Bikey is California Dreamin...

Hi All,

There is lots and lots to get to this week, from triathlon to track & field to Canadian cycling, but first let's recap what was probably the most media-covered cycling event ever to hit North America, last week's Amgen Tour of California.

Does anyone else think it's ironic that Tyler Hamilton and Ivan Basso were both big names at a tour that is sponsored by the maker of EPO? After all, both of them are connected to using EPO and have served suspensions for it...

As I posted last week, I had a chance to visit Southern California for the three weekend stages. First off, Stage 6 in Solvang, a small town that every year gets selected as the time trial locale for the race. This year it was a 15 mile stage, with a small hill about half-way. With Levi in the Gold jersey, the pre-race discussion was whether he could hold off Michael Rogers (3-time world TT champion) and US Champ Dave Zabriskie, who were both within striking distance of Levi. Levi, heading off last, knew that Gustav Larsson (who won silver in Beijing's TT, one place ahead of Levi) had set the new best time. Levi also probably knew that Zabriskie and Rogers were setting race-best time checks at every interval. Levi hammered home, and even though Zabriskie finished in a new best time, Levi cruised home with an 8-second win, and pretty much secured himself the overall Tour win.

Other notables on Friday included George Hincapie finishing in 6th place, Christian Vande Velde in 12th, and Lance Armstrong in 14th. This time trial was probably not hard enough or long enough for Lance to really shine. It will be much more interesting to see how he does during the long time trials in the Giro. Until then, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. Under the disappointing category, you have to note Tyler Hamilton finishing in 93rd place (out of 106) and Carlos Sastre in 82nd place. The 3 high-profile Canadians performed well, with Svein Tuft in 20th place, Dominique Rollin in 38th place, and Michael Barry in 45th place. I guess 20th place was not great for Tuft, since he did medal at the World Championships last year in the TT, but he did have a super cool bike.



Here's a few more random pictures from Friday's stage, including High Road's crazy-looking time trial bike, some race pics of Svein Tuft and Dominique Rollin, and some others of Sastre and Hushovd.






Saturday's Stage 7 was an 89 mile stage that ended with 5 criterium-style 5-mile loops in and around the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. This is a very fan-friendly way of showcasing the riders again and again. This was accentuated when a break-away containing contenders like Frank Schleck, Christian Vande Velde, and George Hincapie entered the circuits with a dangerously high lead on the peloton. So Astana was forced to turn up the heat, which gave fans some great viewing of Lance Armstrong driving the peloton. Eventually, Astana got the breakaway down to a manageable 2-3 minutes, and let the race play out. Unfortunately for the fans, fan fave George Hincapie could not hold on to win the stage. It was actually three lesser names (Rinaldo Nocentini ended up winning) that contested the sprint finish, with Hincapie's group 7 seconds back. Of course, no real change to the GC. Bad news for Canada's Svein Tuft, who crashed during the stage and finished 8 minutes back. Oops.







Sunday's Stage 8 was no pushover, as it contained the biggest peak of the week, the 5123 feet Palomar Mountain. This climb is 12.5 miles in length, and contains a very Alpe d'Huez-like 21 switchbacks. This had the desired effect of breaking up the peloton, and only 31 (out of 84 who still remained in the race) finished with the main peloton. For the second day in a row, Frank Schleck got into a lead breakaway, and was able to outsprint Vincenzo Nibali to take the stage win. The Astana-lead peloton finished 40 seconds back, solidifying the overall win for Leipheimer. Canadians Rollin and Barry both ended up well-back, and Tuft never even started the stage after his crash on Saturday.

Leipheimer was in a class by himself this week, and his near-stage win in Stage 2 and his TT win in Stage 6 proved he was the fastest man in the peloton. And yes, that includes Lance. To be honest, Lance always said that Astana's goal was for Levi to win. Lance even joked that his LIVESTRONG campaign should be re-named LEVISTRONG for the week. Lance played the role as a super-domestique and finished 7th overall. Levi was joined on the podium by Zabriskie and Rogers, and in the winner's circle with Mark Cavendish as Sprint Winner, Robert Gesink as Best Young Rider, and Jason McCartney as King of the Mountains. Congrats to all, especially considering how brutal the weather was in Northern California.




