It’s easy. Struggle a bit in your races, maybe no more than any other neo-pro, but have a kindly dealer handy to tempt you to ‘try this’. When you take the pills and they seem to work, well, it’s a done deal. I mean if they didn’t work you’d stay clean, yes? But they do work and you go faster. Jorg confirms this theory: Jörg Jaksche was 19 years old and not performing at all well in his first pro year, when he got a suggestion as to how to save his career. “The team manager came into my room and said: Listen; in cycling you take drugs like this, and either you accept or you leave the sport,” Jaksche told the anti-doping conference “Play the Game” in Iceland.
Of course you could say it was weakness that sucked him in. There are times when you have to choose between good and bad, and it’s your decision and your personal responsibility. Bjarne Riis appears to believe in that: “Furthermore, that this is supposed to have been a threat is definitely insulting and tells me that Jaksche either has a very bad sense of memory or deliberately chooses to twist the truth. It is correct that I told him about how difficult it would be to come back, and I was speaking from experience here, since I had been through the same only a short time before. That Jaksche still blames all sorts of other people for the mistakes he made himself is just so trivial. It is necessary that the problems in cycling are taken care of, and that’s what I stand for.”
Filed under Jaksche, Riis by Rob.
It’s easy. Struggle a bit in your races, maybe no more than any other neo-pro, but have a kindly dealer handy to tempt you to ‘try this’. When you take the pills and they seem to work, well, it’s a done deal. I mean if they didn’t work you’d stay clean, yes? But they do work and you go faster. Jorg confirms this theory: Jörg Jaksche was 19 years old and not performing at all well in his first pro year, when he got a suggestion as to how to save his career. “The team manager came into my room and said: Listen; in cycling you take drugs like this, and either you accept or you leave the sport,” Jaksche told the anti-doping conference “Play the Game” in Iceland.
Of course you could say it was weakness that sucked him in. There are times when you have to choose between good and bad, and it’s your decision and your personal responsibility. Bjarne Riis appears to believe in that: “Furthermore, that this is supposed to have been a threat is definitely insulting and tells me that Jaksche either has a very bad sense of memory or deliberately chooses to twist the truth. It is correct that I told him about how difficult it would be to come back, and I was speaking from experience here, since I had been through the same only a short time before. That Jaksche still blames all sorts of other people for the mistakes he made himself is just so trivial. It is necessary that the problems in cycling are taken care of, and that’s what I stand for.”
Filed under Jaksche, Riis by Rob.
Even that’s doubtful these days. In my heyday I rode Sydney (ie Surry Hills) to the Blue Mountains (ie Katoomba) and back (that’s 200km) for fun and 200km races for the jolly experience of it all, but 299 in a day? No, not ever. So to finish – let alone win – the Melbourne to Warrnambool (the ‘Warnie’) is simply miraculous, and these guys pulled off exactly that miracle.
I do wonder about the physiology of it all. I found that doing 500-700km a week gave me great endurance but knocked my pace down a notch. Which is to say I suffered in crits something fierce. But 200-300km a week was just perfect for club A-grade crits and my sprint came back. Occasionally I’d do 500, but anything above 200km was a bonus.
And come the track season the big winter road miles (Aussies do their road racing in winter) had built my strength up, so it was a case of simply dropping the miles back and sharpening up.OTOH if I’d had a slack road season I needed 400km a week and maybe some weights to get up to speed.
Even when doing those almost-slack 200km weeks I could still jump on the bike and ride Sydney to the Central Coast and back in a day (200km) with my time each way almost exactly the same. I had ‘endurance memory’ locked into my legs, I guess. But I seem to have lost it in the last 7 years or so. Back then I was knocking over 100km in 3 hours or less on my own, now I’m cramping after 50 and crawling home. Could it be my age? Nahhh. I’ve just slacked off the miles, haven’t I?
Even that’s doubtful these days. In my heyday I rode Sydney (ie Surry Hills) to the Blue Mountains (ie Katoomba) and back (that’s 200km) for fun and 200km races for the jolly experience of it all, but 299 in a day? No, not ever. So to finish – let alone win – the Melbourne to Warrnambool (the ‘Warnie’) is simply miraculous, and these guys pulled off exactly that miracle.
I do wonder about the physiology of it all. I found that doing 500-700km a week gave me great endurance but knocked my pace down a notch. Which is to say I suffered in crits something fierce. But 200-300km a week was just perfect for club A-grade crits and my sprint came back. Occasionally I’d do 500, but anything above 200km was a bonus.
