It has been a while since I wrote.
Paris-Tours Finale
There has not been much significant cycling news since the World Championships in Austria two weeks ago. Sunday, however is the 100th running of Paris-Tours, the sprinters’ fall classic that recently has not been won by sprinters. Paris-Tours this year was decided by a long break which managed to stay away with Francaise de Jeux’s Frederic Guesdon out sprinting Team CSC’s Kurt-Asle Arvesen for what is only France’s fourth victory in the race in the last fifty years. Of course, Guesdon’s victory came not as a field sprint but rather with two men riding the breakaway off their wheels and contesting it themselves. Guesdon will be thirty five next week and this is his first significant win since his 1997 victory at Paris-Roubaix. With the Giro di Lombardia next weekend, the European cycling season is at its end. Fortunately, Australian racing is just starting to ramp up as are the European and North American cyclocross seasons.
American Calendar GrowsThe domestic professional cycling calendar has been finalized for next season. With the placement of events like the Tour of California and the Tour of Utah on the UCI calendar and the announcement of new stage races in Missouri and Colorado which also have UCI status, USA Cycling announced significant changes to the calendar next season. USA Cycling’s National Racing Calendar and competition is being revamped. The NRC will continue, but without any events that are on the UCI calendar. All domestic UCI recognized events will be placed on the USA Cycling ProTour Calendar. The USA Cycling ProTour competition is not to be confused with the UCI’s ProTour, however, or the UCI Americas Tour either.
A new one day race the “U.S. Open Cycling Championship” which is not the US Championship, has been introduced for next April and will be broadcast on NBC. The race will take place in Virginia. The new stage races in Missouri and Colorado will be organized and managed by Medalist Sports which also manages and organizes the Tour of California and Tour of Georgia.
It is great to see the interest in cycling at the professional level here in the United States. States have recognized the benefit to their tourism and marketing efforts from cycling. Georgia, Utah, Pennsylvania and South Carolina have all increased state involvement with cycling as a means of state promotion.
My concern, however, is that we are merely seeing the same thing we saw in the mid 1980’s with the emergence of 7 Eleven and the Coors Classic. There was a lot of interest in cycling and there was pretty good media coverage. Greg Lemond and Bernard Hinault came to the US to participate in the Coors Classic. It was the golden age of cycling. However, the Coors Classic did not last, notwithstanding the emergence of the Tour de Trump which became the Tour du Pont and which died with the loss of sponsorship support, and American cycling reverted to local criteriums and few significant stage races.
From my very limited experience as a criterium promoter, it is clear to me that you only get to have races if you have sponsorship interest to underwrite the cost. Without significant sponsorship support you are relegated to doing small criteriums in conjunction with community festivals. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but point to point races and stage races are very difficult and very expensive.
I hope all of these events survive and I hope that they truly enhance domestic racing. With the enhanced UCI status of many US events and races such as the Tour of Utah getting UCI status, we hopefully will be seeing more Europeans and top pro teams coming to America to race. More importantly we hopefully will see the level of professionalism rise in the domestic peleton. Navigators, Health Net and Toyota-United have solid programs. TIAA-CREF is also a solid professional squad with excellent management. It has signed some new Europe based Americans to help it improve next season. However, TIAA-CREF appears to have some changes coming in its sponsorship and has stated its desire to become more of Europe based team next season. It is the marginal domestic pro teams which will need greater financial support to be competitive. After watching much of this year’s Tour of Utah, I can attest to the fact that between those three teams and the rest of the domestic peleton, there is a huge gap in talent and support between the top four domestic teams and the rest.
Night RidesAs noted before, I have been getting most of my rides at night. Last week the biggest raccoon I have ever seen crossed my path after crossing ParkCenter Boulevard and wandering over into the Albertson’s headquarters. Since we used to live in that neighborhood, I was used to the occasional raccoon sighting, but this one the other night looked like a small child crawling through Albertson’s landscaping.
Last Thursday night I was out for what I had hoped to be about an hour, leaving the house at 8:45. A few weeks ago, I flatted and had not carried my seat bag so I had to call Mrs. Cycliste Moderne and she brought the official Cycliste Moderne Toddler and picked me up. So when my back tire started getting squishy, about a half an hour into my ride, I thought I was ready for the impending flat. I got to the brightest street light I could find and opened my seat bag to realize I had moved the smaller one which holds patches, tools and CO2 cartridges, not a replacement tube.
I got the tire off, found the leak, and started to patch it, only to discover I had missed the hole by a good inch. My eyesight has gotten progressively worse thanks to the law and in the dark my depth perception is poor as well. Ultimately, it took me about 15 minutes to patch the tube in the dark. I had used part of a CO2 cartridge finding the hole so I knew I would either need to ride home on what was left in that one, or run the risk that I had missed the hole entirely and be stranded if I filled the tire completely. So I put the wheel back on discharged the rest of the cartridge and climbed aboard. I knew that was not going to be enough but just did not want to use the second cartridge. The wheel seemed firm enough, but when I leaned hard into the curve when I made the turn to cross the West ParkCenter Bridge I felt my still squishy rear tire not grip the pavement and slide through the turn. At that point, I realized I would just have to nurse it home as my wife would probably not want the come get me call with three small children in bed. So I got home without any further problems and was surprised to find my late night patch job had worked. But Saturday I broke down and decided to go ahead and put Slime tubes in for the winter. Slime is generally fine for your wife and kids bikes, but it is not something you put on your own bike. However, when you ride at night in the fall and winter, you cannot rely upon your cell phone as your sole source of support.
So Saturday afternoon when I went out to ride, I grabbed an extra tube and put it in my jersey, having spent time working today instead of replacing the tubes with my new Slime tubes. I realized though that I had lost one of my bar caps and so I set of to ride to the street light where I patched my tube, and sure enough there it was, lying on the ground under the street light where I patched my tube.
One other thing I have noticed on recent night rides is that Democrats in Idaho do not put that fact on their campaign signs. To the contrary, Republicans in Idaho put that fact on their signs.