136 riders started, and only 84 finished. That speaks to the weather and the difficulty of the race. And the number of crashes that happened certainly didn't help. Stage winners Fabian Cancellara, Thor Hushovd, and Francisco Mancebo all failed to finish the race, and big names like Oscar Freire, Ivan Basso, and Tom Boonen also did not finish.

As we look ahead to 2010's Tour of California, a number of questions remain. Will the financial support be there to enable such a large-scale race? Will the race remain in February, or move to April or June when weather will be less of an issue? If it moves, will the big name European riders still come over? Will Lance be back? It will be interesting to watch, but everyone who was there will speak to how high-quality the event really was. It is an amazing event for North America, and I sure hope it continues...

One more cycling news...Velonews has a great interview with Cervelo's Dominique Rollin as he prepares for the classics season in Europe. Check it out here...Rollin is going to make more headlines in 2009 and beyond...go Dom!

Okay, after spending way too much time there, let's go quickly through a few other things. Big props to Taylor Phinney, who at age 18 set US National Records in both the 1000 meter time trial and 4000 m individual pursuits in sweeping a World Cup event in Denmark. This kid (whose parents are both Olympic medalists) is the real deal and will be the next big thing in US cycling for the foreseeable future.


Triathlon news: the Ironman schedule starts this week with Ironman Malaysia on Saturday. And there are lots of big names racing, with Belinda Granger looking to repeat her 2008 win. She will actually have some decent competition, as Erika Csomor, Nicole Leder, and others look to knock her off. The men's race has lesser known pros like Petr Vabrousek, Luke McKenzie, and Ironman Canada champ Bryan Rhodes trying to tame what the race organizers call the "Toughest Show on Earth". Thats what trying to compete (and win) in an Ironman when the temperature routinely hits 40 degrees. No wonder this is one of the few Ironman events that never sells out...

The ITU crowd also gets off to a start too this weekend, as Australians compete in the Gold Coast Triathlon. This is not a World Cup event, but is noteworthy since Bikey fave Kirsten Sweetland will compete in her first race since last year's World Championships. Good luck to her, and hopefully a healthy Sweetland can help put Canada back on the map in 2009!

Also in Australia are a pair of track & field events, including the first race of the year for Asafa Powell and a world record attempt in the men's pole vault for Australia's Steve Hooker at a meet in Sydney this weekend. Hooker is attempting to beat Sergei Bubka's 15-year old outdoor pole vault record. Good luck to him...



Ok, next week I will publish a bonus doping-only edition of Bikey. Look for it before Tuesday...have a good weekend...

Very brief recaps this week, but for good reason...

Hello All,

I did have a bunch of great updates to recap the prologue and Stages 1-5 of the Tour of California, but instead I jumped on a plane and am down here in So Cal to witness frist hand the final 3 stages of the 2009 Tour. So here's a very quick recap.

Prologue: Lance did get beaten by a Canuck (Svein Tuft finished 9th, Lance 10th, by a tenth of second over the 3.9 km). Bikey fave and fellow Canuck Dominique Rollin was 24th (in a field of 136) but since he is responsible as a lead-in man for Thor Hushovd this year on Cervelo's Team, he isn't expected to make much noise this week. The big boys all came to play though, with the Top 6 including Boonen, Hushovd, Michael Rogers, George Hincapie, Dave Zabriskie, and Levi Leipheimer until the last rider, Fabian Cancellara came out and beat them all by over a second. Cancellara is the king of prologues! The misfit of prologues is Garmin's Thomas Peterson, who missed his start time and ended up in last place, a whole minute and 15 seconds behind the next slowest rider. Oops.

