Justice!!!
March 16, 2018 § 3 Comments
Justice continues to be meted out with a firm hand in the great sport of cycling. Cyril Fontayne, 43-year-old masters mechanical doper, was criminally convicted of misdemeanor attempted fraud and sentenced to sixty hours of community service. In addition to his criminal conviction and sentence, Fontayne was banned from competition for five years and ordered to pay fines and restitution of 89 euros.
Lance Armstrong: No fine, no criminal charges.
Alberto Contador: No fine, no criminal charges, allowed to come back and win the TdF.
Chris Froome: No fine, no criminal charges, no suspension. If found guilty of doping will still be allowed to keep all titles in between the time of the positive test and the finding of guilt, meaning if he wins the Tour and Giro in 2018, he will keep both titles if his case is not resolved before then.
Etc., etc., etc.
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Sagan notches second Tour of California stage win, calls team boss Tinkov a “complete asswipe”
May 18, 2015 § 30 Comments
After smashing the field in the 10.6-km time trial at Magic Mountain in the Amgen Tour of California, then winning the overall event, Slovakian ballbuster Peter Sagan thanked his team for their support and referred to team owner Oleg Tinkov as a “complete asswipe.” Cycling in the South Bay sat down with the Green Monster to discuss.
CitSB: You must be feeling pretty good. Two wins in a Pro Tour race after being called out by your boss, Oleg Tinkov.
Peter Sagan: Yep.
CitSB: And you called him a “complete asswipe”?
PS: Yep.
CitSB: Because?
PS: Because he is. Oleg Tinkov is the pro rider’s worst nightmare.
CitSB: How so?
PS: Oh, come on. You know the type. Total wanker masters racer, buys the best stuff, wears the most expensive kit, shows up at the private training ride uninvited, and he’s off the back before the pace even picks up. Then, because he can’t keep up, he sponsors the local race club so he can be part of the team, hang out at the races, do the training rides. And everyone hates his fucking guts.
CitSB: Well, money talks.
PS: Yep, and Oleg’s is paying my bills. But imagine having said masters wanker telling you how to race your bike.
CitSB: Must be pretty annoying.
PS: You have no idea. Dude texts me a hundred times a day, I’m not kidding. “Spin more on the climbs, Peter.” “You opened up your sprint too early, Peter.” “Take on more electrolytes, Peter.” This from a guy who, ten years ago, couldn’t have picked an electrolyte from an electric car.
CitSB: You’ll admit that your results this year have been disappointing.
PS: Yes, they have.
CitSB: And Oleg’s paying you some pretty solid coin.
PS: Look, no disrespect intended, but pro racing isn’t like buying gas at the pump where you stick in your credit card and out gush six monuments and a green jersey at the Tour. It’s fucking hard and it comes down to fitness, smarts, teamwork, and luck. Tinkov has never won a bike race, any bike race. Dude’s a fuggin’ fanboy who thinks that when you’re on the rivet, your teeth filled with mud, it’s 45 degrees and raining sleet, and you’re still a hundred k’s from the velodrome in Roubaix that you need to “dig deeper.” He’s the one who needs to dig deeper, to dig his way out of that pile of fantasy shit his head is buried in.
CitSB: He seems to think he’s better at managing the team than Riis was.
PS: You know something about Riis? He was a true motivator. Riis earned his stripes at the head of the peloton, not ripping off stupid Russian consumers with payday loans and giving head to Vladimir Putin. Riis believed in you and he showed you how to focus on what you were good at while improving your weaknesses. Tinkov is Vino without the race smarts or the race legs. Rotten to the core, dumb as a box of rusty derailleurs, and as much fun to be around as a bag of cold, wet dicks.
CitSB: Bag of cold, wet dicks?
PS: Well, when they’re cold and wet they shrivel up.
CitSB: Got it. Has Tinkov’s outspokenness created tension in the team?
PS: No. Everyone hates his guts, especially Alberto, and we all call him Dickov behind his back. Did you see that shit about the Giro, where he said that all of Alberto’s rivals fear him, and that Alberto is a shoo-in?
CitSB: That didn’t go over well?
PS: Oh, it did. We laughed our asses off. Dickov thinks that riders perform best when you belittle them or make outrageous brags in the media.
CitSB: And they don’t?
PS: Riders perform best when they’re internally driven to win, they’re fit, they have a good team, they ride smart, and they get lucky. And when they use the right juice [winks]. Marginal gains, as Dave Brailsford would say.
CitSB: Right-o. Thanks, Peter.
PS: Any time.
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Top pro surprised that time on front doesn’t lead to win at Tirenno-Adriatico
March 16, 2014 § 21 Comments
Richie Porte, the leader for Team Sky at Tirenno-Adriatico, expressed surprise today that his race tactics did not result in a stage win atop the climb to Selvarotonda. “I was on the front for most of the climb,” said Porte, in disbelief. “I was killing those guys.”
Alberto Contador, winner of the day’s stage, couldn’t explain the result either. “You know, Richie was up there on the front of the group, just drilling it really hard into a huge headwind up a very long and challenging climb. It’s hard to understand how he didn’t win.” Contador was seen shortly after the interview high-fiving his teammates on the bus and grinning slyly at his team director.
Overall leader Michal Kwiatkowski, who finished the stage with what analysts believe is an unsurmountable 34-second lead over Porte, was also at a loss to explain the outcome. “Richie was favored to win the race, and on the decisive climbing stage we were all sure he would win, the way he sat very impressively on the front for such a long time into such a bitter headwind with no teammates to help him and all of us in the leader’s group on his wheel like that. But somehow he lost.”
