Real men wear pink

How now TdF??

Photo ©: Roberto Bettini www.bettiniphoto.net

Fascinating view from inside the peloton

As anyone that follows pro racing knows, there's a code of silence within the peloton regarding doping. It's fascinating to read a well thought out piece from a recently retired pro racer about the state of cycling now. Check it out here.

Rock Racing at Tuesday Night World's and Tour of Georgia

I first learned bike racing at an even tamer version of Opus, the PIR series at the Portland International Raceway. No corners, no traffic, pro bike racers riding coach and showing us the ropes. An awesome introduction to the sport. ErikV reports that none other than Doug Ollerenshaw showed up to race yesterday. Neat! Jittery Joe's and BMC were also represented. And now Rock Racing has a spot at the Tour of Georgia, not because Michael Ball sued the organizers, but because another team dropped out. I'm surprised they got the spot after that kind of treatment. I'm sure other race organizers will remember how Ball has been treating them so far. That's too bad - from Ollerenshaw's blog he seems like a nice guy, like Tyler Hamilton, doping or no.

LeMond

So here's my question: what's going to happen with the Kelly Benefit Strategies?Medifast sponsorship and the LeMond bikes and tooling? Apparently the new bikes don't use the traditional LeMond slack seat tube geometry, which prevented me from ever being able to ride those bikes. Will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Ball about to lose Cipollini now too?

Cipo in Cyclingnews:

"The boss is Ball, but after him it is me. Therefore I want to manage the squad starting now. I can organise the participation in [Milano-] Sanremo. To find men to race is not a problem. ... If Ball does well it will continue, otherwise goodbye. I now understand that the name Cipollini still has value, in the United States and elsewhere."

"For a week I had an infinite amount of patience ... Maybe it was my great desire to return to racing with an important project. However, we can't go forward like this. We are not able to continue to pull along this heavy weight that ruins our image, and now Ball also understands this. It is not enough to advertise and show off models."

Perspective

Via yogamum. Blog wars aren't limited to bike racers!

Michael Ball

Pretty much exactly as I pictured he would look.

Drama queens

Rock Racing banned trio in special kits Kinda puts our little dramas in perspective eh? To be fair to Rock Racing, as much as I dislike Ball's antics, banning those three riders sucks. Rules are rules of course, but it still sucks.

I love BSNY

Bikes, jeans, and Balls don’t mix. Please take your bling back to 2002 and leave cycling alone.

From the BSNY blog.

Andreu leaves Rock Racing

The only surprise is he lasted as long as he did there. Who'd want to work with Michael Ball? Fcuk* them. Frankie has talent and deserves better than what he got at both Rock Racing and Toyota United. At Toyota United he put together the ass-kickingest domestic squad and got the shaft for telling the truth. Chris Horner was smart to stay away. I wish Frankie luck.

*Smithers blog is retired, but as background here's a snippet from an earlier post:

I heard a story about those Rock Racing guys. There was a group at the race venue promoting a youth cycling rodeo where a bunch of kids were riding bikes around road cones and having fun. The Rock guys showed up and moved all the cones out of the way so they could park their team SUV and Lamborghini next to the course. So much for the kids.

When someone asked them about it the response from the team was an enthusiastic Fuck You.

Ball has made clear his intentions of building his domestic squad into a Tour de France-caliber team, telling VeloNews earlier this year, “I want a yellow jersey on my wall.”

Fuck you.