Stage 1: This was supposed to be a stage for the sprinters, but Mother Nature and Rock Racing's Francisco Mancebo decided otherwise. The weather was brutal (everyone wore jackets and leg warmers) and an early break containing Mancebo could not be caught. Well, the break got caught, but Mancebo solo'd to a stage victory and the Golden Jersey as the race leader. Actually, the Astana-led peloton was trying so hard to catch Mancebo that they ended up splintering the pack, and only a group of 18 riders managed to finish 62 seconds back of Mancebo. So much for Svein being ahead of Lance. But many of the big names stayed in contention (Basso, Andy Schleck, Zabriskie, Rogers, Armstrong, and Leipheimer among others) surged to the top of the leader board. And one day after his super-human effort in the prologue, Cancellara dropped out, citing illness. Thanks for coming all the way to Cali for 3.9 km of racing Fabian.

Stage 2: Turning point of the tour so far. Levi Leipheimer urged his top lieutenant Yaroslav Popovych to attack the lead group at the bottom of the biggest hill of the stage, blowing apart the peloton again. Leipheimer went on to catch what was left of an early break away, and although Mr-I-Showed-Up-Late-For-The-Prologue Thomas Peterson was able to stay with Levi and ultimately out-sprint him for the stage win, Levi grabbed hold of the Tour this year, opening up a 24 second lead on Michael Rogers, which is a nice gap going into the time trial Friday. Not surprisingly, the weather was again terrible, with Levi describing the stage it as "Turn your shower on, as cold as it gets, and stand there for 4 hours". Brutal.

Stage 3: The sprinters got their chance and Dominique Rollin set up Thor Hushovd for his first win of the tour. No change in GC.

Stage 4: Fairly flat stage, the weather finally got better, second group sprint, and Mark Cavendish easily outsprinted Tom Boonen.

Stage 5: Boring flat stage, same results...Cavendish appears to be the man to beat in 2009. He had quite a coming-out party at the 2008 Tour de France, when he won 4 stages. He might win more in 2009 if this keeps up. He was out of position on Stage 3 and had no chance, but has looked unbeatable the past two days.

I guess the other story is that most of the big names have crashed their bikes due to the bad weather. Floyd Landis has crashed, Lance hit a motorbike, Levi almost got run over by the whole peloton when he crashed, Christian Vande Velde has crashed...on and on it goes...Velonews did a great job of capturing the Levi crash here...

Oh yeah, and Lance got his time trial bike back. All is well in the universe.

Tomorrow, off to Solvang, and hopefully next week I won't have to post other people's pictures!

Has anyone seen lance's bike?

According to reports this morning, some enterprising thief stole Lance
Armstrong's custom TT bike last night just after yesterday's prologue.

Keep your eyes open folks...

Lance versus the Canucks!

Hi All,

(Apologies to anyone who doesn't want to hear about the Tour of California, since I have about 8 paragraphs of cycling ahead...)

A huge week in cycling ahead, as perhaps the greatest cycling field ever in North America is assembling in Northern California for tomorrow's start to the 2009 Amgen Tour of California. It's almost a Tour de France-lite field, with classics riders like George Hincapie, Jens Voigt, Stuart O'Grady and Robert Gesink, sprinters like Thor Hushovd, Oscar Friere, Tom Boonen, and Mark Cavendish, and time trialists like Fabian Cancellara all in the field. This of course doesn't count the HUGE names like Ivan Basso, Tyler Hamilton, Floyd Landis, Carlos Sastre, Christian Vande Velde, the Schleck boys, and of course the two big names of Team Astana, Lance Armstrong and defending Tour of California champion Levi Leipheimer. What a ridiculous accumulation of talent. The entire start list is listed here.7 teams of 8 riders.