And come the track season the big winter road miles (Aussies do their road racing in winter) had built my strength up, so it was a case of simply dropping the miles back and sharpening up.OTOH if I’d had a slack road season I needed 400km a week and maybe some weights to get up to speed.
Even when doing those almost-slack 200km weeks I could still jump on the bike and ride Sydney to the Central Coast and back in a day (200km) with my time each way almost exactly the same. I had ‘endurance memory’ locked into my legs, I guess. But I seem to have lost it in the last 7 years or so. Back then I was knocking over 100km in 3 hours or less on my own, now I’m cramping after 50 and crawling home. Could it be my age? Nahhh. I’ve just slacked off the miles, haven’t I?
St Mary’s, Maroubra Speedway, Sydney Speedway, Amaroo Park, Oran Park, Catalina Park, Eastern Creek…
St Mary’s, Maroubra Speedway, Sydney Speedway, Amaroo Park, Oran Park, Catalina Park, Eastern Creek…
Well it’s obvious to me, anyway. Of course land clearing has made our climate hotter. You only have to go for a short bike ride or simply walk in the right places to spot the difference. Whether you travel the hot plains of suburbia or the shadeless wastes we call farmland the only blessed relief from the heat is the shade of the uncleared forests. Around my part of Australia the temperature can drop 5 degrees in the blink of an eye as I pedal through remnant tall gum forest. Now it’s the shade effect, sure, and that’s stating the bleeding obvious. But there’s more to it than that. Forests conserve water by raising the humidity of the air captured under the canopy. Forests also keep the blast-furnace northerlies at bay. Forests are also less likely to radiate the heat back into the atmosphere, unlike our black bitumen roads and red-tiled roofs. They also sequester carbon.
Now plenty of people think we humans are too puny and insignificant to affect global patterns of climate – whilst offering no proof of that other than their blind, optimistic faith. On the other hand I can’t prove that human activity is to blame for climate change on a global scale, either. But I do think it plausible that over 6 billion humans chewing through our planet’s resources will have some effect on the planet’s weather – although the degree of effect is probably still small. I hope. What I am certain of is that human activity – especially land clearing – drastically alters patterns of weather, including rainfall. Now if enough people in enough places are doing the same thing…
From the SMH:Land clearing has led to climate change in Australia, a University of Queensland-led report says. UQ’s Dr Clive McAlpine said their research showed the clearing of native vegetation had made Australian droughts hotter. “Our findings highlight that it is too simplistic to attribute climate change purely to greenhouse gases,” said Dr McAlpine of UQ’s Centre for Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Science.
Journalists have it tough. They must report factually (never easy when truth can be so dull). They must separate fact from opinion (which requires both insight and time-consuming research). They must meet their deadlines (don’t we all?). And they must write appealing prose that targets their readership or audience. In other words they are horribly compromised by eternal conflicts of interest and can never be trusted. If you’ve ever been involved with putting stories together with journalists you’ll know that your words are often accepted holus-bolus (which is great if you want to get your spiel out there) as that’s the easiest (ie laziest) approach for them. However if your story is too insipid, or if they want to prove a point of some kind then don’t expect much of your story to get ‘out there’. Instead it will vary from ‘enhanced’ to ‘total fabrication’. You can’t blame ‘em really.
Anyway, today’s brave words are from news.com.au: MORE than 50 of the world’s airlines can’t be wrong in their choice of Boeing’s hi-tech Dreamliner ahead of the A380 “big bird” from Airbus.
Wow, that many airlines can’t be wrong, eh? Airlines are never wrong, never make mistakes when choosing one aircraft over another, no. Never. Funny how this gushing story also coincides with the arrival of the first commercial flight of the A380 into Australia.
The article continues to enthuse with:The moulded carbon-fibre “plastic fantastic” has yet to fly but is already the most successful new airliner in aviation history. Yes, the fastest selling commercial airliner yet to be seen… and indeed it hasn’t been seen in the air, either. But gee that A380 already has its wings… can’t let Airbus get any leverage out of that, can we?
Anyone got the original Boeing press release handy?
