Race Radio

Today is the first of two TdF stages that is being raced without radios. By and large, the riders seem to be really pissed off about it, too. Some say racing without radios is going backwards technologically, that radios are a natural progression, like carbon fiber and wind-tunnel testing. Some say they make racing safer by alerting riders to obstacles and tricky spots on the course.

On the other side of the argument, the one taken by ASO, the company that own the Tour, people are saying that the radios take the thinking out of the race. The riders just have to wait for their director to give them instructions. Bernard Hinault called radios, "A gameboy with a gigolo on the other end." Riders who see the benefit of racing without an earpiece say that they actually make things less safe, because every rider in the peloton is receiving the same direction for tight turns, i.e. be on the outside or be on the inside, so that all 150 of them try to take the same line through the turn.

I see both sides. And I'm inclined to that latter view, that radios take something OUT of the race by making it too controlled.

I'm not religious about that view though. What I think about today's kerfuffle, with talk of a boycott or a neutralized stage, is that if the teams were going to pitch a hissy, they should have done it back in June when the UCI validated ASO's decision to run two stages sans-radio. That would have been the time to band together and protest, not in the thick of the race.

By and large, I take the riders' side. They were right when, during the Giro, they neutralized the stage in Milan due to parked cars being left on the tight and twisty course. That made sense. It wasn't good to see that stage killed, but the organizers should have had more respect for the riders' safety. And even in this case with the radios, I might prefer to see them race without, but if they really think their safety is being compromised, I have no problem with them using radios.

What I do have a problem with is the disorganization. Pro cycling is always this way. The teams can't get together to speak with one voice. The UCI and various other testing, oversight and race organizations can't agree on protocols. It makes being a fan harder. It injects emotion in all the wrong places and leaves us thinking about rules when we should be watching races.

I love pro cycling. I really, really love it. But, what I like is the race, not the side show.

Fuel to the Fire

From today's Guardian:

"One cherished Tour tradition is the fans' habit of covering the roads with hand-painted exhortations to their heroes. This year four black and yellow Livestrong vans are travelling ahead of the race, selling the wristbands and promoting the charity while neatly stencilling the course, a kilometre at a time, with messages from Armstrong's supporters: "Get a goal and reach further", "Enjoy living not just life", "It's about hope, not the bike".

Ever since I went to a Celtics game (my one and only basketball game, I might add) and witnessed the painful commercialization of sport (music playing all the time, new advertisements emblazoned all over the court and walls and hoarding every fifteen seconds, idiotic automated "let's make some noise" announcements, playboy bunnies shooting t-shirts out of handheld air cannons into the crowd, and an interruption every two or three minutes for some inane showpiece on the court (trampolining, middle school kid shoots a free throw for a bag of Doritos), I've been terrified that this kind of nonsense is going to overflow into the rest of the world and ruin its fine sporting traditions. Apparently it's already happening at football matches in the UK, and now, apparently, the soul of the Tour de France (or what is left of it, at least) is all but sucked dry.

When the US men's soccer team (or Team USA! USA! USA!) finally and inevitably win the World Cup, I will pack up my few worldly possessions and head for the hills. I couldn't live in a world like that.

Just Happy

I'm just happy that Lance is back in the Tour, on account of I had totally forgotten about cancer! I suspect the rest of the world had too. It's nice of him to sacrifice himself to remind us. Never seen a less self-aggrandizing person in my life. So refreshing. And his selfless corporate sponsors too.

It's just like in the old days of cycling.

When people rode for the fun of it.

Modern life is rubbish.

Bah.

Stenciled Bike Bag

Here is the new bag I wrote about the other day, with Fausto Coppi stencil applied.

Friday Video - Fuel Up!!!!

Tour de France - Voekler's Big Win

Hey, so Thomas Voekler won yesterday's stage after a long, dramatic breakaway that outlasted the peloton by just seven seconds.

My friend Sarah Beth was amazed that "the lead withstood the winds with only six of them while the rest of the peloton battled it together and got totally split apart."

And it brought up a really important bit of cycling dynamics that sometimes allows these breakaways to work and thrill us all with the audacity and grit of a single rider.

See, it all depends on when the attacks come and where the wind is at the time. Also, the peloton is harder to organize than a six man break. A disciplined break can be very efficient. On the other hand, it can be hard, within the main group, to decide who is going to do the hard work of chasing down a break.

Typically, in the flats, you expect the sprinters' teams to do the work, but there has been some controversy in recent days because Columbia has felt they were doing too much work, while the other sprint teams (Garmin, Cervelo, et. al.) sat back and rested. Any ambivalence in the peloton about who is going to set the pace gives an advantage to the breakaway. That ambivalence, coupled with unpredictable wind conditions, can make the peloton an unwieldy weapon.

Also, specifically as regards side winds, when the peloton is forced into echelons (those diagonal formations across the road) to fight the wind, it is far less powerful than when the riders are arranged in an arrow formation into a head wind.

This bike, highlighted on one of my favorite cycling blogs, is an excellent primer: http://redkiteprayer.com/?p=183

Better to be lucky than smart

There was a dump truck pulling a long, low, flat trailer down one of the main stretches of my commute this morning. It had perfect handholds on it, so I cruised up and took ahold of the one on the very end of the trailer. I thought I'd just let him pull me about a mile down the road and then let go. I could easily have passed him, but there was a free ride, so I held on at the back.

Then he started to drift over, so I let go and backed off a little. The trailer swung into the bike lane and pinched right up next to the curb. I would have been crushed. I yelled, but he didn't hear a thing, just kept on trucking.

"Fuck," I thought. "That was lucky." At the next light I rolled by him fast, and kept going.

Half a minute later I was skidding to a stop, as a woman threw her passenger side door open, straight across the bike lane, and stepped out directly in front of me. "No! No! No!" I yelled. "You can't get out in the middle of traffic like this!" She smiled and apologized and skittered away onto the sidewalk.

Her boyfriend/husband/driver then honked at me and called me a "fucking asshole" and then bade me fuck myself. I told him he looked very tough sitting in his car. Again, I rode away. I'm a cyclist, not a ninja.

And then I thought (as I often do in the post-conflict period when my adrenaline and sense of righteous indignation are all aflutter), "He's lucky I didn't kill his girlfriend." While he was busy hurling expletives at me, it never even occurred to him that, had his significant other waited two more seconds to fling her door open, I would most certainly have completely wrecked her. She would have been pulling my headset out of her face. She might have been pulling my front wheel out of her...well...you can picture it.

The guy was/is an idiot. But then, so am I. This morning we were BOTH more lucky than smart.