You might notice that there is a huge number of Americans (>40) because a large number of second-tier American professional teams are invited. These guys are often very visible in the breaks since their riders are trying to attract future contracts with the ProTour teams that are also in the race. Last year, one such rider was Canadian Dominique Rollin, who was on Toyota-United's team. He broke away from a group in the pouring rain during stage 4 last year, and held off a chasing group to win Stage 4. He is now racing on the Cervelo TestTeam riding alongside Carlos Sastre. Here is a 10 minute recap of last year's stage if you want to watch. A great ride...anytime a breakaway stays away is pretty exciting...



Rollin has plenty of Canadian brothers in the race this year. Despite Bikey favorite Ryder Hesjedal not being in the race (he's training in Europe for some upcoming races in Italy), Michael Barry (Team Columbia),Svein Tuft (Garmin), Cameron Evans (Ouch), Will Routley (Jelly Belly), and Charles Dionne (Fly V Australia) make it 6 Canadians competing against the big boys. Rollin is probably the best chance to make race headlines, as he seems to race well in week-long events, as he won the sprinters jersey at last year's Tour of California (and finished in the Top 10 in 5 stages), won the King of Mountain jersey at Tour of Missouri, and finished overall top 10 at the Tour de Georgia. He's still young at age 26, and has a good future ahead of him.



Svein Tuft is another Canadian who first made international cycling headlines in 2008 when he finished 7th overall at the Beijing Time Trial and then won a silver medal at the 2008 World Cycling Championships. But his results pale in comparison to his life story. The NY Times wrote a great article this week about his story, which includes dropping out of high school, traveled across the country by jumping railroad cars, cycling to Alaska without warm clothes, etc. He's the Boxcar Willie of the pro peloton, and at age 31, likely headed to the Tour de France for the first time.

Okay, so who wins the Tour of California? It's probably Levi's tour to lose. He's won the race in 2007 and 2008 (Floyd Landis won in 2006, which is the same year he won the Tour - until he got DQ'd for a drug positive) and it seems like Team Astana is going to try and get Levi the three-peat. Lance says he is committed to getting Levi the victory. Lance will undoubtedly try and make some headlines by trying to win the time trial or get a stage win to justify the media attention. The race winner will probably come from a small group of candidates who can time trial well and still get over the mountains in the lead group.

Lance also made headlines this week when his much-discussed personal independant drug-testing program was stopped. When Lance announced his comeback, he announced that he would hire Don Catlin (who runs internal testing programs for Team Garmin and Team Columbia) to run a transparent individual testing program. But this week the partnership ended, blaming it on financial and administrative issues. Lots of people were critical since Catlin's involvement never produced the "posted on the web" transparency that they promised. However, Lance quickly hired Dr Rasmus Damsgaard, who has also done team testing for Saxo Bank and Team Astana. Lance will be tested for a huge list of compounds, including EPO, CERA, HGH, steroids, masking agents, blood transfusions, stimulants, and the entire list of WADA banned substances. It's a pretty good start, and Lance's website quickly published his test results from October to February. So far it looks good. Congrats Lance...

The good thing about the independant testing that many cycling teams currently use is that they can monitor their racers and perhaps prevent dirty cyclists from compromising the team's reputation at big races (see Astana in 2006 or Rabobank in 2007 or Saunier Duval in 2008). However, the NY Times this week suggests the flip side and criticize internal testing for not being transparent. It opens the suggestion that team's could cover up positive tests since they are not required to report them. Poor cycling can never win...

I have lots more doping news and allegations to report on (maybe i need a DopeyMonday blog too?) but will save them for next week...I did want to update a couple of other stories...

The NYRR Empire State Building Run-Up was held last week and the favorites did win again - but the women's champion Suzy Walsham had some obstacles to overcome since she fell at the start and got stepped on by several other competitors in the race to get into the stairwell. But she moved steadily through the field and managed to win her 3rd race in a row by 13 seconds. The Australian was joined by German Thomas Dold who won his fourth in a row in the men's race. Video highlights below...