Really, by now they should know better. They call some cars “green” or the saviours of the world because they do a little better than the others in fuel consumption, but forget that cars need infrastructure and resources other than fuel to get around. And that ‘other stuff’ stuffs the environment, too. And they call old stuff, like hybrid engines (think diesel-electric locos on our railroads) or combos of super and turbo chargers (think piston-engined airliners like the Super Connie), new. And then they write stuff like this: But what happens if one of these automotive gods descends from the stratosphere and into the reach of the only moderately well-heeled? It’s a dangerous path to tread. Mercedes and BMW have been there, trading the exclusivity of the badge for the lure of sales growth. But no one from the top shelf of supercars had tried it until Porsche released the Cayenne 4WD in 2003. This vehicle has certainly lifted Porsche sales (the company says it will make up about 45 per cent of total sales with the new model) – but how has it affected the long-standing Porsche formula? Just how fast (or slow) is the cheapest Porsche money can buy? To find out we grabbed two other popular six-cylinder cars as a benchmark.
First up, who cares? Well I care because the resources squandered by hulks like these mean less resources around for the future. And the basic premise is wrong. This is just a brand issue, and it has been done to death. According to the hacks at drive.com.au Porsche has never trod this path before. Yeah, right. In these lame moto-journalistic eyes Porsche never made a truck-powered 924 or – what was that earlier effort with the flat-four? Well it was firstly the 356 but that was cool, and then the subsequent 912 was bigger and not-so-cool. And then there was the 914. With the parts-bin 924 and 914 they really made affordable, economical performance cars that competed with Alfa Romeo’s GTV and its ilk. Oh for the days when sports cars – all cars – were small and fiesty, not fat and fusty.
But watered down Porsches didn’t really work and they were worked over relentlessly until Porker gave up and kept the 911 going and going instead. Which has led us to today, when the hacks are going ‘gosh, a cheap-ish Porsche’. Again. And the thrust of it all is business, not passion or sustainability. Porsche are once more broadening their range, not with sports cars but with fat but powerful iterations of the 4WD from hell. You could say it’s diversification, and it’s been a success. It’s also risky in that it is polluting and diluting the brand. It may be that in these times when everyone has an overpowered 4WD that Porker can get away with it – seemingly so. But it’s neither new nor original. And definitely not something a ‘traditional’ 911 owner would want to know about.
And let’s not beat it up into something desirable, either.
The what? The CQ rankings, for Cycling Quotient, a la IQ. Hmmm. Well it’s designed to plug a gap that the UCI left when they opted for the ProTour, anyway. And now Aussie Cadel Evans leads both the ProTour and the CQ standings.
The CQ is comprehensive and gives us loads of stats on every pro race, all year long. Can’t be bad, eh?
The what? The CQ rankings, for Cycling Quotient, a la IQ. Hmmm. Well it’s designed to plug a gap that the UCI left when they opted for the ProTour, anyway. And now Aussie Cadel Evans leads both the ProTour and the CQ standings.
The CQ is comprehensive and gives us loads of stats on every pro race, all year long. Can’t be bad, eh?
First up, a mention for elite athlete gone bad, Olympic gold medal sprinter Marion Jones. Ooops. It’s been a long time coming, hasn’t it? We’d feel sorry, maybe, if she hadn’t so stridently denied it.
Of course we Aussies often think or act like we are immune to the problem, but we are all in this together. From today’s Sydney Morning Herald: A track-and-field athlete and a swimmer are among the 24 Australian sportspeople who recorded anti-doping violations in 2006-07. The list included nine athletes from weightlifting and body-building, along with seven rugby league players – mostly from the Queensland and NSW state league competitions.
In the long run it will become increasingly difficult to manage performance enhancement amongst all sports, not just cycling. Today we have the question of which drugs to include, and in what quantities. To identify the drugs is hard enough, and so instead we identify the blood-count variables and set acceptable limits. When an athlete’s blood profile steps outside those parameters they are focused upon, questioned, tested or ‘rested’. It’s not perfect and many questions remain, such as ‘what after all is normal’, or ‘what is safe’? Indeed, what really is performance-enhancing? Caffeine is on the list one moment, gone the next. Cortico-steroids? It depends who you ask.
And tomorrow we face genetic manipulation. Whilst DNA-profiling will certainly help, if an athlete is baselined after the manipulation has occurred then what changes will we see? Presumably none. So do we baseline athletes at junior level, or even earlier? No doubt we will also turn to the limit-setting, but what if genetic manipulation confounds that as well? If we can manipulate our genome to produce more strength or endurance we are surely able to engineer apparently ‘normal’ blood profiles. So what next do we do? Give in?
