Post Tour EuroPro Review Parte Deux – Boogaloo Electrique

Hmm, no wonder Breakin’ 2 didn’t do well in France.

Alright, this is what you’ve all been waiting for (ok, it’s just me, then). It’s time for the Europro Tour de France fashion dos and don’ts. This year the peloton produced some magical sartorial moments. But for every winner, there has to be a loser. Let’s get started. And the first category is…

Best Team Kit

Winner: Belkin

Belkin – so fresh and so clean

(Lars) Boom! Their first at bat with all the bases loaded and they slam-dunk a touchdown (I got the American sporting references right, yes?). Riding for the first half of the season, they were the non-sponsored Blanco. Oddly, lots of people dug that kit, but I just wasn’t feeling it. Then the US peripheral giant steps in right before the tour with a super-clean, super-stylish, green, black and white setup. Looking good guys. Modern, yet with a nod to the golden age of trade teams. Then what happens? They were everywhere! Mollema and Ten Dam were kicking it on GC. The whole team was drilling it on the front of the windswept stage 13. They were getting max airtime for their new sponsers and looking damned good doing it. Sometimes a fresh lick of paint (and a fat sponsor cheque) can make all the difference.

Loser: Lampre

The Little Prince – this photo is the only evidence that he was at the Tour de France

Lampre were nowhere to be seen at this tour, not even in the breaks, and that’s probably for the best. Cunego, the little prince, must be tiny, because I never saw him at all for 3 weeks straight. Do they ever win anything? Really? Ever? Their kit always sucks. The pink and blue is not working at all. They ditched Wilier for Merida and lost even more Italian cool points. To be honest, last year, their kit was worse, but I’m docking serious points for lack of effort. If you’re going to rock hot pink, royal blue and flouro lime, then show that crazy shit off in an attack. That way we’d maybe have seen more of the one awesome thing you had going for you at this tour (more of that later).

Best Cap

Winner: Omega Pharma Quick Step

#capsnothats

Was it the best cycling cap at the tour? To be honest, I don’t know, but it was the only one I remember seeing. Their kit sucks. Sorry. Gradients are OVER, man! OVER! But, they are a top level team and they actually wore cycling caps on the podium. Cheers for that! Cav, keep the soul fire burning. Chapeau! #capsnothats

Loser: Team Sky

Not a cycling cap. From a company that sells cycling caps. And doesn’t sell baseball caps.

What the fucking fuck? I’ll say this right now up front. I love Rapha’s stuff. I love all that golden age of cycling nostalgia bullshit they sell me. I lap it all up, mostly because they actually make superb clothing. I love their cycling caps. So why the hell is Chris Froome wearing that ridiculous NASCAR/F1/Golf shit on his skeletal noggin on the podium? Can I buy a Team Sky straight bill douche hat on Rapha.cc? No, I can’t. Because it’s not a cycling cap. They have a very nice Team Sky cycling cap. I own one. It’s great. So what the hell was going on here? Was this part of the Murdoch 21st Century Fox tie-in before the tour? Make it more accessible to golfers? I can’t believe Simon Mottram was down with this. This is a travesty. A travesty! Alright, it just seems kind of weird to me.

Best Facial Hair

Winner: Tie – Jerome Cousin and José Serpa

Hirsutes you, sirs!

Jérôme Cousin wins most aggresive facial hair on stage 10

Wow. First of all, Europcar are amazing. They’re like the Dirty Dozen, but mostly French, and in tight lycra. OK, they’re nothing like the Dirty Dozen. They’re like the Seven Samurai, except there’s nine of them and only one of them’s Japanese and… OK, terrible analogies. They’re just brilliant and hilarious and swashbuckling and way more exciting to watch than most teams out there. Is there a breakaway? Well you can bet your last centime that somebody from Europcar is going to be in it, and chances are they’re going to be from a woefully under-represented ethnicity, or they’re going to make ridiculous faces, or they’re going to have a spectacular moustache, like Jérôme Cousin has.

Serpa – tachetastic

Remember what I said earlier about Lampre? Why didn’t I see this magnificent bigote until the third week of this tour, and why can’t I find a better picture of it? By the third week it was taking up half his face! Shame on you, Lampre! How could you deprive us of this amazing facial foliage? Oh, and he’s Colombian. Extra awesome points.

Loser: Peter Sagan

Clown Prince of the Peloton

Yes, he’s amazing. Maybe people still really love clowns in Slovakia, but they scare the shit out of me.

