SB Nation User Blog: fmk

Anything UK can do Oz can do better, anything UK can do Oz can do too ...

fmk — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 14:43:35 -0000

As everybody knows by know, the Team GB Reach For The Sky+ Box road team will be winning the Tour de France within a few years. Dave Brailsford has promised it so it must be true. But it seems that the Brits could face competition from an unexpected quarter ... or rather hemisphere. The Aussies want their own Tour team too. And Cadel Evans could be leading them, especially with it already looking likely that Silence-Lotto will fail to support his Grand Tour ambitions. Again.

The story comes courtesy of the Herald Sun newspaper. It reports that a Melbourne-based consortium - Australian Road Cycling - has been working for more than a year on the Tour de France project and wants to put a team on the road in 2010. And ARC consultant Paul McNamee says he wants Evans to lead it:

"Cadel has been very supportive. If the opportunity arises, he would be our No. 1 target. We would love to think he could ride in our team eventually."

Evans is reported to be very interested in the project:

"Getting an Australian team up is what I am keeping busy doing. I had a meeting this week and that is something we are really working towards. It has become a real interest for me. We are well placed on the talent side of riders, team staff and even equipment manufacturers. We have all the experts in that regard. And now the interest is coming from the corporate side. You obviously need a lot of money to run a team. It's certainly a possibility. When, I am not exactly sure, but I am working on it as well. I hope it is while I am still competing but time is running out a bit for me. To build a really good team takes a couple of years, but I hope so. My ultimate dream would be to finish my last couple of years riding on an Australian team."

A 'significant announcement' is expected at next month's Tour Down Under. Says McNamee:

"I think there is momentum, but we'll be in a better position to say more at the Tour Down Under, which will be a massive fillip for the sport with cycling front and centre for a week."

Columbia & Garmin Choose Catlin For Independent Testing Programme

fmk — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 14:29:16 -0000

According to CN, Don Catlin has secured the contract to carry out Columbia and Garmin's independent testing programmes. Testing has already commenced. Catlin had been Columbia's original choice for their testing programme but ACE ended up getting the gig.

According to Bob Stapleton, the new programme will be a step forward from the ACE programme and will take account of the ACE database of testing as well as the UCI's biological programme:

"We will be working with Garmin to bring the programme together. The direction is quite different to ACE as the UCI now have the biological passport in place, and we've already done a lot of baseline testing. We have a complete database on our athletes. That's a pretty powerful tool with a year or more of history."

Jonathan Vaughters added that Catlin's testing would differ from the UCI's testing in several ways:

"Don Catlin isn't restrained by so much protocol when it comes to testing, he can look at results and test for drugs that aren't even on the market and can then come to us and say 'the results for this guy are very strange' and from there we can act."

As well as having access to the UCI's bilogical passport data, Catlin's programme will also have access to WADA's comprehensive ADAMS whereabouts system. This brings to mind a recent comment from Lance Armstrong when faced with questions about the apparent foot-dragging in implementing his own much vaunted independent testing programme. Interviewed by Rupert Guinness, Armstrong offered this explanation:

"That is complicated to organise. You have the idea of Don Catlin. You have the reality of Damsgaard at Astana. You have the reality of WADA, USADA and the UCI. Then you have the reality that none of these people communicate. I think the idea that you have a comprehensive independent testing program is a great idea. [But] it is another step to post those results online. Keep in mind WADA does not support Catlin and Damsgaard. For them, an independent testing program is their worst nightmare."

Keeping in mind Armstrong's contention that WADA does not support Catlin or Damsgaard, that such programmes are supposedly their worst nightmare, one has to ask the obvious question: how come Columbia and Garmin have secured access to the UCI's passport data and WADA's ADAMS whereabouts system? Could someone be telling porkies here?