First up, a mention for elite athlete gone bad, Olympic gold medal sprinter Marion Jones. Ooops. It’s been a long time coming, hasn’t it? We’d feel sorry, maybe, if she hadn’t so stridently denied it.
Of course we Aussies often think or act like we are immune to the problem, but we are all in this together. From today’s Sydney Morning Herald: A track-and-field athlete and a swimmer are among the 24 Australian sportspeople who recorded anti-doping violations in 2006-07. The list included nine athletes from weightlifting and body-building, along with seven rugby league players – mostly from the Queensland and NSW state league competitions.
In the long run it will become increasingly difficult to manage performance enhancement amongst all sports, not just cycling. Today we have the question of which drugs to include, and in what quantities. To identify the drugs is hard enough, and so instead we identify the blood-count variables and set acceptable limits. When an athlete’s blood profile steps outside those parameters they are focused upon, questioned, tested or ‘rested’. It’s not perfect and many questions remain, such as ‘what after all is normal’, or ‘what is safe’? Indeed, what really is performance-enhancing? Caffeine is on the list one moment, gone the next. Cortico-steroids? It depends who you ask.
And tomorrow we face genetic manipulation. Whilst DNA-profiling will certainly help, if an athlete is baselined after the manipulation has occurred then what changes will we see? Presumably none. So do we baseline athletes at junior level, or even earlier? No doubt we will also turn to the limit-setting, but what if genetic manipulation confounds that as well? If we can manipulate our genome to produce more strength or endurance we are surely able to engineer apparently ‘normal’ blood profiles. So what next do we do? Give in?
I used to pick and choose my digital file formats carefully, depending upon what I needed to do and the quality I wanted. And sometimes I must do that to preserve layers or image avoid loss. But other times, well I get lazy and default to the Joint Photographic Expert Group’s JPEG format (often shortened to JPG).
The JPEG format is lossy, but at least you can adjust it as you save (ie change the compression ratio). Less compression means a bigger a file with less image loss. Some file formats, though, like TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) and Photoshop’s PSD, are loss-less by design. So you keep the quality. With PSD of course you also preserve the layers, so you can ‘de-edit’ your image effectively. Those layers are lost in a JPG file, and some of the quality is lost, too, as it compresses. But if you have lots of quality to start with, why not sacrifice a bit? Especially if you are not likely to print the image, or enlarge it.
Compuserv’s GIF (for Graphic Image Format, from memory) of course used to be the compressed format of choice where human skin tone was considered but now it’s more likely to be used for its animation feature.
Some people use their camera’s standard RAW image format as it preserves maximum image quality. But RAW files are huge, like the old bitmaps we used to use, before PCX and TIFF came along. And unlike bitmaps you need to know which RAW format is being used in order to read the image. And like bitmaps (ie BMPs) you can’t use ‘em natively on websites. Which is what I do most of the time, and why I mostly use GIF and JPG files. (PNG files are an alternative, too.)
Whatever format you currently use, consider trying some of the others, too. Saving in PSD will certainly open up some editing options for you, whilst consuming far more space than JPG. But once you have saved in a lossy format there’s no going back, so at least keep an original, uncompressed copy for posterity – and backed up on another drive or a CD to boot.
Filed under file formats by Rob.
I used to pick and choose my digital file formats carefully, depending upon what I needed to do and the quality I wanted. And sometimes I must do that to preserve layers or image avoid loss. But other times, well I get lazy and default to the Joint Photographic Expert Group’s JPEG format (often shortened to JPG).
The JPEG format is lossy, but at least you can adjust it as you save (ie change the compression ratio). Less compression means a bigger a file with less image loss. Some file formats, though, like TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) and Photoshop’s PSD, are loss-less by design. So you keep the quality. With PSD of course you also preserve the layers, so you can ‘de-edit’ your image effectively. Those layers are lost in a JPG file, and some of the quality is lost, too, as it compresses. But if you have lots of quality to start with, why not sacrifice a bit? Especially if you are not likely to print the image, or enlarge it.
Compuserv’s GIF (for Graphic Image Format, from memory) of course used to be the compressed format of choice where human skin tone was considered but now it’s more likely to be used for its animation feature.
Some people use their camera’s standard RAW image format as it preserves maximum image quality. But RAW files are huge, like the old bitmaps we used to use, before PCX and TIFF came along. And unlike bitmaps you need to know which RAW format is being used in order to read the image. And like bitmaps (ie BMPs) you can’t use ‘em natively on websites. Which is what I do most of the time, and why I mostly use GIF and JPG files. (PNG files are an alternative, too.)
