World Championships

I woke up late enough to catch only the fun parts of the World Championships last weekend.

It's pretty nice to see Cadel Evans, who has a bit of a reputation as an always-the-bridesmaid rider (not to mention a bit of a whiner), ride a strong, well-timed attack to victory. Seeing him alone in the final kilometer, out of the saddle and grinding his gear to the finish line without any flamboyant victory salutes - that's a nice aesthetic of victory. It reminded me of Sergei Ivanov's stage win on stage 14 of the Tour this year - the right attack that gets clear and then a hard, ride, hands in the drops, ass on the nose, pounding home solo. Now that's PRO.

Aero Wheels

Recently, some good reading on the subject of aerodynamic wheels came up. I didn't really understand aerodynamic wheels until I read this post and this post by sprinterdellacasa a while back.

A few months ago, NYVelocity posted an equipment review of rental deep carbon wheels from Revolution Wheels. Using Zipps as a familiar point of reference, NYVelocity concluded, "These wheels are maybe 95% as good as Zipps, for 42% of the price. Unless you're lighting cigars with twenty dollar bills these babies are hard to beat."

A few months later, Zipp's lead engineer gave a very open interview to NYVelocity in response. It offers some interesting insight into Zipp's R&D as well as the industry's copycat process. Plus you get to learn some juicy details about ceramic bearings.

Now, another response comes from Steve Hed, who apparently wants to clarify some of the Zipp-v-Hed issues brought up in the interview with Zipp's engineer. Hed picks apart some of the claims and illustrates a chicken-or-the-egg rivalry going on between the two companies: The fact is that since Zipp acquired our patent (sometime in the late 90s) their wheels have changed shape to more closely mirror the wheels we started selling 18 years ago. We have continually improved them since then, but the underlying aero shapes are still similar. As Zipp's wheel shapes have changed to more closely resemble ours, it only follows that their wind tunnel data is more like ours too.

It's a good read for the nerds who enjoy not only technical data but industry sparring as well.

Stage 14 dramarama

Stage 14 of the Tour was incredible to watch - well, the last 20k, which I caught after coffee and muffins - and provides plenty of fodder for us armchair jerks. Everybody's favorite hardworking nice guy pro, George Hincapie, was the virtual yellow jersey being the best-placed rider in a break of 12. He needed to finish a little over five minutes ahead of the peloton to grab the yellow. The break of 12, with a big gap on the peloton, started attacking each other around 14k to go, and Sergie Ivanov counterattacked the son of Stephen Roche (who provides one of my favorite Tour stories) and opened a gap on the other members of the break, who looked at each other wondering who would chase. Ivanov won after a spectacular ride, and Hincapie rolled in several seconds afterward.

Garmin, the team that Hincapie's teammate Cavendish has repeatedly badmouthed, took over pacemaking at the front from a tired yellow-defending AG2R. There was the fuss during the Giro d'Italia about how Cav thought Garmin's focus on the TTT was disrespectful to the race. Interesting, coming from somebody who's a part of a team that doesn't have GC contenders for major stage races and instead seeks to just win individual stages. Isn't that the same thing?

So, with Garmin at the front driving a pace, the peloton is brought under the red kite and after a messy little low-speed sprint, with Cavendish trying to win but trying to do so as late as possible, Hincapie winds up five seconds outside of the yellow jersey. Cavendish, meanwhile, is relegated for his sprint tactics against Thor Hushovd. From the video, he half puts Thor into the barrier; the barrier line also moves inward and Cavendish doesn't really chop over very far.

Practically before any reporter can jam a microphone into anybody's face, Twitter lights up about all of this. The most interesting was from Robbie McEwen, who said that sprinting tactically walks a very fine line, and "if Cav hadn't [looked over his shoulder at Thor], he wouldn't been DQ'd." He also points out that it's easy to armchair quarterback like this, but I'd lean toward saying that he knows what he's talking about, having won the Green jersey a few times as well as lost it due to a relegation.