Best Way to Show Off a Leader’s Jersey

Winner: Team Sky

Yellow Jersey, not yellow bibs

You’ve got the yellow jersey for 2 weeks. Do you dye your pubic hair yellow? No. You wear the yellow jersey with your regular team bibs. Classic, classy. The opposite of that stupid fucking baseball hat! Sure, ride a custom yellow bike into Paris when you’ve actually won the Tour de France (still in your regular bibs), but don’t do what this guy did…

Loser: Team Europcar

You think the gloves are too much? Nah, I’m sure you’ll be wearing all this shit in Paris.

First week in the tour, you’ve been over a couple of small bumps and you’ve won the polka-dot jersey, What do you do? You don’t do this. Polka-dot bibs are never, ever right. I get it, you’re wild and crazy (mostly) Frenchmen, but that ain’t right.

Best Eyewear

Winner: Ryder Hesjedal

I’m just here to catch some tasty waves

Hey look, Ryder isn’t wearing Oakleys like everyone else. He’s wearing big ass funky Swedish aviators.

Loser: Ryder Hesjedal

Hey look, Ryder is so cool and laid back in his big ass funky Swedish aviators. In the words of Liberace, ‘return to the classics’. Let’s let the Badger show you how you rock aviators and stick it to the man.

Badger don’t care

Best Bike

Winner: Europcar

So it’s not the best shot of the bike, but it has the seal of approval of this guy, and he’s wearing a cycling cap.

White Colnago C59 with Campy 80th Anniversary Super Record. Enough Said.

Loser: Everyone else

Post Tour EuroPro Review Parte Un

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I’ve been out of action here for a while for two reasons. Watching this year’s tour has been a full time job for a start. I don’t know about you, but this has been probably the best Tour de France since the last time a British cyclist won it. How often does that happen? Also, I put a lot of my Bespoke panache into the Le Tour du Vin fundraiser that we had last week for our Bike MS team. Oh, and my laptop is now blind. It works, but the screen doesn’t. This makes writing a blog quite difficult. I’m currently tapping this out with one thumb on a tiny virtual keyboard while trying to get a two year old to stop doing Hulk Hogan moves on me and go to sleep. I’ll have to add the pictures later!

I’ve been thinking about a lot of things during and since Le Tour, but always Schwinn Paramount™ on my mind is what it means to be EuroPro. Of course, EuroPro can never truly be achieved. It is an ideal. It is always over the next HC climb or cobbled berg. EuroPro is only truly attained by the Pantheon of Gods, Demi-Gods and Demons that name the hairpins of Alpe d’Huez and the shower stalls at Roubaix, and in very special cases, both.

First of all, before we get into the stylistic elements of what EuroPro is (trust me, those are coming – this TdF has been a rich seam to mine), lets not forget the proclivities, idiosyncrasies and extravagances of the truly EuroPro are all forged in the same fire. Pain. Medievel levels of pain. You can’t ever achieve EuroPro unless you have taken physical and mental suffering so far that you find a sense of satisfaction from it. This is not masochism or martyrdom, it is the knowing that you can hurt far more than you ever have before, and more importantly, more than the guy next to you. It is a badge of honour and a stepping stone on the path to Merckxian Enlightenment. Once you know that you can take that kind of pain, then you know that you can dish it out! Here’s the Bespoke Honour Roll of PainMeisters of the 2013 Tour de France:

1. Geraint Thomas.

Welsh Hardman – ouch that hurt, just give me a second, then I’ll ride another 3,000km full gas.

Stage 1. Fractured pelvis. That has to hurt a lot at the best of times. I can’t imagine what it’s like to ride a bike at race speed day after day, km after km like that. He kept going, his Mum back in Wales begged him to pull out. He kept going. He suffered through the Pyrenees, survived the ferocious pace from Britanny to Ventoux, and then put the hurt on everyone on the flats leading up to the Alpine climbs. Welsh. Hardman. This bodes very well for him one day joining the Roubaix Pantheon. Oh yeah, the reason he missed the tour last year? To grab a fat gold rope at the Olympics.

Drilling it on the front on Étape 14 – oh are you guys hurting, let me turn it up, how about now?

2. Tony Fucking Martin.

Tony Fucking Martin – easy girls, he’s taken!