Cooke, Cavendish and British Cycling

fmk — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 14:56:40 -0000

It's cycling Sunday in the UK today, with the Absurder giving-over seven and a half thousand words, give or take, to Nicole Cooke, Mark Cavendish and British Cycling's management team. Three different journalists – Anna Kessel, Tim Lewis and William Fotheringham – looking at three different aspects of the sport in the UK. Not bad for a wet and miserable Sunday in November.

The Fotheringham piece is the easiest to get out of the way. Nine hundred words and nothing very interesting said. But when secret squirrels, odd shaped nuts and the amazing properties of cherry oil get more credit for the Beijing bauble haul than the actual cyclists did, it's the sort of piece you can expect. It's mostly about the fantabulous management structure of British Cycling and the brilliance of British Cycling's very own Peters Principle.

There's no real news in the piece. British Cycling's road squad – ANC Halfords-Linda McCartney Mk III – is targeting the Tour in 2010. Or 2011. Germany's Heiko Salzwedel – recently of Team Denmark – will be returning to British Cycling in January and ... well, actually, that's pretty much it. No mention of Roger Legeay. No mention of Scott Sunderland. No mention of riders to watch. A light and slight puff piece for the men behind the medals.

How about a woman with a medal then - what's Nicole Cooke got to say for herself? Well you can usually count on Cooke to say something about drugs in sport. Here's what she tells Kessel:

"There's awful problems in men's cycling now. I really can't understand the mentality they have. It's almost like they know they're going to get caught now because the testing is so good and yet they still do it. It's an historical problem. I think women compete because they love the sport, not for the financial gains or status there is in men's cycling."

Me, try as I might, I just can't get myself inside the heads of people like Tammy Thomas, Marta Bastianelli or Maria Isabel Moreno, all of whom have helped drag this sport through the mud this year.

On other controversial issues, Cooke's been there, done that and worn the t-shirt. While Dave Brailsford is a relatively new recruit to the fight for equality between men and women at the Olympics – men: eleven events; women: seven, with all the disparity happening on the track, where the men get to race seven events and the women only have three – Cooke's already fought the good fight, having served on the Women's Commission at the UCI. But as she tells Kessel, that episode proved to be a bit of a waste of time and energy. The other women on the commission simply didn't feel the disparity was a problem.

But how about the disparity between track and road within British Cycling? There Cooke clams up a bit: "I don't want to make enemies." Pressed on the issue by Kessel Cooke does acknowledge a gap exists between the two disciplines: "It is true but then Dave Brailsford would admit that. Because they thought that medals were easier, or more likely to get on the track, and so they invested on the track." Which prompts Kessel to ask Cooke if that means track cycling is less competitive than road cycling: "You might have to be careful how you write that. Do some research, find out how many riders were on the start list for the women's sprint and then find out how many riders were on the start list for the Olympic road race." According to Kessel's research, that means there's more competition on the road, by sixty-six to twelve.

That's about as far as Cooke is willing to take that issue though. Mark Cavendish on the other hand, isn't pulling his punches and British Cycling comes out of his interview looking a little bruised and battered.

"At first after the Olympics, I was pissed at Brad," he tells Lewis. "But if he's made to train for 4k, for sure he's not going to be good at 50k. And they [British Cycling] were all about the team pursuit and he just had to train at 4k. In training, they would just ignore me while they timed the team pursuiters going round. They trained so much for that that they forgot the Madison - well, they didn't forget the Madison, they didn't give a shit. That's not fair when I've given that much commitment to it. I left the Tour de France - the biggest bike race in the world - when I was fighting for the green jersey and I could have potentially won on the Champs Elysées, and it makes me bitter that they didn't give back what I'd given to them."

Not that British Cycling are just going to stand there and be a punching-bag for the Manxman. Chris Boardman seems only too happy to jab back at one of the stars of British cycling, dissing Cav's post-race interview style – "he can be a bit of a dick sometimes" – and trying to blame the Manxman for his own Madison miseries: "Mark's goal for the year had to be the Tour de France and that meant that we had to take whatever was left. Afterwards, he had to take a break for a week when the other guys were on a training camp. Then he wanted to capitalise on it and ride some Criteriums around the world and then he just wanted to do some training on his own in Manchester. And all this time the other guys were on an Olympic camp, doing specific preparation for the Games. So I don't think that helped massively."

