Leading off this week with the Giro, which from a Canadian point-of-view has peaked (so far) on Day 1. Ryder Hesjedal and his Slipstream teammates won the Team Time Trial (which was Stage 1 of the Giro), resulting in him being third overall after Day 1. Alas, he has slipped to 86th overall after today's Day 6, but he continues to be one of the higher placed riders on his squad. If he can keep it up, his chances are riding in the Tour are good. Stay tuned. By the way, Ryder is the one in red (he wears his Canadian Time Trial Champion jersey when they ride time trials).
The only other race update will be brief. Last weekend the ITU had their European Championships. Vanessa Fernandes from Portugal (more on her next week) won the womens race (her fifth Euro championship...she's only 23!) while, in a huge surprise, Sergio Gomez somehow didnt win. Despite the best run time of the day, he got dropped on the bike and managed to only finish 7th. To highlight how crazy that is, he had made the podium at 16 races in row! Maybe some hope for Simon...
Speaking of Mr Whitfield, he actually posted a pretty funny comment on his Olympic blog on the Globe and Mail's website. "Last year I wasn't able to teach Javier any lessons. He gave me six Spanish lessons in a row..." Pretty funny I thought.
Cool product of the week. I found these online, and it's a company that just makes stickers/decals for carbon wheels. If you're tired of having the same Zipps as everyone else, get a set of these wheel "tags" from wheeltags.com and then your wheels will be distinct, even if you have the same Cervelo as the bike next to yours.
Lance Armstrong, who seems like he'll become quite an entrepreneur, has opened a bike shop in his home town of Austin, Texas. It's called Mellow Johnny's (his nickname in the peloton...slang for Yellow Jersey) and is one of those industrial-looking bike stores combined with a Lance Armstrong museum. Not surprisingly, the stores sells Trek, Nike, Giro, and Oakley products. What a shock!! It does have a cool espresso bar called, get this, Juan Pelota - which is a play on words for "one ball". I hope everyone got that joke. Here's a couple of pics...
Ok, that's about it for this week. This weekend, the Giro continues, and there's a big 70.3 race in Florida, but it's still a pretty slow weekend. Come back next week for lots more stories...cheers!
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