Don't worry! Everything's okay!

The story so far: cruelly abandoned by their DS after a disastrous season, the former members of Team Lady Marmottes soon found themselves in dire straits. Things got even worse, and then, if possible, worse...so bad that they could only get better. Right?

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Now with more cows!

Note for the confused: Willj and I are friendly co-members of Podium Cafe, with great respect and admiration for each other...until it comes to our knock-down drag out rivalry in women's FSA DS. Our teams, the Lady Moos (his) and Chamois Full of Bliss (mine) are bitter enemies. One of the things Bliss has taken umbrage with this year is the sad plight of certain members of Will's 2011 team, the Lady Marmottes, now known as the Marmottes Without Contract since they were callously cast aside after failing to beat us last year. Follow the rivalry here, if you like. If you don't like, leave now, because things are about to get worse...

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Just about 9 hours to go until FSA DS men's league deadline! Are you still agonizing over your lineup? Let PdC help! Pour out your difficulties, we'll listen, we'll give the best and worst advice you could ever imagine. Or bypass the puny mortals and go straight to the unicorns: White and Black. If you haven't started a team yet, there's still plenty of time to cobble one together (see what I did there? Happy Omloop Eve!).

Is your team already in? Who's on it? Why? Pull up a chair, open a brew or pull an espresso, put another dime in the jukebox, baby, and let's talk smack!

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Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth--Buddha

Tom Boonen is so not going to win Het Nieuwsblad. He has brown eyes.

Blame it on the moon. See, of the past fifteen editions* of the Omloop, seven of them have been held when the moon was waxing,** and it’ll be waxing again on Saturday. Six times out of those seven, the race was won either by (a) a foreigner (four times), or (b) a Belgian with blue eyes (twice). A brown-eyed Belgian? The trend is against it...although the exception in that rogue seventh edition was Peter Van Petegem, who is indeed a brown-eyed Belgian.

But, you see, PVP had already won the race previously. Het Whatsit likes multiple winners—more than half of the 64*** editions have been won by riders who won it two or three times. So, if any brown-eyed Belgian is going to buck the trend, expect it to be a previous winner. Since Nick Nuyens won’t be there, there's only one person on the start list who fits the bill. Phil something, I believe.

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Or, Jonathan Tiernan-Locke? Are you kidding?

The Black Unicorn tells me that one of these statements is likely to be true—or at least truer (insert mwah-ha-ha here):

(A) Bah. Pre-Het Nieuwsblad races are meaningless in predicting riders’ points performance for the purposes of creating an FSA DS team. Ignore them!

(B) Yay! Pre-Het Nieuwsblad races are an excellent source of info for building an FSA DS team. Ignore them…at your peril!

Since he then refused to tell me which, I had to go investigate the problem myself. So, I looked at the early-season calendar and picked out 10 races that seemed to boast an international field. The ones I left out were, in my opinion, too regional or didn’t impress me with the strength of their competitors. I then pulled up podiums for them from 2008-2011, and checked to see how the guys occupying them did during the immediately-following VDS (now FSA DS) season. Did their early success seem to have any bearing on how they did later? Join me (and a couple of unicorns) below the jump and find out! .

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(They don't like it--and have let us know.)

Picture of Euskaltel-Euskadi in action at the Tour de France 2011: By VirtKitty [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Podium Cafe is a magical place where people of all nations gather in peace and harmony to talk cycling, and happy little internet gnomes translate tweets and articles for us. So it's no surprise that we have our very own unicorns, too! And they're ready and willing to help you pick your 2012 FSA DS team.

Because, face it--it's a hard task. Is Eddy worth the premium, especially now that he's given up the yellow shoes? Does a victory in Qatar prove Boonen is back to his winning ways, or are early-season SSR results meaningless? How's Renshaw going to do now that he's not towing Cav to the front? How many freaking points can Bert rack up after August 6th, anyway?

Take the anxiety out of it and ask the unicorns instead! Go to the links below, enter a name in the box, and see what they have to say. There. Now you have time to obsess over your women's team properly.