Same shit, different hurt. Tony apparently left half his freaking skin in Corsica (this happens a lot in Corsica, but is usually due to drunken, ginger haired, pale skinned British tourists neglecting to apply sunscreen). How do you come back from that? You win the Mont Saint Michel Time Trial on stage 11 with blood pouring out of your bibs! Tony. Fucking. Martin!

Tony Fucking Martin – rocking the Alien movie poster look.

3. Jens

The Jensie – the crown prince of pain.

It’s kind of a cliché to talk about Jens, but holy panéed deep fried shit balls soaked in cognac and set on fire, the man is almost 42. I’m 42. He should not be able to do the ridiculous shit that he does. Does it work? On the Amgen Tour of California? Sure. On the Tour de France? Hey, he makes them chase him down, he makes them pay for their supper. Sure, he’s going to go in reverse like an Italian tank on the last climb (what, WW2 is too soon, reallly?), but, damn, why the hell is this geriatric German who should be wearing Depends™ the last survivor of the breakaway in the big show? Jens must have made a Faustian pact to be dishing out the pain to all the young bucks out there, and wearing cycling bibs instead of a bib to catch his spilled soup. Is this really your last tour Jens? I bet, your last race is next year’s Amgen. You’re going for one last stage win, aren’t you. Shine on you crazy diamond. We’re going to miss you at the big show.

That’s just my shortlist. Of course, there were other PainMeisters out there. Who were yours? Chava? Ted King? Let me know who I’ve missed out, and why. More TdF EuroPro action to follow soon.

Skyfall?

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Wiggo loses time in the Giro – photo AP

Team Sky set out with a very bold statement in their debut year, 2010, that their mission was to put a British rider in the Maillot Jaune on the Champs Élysées within 5 years. After their first Tour de France that year, it really looked like a hollow promise. The team was far too aggressive on the early climbing stages and ill-equipped to back up that bravado with any results. They obviously had a pool of talent but just looked like a newly promoted small town championship football team taking on the might of the Mancunians (sorry to my American readers for the English football analogy, but there’ll be some more later).

The next year Wiggins was looking much stronger and the team more cohesive, but a crash in the first week put paid to any GC hopes. EBH nabbed a great stage win and he and Thomas both showed great promise as puncheurs.

2012 could not have gone better for them. Their GC squad looked like (and drew unwelcome references to) the Postal Train of the previous decade. Wiggins won all his tour targets with consistent climbing and imperious TT performances. His colonels on the climbs, Froome, Porte and Rogers made it all look so easy. We did get to see the first signs of trouble between their top two GC men with Froome’s ‘Hinault’ moment and the WAGs’ (that’s wives and girlfriends for the non-Premiership followers) twitter fight.

This year has seen a reversal of fortunes for our two protagonists as Froome has flourished out of Wiggo’s shadow. There’s been some more handbag waving with Bradley’s flip-flopping statements about who would be leading the team for this year’s TdF. I’m sure it’s a huge relief for Froome that Wiggins won’t be there on Saturday

Porte has proven himself more than capable of winning big stage races with Paris-Nice this year, and Uran was superb in the Giro. Where I’m heading with this is that it’s hard to keep a team cohesive when there are so many stars and not enough water carriers. Cycling is an unusual sport in that, unlike football, the whole team works to get the win, but only one of them (or two as is often the case with Sky) gets to stand on the podium. The rumours suggest that Uran is being wooed away by other teams looking for a GC leader. If he goes would Henao follow? They’re both ideally suited to the steeper climbs of the Giro and Vuelta and even though Porte is supposedly being groomed for a Grand Tour, presumably that would be the Giro or Vuelta and he could be up against the arguably better climbing skills of his current Colombian teammates on whatever teams they end up on. With Sky’s British-based team and Commonwealth preferences for leadership, you can imagine Uran might think he’d rather get a real leadership role where he isn’t having to make up time lost nursing Wiggins up the hill.

With their meteoric rise, and dominating performances, the comparisons to Postal have been inevitable. Aside from the predictable doping rumours, people refer to the ~~Postal~~ Sky Train style of racing. It’s certainly not as entertaining as a Voeckler breakaway or Contador dancing on the pedals up the Alpe, but it gets results like Georgie Graham’s boring, boring, boring Arsenal. Also like Postal, they’ve been pretty lacklustre in the Spring Classics. One day races really don’t seem to favour the Pain Train style. EBH hasn’t quite lived up to the promise of his talents so far. Poor guy, it doesn’t help him that a certain Mr. Sagan showed up on the scene!