Whatever format you currently use, consider trying some of the others, too. Saving in PSD will certainly open up some editing options for you, whilst consuming far more space than JPG. But once you have saved in a lossy format there’s no going back, so at least keep an original, uncompressed copy for posterity – and backed up on another drive or a CD to boot.
Filed under file formats by Rob.
I can’t help but watch the cars go past. We live on what is almost an island, just a ridge of mountain with a swampy strip on each side connecting us to the mainland. In the old days there was no road in, all traffic was via the wharves on the southern side of the peninsula. As the settlement grew and the land cleared it became viable and desirable to connect the the old Yow Yow settlement to Kincumber parish, and the first road (Elvy’s) was driven up over the ridge. It’s still there but impassable in places, at least by cars. Bullocks would’ve been the ‘heavy’ traffic, carting timber from Kincumber down to the boat builders at Davistown. And then the road was pushed to the west along the swampy strip, connecting us to Green Point and Erina, and by punt from there to East Gosford. So as I say, there’s now just one road into the place.
So when I stand at my front door I can see all of the traffic to Saratoga and Davistown. In what passes for peak hour it’s a constant stream. Car after car, plus buses and trucks. The buses are full of schoolkids, at least by the time they roam around and collect a load, then quite empty. The cars are mostly driver-only, no passengers. By my rough count we see 50 cars a minute for 2 hours, and 40 a minute for another 3 hours, then 10 a minute for 10 hours. Much less overnight but at a constant trickle.
Now this is a small community. One set of about village shops for Saratoga, another much smaller set of shops for Davistown. One small grocery shop, a fruit shop, a butcher, a baker, a hairdresser and some estate agents at Sara and a newsagent and a take-away in each. Yet when you look at the traffic it’s at least 50*120+40*180+10*600 vehicles during the bulk of the day. That’s 19,200 vehicles passing by every working day and somewhat less at weekends. Let’s be generous and forget weekends. So that’s 96,000 vehicles per week, in and out. The speed limit is 50kmh but most do 60. All of them buzz past houses, children, pets and wildlife and either disturb their rest, their play or just their daily lives. Kids can’t play in the street, nor can they cross the road safely. Even adults have to wait for a break in the traffic before crossing and cyclists are blasted by horns for daring to venture forth.
Now we chose to live here, and it’s relatively quiet behind our screen of trees. We could live in a cul-de-sac. But not everyone can live in cul-de-sacs, or afford the premium paid for a quieter street. And whilst Davistown Road is a funnel that concentrates the traffic, plenty of other streets here and elsewhere have either more or somewhat less traffic to deal with.. and to be honest I am wondering why we allowed this to happen. Why are we encouraging these immense numbers of vehicles to terrorise communities? Is terrorise too harsh? Well imagine a world where kids could play in the street safely and where anyone could just cross the road when they wanted, without waiting for 10 minutes or more. Yes, we love the utility of jumping into our cars are going places but is the traffic, the exhaust, the noise and the fear generated really worth it? Have we blinded ourselves to what we are doing when we swap feet, boats, buses and bikes for cars?
Absolutely.
Cadel Evans seems the least-rated contender no matter where or when he is racing. He’s generally acknowledged as one of several contenders but always with a qualification of some sort. Either someone else is stronger or has won more recently, or Evans is tired, or perhaps injured. It never seems as though the guy is really likely to win, like Armstrong, Ullrich or Basso were and Bettini, Contador and Di Luca are now. Yet he’s so consistent, when he gets the chance. Perhaps it’s his quiet demeanor. After such a great 2007 maybe 2008 will be different for Cadel.
Interesting overview of his season, here at Cyclingnews.com.: Cadel Evans won the ProTour classification on Saturday after a consistent stream of steady results over the past four months. Before the Giro di Lombardia, he talked about his performances in the Vuelta a España and world road race championships, the Tour Down Under’s graduation to the ProTour calendar, his plans for the months ahead and his Olympic aspirations.
Cadel Evans seems the least-rated contender no matter where or when he is racing. He’s generally acknowledged as one of several contenders but always with a qualification of some sort. Either someone else is stronger or has won more recently, or Evans is tired, or perhaps injured. It never seems as though the guy is really likely to win, like Armstrong, Ullrich or Basso were and Bettini, Contador and Di Luca are now. Yet he’s so consistent, when he gets the chance. Perhaps it’s his quiet demeanor. After such a great 2007 maybe 2008 will be different for Cadel.
