Pretty sure I managed to beat Versus to posting audio of their press call today. Added some notes on where to find things, and an MP3 for the non-Flash crowd as well.

Features questions and analysis with Phil Liggett, Paul Sherwen, Tyler Farrar, Christian VandeVelde, and the Cafe's very own Chris. Some very interesting things came up—including that Phil feels in his heart that Lance might not make the podium at this year's Tour. 

Do not let your eyes deceive you—this is indeed a periodic chart laying out over 100 of the world's top cycling events by prestige, type, geographic location, and UCI rank. You can even buy it.

But what I'd really like to do here is refine and improve. It's a friggin' huge chart and I'm a) saddled with many toxic opinions (note the ProTour designation for the ToC) and b) a poor copy editor to begin with. So, as cool as I think you'll all find this, I'd really like to hear what you don't like.

I don't know of a more knowledgeable audience than here at the Café, so I feel like this is probably the correct forum. Certainly it'll be nice to have a few voices from continents where these races are actually run. Anything is fair game—choice of abbreviation, race name, chart position, etc.

A commenter at Cyclocosm has already found one quibble (PV vs VoC) and that led me to discover typo #1—Pays Vasco's first edition was run in 1924, not 1911.  So already, the 2011 version will be an improvement. 

I made an infographic for determining the Jens Factor of your off-season rides. Just after I published it, though, ednl pointed out that I had omitted the well-deserved permanent exclamation point after Jens!

So in the interests of correcting that, I've created a Podium Cafe version. Feel free to print, re-use, remix, etc. under this Creative Commons license. Just send me an email if you'd like the source file or a higher resolution.

Jens Factor - Podium Cafe Edition (via cosmocatalano)

A video spoof, possibly relevant to your interests. Source material is from http://bartape.net, if you didn't recognize it. You can download from my blog for your media playing device.

An aging champion struggles to regain his form. A brash rookie refuses to conform to the ways of the peloton. Together, they can overcome the forces arrayed against them—but only if they first conquer the demons within. The Bodyguard is the timeless tale of a bond forged between two men in the quest for victory in professional cycling.

http://twitter.com/universalsports/status/1764661202

Universal Sports wants everyone to Digg their coverage, and I suppose it wouldn't be such a terrible thing to have links to broadcasts of bike races made available on one of the most heavily trafficked pages on the Internet.

It only takes about 50-60 Diggs to get on the front page of the Enviroment or Science sections, which I think this here Cafe could churn out fairly easily. I think the bar for the Sports section may be higher, but hey, it couldn't hurt to try, right?

When I was pursing money instead of awesomeness last summer, I found that online content producers form cabals based around group Skype chats to vote up their stories.

Someone would publish an article online, and then IM a Digg link to the chat, so everyone could vote it up. It's a fairly decent way to generate traffic to things, because once they make the front page of a section, million of bored cube farmers start checking them out.

If anyone's interested/intimiately familiar with Skype (I tend to avoid it) sound off in the comments, and lets see what we can get together.

(Oh, and if you don't know what Digg is, don't tell anyone!  Just check out the Wikipedia entry and their homepage and act like you've been using it for years.)

How The Race Was Won - 2009 Giro d'Italia Video Analysis #1 from Cosmo Catalano on Vimeo.

Nothing much happened in the way of GC yet (it being Stage 2 and all), but the finish in Trieste was fun to watch.

Going to have to limit myself to weekends on this, I think. Maybe if events of unparalleled awesomeness transpire during the week I'll crank a video out. The good news is I've got some newer software & hardware tools to play with, so final quality should go up, and time investment should go down. Gotta say, I like the Rai graphics better when they're in Italian.

As cycling fans, I think we might be a little jumpy when it comes to reacting to positive tests. But I think it would be beneficial for us, and for Tom Boonen, if we all took a big step back here. 

This "positive test" was an out-of-competition control that showed traces for a substance that isn't banned for out-of-competition use. No infraction occurred. The only recourse for action is a fudge clause (Article IX) in the ProTour ethical code that essentially forces teams to suspend anyone that has done something UCI might not approve of.

This "failed test" brings up three important questions:

1. Is Tom Boonen OK?
2. Why are tests being carried out for non-prohibited substances? 
3. Why are anti-doping authorities announcing positives tests that are not sanctionable?

If you are not asking these, then (IMHO) you're more concerned about destroying positive cyclists than fixing the problem of doping. 

My full rant on it is here. 

