There was some discussion of the lack of international standard velodromes in Canada and North America in the "Top Trumps 16: O Canada" thread last week - here's a chance to show support for the effort to replace Edmonton's aging concrete velodrome, complete with instructions on where in the survey to indicate your support.

Not sure how long this has been available but I couldn't find anything when I checked before - ever since TSN announced they'd got the rights to the Tour I've been wondering exactly what coverage they'd have and where. So, looks like it's live every day but on TSN2 not the main network, there aren't any repeats of coverage showing up at this point. (I'm guessing the schedule is fairly new to their website, as I'm pretty sure the last time I checked "Cycling" was not a separate category under "More+" as it is now, you had to look under "summer sports" or something like that). It remains to be seen what they're doing for coverage, ie. picking up Versus/"NBC Sportschannel" (or whatever the new name is again) directly as did OLN in the past, or whether they're actually going to add any Canadian content to it.

I was wondering last night whether there would actually be any TV coverage (Canadian or other) of the Montreal and Quebec PT races, and found this from the official website (link above): "Don't miss the live coverage of both races in their entirety on Evasion"
- so, I suppose I'll be re-subscribing to Evasion on digital cable again for September at least (they had the Giro a few years ago so I watched them then, they have the Tour each year - French-Canadian OLN type channel). Has anyone heard or seen anything about other TV coverage for these events? (ie. Versus or Universal, Eurosport, other Euro broadcasters?)

and for completeness, here are links back to 2 prior recent posts on these races, Hons' invite to come to Montreal, and MathieuG's post discussing who will be riding.

(and re: who's riding, sounds like Evans will not be there because of his injury - according to the Velonation translation of a Gazetta interview, it was linked yesterday in a post about Madonna del Ghisallo)

update August 11: from Canadian Cyclist, apparently there will be English TV coverage from the new Sportsnet One in Canada, and "two special programs on Versus" (as well as 2 - 90 minute programs on Radio Canada = French CBC). Of course, seeing as Sportsnet One doesn't actually start broadcasting until this weekend (I think), who knows how much extra my cable company will want for it...

I was particularly concerned this year that Canadian OLN didn't seem to have anything on their website about the Tour until pretty much the last minute (ie. wondering whether they were going to be showing the Tour at all or whether I'd have to subscribe to the French-Canadian Canal Evasion at the last minute instead) - and they're only showing the live coverage, not the prime time repeat, which made me question their commitment to the Tour coverage. Now, apparently there is information that they will not be showing the Tour beyond this year - hopefully someone else will pick it up, I like the rumour in this linked article that it might be the Sportsnet channel owned by the same company (Rogers) as it would seem the Tour fits better on an actual sports channel, rather than an "Outdoor Life" channel where the definition of "outdoor life" seems to include ghosthunting, UFO's, and car repossessions judging by all the promos shown for other shows! I just really hope that it doesn't get missed out such that no English Canadian channel has it for next year.

a local newspaper columnist talks to Edmontonian and former yellow jersey Alex Stieda about the committee looking into the possibility of doing a pro race around our province of Alberta, due to report to the provincial tourism department later this year. The committee (and columnist) are currently at the Tour of California. The follow-up column the next day has more about it, and both articles are also promoting Armstrong's upcoming visit to Edmonton in August (co-sponsored by the paper).

3 years ago when I did a bike camp with Stieda he mentioned this sort of Tour as a possibility, but with the recession and the loss of other races due to lack of sponsorship I thought the idea was long-since-dead - guess I was wrong.

Better late than never I suppose, particularly if you're like me who these days is finding it hard to watch live cycling via sometimes nebulous internet feeds (a 10 month old daughter has a lot to do with that - so much easier to PVR something just in case I can't watch it right that moment). I'm sure there will be a big focus on Tara Whitten and her 2 golds, and probably a ton of speculation about London 2012 "will she be the next Lori-Ann Muenzer?" (ie. do we have a gold medal chance in London?). Clara Hughes and Mark Connolly are commentating, obviously Clara knows about cycling and at least CBC seems to be consistent in that they keep letting Mark do any cycling stuff (eg. Olympics, last Commonwealth Games) so that hopefully he at least has some cycling knowledge. Anyway, it's a bit of a fix and likely the only cycling on TV here in Canada until the Tour - if only we could get Universal Sports and/or real Versus up here (our OLN only picks up the Versus feed for the Tour, not any other of the cycling stuff on Versus :-( ). I'll be following Pedal Mag's suggestion to send a comment to CBC afterwards thanking them and suggesting they show more cycling!