Are you pure of heart and full of sparkling goodness? Ask the White Unicorn!

Um, not so much? Ask the Black Unicorn!

Somewhere in between? Try 'em both, and average the two! It's still better than spending hours hunched over a spreadsheet. And, sadly, in my experience has at least as much predictive value.

BROWSER NOTE: The unicorns work for me in Safari, IE, and Firefox. For some reason, they utterly refuse to answer in Chrome (perhaps you consider selling your Google stock?). Your mileage may vary--the internet is weird. But I thought I should warn you. Thanks to the incredible help of SuperTed, the unicorns should now work in ALL browsers! I so owe Ted a beer. Or three.

Picture credits: Virgin Majope and Unicorn, Domenichino [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons; Abduction of Prosperine on a Unicorn, Albrecht Dürer [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The sun's over the yardarm somewhere, and there's been a lot of heavy lifting today. Raise a glass and decompress here! It's the dawn of a new season, and there will be much to enjoy ahead.

If you want to talk serious stuff, go here. Otherwise, please leave it outside.

Careless coureur cannot contain criminal compulsion.

Romain Sicard was arrested in Toulouse after police noticed a stolen street sign in a parked car, and lay in wait for the thief to return. A thorough search of the vehicle also revealed the presence of a traffic cone (orange, of course). Looking at his ID and realizing the Euskaltel-Euskadi rider was over the age of 14, police are reported to have said "What, are you drunk?" and given him a breath test which, indeed, proved he was.

No word yet on potential sentencing, but I understand the guillotine is no longer an option.

EDIT: English-language story up at VeloNation.

An open letter to our dear DS, from the Lady Marmottes.

 (Note: this letter is from actual Lady Marmottes, and is not meant to reflect the training regimen of any of the awesome real-life human cyclists unfortunately chosen by Willj to form his VDS-w team...which was severely trounced in this year's competition.)

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Ward off race withdrawal here! Tell us what sort of cheese you're having for lunch, how this morning's ride went, how the hurricane cleanup is going.. Or even talk about the upcoming second half of the Vuelta, if you like. Because it may be the SSGT, but it's better than cricket.

The Eneco Tour starts tomorrow! This classic race, rumored to be reclassified as Cat 1 next year,* meanders through the Be and Ne parts of Benelux and features a largely sprinty field (once upon a time there used to be a King of the Mountains jersey, but it sadly doesn't seem to have been brought back for this year).

Learn more at the official site, which also features the definitive start list.

Please try not to be too intimidated by my stellar team, which features former winner Edvald Boasson Hagen, ably supported by Ben Swift, Lars Boom, Theo Bos, Greg Van Avermaet, Gerald Ciolek, Taylor Phinney, and Johan Vansummeren. If I don't have at least one guy on the podium every day, I will have to assume they weren't trying hard enough and will punish them accordingly.

So, who ya got? Miss Eneco Tour wants to know.

*A fine reminder that not all rumors turn out to be true.

LIVE NOW! Look for links at cyclingfans. Today's stage is flat and short. Sprinters!

Ticker

Official site

Stage info

Start list

A few weeks ago my son, Barbie Barbie, and I took off over the seas for a Great British Adventure.

Read all about it below the jump!

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According to an article in CN, Riccardo Ricco snuck into the Gran Fondo Prologo-Giovanni Lombardi on Sunday, creeping out from under behind a house 10 km into the race to help friends of his close the gap to a break. Ricco, who is banned from participating in any form of competition, continued on to the finish despite being told to leave by other participants.

Ricco continues to insist that his kidney failure in February was caused by illness, not bad blood.

Sportwereld (among others) is reporting that Paris-Roubaix winner Johan Vansummeren has extended his contract with Garmin-Cervelo for a further 3 years. The impressively tall Belgian was reportedly sought after by other teams, including his former employer *Lotto, but "feels perfectly in his own skin" at Garmin.

Will Leeenooos the Leopard hold on for the win? It should be a nail-biter today as the Skoda Tour of Luxembourg winds up with a 152.1 km stage from Mersch to Luxembourg City.