How The Race Was Won - 2009 Tour of Romandie Video Analysis from Cosmo Catalano on Vimeo.

Hello again, Podium Cafe. Sorry I was too busy to follow up on comments last week. Promise to pay more attention this time around. 

I'm curious to know what you think of using this all-stages-at-once format for shorter stage races. The alternative, which I'm planning to use for the Grand Tours, would be to recap quickly the events leading up to a big stage, and then cover the big stage as if it were a one day race. Afterwards, I'd have a short segment going over the implications for the rest of the event.

Initially that was my plan, but Romandie had some great finishes—I loved the Evans/Gilbert move, and the pushy last kilo at the end of Stage 5—that I wanted to look at in at least passing detail. The downside is that nothing gets a super deep analysis, and all the internal competitions (points, Mountains, aggressiveness, etc.) get left out entirely. 

Oh, and my apologies for mispronouncing "Kessiakoff". Repeatedly.

*And it was Kuschynski who was 2nd at Wevelgem. I need an intern to fact check before these go live.

How The Race Was Won - 2009 Liege-Bastogne-Liege Video Analysis from Cosmo Catalano on Vimeo.

All SaxoBank, all the time.  I really would have liked to have seen some more fight out of the other teams today, but I suppose I can take heart in the fact that there's a cyclist who can win classics and grand tours again. Hooray!

Also, Chris Anker Sørenson is a pretty cool guy. He attacks on the hill closest to 50k to go in every race and doesn't afraid of anything.

How the Race Was Won - 2009 Fleche Wallone Video Analysis from Cosmo Catalano on Vimeo.

Mid-week ones are always the hardest. Fortunately, I think this is the last big Wednesday until next season.  

It'll be an interesting twist to do these for the big weekend stages after Liege essentially closes the spring one-day season. Also planning to get the L-B-L vid out same-day. Stay tuned.

iPod etc compatible download at Cyclocosm.com. Did you know I'm also on twitter?

How The Race Was Won - Amstel Gold 2009 from Cosmo Catalano on Vimeo.

More at cyclocosm.com (and @Cyclocosm)

 Amstel Gold! Ivanov wins a classic heads-up hill sprint, with daring attacks and savvy teamwork throughout. Also, I believe Amstel is the classic at which Bob Roll had his best result. Not sure, though.

Note well that all Americans do not hold such stereotypical views of the Netherlands as expressed in the opening of this movie. My implication that most do is purely for the sake of humor.

How the Race Was Won - 2009 Paris-Roubaix Video Analysis from Cosmo Catalano on Vimeo.

(Almost) same day service! Probably could have gotten it done by midnight if I had elected not to ride earlier today.  Anyway, here's the How The Race Was Won on Paris-Roubaix, downloadable version for your mobile device at http://cyclocosm.com, plus some other stuff that isn't a video occasionally...

Might have to pass on making one of these for the Scheldeprijs, though the Boonen/Cavendish showdown might be worth it...

How the Race Was Won - 2009 Gent-Wevelgem Video Analysis from Cosmo Catalano on Vimeo.

Well, I wasn't sure if I'd be able to watch it, but I managed. Here's the Gent-Wevelgem analysis, preceded by a mini-rant about it being "the sprinters' classic".  It was an interesting race, but I definitely missed seeing Quick.Step's nefarious hand in the mix. Looking forward to Roubaix.

iPhone/iPod/Zune/PSP/whatever compatible download available at http://cyclocosm.com. And sometimes, when I'm not making videos, I put words up there, too. 

How the Race Was Won - 2009 Tour of Flanders video analysis from Cosmo Catalano on Vimeo.

You know the deal. Download available at Cyclocosm.com, along with an embedded QuickTime version.  Thanks to a glitch at Cycling.TV, I only got the final 26k of footage, but it's one of those limitations that paradoxically expands your production opportunities.

Might be able to get off work on Wed to capture/edit Gent-Wevelgem, but I also might feel like sleeping sometime this week, too. No guarantees. 

E3 Prijs Vlaanderen 2009 - How The Race Was Won from Cosmo Catalano on Vimeo. Better version at cyclocosm.com, as well as an iTunes-compatible download

What better thing for media jackass day than some actual analysis with snappy video commentary from yours truly, including improved audio via iPhone voice recorder. Sure, the race happened four days ago, but c'mon—I'm not made of time.

In fact, I think I'll have to limit these things to big Grand Tour stages, the races we used to call the World Cup, and the Championships of the World...which gives me precisely no time off until June. Man, I love this time of year.