Across the three pieces, you get an interesting picture of British Cycling, I think. Cav can afford to criticise them, Bob Stapleton pays his salary, not Dave Brailsford. And come the worlds, come the Olympics, come the launch of Team GB Reach For The Sky+ Box (or whatever it'll be called), British Cycling will come calling on Cav's services regardless of his criticisms. British Cycling need Cav more than he needs them. Cooke, it's the wins she'll get in a Team GB jersey that matter more than the ones in her new Vision1 colours. Cooke needs British Cycling at least as much as they need her. And British Cycling? They'll just go on and on an on and on, slapping one another on the backs and taking as large a share of the credit for their cyclists' successes as they can.

Oodles of strudels for Ullrich as Coast coughs up €340k

fmk — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 14:36:28 -0000

Seven-time Tour de France loser Jan Ullrich has today won a court battle to secure €340,000 in salary owed to him since his 2003 sojourn with the ill-fated Team Coast.

Team Coast manager Günther Dahms had hoped he could avoid paying Ullrich by claiming that he had used drugs while employed by the team. The only flaw to Dahms' plan was that he didn't actually have any evidence of Ullrich's alleged drug use during this period. Ullrich flatly denied Dahms' claims, saying:

"I did not use any forbidden doping materials or methods banned under regulations during that period [January - March 2003]."

(AP)

The Race To Replace ACE - It's All Over Bar The Details

fmk — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 14:25:50 -0000

The Comic carries news that Garmin and Columbia, both given the big-E by ACE earlier this month, have already found someone new to share their bodily fluids with. Even my last ex wasn't that quick.

According to Jonathan Vaughters though we're going to have to wait another few weeks before we find out the exact details of the new programme. But he has given an interesting clue as to how it might work.

"ACE did a great job, but we're optimistic that this new system will be even better. We're going to talk this through with the riders first at the team get-together in mid-November, and then we'll be revealing specific details to the press late on in the month or in December. It'll be a whole new system and will very probably be in collaboration with the UCI."

The UCI? Has Pat McQuaid decided to branch the sport's governing body out and opened up a whole new revenue stream? Certainly a three-tier testing system has lots of potential: a basic bog-standard system for the teams too tight to splash out on the biological passport, the passport itself for middle-class teams and then a premium service for sponsors who want to fly the Team Clean flag.

Team Time Trial - Columbia Vs Garmin In A War Of Words

fmk — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 15:20:46 -0000

After the announcement of the Tour de France parcours last month, two stages in particular were singled out by the various talking-heads: the penultimate stage to the Ventoux, and the team time trial. While the Ventoux easily steals the imagination, some believe that the real damage will be done in the 38km stage four Montpellier TTT, with real times being taken and no artificial lessening of the losses. Already a minor war of words seems to be being stoked between the two American Pro Tour teams as to which of them is bestest at the TTT.

At the Tour's parcours presentation one team couldn't hide their glee at the prospect of the TTT - Garmin. Jonathan Vaughters suggested that the stage might even have been purpose-built for his squad:

"The Tour organizers must like us. They brought back the team time trial and are going through our hometown [Girona]. I think we'll have a lot of visiting friends and family the night before. It [the TTT] will be good for us. And there will be no stupid time restrictions as in the past. The fastest time wins. That's what gives us a big advantage."

In Vaughter's view, there was one clear favourite for the stage:

"We are the favourites to win [the TTT]. It’s perfect for our team to have a chance to win a stage and take the yellow jersey. It’s also a good chance for Christian [Vande Velde] to take time on the climbers."

He even went so far as to offer a prediction as to how much damage that stage could cause:

"If everything goes right there we could give Christian Vande Velde a minute and a half lead after the team time trial. That would make things interesting."

