inthedrops: a compilation of my work
After the excitement of seeing two of my favourite riders battle it out for the win at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, the news that the two Basque WorldTour races might be at risk has put a rather large dent in my good mood. Yesterday, the news came out that the Basque government will not be able to honour its financial commitment to the organisers of the Vuelta al País Vasco and Clásica San Sebastián fully this year. Continue reading “Basque Races At Risk (Updated)”
Well, we’re here again. This weekend sees the beginning of the ‘proper’ racing in Europe with Omloop Het Nieuwsblad starting in a few hours time, and Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne being run on Sunday afternoon. Continue reading “Here Come The Spring Classics”
And so today comes the news that another Chinese stage race looks like being shoehorned in to the WorldTour calendar. The Tour of Hanghzou is proposed to run from October 17-21 of this year. The race was approved during a two-day meeting of the Professional Cycling Council, ending yesterday, and is likely to become the 29th race of the WorldTour calendar. Continue reading “Thanks UCI, Another Meaningless Stage Race”
Those are the words of UCI spokesman Enrico Carpani in the wake of the news that Lance Armstrong’s federal case had collapsed. So it seems that the UCI have struck a major blow against anti-doping that Jan Ullrich, the retired 1997 Tour de France winner, has just been banned from cycling for two years from August 22nd 2011, and had his results from 2005 up to his official retirement in 2007 stripped. Continue reading ““The past is behind us. We don’t want to look into the past now, we want only to go forward””
So Contador gets his two years, and all the riders he swindled out of victory with his 50 picograms of clenbuterol get to move up a spot. Continue reading “Andy Schleck wins a stage race!”
Today it was announced by the UCI that eight teams – Astana, BMC, Garmin-Cervélo, Lampre-ISD, Liquigas-Cannondale, Movistar, Rabobank, and Sky – have been confirmed for cycling’s top tier, the UCI WorldTour, next season. Also confirmed by the UCI were fifteen of the teams who will ride at Professional Contintal level in 2012. They are Accent Jobs-Willems Veranda’s, Androni Giocattoli, Acqua & Sapone, Bretagne-Schuller, Caja Rural, Cofidis le Credit en Ligne, Colnago-CSF Inox, Colombia-Coldeportes, Landbouwkrediet, Project 1t4i, Saur – Sojasun, Spidertech, Team Netapp, Topsport Vlaanderen-Mercator and UnitedHealthCare.
Every few years or so, it seems that we have a piece of news telling us that the Basque national team, Euskaltel-Euskadi, is under threat of folding. However, this time, the threat seems more serious than it has been before. Today it was announced that the team is one of the five that are not in the top fifteen on the UCI’s sporting value points ranking. Assuming the top fifteen are ok with regards to the other UCI criteria (administrative, ethical and financial), Euskaltel will be fighting it out with the three French squads AG2R, Europcar and FDJ, and possibly whatever becomes of Geox-TMC for the remaining three WorldTour spots. It does, however, seem that Geox would need some sort of miracle to exist next year.
Another year, another crazy Giro stage. Seemingly sacking Angelo Zomegnan will not deter new race director Michele Acquarone from torturing the riders, though he has said the Giro will be more balanced in terms of its route in future. The fans, however, have voted for a monster stage to finish off next year’s race.
Continue reading “Giro d’Italia 2012: Caldes – Passo dello Stelvio”
Well, its Worlds time again and all of the season’s familiar questions are popping up again, such as ‘Will Gilbert win?’ and ‘Who can beat Gilbert?’. Will it be one of the riders in this rather shoddily made collage? Or will it be someone whose outline I couldn’t be bothered to trace around in Paint.net such as Matt Goss or Fabian Cancellara? Continue reading “Men’s Road World Championships 2011”
Dani Ostanek 