Rather than make another boring old text post, I thought I might whip up a little video analysis of this weekend's race. We at Cyclocosm are all about multimedia production, and we'll be even more all about it once we get a decent microphone.  I swear I can annunciate better than it sounds like I do. 

There's a much better version of this on my webpage, as well as a downloadable version for your iPod/iPhone/PSP etc.  Not sure how regular a feature I can make this, but I'll do my best for the fans. 

In case any of you were wondering, yes, it is against the law.

The article is tastefully short on details, though it does leave me with some questions about the how the mechanics of this would actually work...

Eurosport/Yahoo! is reporting that Mayo tested positive for our old friend EPO.

David Millar will now be even less psyched that he turned himself inside out for that guy.

After taking the maillot pois today, David Millar accomplished a fairly rare Tour de France feat - he has now worn each of the race's four leaders' jerseys. He wore yellow after his prologue win in 2000, spent several days in white in 2002, got green as a consolation prize after his chain fell off in 2003, and then picked up the spots today.

While he never lead the points competition (he was baby-sitting the maillot vert while McGee wore yellow), when he takes to the road tomorrow, Millar will be the only rider I can think of to have actually raced at least one day in each jersey. Did Jalabert ever wear white? Or did Eddy Merckx slip into the KOM lead sometime after the spotted jersey's introduction in 1975?

http://wiki.cyclocosm.com

Now all it needs is some content. There's a sample page at Tom Boonen, but it still needs to be cleaned up a bit.

Go nuts. Add anything and everything you know, even if it's next to nothing.

Send me photos of your broken Cannondales! Image searches have proven far less effective at finding them than I had anticipated. Although all damage is welcome, catastrophic failures the most greatly appreciated.

Many thanks,

-Cosmo

Hooray! After a few agonizing months, Cyclocosm has completed its needlessly wearisome transition to Wordpress. Now I'll be posting on an essentially daily basis again.

Awesome.

http://cyclocosm.com

[editor's note, by chris] See Hugh's diary too

If you've ever been by my webpage, you know I think WADA does for clean sport what George W's done for stability in the Middle East. But in the event that you cling steadfastly to a contrasting viewpoint, the LA Times recently published this article highlighting some of the more glaring improprieties in WADA protocols.

It's a relatively fast read, and highly recommended, regardless of what side of the doping debate you find yourself on. I'd love to see rebuttals on some of the points it makes, if there any WADA proponents left in here...

Here's a good question for next week's Trivia Monday: what color is the glass at UCI headquarters? Give up? The answer is "doping".

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I'm still waiting for someone to get convicted - er,  charged, rather - in connection with Operacion Puerto. There were 37  names actually mentioned at some point, though a few have by now been cleared. As the wheels of justice grind slowly, I'll pass the time by taking a quick poll:

(Don't sit and ponder the ideological concerns, just answer the question. My apologies if this has been done before.)

What is it with Germans? Why must they produce such brilliant machines with such horrifically fatal flaws? I loved the Sigma Sport BC1200 - but then I moved it to my stem to make way for aerobars and sweated on it - game over.

Now, my beloved Sigma HRM is shot. Changed the batteries repeatedly, finally cracked open the strap/watch and found that my perspiration had overcome the seals and spread massive corrosion. Does Erik Zabel not sweat? Or perhaps my vitriolic personality is the result of an especially corrosive body chemistry?

Anyway, when I replaced the BC1200, I grabbed the first, cheapest, wireless computer I could find. Resilience aside, it's been 3,000+ miles of wrestling with a miniscule display, crappy UI, and largely useless features (a light that illumates only 1/3rd of the face, for example). So I have decided, uncharacteristically, to ask for opinions on a new HRM.

Not much needed for features, just max/average HR from a workout and maybe, maybe HR zones, with time spent in each zone. Primary criteria are durability, readability, and price (my range is always "as cheap as possible").

Frankie Andreu and an unnamed ex-Postie admitted their EPO use to the New York Times. While most people are focusing on the larger implications of this news on the sport, I really just want to know who the second guy is. I know trying to "out" people is kind of impolite, but eh...

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[editor's note, by chris] Cosmo throws some gas on the fire... as he's been known to do.

How many of you cheered when Ullrich, Basso, Mancebo, and all of Astana were banned from this year's Tour? I seem to recall very few people shouting along with me above the fray, trying to point out that these men, who'd worked essentially their entire lives to compete in this one event, were being pushed aside without conviction, without trial, without even charges.

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