They’ve completed their initial mission two years early, and while you’d think British cycling fans would be jubilant, there’s quite a bit of backlash about the team’s wealth, Murdoch money and, yep, you guessed it, overpriced Rapha kits. Combine that with the superstar roster twittering away at each other and it makes one think of Real Madrid or Man United. Ugh, now I hate them too!

What do you all think? Yes both of you! Are you Sky haters? Who will you be cheering for at Le Tour?

Badger Watch 2013

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It’s almost time the Tour, which means The Badger will be in action once again, greeting local dignitaries, congratulating stage winners and kicking some ass!

It seems some French right-wing crackpots want to disrupt the Tour de France to protest against same-sex marriage. I don’t know what The Badger’s views on the subject of marriage are, but I do know that he doesn’t stand for anyone messing with the sanctity of his bike race.

Nobody messes with The Badger. Wait, wasn’t the guy on the right in Goodfellas?

The Badger can smell a fake FdJ rider from 50 metres.

My Life as a Bike

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Sierra Madre del Sur Mud and my 2002 Stumpy

Here’s the first post on my bikes. I suppose it makes sense to give a little back story, so to kick it off here’s most of the bikes I can remember owning that I don’t have anymore. I’m also mentioning where I owned them.

Raleigh Chipper (UK) (like a Chopper but without the small front wheel and the 3-speed shifter on the top tube). This is the bike I learned to ride on. My friend’s dad painted it yellow and put some cool stickers on it.
Piranha BMX (UK) – crap, the less said about this, the better. OK, one thing. Magnesium wheels!
Mongoose Supergoose frame with yellow (what was with all the yellow?) Skyways and all gold anodized parts (Dia Compe MX brakes) (US and UK). Went through various parts specs, mostly based upon what else I could find that was gold to put on it. Wish I still had this.
Raleigh Quasar road bike (UK). Reynolds 501 ‘aero’ frame, ‘aero’ water bottle, weird concave Weinmann rims and my first roadie. First bike I would actually go on rides to other towns on. Getting misty eyed thinking about riding the Yorkshire Dales on this thing with nothing but a bottle of water and a cheese and branston pickle sandwich.
Specialized Hardrock Comp (US and UK). Pink and white frame. Suntour groupset with their answer to Shimano Biopace. I believe it was called Ovaltech. First mountain bike.
Specialized Stumpjumper Team with Suntour XC Pro (UK). ’91 or ’92 model. Superb bike. Japanese built triple-butted Tange Prestige frame. Purple pearl over black. Rode this bike on trails all over the UK. It also travelled to Greece. Only bike I’ve ever had stolen. Wish I still had this.
Specialized Rockhopper Comp (UK). Maybe ’96 or ’97. Beautiful powder blue frame, Shimano SIS and a Rockshox elastomer fork. First Alu frame. Decent bike. Sold to my friend. Put a lot of miles on this in London. Did my first century on it. Had my worst crash ever on it. Wear a lid kids! Seriously, wear a lid.
Specialized Stumpjumper hardtail. 2002 model (US and then Mexico). My first bike with SPD pedals. This was my daily transport in San Francisco, my commuter from the city to Marin County, my trail shredder at Tamarancho and repack, my bike packing rig to Point Reyes, and later, my Mexico trail tamer and my Sierra Madre del Sur death marcher. Almost every part got replaced on it over several years. Started on a Rockshox Duke fork (terrible, exploded on a ride in Marin headlands immediately after the warranty expired), followed by an eBay Manitou Skareb (light, but noodley and not great damping) and then a Marzocchi Marathon S (heavy, brilliantly simple piece of engineering with coil/oil and one of the best climbing lockdown systems ever – still my favourite suspension fork and I wish I hadn’t sold it). Update on the Skareb: Just heard from my friend I gave it to and it just died with a broken bridge. Not a bad innings for a crappy fork. Upgraded most of the components – in order:
- King Headset (still using these today on all bikes that’ll take them)
- Thomson Seatpost (still using these on all bikes I’ve owned since)
- Some sort of fancy Avid brake levers with Ti in the name and not much Ti in the parts.
- Easton carbon riser bar (still being used on Brooke’s mountain bike and I still use their road carbon bars)
- Thomson stem (still using these today on all my bikes)
- Shimano XT Octalink Hollowtech 1 crankset (still have it in my parts drawer)
- First custom wheel set – King ISO Disc hubs with DT Swiss Supercomp spokes and DT Swiss 4.1 rims (on Brooke’s mountain bike today)
- Avid BB7 disk brakes
- WTB Rocket V Ti saddle (still on my current MTB)
Turner Burner 2004 (Mexico and then US). My first full suspension mountain bike frame. Supergo (now Performance/Nashbar) were selling off all the remaining stock. We were living in Mexico City and went to visit Brooke’s sister in San Diego. I drove up to their Laguna Beach store and picked up one of the last XL frames for super cheap. All the parts from the Stumpy were transferred over. An astonishingly good bike. One thing I will say, is that having grown up with full-rigid and later hardtail bikes, one learns to ride trails with a certain degree of finesse in order to stay on the bike on rough terrain. Moving to a bike with full suspension allowed me to build on that and not only ride sections that would have been very difficult before, it allowed me to take more technical trail sections at much faster speeds. This bike worked so well with the Marathon S fork, a supremely balanced ride. Was it the lightest 4″ travel bike around? No. Was it bulletproof, predictable and a boat load of fun? Abso-fucking-lutely. More XT stuff got added and I finally put hydraulic discs on it – another revelation. Anyone that says cable disc brakes are just as good is either lying or has never tried hydros (also, all you roadie curmudgeons that don’t get what the benefits are, have obviously never tried them either). The only bad thing I have to say about this bike is that the top tube could have offered more clearance. More upgrades from what was carried over from the Stumpy:
- XT front mech (still rockin’)
- Thomson straight post 27.2 (keep on keeping’ on)
- Magura Marta 2007 brakes (you see where this is going, right?)
- Paul Components 4″ rockers (these are rarer than hen’s teeth these days, sold separately to frame for what I paid for them)
- Fox RP3 shock (sold)