Meanwhile on Twitter, Lance says that Astana didn't close the gap, Vaughters says his team wasn't denying Hinc the yellow in retaliation for this feud between two American cycling teams (with Columbia usually coming out on top; Garmins wins in this years Grand Tours have been limited), Bruyneel raises his eyebrows at Vaughter's defense, and Vaughters' rider Wiggins feels sorry for Hincapie while defending himself, saying that he doesn't make the decisions on the road.

Both buzz-inducing moves - Garmin taking the necessary seconds from Hinc and denying him the yellow and Cavendish's half-chop of Hushovd - could go either way, in my opinion. Cavendish's move was far from flagrant, and yeah, Garmin's nibbling at the seconds is all part of racing, petty as it may appear to be.

But the real question is, when the hell did Twitter become the gossip-y medium of choice for the pro peloton?

And now it's time for the mountains.

Vive le Tour

Yesterday, during my day of avoiding any Stage 3 spoilers on the internet (and before I headed down to Lakeside Lounge to watch the two-hour replay during happy hour), I started drafting a post with a list of things I want to see during this year's Tour de France. It's a list of things I'll be watching out for and pulling for, in the name of an exciting tour. I had no idea that I'd see some of it on Stage 3.

That evening, with a crispy Hoegaarden in my hand and a Neighburrito in my belly, I watched Columbia split the field in a stunning manner and with eight of their nine racers represented, drive a huge, late breakaway, and set up Cavendish for the win. The exciting part, however, is that Lance Armstrong was in it and Contador was stuck napping in the peloton forty seconds back. Everybody is speculating about Astana team dynamics and drawing comparisons to La Vie Clair in 1987. Will Armstrong and Contador be riding against each other? For this to happen, Armstrong needs to be a credible GC threat.

The most boring scenario, of course, would be that Armstrong winds up not being a GC threat by the time the race gets particularly difficult, Contador is the only Astana contendor, and the race plods along with a handful of climbers marking each other, racing conservatively, riding up some mountains and then into Paris. Yawn.

But if Armstrong could win the Tour, what would happen then?

Which brings us to yesterday's stage - too early in the Tour to draw any conclusions, but ripe for questioning. Why did Columbia drive the pace from 30k out when they've got the fastest sprinter setting up? Did Armstrong know to be at the front, perhaps thanks to a word from his former faithful domestique and New York City our-boy Big George Hincapie? Rumor has it that Contador let the initial gap open up. Here's a new angle - Armstrong is a master of confounding doubletalk (Belgium Knee Warmers had a great bit on this a while back, but I can't find it now), and Bruyneel is a master tactician. What if all this stuff about it being Contador's year is just smoke? What if Contador let that gap open to give Lance a boost in the GC prior to today's TTT? What if other GC riders mark Contador later in the race only to have Lance fire off on an attack?

Now, as you'll see on the list below, I'm also hoping that thie Tour de France will also feature somebody who's not Lance Armstrong. I can't stand the constant Lance check-ins, I can't stand his faux-nice-guy demeanor. Maybe I'd be able to if they didn't happen every ten minutes, if every other article were somehow about him. There are 179 other people in the race, after all. And here I am departing from my own wishes, but for a good reason: Lance Armstrong, throw down or shut up. You said you were coming back to win the Tour de France. All this nonsense is for naught if you don't make a good show of it.

And so, here's my list of hopes and dreams for this year's Tour:

1: An exciting, dynamic bunch of shaking-up of the General Classification, since there are enough people who can compete with each other. Hopefully this will be assisted by,
2: Lance Armstrong doing pretty well. I mean, for all his fake-humble words, he did say he was going to come back and win the Tour de France. If he challenges it, it could lead to,
3: Interesting Astana intra-team dynamics, with Armstrong and Contador both potential GC threats. Maximum drama probably won't ensue, but you never know!
But more importantly,
4: Occasional TV and news coverage of somebody who's not Lance Armstrong.
5. Lots of George Hincapie leading out Mark Cavendish, but also,
6. That Cavendish gets soundly beaten in a few sprints.
7. That the two radio-free stages go so well that maybe everybody thinks that going radio-free would be a decent idea. Cyclocosm has a good bit on why people who clamor for radio-free racing are missing the point, and Sprinter Della Casa has a good bit on both sides, but coming down against race radios.

Your thoughts on the whole affair?

See you at Lakeside...