A mere 10 days since the Tour and we’ve already had how many races? My count of top-tier post-Tour Euro cycling events is currently at three; one classic and two fairly extensive stage races: Tour of Denmark (29 July – 2 Aug) Clasica San Sebastian (1 Aug) Tour of Poland (2 Aug – 8 Aug)…
Rants Archive
The Rants category was added in the early days of Cyclocosm to differentiate opinion pieces from the daily news recaps.
Oh, I've Got An Otra Pregunta for you, Buddy…
I’ve know you don’t wanna answer those pesky questions about drugs, Alberto, but in all seriousness—are you high right now? You’d have to be stoned out of your skinny Spanish gourd to simply stonewall some very reasonable questions a day after word broke that DiLuca turned up positive for CERA twice during his Giro campaign…
An Open Letter to the ASO
(I tried contacting the directly ASO via their YouTube channel, but they refuse to accept messages from anyone they aren’t friends with. I sent this to them via email links on their homepage, but I do not expect a reply.) Dear Sir or Madam, I was very disappointed to read this morning that you filed…
Pro-Radio's Missed Opportunity
Today’s stage, and the radio-inspired protest that dominated most of it, was one of the most foolish things I’ve ever seen at the Tour de France—and yes, I am including the Giuseppe Guerini incident in that list. And, lest we forget, I am adamantly pro-radio. All the proponents of race radio had to do was…
The Four Impossibilities of Radio-Free Racing
It’s not like I haven’t covered this before, but I feel I ought to touch again on the radio issue. With two stages of this year’s Tour de France to be run radio-free, there’s a significant groundswell of support for the out-and-out prohibition of radios in professional cycling. I’ve characterized this group—largely for comic effect—as…
When it Rains…
Yeah, so as if WordPress nuking every file on my server wasn’t bad enough, there was a brief mix-up with DNS records that temporarily bumped Cyclocosm.com to a GoDaddy parked URL page. The whole rigamarole would have been fixed much sooner—and possibly avoided entirely—if Verizon, my grundle of an ISP, hadn’t spent hours redirecting me…
And June Slogs Slowly Onward
So I’ve told you, many a time, that smaller stage races don’t do it for me. Don’t get me wrong, its awesome to see a dude like Sylvester Szmyd, who turned himself inside out feeding the whims of the schizophrenic helper monkey driving the Liquigas team car last month, take a stage on storied climb…
Component Review Fail
“…it won’t snap, either.” -Lennard Zinn, on Mavic’s r-sys spokes, May. 8, 2009 I had a definite sensation that Lennard Zinn would end up ruing this tech story on Mavic’s “improved” R-Sys wheel design. I know Zinn’s got a heck of a reach, but at a beefy 190, I still wouldn’t put money against fellow…
Sastre's Win Still Doesn't Take Cervelo Off the Hook
I bet that out there, somewhere, are people who think today’s Giro win by Carlos Sastre somehow justifies the ridiculousness of the Cervelo Test Team’s tactical blunder yesterday. From the moment the team car pulled alongside Serge Pauwels, the squad has been trying to explain away what was nothing but team mismanagement, pure and simple….
Exciting Racing, But Who's Calling The Plays?
Tactics take a holiday in tomorrow’s long, hilly time trial, and if the first half of the race has been any indication, a lot of the team cars could use a break. While the riders might focus on the gnarly courses, and other fans on the Stage 9 drama, I think the most glaring problem…