Speaking to VN later in the month, Vaughters was still bubbling over with glee, though downscaling a little his hoped for advantage at the end of the stage:

"With the team we have, even if we have a Dan Martin in the line up, to help Christian in the mountains, which we didn’t really do this year, with a team of [David] Millar, [Tyler] Farrar, [Dave] Zabriskie, Svein [Tuft] and Christian [Vande Velde], we could put a minute into the next team and really set the foundation for our GC possibilities on that."

Even individual Garmin riders have highlighted the TTT. Bradley Wiggins, speaking to CN about his 2009 schedule, looked forward to the Tour's TTT:

"I can't wait really; just talking to them [Garmin], it feels right. I've had my programme through and I'm really excited about it. The Tour has been announced and there's a team time trial, you know, we should have a real good shot at it."

Ryder Hesjedal similarly bigged up Garmin's TTT chances:

"The TTT is a welcome addition and very good for our team, as we showed in the Giro that we are capable of winning!"

Nor could Trent Lowe hide his excitement:

"Next year’s Tour course should be great for our team of very strong time trialists. Watch out for the two Daves in the opening stage! For me it will mean that my helmet will need to be well strapped on for the team’s edition of the time trial!"

For David Millar, the disgraced former ITT World Champion, it wasn't just about the team, but also about his own personal hopes, with his Tour boiling down to two stages:

"On a personal level [...] it's all about the Monaco time trial and then the team time trial later on."

Some though are already getting their backs up a bit at Garmin's presumption that the TTT is theirs, without even a pedal being turned in anger. Over in the Comic, Columbia's Mark Cavendish pours a soupçon of scorn on Garmin's dreams:

"Everyone seems to be thinking Garmin are going to win it because they've got a load of individual time trial riders, but they're not going to have it all their own way. The best team time trial squad is not made simply by putting nine individual time trialists together. Remember when Real Madrid signed six of the best players in the world and didn't win the league?"

Real Madrid? Is Cavendish comparing Garmin's decision to sign so many TT specialists with the Spanish soccer squad's galáctico strategy? Vaughters, for one, might dispute such a description. In a recent CN interview, he suggested that the reason Garmin excelled at something like the TTT was down to him worrying more about whether his new recruits had the right personality than star-power wattage:

"what people don't realise is that the reason we're so good at 'unity' events like the team time trial or days that the team really has to sacrifice itself to keep things together is because I've chosen personalities that are compatible and can see the bigger picture – intelligent riders. We don't really have any big heads. [...] We always operate as a unit – there's a lot you can do in terms of training camps and team bonding that helps that along. At the end of the day it's the people you pick in the beginning who really allow that to happen. Quite frankly, we didn't pick any mercenaries. We picked guys who wanted to be part of something bigger than just themselves alone."

Nonetheless, Cavendish is still looking forward to serving up some schadenfreude come the Tour's TTT:

"I think it's dangerous for Garmin to assume they are going to win it because they've got all these individual time trialists. It doesn't work like that. I can't wait until they get beaten by a team of sprinters."

A team of sprinters? Like, maybe, I dunno, Columbia? Cavendish explains to the Comic how this logic might actually work:

"I really think that with the number of sprinters in our team, we will do well, because the hardest bit about a team time trial is not when you are at the front, it's the sprint effort you have to do to get back on the end of the line. Your personal effort goes up and down but the team effort should be constant."

Rolf Aldag, Columbia's DS, was initially a bit more cool on the TTT than his star sprinter and not making any promises:

"The TTT will be hard, but I love to see it in the Tour."

And all Alan Peiper would offer was that

"the team time trial is going to put a lot of pressure on the favourites early on. A guy like Cadel Evans, for example, will need to get two minutes on someone like Alberto Contador."

Cavendish - who some have suggested might be carrying a tad too much arrogance - does pull back from promising certain victory for the Columbians:

"Seriously, we may not win it, but no one can assume they will either. There's CSC, Astana, us, a lot of good teams who can beat them."