Start list and parcours at the official site. It also has video reports from earlier stages.

Follow along with procyclinglive on Twitter (also search #skodatour for other folk's updates)

Photo of Schoenfels Castle, near Mersch, by Ipigott (Own work) [CC0 (creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons

Today's stage runs 185 km from Eschweiler to Roost. But there are plenty of -anges along the way: Wincrange, Lullange, Doennange, Weicherdange...

Yesterday Linus Gerdemann proved he's still alive and can win stages. Can he take the leader's jersey to the end? Just two stages left...

Start list and parcours at the official site. It also has video reports from earlier stages.

Follow along with procyclinglive on Twitter (also search #skodatour for other folk's updates)

Statue of John of Nepomuk in today's destination city, Roost. Who is John of Nepomuk? He is a Christian martyr who was drowned by Not-the-Good-King Wenceslaus for refusing to give up the queen's secrets from the confessional. Wenceslaus was King of Germany and Bohemia, Elector of Brandenburg, and Duke of Luxembourg. You don't hold out on a guy like that.

Attribution: photo by Cayambe (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

Leudelange-Gare, Luxembourg

Attribution: Fliedermaus at lb.wikipedia, licensed under  the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Luxembourg license.

Today's stage runs 200.7 miles from Schifflange to Differdange, and on the way passes through Leudelange (see above), Tuntange, and likely other -anges as well. Finish is expected somewhere between 17:21 and 17:51 CEST (11:21-11:51 EDT, 8:21-8:51 PDT, 1:21-1:51 AEST)

Get yer start list and parcours at the official site in nice shiny pdfs.

Follow along with procyclinglive on Twitter (also search #skodatour for other folk's updates)

via upload.wikimedia.org

Today's stage is 192.8 km from Luxembourg city to Bascharage. Once again, no video, but we can follow along on Twitter (tag is #skodatour, updates also available from procyclinglive). Here is a photo of the break, which consists of Labbe, Poos, Mouris, and Scheirlinckx.

Racing started at 13:00 CEST, and is expected to finish up between 17:30-18:00 CEST (11:30-noon EDT, 8:30-9:00 PDT, 1:30-2:00 AEST).

Official site

(photo of Luxembourg Fortress courtesy of Caranorn, licensed under GNU Free Documentation License for free distribution, see Wiki Commons page for more details)

No video that I can find, but you can follow along on Twitter by searching #skodatour. At the moment, Gaudin has the best time.

So, Monday dawned bright and fair, with temperatures aiming for the 90s. My brother took off early to cycle the whole way--I drove into downtown Greenville and met him and his friends there. Then we set off for Paris Mountain...

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This is going to be mostly pictures because, well, I'm beat. The kid and I threw my bike and Barbie Barbie in the car and road tripped from Indiana down to South Carolina for the US Pro National Championships.

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Hey! There's racing outside of Italy, too! Today the Tour de Belgique/Ronde van Belgie/Tour of Belgium kicks off with a 5.6 km prologue in Buggenhout at 13:00 CEST, with video expected an hour later (see below).

Official site here.

Ticker

Start list

Parcours for all stages available for download here.

Video is expected from 14:00 CEST (8:00 EDT, 5:00 PDT, 22:00 AEST, other time zones here)--among your best bets for live feeds are CyclingFans and BVLS. 

The Bayern Rundfahrt also starts today and is already LIVE, but alas, I can't find any info on live video. However, we can still follow along on ticker. Bayern official site * Start list * Parcours

Please label your posts Bayern or Belgium to help us easily-confused types keep it all clear.

Wouter Weylandt's tragic death on Monday left behind a grieving cycling community, but most of us can only imagine the devastation of his close friends, teammates, and family--and the special pain of his girlfriend An Sophie, who is expecting Wouter's child in September.  Leopard Trek has set up a donation page in support of the family, and as promised, have now included an option to make payments via PayPal.  

Please help if you can! 

Cool video showing exactly what you need for a three-week race. Just an amazing amount of kit.