Get On, Clip In, Fall OffRandom bletherings of a dilletante cyclist.Doping and hypocrisy- July 28, 2007 I guess that most readers (both of you) won't need to be told that since I last got around to posting an update here, there have been a bunch of people expelled from the Tour. T-Mobile's Patrik Sinkewitz was the first to go after producing a positive test for testosterone in an out-of-competition test a month before the Tour began. Then possibly the biggest shock - pre-race favourite Alexander Vinokourov produced a positive A-sample for homologous blood doping (i.e. transfusion of blood from..http://uffish.net/archives/2007/07/doping_and_hypo.html If you want to stop doping, do the testing right.- July 20, 2007 The still-dragging-on Floyd Landis case and the fact that cyclists are continuing to note chain of custody and test protocol issues today makes me sad. Patrik Sinkewitz's recent positive test for testosterone came from a session where a number of riders noted concerns about protocol and chain of custody issues on their control forms. Add to that the numerous lamentable holes in laboratory technique that arose during the Landis arbitration hearing, and it's clear that way too many doping tests...http://uffish.net/archives/2007/07/if_you_want_to.html Naughty riders who must be punished- July 17, 2007 So the Tour has finally hit the mountains in a big way. Fabian Cancellara surrendered the yellow jersey with good grace after holding on to it for a few days more than CSC had really planned to defend it for anyway. He surrendered it to a bewildered-looking young thing from T-Mobile, Linus Gerdemann, who was so taken aback at taking yellow in his first Tour that the next day he felt obliged to wear the yellow shorts and the yellow helmet as well just in case he forgot. This is just as well, as..http://uffish.net/archives/2007/07/naughty_riders.html 560 milliFabians- July 13, 2007 Now I've finally started riding my bike enough that it might hopefully be making me a bit better at riding bikes, I thought I'd try something a little different to my normal circular routes this evening. Yes, it was time trial time, but only in a vague sense of the word. For starters, I only decided to actually care about my time about 8km in, which is the kind of thing I don't think ace time-triallists do. The idea was fairly basic - ride out for 20 minutes, then turn round and ride back...http://uffish.net/archives/2007/07/560_millifabian.html Claims Direct- July 13, 2007 I only just noticed today how appropriate it is that way too many of the adverts on Eurosport during the Tour de France are for ambulance-chasing claims firms. You know the kind of thing - "I was walking into my office and slipped on a wet floor with no warning signs. I had to go to hospital and was in great pain." Maybe they're looking for some business from the professional cycling world. I could script some new adverts for them if they like - "I was riding along at the back of the peloton..http://uffish.net/archives/2007/07/claims_direct.html Le Tour, so far- July 13, 2007 Avoiding all the usual "wow, the start was in London" stuff that would be expected here (and well, it was a weekend of great cheer for the capital and for Kent) the Tour has been pretty spectacular so far this year. Much of this spectacular has been down to Fabian Cancellara, whose demolition of the competition in the Prologue was only the beginning - he and CSC have worked hard to defend the yellow jersey over this first week. It's by no means standard for the winner of the Prologue to hold...http://uffish.net/archives/2007/07/le_tour_so_far.html More comment spam- July 10, 2007 Having had a (totally justified) complaint from my hosting people about the load the comment code on this site was causing on the server, I had to disable the commenting stuff recently. After cleaning out (I am not making this up) 96000 comments from the database earlier I'm now back up and running again using Akismet to filter spam. I hope this time things will be a little less crazy... And yeah, yeah, I know. No postings. I should probably just start going on about cycling a lot or...http://uffish.net/archives/2007/07/more_comment_sp.html |