Interesting overview of his season, here at Cyclingnews.com.: Cadel Evans won the ProTour classification on Saturday after a consistent stream of steady results over the past four months. Before the Giro di Lombardia, he talked about his performances in the Vuelta a España and world road race championships, the Tour Down Under’s graduation to the ProTour calendar, his plans for the months ahead and his Olympic aspirations.
One moment you are outed as dirty and the next your B sample says otherwise. What was that about innocent until proven guilty? How do we as a community deal with these sorts of catastrophic confusions? In this example Mayo has been through personal and public hell because of one sample that painted him black, but unlike many recent others his 2nd sample has vindicated his claims of innocence. Or does it? It seems to be another case of too many cooks, as the Spanish federation says one thing and the UCI another. Meanwhile the rider – the person at the centre of it all – is powerless and (rightly or wrongly) hung out to dry. Is our approach wrong? It seems logical and professional to wait until the B sample comes back, but the current approach instead is to play it safe from a publicity angle and spill the beans early. Thus we pull riders from the peleton ‘just in case’, and often a rider gets burned in the process. It doesn’t look good for the sport’s administration and ethically it smells bad, too. Where’s our humanity in this process?
Here’s the report in CN: Mayo cleared after B sample comes back negative Iban Mayo was informed by the Spanish Cycling Federation on Monday that the testing of his B sample from the Tour de France positive test on July 24 has come back negative. The Saunier Duval – Prodir rider was originally declared positive for the blood booster EPO from a sample taken on the Tour’s second rest day, but has now been cleared for a return to racing. According to AFP, the federation confirmed that there had been a mistake in the testing of Mayo’s A sample, which was carried out at the Châtenay-Malabry anti-doping laboratory in Paris. The B sample was tested by a separate laboratory in the Belgian city of Gent, and was confirmed by another test done in Australia.
And here’s the followup a few days later…The UCI said on Tuesday that it does not consider Iban Mayo’s doping case to be fully closed and took issue with the Spanish Cycling Federation’s announcement that Mayo’s B sample had tested negative for EPO. “It wasn’t a negative B sample it was an inconclusive B sample,” Anne Gripper, UCI anti-doping manager told AP. “The case for us is still very open, we have not gotten a final resolution on the B sample. It needs to be analysed in the Paris laboratory.”
One moment you are outed as dirty and the next your B sample says otherwise. What was that about innocent until proven guilty? How do we as a community deal with these sorts of catastrophic confusions? In this example Mayo has been through personal and public hell because of one sample that painted him black, but unlike many recent others his 2nd sample has vindicated his claims of innocence. Or does it? It seems to be another case of too many cooks, as the Spanish federation says one thing and the UCI another. Meanwhile the rider – the person at the centre of it all – is powerless and (rightly or wrongly) hung out to dry. Is our approach wrong? It seems logical and professional to wait until the B sample comes back, but the current approach instead is to play it safe from a publicity angle and spill the beans early. Thus we pull riders from the peleton ‘just in case’, and often a rider gets burned in the process. It doesn’t look good for the sport’s administration and ethically it smells bad, too. Where’s our humanity in this process?
Here’s the report in CN: Mayo cleared after B sample comes back negative Iban Mayo was informed by the Spanish Cycling Federation on Monday that the testing of his B sample from the Tour de France positive test on July 24 has come back negative. The Saunier Duval – Prodir rider was originally declared positive for the blood booster EPO from a sample taken on the Tour’s second rest day, but has now been cleared for a return to racing. According to AFP, the federation confirmed that there had been a mistake in the testing of Mayo’s A sample, which was carried out at the Châtenay-Malabry anti-doping laboratory in Paris. The B sample was tested by a separate laboratory in the Belgian city of Gent, and was confirmed by another test done in Australia.
And here’s the followup a few days later…The UCI said on Tuesday that it does not consider Iban Mayo’s doping case to be fully closed and took issue with the Spanish Cycling Federation’s announcement that Mayo’s B sample had tested negative for EPO. “It wasn’t a negative B sample it was an inconclusive B sample,” Anne Gripper, UCI anti-doping manager told AP. “The case for us is still very open, we have not gotten a final resolution on the B sample. It needs to be analysed in the Paris laboratory.”