Looks like Will Walker, who retired last year due to heart problems (at least according to the minimal information that any of us were able to find at that time), has reappeared as "sporting director in charge of race operations" for the Malaysian road cycling team. He had such a promising start to his career - 2nd in the 2005 U23 World championships RR, won the Aus national RR in 2006 (as a U23 then controversy over whether or not he'd get to wear the jersey because officially he was only the U23 champ not the elite champ even though he won the race over the elites). Then hit by Bell's palsy during his time at Rabobank, not re-signed, almost signed with Rock Racing for 2009 then did sign with Fuji-Servetto before apparently having to retire.

The Australian national U23 mens' road race title was won by 18-year old Michael Hepburn, in his first race as a non-junior. This is the rider who broke the junior pursuit world record (which was Taylor Phinney's at one point) a couple of times last year on his way to the world junior pursuit title. So, perhaps yet another talented young Aussie to watch in future.

an additional note - the report mentions that Ben King had a solo breakaway for 5 laps. When I was googling around to double-check his team (I thought it was Fly V Australia), I discovered that yes it was for 2009 but he's going to Trek-Livestrong for 2010. Thus he will be joining the American Ben King who already rides for Trek-Livestrong, and creating a situation even more confusing than the C(hristian) Meier/C(ameron) Meyer one at Garmin ;-).

So, Garmin announced their roster today and Tom Zirbel's name isn't on the list - I (and others on Facebook) thought they'd signed Zirbel back in September, looked it up and found this CN article for instance - so is it just a mistake or did something change between September and now? Anyone know?

link to a photo from Cadel Evans' website, from a book-signing event today/yesterday (depending on one's time zone!) - note the phrase on the T-shirt, lol.

... not to be confused with the Australian Cam Meyer also on Garmin ;-). Of course, there have to be the comparisons to hockey and the explanation of what a domestique does for the non-cycling readership - the writer makes it interesting. and a good quote:
"It is work without glory yet Meier finds romance in it. "For some reason as much as I admired the winners and champions I always had a deep respect for the domestiques. The guys who ride day in and day out and do the work and get bottles. They'll ride two or three of the Grand Tours a year. For me that held huge appeal. You always want to be a rider and a winner and a champion but I also enjoy being a domestique. I love riding at the front of a race.""

cool tidbits about Horner's life in Bend including stuff about his kids... oh, and cycling of course!

good to hear that Tuft is finally getting back to normal, I'd thought his crash at De Panne didn't sound so horrible and wondered why he didn't seem to have raced since (and was pulled from Garmin's Giro team) but it sounds like he'd been having post-concussion effects from his ToC crash even until just recently.

Keenan (sometime CTV commentator) comments on a number of recent crashes with some good analysis - including Armstrong, O'Grady, Schleck/Lloyd, McEwen, and the Bos/Impey incident (someone quoted Keenan in one of the Bos threads, not sure if they'd seen this video or whether it was transcribed somewhere) - also some pics (somewhat graphic) of Keenan directly after his own crash 3 weeks ago, glad to see he's recovering.

click on "reactie Evans (Engels)" under audio for the interview, the accompanying article has just a brief summary but not really all of it.

In reading this article by Barry over at Pedal, I thought it was interesting that the last time Barry rode Paris-Roubaix was the year of Hincapie's best finish (2nd in 2005) ... coincidence? ;-)

for those Evans fans, like me, who may have noticed that his old website first disappeared with error messages then showed an "under construction" header then reverted back to an error message, there is in fact a new (and IMO much-improved) website as linked above. Much-improved in that it isn't flash-based anymore (so if I want to quote something, I don't have to retype it all - I can just cut and paste), and the wordpress blog format means I can get an RSS feed for Google Reader (rather than have to check the site every few days to see if anything is new).

And then, the latest entry today points out that Cadel has also started tweeting and has a MySpace page as well. There's a funny tweet on his wife's Twitter: "I think I created a monster when I introduced Cadel to Twitter and Myspace" ...

yeah, it's in French, the Québéc/francophone media in Canada pay a lot more attention to cycling than the anglophone media do, google translation/garbling here. The article has quotes from Dominique Rollin, Charles Dionne, Martin Gilbert, François Parisien, Keven Lacombe (who won the first stage of the Tour of Cuba the other day), and David Veilleux.