firstoffthebike.com - Blog

The late Crank

• Nice to see our man Pippy G (Phil Graves)  get a second at 70.3 UK. Not a great field assembled and all the hype about Macca racing was inaccurate. You know the athletes should be filling in their whereabouts not for the drug testers but for the media.
• The Crank got challenged last week to make a comment regarding the lack of endurance racing in Victoria. The answer is never simple and outside of Shepparton there is not too much else. The Crank hears tales of another race that will be happening in Feb but that's all cloud talk. But let's face it, it is not too hard to jump a plane in Australia and go and race. It is not ideal but it is better than nothing. As for the lack of places in IM races in Australia that is a different angle. It's a watch this space.
• Interesting to see the reaction of the pro peloton after the Tour de Suisse Carnage that was caused by Mark Cavendish. A two minute stand off by the pros the next day in recognition of the sanctions given to Cavendish (time bonus and monetary sanction) where a timely reminder that the bunch holds the balance of power. Memo to triathletes, watch how the cycling pros organsise themselves to get their message across.
• We talked about this two weeks ago and who would have thought, the UCI will begin testing for motorized doping in time for this year’s Tour de France. The measure was put in place at the recent UCI Management Committee, held in Birmingham, United Kingdom, on June 17.
  
  The sport’s governing body recognised that it was “necessary to bolster measures that have already been put in place (in particular the visual inspection of bicycles, a procedure that was recently reinforced). As a result, a scanner will be used from the time of the Tour de France,” . Uhuh, well while this all seems fanciful let's not forget the lengths that cyclists have gone in the past.
• Lance says he is ready for the Tour after his second at the Tour de Suisse. Lance would want to get his time trial mojo working before he gets to the start line in July.
• Surely the World Cup is driving people to other sports? Rubbish refs making life changing decisions, players who could win Oscars for their work on the pitch and dead boring nil all draws. The greatest sporting event in the world so far has shown little. Compare that to one day in the Tour de France. The World Cup shine may have faded a little. Still the Crank is enjoying the cafe talk and the Maradonna's mullet!