Second-place finisher Nairo Quintana was likewise mystified by Porte’s failure to win the stage and take control of the race despite his clever tactical riding. “We were all telling him, you know, ‘Wow, Richie, you’re killing us, dude,’ and ‘I’m cracking, I can barely hang on,’ and stuff like that, but then somehow just towards the end we all felt better and were able to pass him and put a lot of time on him. It’s weird. He was riding so strong and we were all so, how you say, in the box of hurt?”
Porte concurred with Quintana’s analysis. “It’s fuggin’ weird. Every time I looked back they had these faces that were filled with pain, awful grimaces, you know? And their shoulders were drooping and they were making loud breathing noises. I had ’em, I had ’em, I swear. Then, poof! We get about one kilometer out and suddenly everybody takes off and there I was, even though I’d done all the work, I couldn’t go with them. After pulling them up the climb like that you would have thought that they would at least have waited for me,” Porte added with a slight show of frustration. “It’s almost like they were playing me. If we weren’t all such good pals, I don’t know.”
Teammate Bradley “Wiggo” Wiggins was nonetheless upbeat at Porte’s chances on Sunday’s last mountain stage. “He’ll just have to hammer from the gun,” said Wiggo. “Tire ’em out from the start, maybe take a little breather if he can, and then go right back to the front and drop the hammer on the climb. Ride ’em off ‘is wheel. That’s the ticket, just like it was a triathlon, full fuggin’ gas from the get-go. They won’t know what hit ’em, especially at the end when they hit the Muro di Guardiagrele with its 30% ramp.”
After the award ceremony, the top finishers congratulated Porte on his outstanding ride, saying “You were a beast,” and “I hope you don’t hammer us like that tomorrow. We won’t stand a chance!”
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Froome, mad after being sad, now happy
July 19, 2013 § 22 Comments
After his frightening brush with sadness on Monday’s rest day, Tour de France leader Chris Froome became very mad on Tuesday. Froome, angry about challenger Alberto Contador’s “dangerous” riding which forced him off his bike near the end of Tuesday’s 16th stage to Gap, was still stewing about the incident six hours later when he posted a tweet expressing his irritation.
“Yesterday I was really sad about all the volcano doping allegations,” said Froome. “But today I’m mad. Contador’s dangerous riding was really dangerous. It was extremely dangerous, so much so that I could have gotten really badly hurt. That just makes me mad.”
When it was pointed out that, generally speaking, two hundred cyclists crammed onto French roads no wider than a tampon while racing shoulder-to-shoulder downhill at speeds exceeding 100 kph was a fairly dangerous endeavor, Froome reacted angrily and with a lot of madness. “I have a right to be mad about this. I think Contador was taking too many risks and evidently he did go a little too fast, he couldn’t even control his own speed and crashed. That put me in danger.”
Spanish madly react to Froome’s anger
Contador rejected Froome’s concerns, appearing to be mad that Froome was mad at him. “He is, how you say in English, a big pussy? Is true, I made the crash in front of him going a little too much fast, no bueno. Now he’s crying about peligroso? It’s the bike racing. Que pussy.”
Soon-to-be-Sir David Brailsford, babysitter of Team Sky and curator of the team’s Hello Kitty collection, was also very mad, despite being sad only a day earlier. “This makes me mad. Chris could have lost the Tour. Do you know how mad he would have been then, not to mention getting very sad again? He has ridden an amazing race. The others should be giving up, not pushing the pace on the downhill and somehow trying to gain a time advantage which makes Chris awfully mad. We talked about this amongst ourselves, and the whole team was mad. Just really mad. Angry mad.”
Teammate Richie Porte, who is hardly ever mad, was hopping mad. “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more,” said Porte in his thick Australian accent that sounded like a cross between English and a throat disease. “G’day mate, shrimps on the barbie and all that. Just because I’m a banana bender don’t mean these bities ‘n bludgers can act like a bounce on me mate, eh?”
Froome goes from mad to happy after Thursday’s queen stage on l’Alpe d’Huez
Despite being sad, then mad, Froome found himself feeling happy after Team Sky released his power data to Dr. Professor Jacques Tati, the respected French physiologist and comic film director. According to Tati, “Froome’s power profiles show what we would expect within the range of a human with a V02 max that is at the limit of what is possible for a human, although suspect for a gangly insect, which he may well be.”
Froome was very happy to hear Tati’s analysis. “I’m really happy to hear Dr. Tati’s findings and his take on it, and basically to back us up and say that these performances are very good and strong, clean, sporting performances. I’m not mad anymore, and I forgive Alberto. I am happy now.”
Dr. Tati pointed out that he had not concluded that the performances were clean. “I only said he was normal for someone who is completely abnormal. Whether he is clean or not, who knows?”
British cycling public slowly getting happy
As Froome’s lock on the 2013 Tour looks unshakeable, the cynical, sad, mad, and fundamentally grumpy British public has slowly shown signs of being happy about Froome’s happiness.
Nigel Rathbone, a waiter at the famed “Warm Beer and Fish” pub, was guardedly happy. “I s’pose I’m happy, yeh, if it means we beat the French at something. Yeh. Why not, eh?”
Cloretha Clammonger, a charwoman in the City’s toney central district, was also potentially happy. “I reckon I could be ‘appy, I could. I’d rather be grumpy, but you know Chris is just a South African, which isn’t really English, right? Now if he was a right good Englishman, I s’pose I’d be ‘appier than a whore at a cardinal’s convention, I would.”
Cycling in the South Bay 