When he was asked about the TTT, CSC's DS Kim Andersen didn't allow either of the American squads to figure in this thoughts. For him, there was just one team to beat:

"I'm looking forward to a good fight with Astana in that TTT!"

Those reality checks though don't stop Cavendish kicking sand in Garmin's face:

"Everyone will prepare for the team time trial at the Tour and it'll be extremely competitive. I am not saying we will definitely beat Garmin or that we'll definitely win it, but you can't just look at Garmin's team and see Dave [Millar], Brad [Wiggins] and the others are in it so they're going to win it. It doesn't work like that. I think we're a faster team."

So ya boo to you Garmin, you suck. According to the Manxman.

No team, of course, rules themselves out of contention for such a stage. Quick Step's DS Wifred Peeters offered this:

"I think the TTT will be good for us."

And Marc Sergeant felt that some of his new signings would make Silence-Lotto a contender:

"With that long time trial [in Monaco] the favourites will have to show themselves early. That goes also for the team time trial. We made good moves taking on Thomas Dekker and Sebastian Lang."

And then there's Alejandro Valverde, who would really, really, really like Santa to bring him a grand tour victory in 2009:

"I'm concerned about the 40km time trial near the end of the Tour because such long distances are not good for me. There is also a team time trial, and Caisse d'Epargne usually does well in these."

Of course, there's always Astana. Levi Leipheimer doesn't doubt their chances in a discipline Johan Bruyneel's riders have typically excelled in:

"Having the team time trial back is cool to see again, especially now that I am on a team that has a good chance of winning and putting time into everyone else."

But, as with Cavendish, Leipheimer tries to mask his inner arrogance with an outer shell of humility:

"I don’t want to come off like we’re talking a big game, but we have a strong team. And there’s the experience of this organisation of having won the team time trial in the Tour before, that goes a long way. I’m not going to say we’re going to win because that’s bad karma. I’m excited about it."

In any consideration of various teams 2009 TTT hopes, there's been a few TTTs in 2008 which ought be taken into consideration. The Tour of Qatar in January offered a 6km course, and Quick Step completed it two seconds quicker than Garmin. At the Settimana Ciclistica Internazionale Coppi e Bartali in March, Liquigas came out best over an 11.8km course. In April, at the Tour de Georgia Garmin trumped Astana by four seconds over a 16km course, with Columbia a further four seconds back and CSC seven seconds behind them. The following month, over the Giro d'Italia's 23.6km course, Garmin were again best of the bunch, six seconds faster than CSC, seven seconds up on Columbia and twenty-nine seconds faster than seventh-placed Astana. In August's Vuelta a España TTT, it was Liquigas who took the most risks to finish fastest over 7.7km. And in September, at the Tour de Pologne, a 4km TTT saw CSC taking seven seconds out of sixth placed Columbia, and twelve seconds out of twelfth-placed Astana. Make of those stats what you will.

The benefits of a good TTT outfit are clearly not just be confined to the Tour. With the Giro opening with a flat and fast 21km TTT along the Lido in Venice, it could be a major decider there of who will wear the maglia rosa for the race's early days, if not at the end of the race. While all the talk so far has been about the Tour's TTT, all promises made now will have to be backed up by action at the Giro and the TTTs that will come before that. Words spoken today could come back to haunt some teams next year.

TdF Presentation - The Warm-Up Act

fmk — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 23:30:17 -0000

Sam Abt is in good form in the IHT, taking a slight pop not just at ASO but also at the man who's planning to piggyback his cancer summit on the press surrounding 2009's Tour de France.

Anybody yearning for great theater in Paris on Wednesday afternoon should skip the matinee at the Comédie Française and head instead to the presentation of the next Tour de France. Will there be high drama? Aplenty. Laughs? A dime a dozen. An audience on the verge of tears? That too.