The 2007 Masters World Track champs are being held in Sydney right now, and I have to say (as a master myself) that’s damned quick…1 David Le Grys (GBr) 0.34.14 (52.73 km/h)
I’ve done just one timed 500m run on Sydney’s Tempe velodrome, a 40.09sec effort. I reckon I could get below 40 with some practice… but under 35secs?? Yikes!
Filed under Masters, track by Rob.
The 2007 Masters World Track champs are being held in Sydney right now, and I have to say (as a master myself) that’s damned quick…1 David Le Grys (GBr) 0.34.14 (52.73 km/h)
I’ve done just one timed 500m run on Sydney’s Tempe velodrome, a 40.09sec effort. I reckon I could get below 40 with some practice… but under 35secs?? Yikes!
Filed under Masters, track by Rob.
Speaking of Zetland, as I did in my trams post, it’s worth mentioning that South Dowling Street used to disappear into sand dunes… and that’s probably why it was a bit of a centre for glass making. The massive Dowling Street tram depot was also down that “dead end” of town (now a hardware/retail monstrosity), as was the Sydney Hydraulic Company’s plant (was now an Otis elevator testing facility when last I looked). They generated hydraulic power for Sydney, there being a need for power before the advent of widespread electrical distribution.
Heading south into the sand and swamp we had the old Victoria Park Leyland (aka Austin, Morris, Wolseley) car plant on the right, hard up against O’Dea Ave (where the single track tram connection from South Dowling Street to Waterloo is still visible). It became Navy land in the mid-1970s, then residential. Before all of that I think it was a pony racing track. On the left is Todman Ave and the old WD&HO Wills cigarette factory, Raleigh Park.
As an aside, let’s remember Tempe tram depot here.
Speaking of Zetland, as I did in my trams post, it’s worth mentioning that South Dowling Street used to disappear into sand dunes… and that’s probably why it was a bit of a centre for glass making. The massive Dowling Street tram depot was also down that “dead end” of town (now a hardware/retail monstrosity), as was the Sydney Hydraulic Company’s plant (was now an Otis elevator testing facility when last I looked). They generated hydraulic power for Sydney, there being a need for power before the advent of widespread electrical distribution.
Heading south into the sand and swamp we had the old Victoria Park Leyland (aka Austin, Morris, Wolseley) car plant on the right, hard up against O’Dea Ave (where the single track tram connection from South Dowling Street to Waterloo is still visible). It became Navy land in the mid-1970s, then residential. Before all of that I think it was a pony racing track. On the left is Todman Ave and the old WD&HO Wills cigarette factory, Raleigh Park.
As an aside, let’s remember Tempe tram depot here.
You have to be there to really experience it, but any racing cyclist can imagine themselves riding with Stuart O’Grady, can’t they? Maybe Stuey jumps on your wheel as you attack the C-grade bunch, ha ha, or you come around him and take the sprint win? Well, maybe. Or maybe we should just read the rider diaries during stage races and get a feel for what it really feels like. From cyclingresults.net:After joking around with Stu Shaw, saying “I hope you have your sprinting legs on Stu”, with him replying “They’ll be on as long as you get your attacking legs on.” I decided I better do my part and got up the front jumping on everything I could. At around 25km to go, there was a break at around 30secs and I thought I should one more time. I looked around to find only Stuart O’Grady on my wheel, and along with him managed to bridge across. I must say, after only a month on the bike I was absolutely on the max just holding his wheel, but it was a pretty exciting experience for me.
Filed under O'Grady by Rob.
You have to be there to really experience it, but any racing cyclist can imagine themselves riding with Stuart O’Grady, can’t they? Maybe Stuey jumps on your wheel as you attack the C-grade bunch, ha ha, or you come around him and take the sprint win? Well, maybe. Or maybe we should just read the rider diaries during stage races and get a feel for what it really feels like. From cyclingresults.net:After joking around with Stu Shaw, saying “I hope you have your sprinting legs on Stu”, with him replying “They’ll be on as long as you get your attacking legs on.” I decided I better do my part and got up the front jumping on everything I could. At around 25km to go, there was a break at around 30secs and I thought I should one more time. I looked around to find only Stuart O’Grady on my wheel, and along with him managed to bridge across. I must say, after only a month on the bike I was absolutely on the max just holding his wheel, but it was a pretty exciting experience for me.
Filed under O'Grady by Rob.
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