SB Nation User Blog: fmk

All The Lies That You Told Me

fmk — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:43:20 -0000

Recently, someone asked why it is that there’s so many junkies who protest and protest and protest their innocence. The implication of the question was that if a lie lasts forever it’s probably true and we should just believe the lying cheating bastards and assume that the tests really don’t work. But what if the lying cheating bastards really are just lying after all? How many times would they have to fool us before we’d say shame on us and not just shame on them?

"It must be a mistake."

"A magical twin did it and vanished."

"Someone must have spiked my drink."

"It’s a false positive – the tests don’t work."

"I drank too much whiskey the night before."

"I didn’t inject – I only enquired about injections."

"I have naturally high testosterone / cocaine levels."

"It’s not doping cause it’s only banned by the IOC, not the UCI."

"I’ve done nothing wrong. If I had I’d have lied about my address."

"The drugs found in my car / kitchen / garage were for my wife / mother-in-law / dog."

"It's not in my job description to ask the team doctor what was in the injections he gave me."

"Sure it’s a banned substance, but I have a back-dated prescription saying it’s ok for me to take it."

"Of course it’s a lot of money to pay for a training programme I never received. But the guy came highly recommended."

Today’s revelation that Andrei Agassi – the stubble-headed stud-muffin and tennis superstar – junked up on crystal meth and lied about having done so is an apt example of a junkie who got caught and then decided to brazen it out by telling porkies and professing his innocence. Until finally – a mere dozen or so years after the fact – he realised that confession was good for the soul. Or the bank balance, if you're Monty and want to be cynical about it.

In 1997 Agassi was in the midst of a dip in form and having doubts about his looming marriage to Brooke Shields. (Who wouldn't have doubts about marrying Brooke Shields?) So when an assistant suggested getting high on crystal meth, Agassi decided to give it a go. As you do when offered some gack. It'd be impolite to refuse. Funnily, while drugs have opened the doors of perception for many an artist down through the years, their effect on Agassi was to turn him into a mucho macho version of Kim ‘n’ Aggie:

"I’ve never felt so alive, so hopeful — and I’ve never felt such energy. I’m seized by a desperate desire to clean. I go tearing around my house, cleaning it from top to bottom. I dust the furniture. I scour the tub. I make the beds."

Alas and alack and ochone agus ochone oh, but the come down wasn’t so hot for Agassi. Subjected to a dope test, he failed. Advised that his failure could result in a three-month suspension, Agassi did what so many others before and since have done – he lied:

"My name, my career, everything is now on the line. Whatever I’ve achieved, whatever I’ve worked for, might soon mean nothing. Days later I sit in a hard-backed chair, a legal pad in my lap, and write a letter to the ATP. It’s filled with lies interwoven with bits of truth. I say Slim, whom I’ve since fired, is a known drug user, and that he often spikes his sodas with meth — which is true. Then I come to the central lie of the letter. I say that recently I drank accidentally from one of Slim’s spiked sodas, unwittingly ingesting his drugs. I ask for understanding and leniency and hastily sign it: Sincerely."

The ATP — determined to stamp out doping within their sport — examined all the evidence available to them, considered Agassi's heart-felt confession that it was all just a silly little mistake and decided to dismiss the case without even slapping him on the wrist and telling him not to let it happen again. Ah for those innocent days before those jack-booted fascists in WADA came along and decided to pick on the poor and the defenceless.

So remember, the next time you hear a cyclist who’s been caught with his hand in the cookie jar come up with ever more inventive excuses to explain his positive test, the presumption of innocence has been shat upon by so many before him that you really should just take his protestations of innocence with a pinch of sodium chloride. Which you can conveniently find in the crocodile tears the lying cheating bastard is probably shedding.

Community Bicycle Rental Schemes

fmk — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:27:26 -0000

DublinBikes, Dublin’s communal bike rental scheme, launched last month and is already claiming to be a success, with more than 10,000 of the city’s citizens signing up for annual membership of the scheme.

Modeled on Paris' popular public bike rental scheme Vélib' (short for Vélo liberté), DublinBikes - like Vélib' in Paris and Vélo'v (Vélo love) in Lyon - is run by the outdoor advertising conglomerate JCDecaux, in conjunction with the city council. In return for allowing the marketing maestros to litter the city’s streets with new advertising signage the city gets a community bike rental scheme. Unsurprisingly, not everyone thinks this is a bargain worth bragging about.

Though sometimes billed as a free bike scheme, there are, of course, costs attached to using the bikes. First off, to access the scheme, you need to buy either an annual ticket (€10) or a three-day ticket (€2). The annual ticket you can apply for online or, like the three-day ticket, you can buy it from one of the 14 credit-card enabled kiosks spread around the city. Once you’ve got your ticket and picked up your bike, you get the first half-hour’s use for free. After that the pricing structure is designed to encourage you to get your bike back as soon as possible: an hour’s use will only cost you €0.50 but four hours will set you back €6.50, with another €2 being added to your bill every half-hour after that. And if you haven’t returned the bike within 24 hours then it’s reported stolen and you’ll get billed another €150. So that’s a bill of €238.50 you’ll be faced with if you fancy making off with one of the stylishly-liveried bikes.