That pretty much brings me up to my current stable, which is interesting (if only to me), because, I’d never owned more than one bike until after this point. I’ll update this post as soon as I can dig up some pictures of some of these bikes. Stay tuned.

The Americans are Back!

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Sergio Henao, Rigoberto Uran & Nairo Quintana

Back in the 1980s, the Café de Colombia team lit up the climbing stages of the grand tours. The great Luis ‘Lucho’ Herrera, otherwise known as El Jardinerito (The Little Gardener), won the mountain classification in all three grand tours and even won the Vuelta d’España in 1987.

We haven’t seen much of Colombian riders in the Pro Tour since the demise of the Café de Colombia team in 1990. Perhaps certain ‘training techniques’ allowed lesser climbers to keep up with these masters of altitude, but now there’s a whole new generation of Colombian pros that are lighting up the peloton.

The new wave are more than just mountain goats. They’re much more rounded riders than the previous generation, able also to perform in the tough one-day Ardennes classics or in the race of truth against the clock. Perhaps this is partly due due to them being picked up and groomed by top-flight teams with big budgets and all the benefits of modern sports science.

Sergio Henao and Rigoberto Uran are instrumental to Team Sky’s pain train when the road turns up. Uran turned in such a solid performance in the Giro (including a very strong TT ride and a mountain stage win), that when his leader Wiggins wigged out, he was well enough placed to take a very convincing second overall. Nairo Quintana (Movistar) stole the Tour of the Basque Country from Richie Porte, with Sergio Henao clinching third. Henao took the win at the Volta ao Algarve and finished second at La Flèche Wallonne. Carlos Betancur (AG2R) has proved himself this year with great classics finishes in La Flèche Wallonne (3rd) and Liège–Bastogne–Liège (4th) then garnering a superb grand tour performance clinching 5th and the young rider’s jersey in the Giro (Uran won it last year). In fact, four of the top 20 in this year’s very tough Giro were Colombians.

Traditionally, the European peloton has been dominated by the European powerhouses of cycling. France, Italy, Belgium, Spain. For all the excitement in the US cycling media about Tejay finally coming good* and Talansky about to, a look at the WorldTour standings reveals a fascinating picture of where the young talent is coming from. Of course the season has a way to go, we’ve still got two grand tours and the world championships, but I doubt many would have predicted that Colombia would be 2nd in the world rankings right now with 766 points. In contrast, the USA is sitting 12th with 296, and with two very lumpy three week races coming up, you can bet the young Colombians will be to the fore again.

The Americans are back! They just happen to be South Americans.

*Yes, Tejay won the Amgen Tour of California. How many WorldTour teams were there? Let’s not forget who won that grueling 109F climb in Palm Springs – Janier Acevedo from Colombia, on a little continental team, who went on to finish third overall.