Be Excellent To Each Other

Never in doubt - go Wiggo!

Wiggo did well to reel in Nibbles, by all accounts. For all the talk of Froome holding back on this TdF, there's no saying if he'd have been able to make a break stick over Wiggins, and Brad is definitely the better time trialler. I think we should just be happy that we've got a 1-2 for GB!

Right, here's hoping for something extra-ordinary in the GC today. Hopefully, there'll be some form of pact between Evans and Nibaldi and TeeJay to attack, attack attack, and let Nibbles go for it. i want to see Froome in full uphilll mode. I hope Cavendish gets over the mountains.

I was reminded the other day of Mario Cipollini whose attitude towards the mountainous bits was "fuck this, I'm going to the beach" and his brilliant apparel, and I'm pleased that Cavendish is going up the hills as best he can.


I liked Voeckler's sitting up on the saddle, arms outstretched poses yesterday. I was doing that on Sunday. And, apparently, I was also climbing with my tongue out. So, it clearly isn't an odd thing to do, despite what others say.

Big day today in TdF.

Also start of The Open and the Test!

I should have taken the day off!

Gwan Wiggo!

It's not always the same route?!

Ooooh no, it's been to the UK in the past

WTF

I saw it in London. It was one of the most awesome days ever.

Just watched the time trial. How fast is Wiggins.

You should be able to tell us, you just watched the time trial.

Perfect ending!

That was brilliant. First time I have watched the TDF

Didnt you watch it yesterday?

Where does this sit in terms of sporting achievements in British history?

Gotta be pretty near the top, with Wiggo one of our best sportsmen ever when you add in his Olympic golds etc.

Worse than Eddie The Eagle.
Better than David Beckham.

yes yesterday was the first time I watched it.

Very high up there, especially as there is no real tradition of the sport in this country.

One thing that did occur to me was this was heavily funded over the last twenty years or so by Lottery money and grants. When you compare the state of cycling now and then, compared to the FA which has had much, much more private money poured into it over the same timescale, it shows just how bad a job the football authorities have done.

I assume that funding will drop off with Sky sponsorship and success generating more commercial returns. What then needs to happen is that the cycling funding is redirected to another deserving sport with similar ambitions.

Finally Ultimate Frisbee will get the respect and funding it deserves!

Wiggins during Lesley Garrett massacring of the National Anthem.

Eh?

Ironically, most of the current grant money's been wasted on the Mcdonalds-Coca-Colympics, so...

Yeah, I loved it when his bike lifted off the ground with Gaywood in the basket heading towards the Mothership.

I can't believe it was considered a better idea to fly that screeching harpie in than to play a fucking CD. This is the French resenting and punishing us.

Badly phrased. We've got a history of it, but then we've got a history of ice hockey since the 1920s as well. It happened, but we didn't do much with it and what we did have was one-offs. We have no real tradition of road racing. Tom Simpson in the Sixties, Robert Millar. In the 90s Chris Boardman and Max Sciandri. Wasn't it as recent as 2005 where there were no British riders in the Tour at all?

I was reading something about some rule that stopped road racing in the UK for a while, so we've always been good at track cycling and time trials because they were only things allowed.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/others ... arges.html

I'm gutted beyond belief about this. Gutted for Armstrong if he's innocent, and gutted for cycling (and sport in general) if he's guilty.

A less sympathetic view:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/20 ... ed-cycling

I'm really torn now. Part of me hopes it isn't true, and it is all a big misunderstanding. The other half is very angry. Again. I feel cheated upon.

However, I did like the tale of him calling up Millar's sister and saying "What the fuck is he doing?" after they ran into each other in monaco and millar was trollied.

I can't decide. If he's innocent he should fight it until the end - why give up? But he's never failed a drugs test - it's all based on circumstantial evidence from erstwhile teammates who may or may not bear grudges.

Did he fail any tests?

Apparently not at the time, but part of the allegations are that he DID test positive, but that the Lance Armstrong Show was big enough to hush it all up.

The last paragraph in the grauniad piece sums it up:



I was listening to this story on R4 this morning. Which is worth a listen again.

As reluctant as I am to make assumptions, by doing this he's effectively just walked away from his entire lifetime's accomplishments, so that rather suggests he knew he'd be convicted.

Fuck you, cycling. Again.

Yes, it looks that way. However, his statement says that it's taken too much of a toll on his family and other pursuits away from cycling (cancer charity etc), so we will never really know the truth, I expect.

Plus he doesn't believe he'd get a fair trial, in any case.

http://lancearmstrong.com/news-events/l ... st-23-2012

Livestrong has been a for-profit company, not a charity for a while, if my recollections are correct.

Yeah. The Guardian took the line that you have to be a master strategist to win the Tour de France, doped or no; this "I'm walking away from the legal hassles for my family's sake" is exactly what a master strategist who knew he was about the get caught would do to save whatever he could of his professional reputation. Obviously none of us know, but to my mind Occam's Razor says he's a cheat (as were, it seems, practically all of them).

Some weren't/aren't. I hope. I really, really, hope.

You're probably right. How could someone clean dominate the sport when practically everyone else around them was doping?

It's sad, because his ascent from cancer survivor to sport superstar was an amazing story. I'd give my left bollock just to win the Tour even once.

Anyway, time to look forward; cycling is cleaner now, and if someone who is so anti-doping as Wiggins can win it, most of the field must now be clean.

I hope.

I'm pretty sure it wasn't easy, even with drugs. And anyway if others around him were at it then his achievement still stands really.

Oh, I don't deny that he's still an amazing athlete. But the 'cycling star, hero, survivor' gleam he had on him is now irrevocably tarnished.

And a bit of a cunt.

There was something with demandmedia to do with it, which has probably thrown me down the wrong trail.

Somebody mentioned the fastest times up Alpe d'Huez.

It's an interesting list....

How can one person for the drugs testers to not report it...