Parisians could choose from more than 10,000 bikes located at 750 stations around the city when their scheme launched in 2007 and have seen the scheme double in size since then. London’s eccentric cycling Lord Mayor, BoJo, has promised that his version of the scheme – due to go live next year – will see Londoners having access to more than 6,000 bicycles located at 400 stations. DublinBikes though currently stretches to just 450 bikes and 40 stations – and all of those stations are within the boundary of the city’s two canals, north to south a distance of about three and a half kilometers. With barely 300m between stations in Paris and the scheme covering the whole city it's easy to see how it became so popular over there. Given the smaller scale and density of the scheme in Dublin it'll be interesting to see how the city's citizens take to it in the longterm.

Race Fixing – Two Wheels Good, Four Wheels Bad

fmk — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 21:08:16 -0000

One of the weird things about being a cycling geek is how you have to get used to your sport being used as a whipping boy by other sports. I know we sometimes bring it on ourselves, by actually discussing the needle and the damage done but even so, it does rather grate a bit when you’re hearing the criticism being used simply as a distraction from another sport’s problem.

Which, I guess, is why I wasn’t really all that surprised during the recent F1 race fixing brouhaha to see that cyclists were once again being co-opted to distract from motor racing’s problems. The bit that caught my attention was where Max Mosley tried to explain how the Renault case was worser than cheating – and to oil the wheels of his argument, Mosley turned to cycling.

“Fixing is one degree worse than cheating,” explained Mosley. “If you’re a cyclist and you take dope, that’s cheating,” he told us. “If you bribe the other cyclists,” he continued, “or you get somebody to have a crash in the peloton so the yellow jersey guy crashes, that's more serious.”

It was one of those lame-brained arguments that just made me go ‘WTF?!?’ Was Mosley really trying to suggest that, say, Steve Bauer’s contratemps with Claude Criquielion at the World’s in 1988 (it being World’s Week I’m trying to be topical with my reference but can’t think of something more recent – I’m sure someone will remind me of a less aged incident in the comments thingies below) is worser than oh, I don’t know, Davide Rebellin being busted for CERA?

Or, using a name Mosley might actually recognise, that Stefan Schumacher taking out George Hincapie in the 2006 Eneco Tour in order to secure his overall victory was somehow worser that Stefan Schumacher being busted for being a junkie? I. Don't. Think. So. Max.

Having thrown the book I was reading at the radio (Colum McCann’s Let The Great World Spin, as you asked) I decided to build a bridge and get over this silly little story. Until something happened that made me recall Mosley’s comments and approach them from a slightly different angle.

That something was Philip Deignan finally breaking the Irish hoodoo at Grand Tours and bagging a stage win in the Vuelta, our first since Roche Snr bagged a Giro stage in ’93. Interviewed on radio after the stage (Irish radio, having previously said that cycling was a drug-addled corrupt non-sport in explanation for their non-coverage of it, suddenly rediscovered a passion for Irish victories and cleared the schedule in order to bring news of our new hero to us), Deignan for some reason decided to tell the reporter how he turned down an offer of dosh from Roman Kreuziger in the closing klicks of the stage and decided he wanted to win the thing himself.

“He [Kreuziger] turned to me with three kilometres to go and said ‘How much?’. I just shook my head and said no there was no way I was going to consider giving away a stage no matter how much he was willing to pay me and there was no more talking about it. That was it.”

It’s not that I was heretofore ignorant of the way money changes hands in the pro peloton. Laurent Fignon's claim during the summer that he sold the '87 Vuelta to Luís Herrera hardly raised an eye-brow. Or there's the story, resurrected in Wilcockson's recent hagiography of the world's most controversial cyclist, about the '93 Thrift Drug Triple Crown. Go back to the '60s and you have the likes of Anquetil, Elliot and Simpson all discussing how money changed hands. It's one of those facts of cycling that we just get used to, isn't it? For us, no matter what Max Mosley thinks, fixing isn't even nearly as bad as the fix so many cyclists seem to need.

(Of course, maybe when spread-betting finally gets its claws into cycling, our attitude will have to change.)

LiveStrong Global Cancer Summit

fmk — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 12:11:25 -0000

Some of you may remember some of the promises made by The Most Controversial Cyclist In the Whole History Of The Ever Ever when He returned to the pro peloton last year. One of them, you may recall, was to host a Global Cancer Summit in Paris immediately after the Tour de France ended. Indeed, this Global Cancer Summit seemed at the time to the be the favoured reason-of-the-day as to why He was throwing his leg over a pushbike once more and gracing us again with His luminous presence. But, as with the Most Rigorous And Transparent Testing Progranmme Ever, things didn't quite work out as planned. And His Global Cancer Summit yesterday kicked off in the main hall of the RDS in Dublin, which the previous week played host to some wedding fair or other.

Here's where you can help me - how global is a Global Cancer Summit? While the Irish media are paying attention to events in the RDS - the Irish minister for health, Mata Harney, has promised to ban all use of sunbeds as a cure for cancer - just how much coverage is this summit generating in your neck of the woods? Primetime? Or relegated to page 92, beneath the fold? Answers in the comment box thingey below. And TIA for em, whatever they are.

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.