Welcome one and all to another bike-y Friday...got some serious stuff and some funny stuff this week! As you have obviously noticed, this week's is the first of many to be posted to my new Bike-Y Blog. I will try to archive some more old ones as time goes on...feel free to pass along the link to other interested parties...
First off, the new Team Astana (refresher: old USPS/Team Discovery) was rolling along last week, getting ready for the year's big races. Johan Bruyneel even claimed "there is no stronger Tour team". Can't say i blame him, they do have Contador, Leipheimer, and Andreas Kloden on their team.
But...and huge but...the new Team Astana has generated enough ill-will (or has enough leftover from 2007) that the Giro d'Italia didn't invite them to the 2008 race. Whoops. That is not a good sign for a new team. Anyhow, now Astana are in serious spin mode and have to find other races to do in the month of May. At least 2008 is an Olympic Year so the riders can instead prepare for that, but getting excluded from a Big Three Race is never good. Actually, three other high profile teams got shut out of the Giro (including the old T-Mobile, Credit Agricole, and Bouyges Telecom).
That last link did mention that the new Team Slipstream did get an invite. Here's a pic, courtesy of Andrew Hood of Velonews.com, that shows off their sweet 2008 uniforms. Check out the leg warmers!
Okay, three more interesting links. One, Canada has reclaimed ownership of Sugoi. In 2003, Cannondale (big US bike company) bought Canada's own Sugoi. However, this week, Dorel Industries bought both Cannondale and Sugoi for $190 Million dollars and change. Sweet, i wonder if we can start claiming Cannondale's should get a Canada flag thrown on...thanks to Hooper for being the first one to pass this one on...
Set your pvr's on Tuesday for what promises to be an interesting look at Nike. Darren Rovell with CNBC recently spent a lot of time interviewing Nike executives, going to their factories, etc, for this one hour show on the company, its impact on pop culture, etc. Anyhow, it premieres on CNBC on Tuesday night, so for all you Nike-addicts, check it out. The link below does include some pictures of the factory tour, which does look remarkably non-sweatshop...and they did manage to keep all the 8-year olds out of the pictures...
Last thing this week, here's a pretty funny recap of Lance Armstrong's Least Impressive Accomplishments...
http://www.yourcycling.com/cycling-features/least_impressive_accomplishments.html
Okay, thats it for this week, comments welcome below...
2 comments:
Awesome Lance list... They're totally right, Mary-Kate is WAY hotter... Which one has the eating disorder again?
As for the slipstream unis, I've stated here before that I liked them. I may have spoken too early as they appear to look terrible when actually on the riders...
Attaboy Trev. Good to see Bikey online now.
I don't like the Slipstream outfits.
Lance list was awesome. Now I'm going to have to go rent Dodgeball.
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