Yes folks, it's already time to start thinking about tomorrow(*), when you'll be thinking about next July. It's not just about what the route will be (cause we already know most of it). It's not just about who the guests will be (or the fact that some of the guests will be about as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit). And it's not even just about what they'll be wearing (though obviously it is a lot about what they'll be wearing - but there are more things to life than cyclists in sharp suits. Or their many and varied fashion faux pas).

It's also about how Prudhomme will turn a negative - seven positives - into a positive (Or maybe that should a positive positive? As opposed to a positive negative (which is not the same as a negative positive, as all negatives are positive. Unless of course they're false negatives. In which case they'd be negative negatives). Or maybe I should just find a better way of saying that bit. But it's late and I'm lazy. And you probably get the gist of it anyway. So sod it, it can stand). Prudhomme can't claim it's down to Bordry's wonderful staff being better watchdogs, seeing as anti-doping goes back to the UCI next year and Bordry'll be back to his role as a hurler from the ditch. And he can't trot out the usual tripe about it being down to a fading generation's inability to get with the anti-doping programme. For, as Abt so aptly notes, too many of them are too young for that one to wash again:

So much for the usual speech about how the new generation of riders has chosen to break with the past and ride clean. Molière it isn't, but, hey, what is nowadays?

So how will he spin it? I guess we'll just have to tune in Wednesday to fine out.

And that LA dig for all you cancer-loving haters out there?

Armstrong, who enjoys mind games the way most people enjoy a morning cup of coffee, has announced that he will race in selected countries next year to improve knowledge about cancer, which struck him in 1996. It's a commendable goal and he will pursue it in backward countries like Australia (the Tour Down Under), the United States (the Tour of California), Italy (the Giro d'Italia) and possibly France (the Tour). Why he is not racing instead in the Tour of Burkina Faso or the Tour of the Philippines, where his crusade might find more unturned ground, is a puzzle.

Or how about this for a distraction from LA's mission:

Jean-François Lamour, France's sports minister during part of Armstrong's reign and now vice president of the World Anti-Doping Agency, an organization that is a loud critic of Armstrong, called word of the Texan's comeback "a return to the dark years. He's a troublesome guest of the Tour, like a rubberband that will lead us back to a page that seemed to be turned."

Someone in WADA criticising LA? It really is like we've turned the clock back three years.

Roll on Wednesday.

(*) I don't care what date is on your calender, but it's tomorrow already in my timezone and today is yesterday.

WADA Olympics Report

fmk — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:36:04 -0000

WADA's Report of the Independent Observers, XXIX Olympic Games, Beijing 2008 is available online, for them as are curious about such things. It makes some interesting reading, especially with the re-tests up-coming. It also explains the doping control processes in place in Beijing.

While commending the Beijing Organising Committee on the organisation of the doping controls at the Olympic Games in Beijing the Independent Observers' report draws attention to some interesting matters.

The supercomputer was powered during the presentation by a team of cyclists from the UM Cycling...

fmk — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 19:14:07 -0000

The supercomputer was powered during the presentation by a team of cyclists from the UM Cycling Club and from a race team organized by Rose's Bike Shop in Orono. The 10 cyclists hooked their bikes up to generators, which were connected to a battery on the computer, a SCO72 model that houses 72 processors, each of which uses just a half-watt of power. By comparison, a typical processor on a personal computer uses 100 watts of power.

Cyclists poer supercomputer

A Decade of the Dude

fmk — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 19:07:54 -0000

Lebowski is ten years older. Is The Dude a slacker prince for our times?

via www.filmz.ru

"It is fun to drink and bowl," says Mr Russell, co-author of I'm a Lebowski, You're a Lebowski. And they are all united into one temporarily tight-knit community by their love of the film. "The characters are so loveable and it is a really quotable movie. Not everybody gets it. A lot of people see the movie and they don't like it. Other people fall in love with it." It's a key element in cult appeal. Not just loving something, but also relishing the fact that not everybody does. "It was considered a flop at the time. Titanic was in its 20th week and it still beat the Big Lebowski. US Marshals beat it." But neither have the quotability of The Big Lebowski.