I vowed to limit my Olympics viewing to a bare minimum. 1. because I watched the whole TdF from beginning to end. I even watched some stages more than once. That's just a crazy amount of time spent in front of the TV. and 2. the commercial aspect of the games generally turns me off.

However, the HD coverage sucked me in, and I've been bouncing from event to event, and have been enthralled by some sports I was only dimly aware of.

For example, I'm hooked on handball--lots of action and speed and some mild violence.

How about you? Any sports that are "new to you" that are stealing the hours away from your life?

On the flip side, there are some events that don't seem to belong in the olympics. Air rifle? If that's an olympic sport, I hope darts is too.

From Xinhuanet:

Former Chinese Olympian race walker Song Hongjuan was busted for EPO.

According to the Chinese Athletic Association's website, the 24-year-old race walker, who placed 14th in the women's 20 kilometers walk at the Athens Olympic Games four years ago, tested positive for erythropoietin at a competition here in February.

Apparently, according to CNBC, some Russian race walkers have been banned, too.

If race walkers are doping, can there be any hope for clean sports? The short answer is no.

To The Producers of the Tour de France on Versus, and to Phil, Paul, Bob, and Craig,

Thank you for the beautiful coverage of the Tour de France again this year. For Americans, Versus is our pipeline to this great event.

The live coverage is incredible. This is the first year that I've had the free time to watch from the rollout of the first stage through the podium presentation on the Champs. There is no other event like this, and no other sports show that comes close to the epic scope of your Tour production.

I can only imagine the logistical difficulty of following the Tour around France for a month, while being away from friends and family.

I hope Versus continues to cover the Tour in the years to come, and that you're able to broaden and deepen your coverage of this spectacle.

Thanks again,

Kevin

George Hincapie's crash in the 2006 Paris-Roubaix was something straight out of most cyclist's nightmares. Sudden failure of a critical component. A sudden loss of control. Nothing to do but crash.

This is my third season racing my Litespeed Sienna. It's got about 10,000 miles on it and has been through 30-40 races. I planned to replace the fork, stem, and bars sometime this season, but didn't think it too urgent.

I'm sure you can guess where this is going. I was racing today. I got up out of the saddle to crest a little rolling hill and the bars (Mantis ITM) snapped in half and down I went one instant later. Luckily it was a low speed crash and I am only a little bruised and banged up.

Consider this a PSA. If you're wondering about the age of some vital components on your bike, replace them!

Also, this was another instance where my helmet saved my brains from any damage. The rear of my helmet is bashed up and scuffed, but my head is fine.

This is the last of the kneehab diaries. I'm writing this up for other unlucky cyclists who break their patella. Unfortunately, it will probably be pretty useful! Broken kneecaps seem to be a common cycling injury.

A short recap (long version here): I was in a car accident in early January. I broke several ribs and fractured vertebrae, and my kneecap broke into three pieces. It was surgically repaired immediately after the accident. I've been in physical therapy since late January, and just started riding on the road again (the first road ride of the season was March 13, 2008).

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Disclaimer

No medical professionals contributed to this article. If this article provokes questions about your injury or treatment, ask your doctor.

I had a car accident about three months ago. I broke several ribs, fractured some vertebrae, and shattered my kneecap. One of the first things I did after getting home from the hospital 2 days later was to Google for "cycling after a knee injury". I found some useful information, but it wasn't as specific as I'd hoped.

So I started taking detailed notes during my recovery, and am writing them up here to give other poor folks who end up in the same situation a better idea of what to expect.

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Jesus Manzano, that is. Recall that Manzano has accused Valverde of using Testosterone:

From June 07, 2007 Cycling News:

Alejandro Valverde "took the same stuff that they gave me," said his former Kelme teammate Jesus Manzano. He gave a concrete example in an interview with the German magazine Stern, saying "I remember an evening after one of the Vuelta stages in 2002. Valverde came to dinner with a testosterone plaster on. After an hour he ripped it off, otherwise he would have been tested positive."

According to the cycling news blurb, Ettore Torri interviewed Manzano about Operation Puerto. It's been about two years (May 2006) since OP broke. The wheels of doping justice are slow to roll. Will Valverde get nabbed by an Italian prosecutor?

Cue the fanfare music... Dim the stadium lights. Ok, ok, launch the doves, LAUNCH THE DOVES! Cue the interpretive dancers... Bring out the elderly 15th duchess of Craptenstein. The IOC has an announcement to make.

From: Linky here

In a series of guidelines, the IOC said blogging would be allowed during the Beijing 2008 Olympics as long as individuals writing the journals keep within the IOC format.

"The IOC considers blogging... as a legitimate form of personal expression and not a form of journalism," the IOC said.

Blogging is only "personal expression", which can be squashed to stroke corporate overlords, and placate communist dictators.

[editor's note, by chris] Anyone going to Beijing? The Cafe is HUGE in China. Also, contact me and I'll help find some anti-CCP websites you should be sure to access while on premises.

Update [2008-2-17 12:16:58 by chris]: Does anyone else think this is a ploy by the locals to control content? "Here, use our T1 line. Oh, and if the cursor starts moving when you're not touching anything, don't worry, it's nothing."

VideoLAN (aka VLC) is the open source (free) swiss army knife of media streaming and transcoding. It runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. It's indespensible for a media starved cycling fan. If you can watch it or listen to it, VideoLAN can encode it to a file, decode it from a file or serve it up on a network in dozens of formats.

You can use VLC to encode live audio from a microphone that's plugged into your PC or laptop into an mp3 stream. If you aren't satisfied with the commentary for the ToC, you can provide your own to the world!

The "how to" follows below:

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