Big news in sporting goods, where Chinese company Li Ning appears to be going global. They signed Yelena Isinbayeva to a $7.5 million sponsorship deal to wear Li Ning clothing for the next 5 years. Normally, the vast majority of big names in Athletics are sponsored by Nike or Adidas, with smaller players like Puma, Reebok, and Adidas sponsoring smaller numbers of athletes. This is the biggest contract ever for a female track and field athlete and is more money than even Usain Bolt makes from Puma. Wow. Congrats to her and get ready for Li Ning to become a bigger name on the global market. I wonder if they'll sign Liu Xiang since his value is way down after his injury-plagued 2008 season?

Two fast people to report on...the London Olympics are still 42 months away, but 19-year-old Steph Twell is already stoking british hopes. She's a long distance runner who is gunning for gold in the 1500m, but her background has her being compared to Paula Radcliffe. Actually, Twell's numbers in the middle distances are better than Paula's at the same age, but Twell probably will be a 1500m and 5000m runner for the foreseeable future. But she is fast (Junior World Champion 2008) and with UK Athletics and Nike pushing her forward, she will make a lot of headlines in the next 3 years...

Another great running story about a Japanese marathoner who only started running when he was 36. 60-year-old Yoshihisa Hosaka set a world record for runners over 60 when he ran 2:36:30 at an elite marathon in Japan. It would have been neat to see the race since he was encouraged by other "elite-level" runners who ran around him to try and help him break the previous record (which was just above 2:38). Hosaka says he ran nearly 30 km every day to try and prepare for the world record attempt. To put his run in perspective, the top Canadian 60+ runner has run 3:03 and 3:09 the last two years.

Okay, thats it for now...lots of daily updates next week from California. See you then....

Another Slow Week Can't Slow Bike-Y Down...

Hi All,

With no really big international running, cycling, or triathlon events in the past week or the upcoming week, it really is a slow time in the Bike-Y World. Good thing there are still are lots of things to catch up on, so I'll try to keep it interesting...

First up, I stumbled on a cool site that might improve your indoor cycling. TheSufferfest.com is a great independant site that uses old cycling video footage as part of their cycling training videos. So rather than stare at Coach Troy and his band of cyclists, you can watch old footage from the 80's and 90's, with European cycling stars (and very few helmets). The video quality is not high-def, but you can either watch it on your laptop or download the file to a DVD and watch it on your television. They are pretty cool, and might be worth a try in these last couple months before outdoor cycling becomes a reality.

For those of you who would rather just sit on the couch and watch some amazing cycling footage (or spin without someone telling you to go hard for 10 minute intervals), check out this cool YouTube find. In 2001, a movie production crew spent a month with Lance Armstrong and Team Discovery as Lance and John and the rest of the team prepared for the 2001 Tour de France. The final movie, Road to Paris, is chopped up into 11 segments on YouTube, but contains some great training footage, racing highlights, and behind the scenes look at Lance's preparation. I've posted the first chapter below, and you can link to the rest of the videos from YouTube directly.



Okay, couple of other cycling topics to cover. First off, a nice article about Andy Schleck, who is still only 23 years old. In the past two years, he has finished 2nd overall at the Giro d'Italia, won the white jersey (best young rider) in the Tour while finishing 12th overall despite doing a lot of hard work for teammates Carlos Sastre and brother Frank Schleck, and was 5th at the Olympic Road Race. Ridiculous. He might still need a bit more time to really go head-to-head with the likes of Alberto Contador and Ivan Basso, but he's still young enough to win the white jersey again this year in France. So a huge future awaits...whether that future starts in July is up to him.

A cool new product for the cycling world. Earlier in January there was a lot of buzz around a concept product called LightLane. It is essentially three lasers that attach to the back of a bike which then show drivers the illusion of a cycling lane. Obviously anything that enhances cycling safety is great, and this product could be used on anything from a commuting bike to road bikes to kids bikes. The light makes it a great option for dawn and dusk when daylight may be low, and the bike logo reminds motorists to be extra caution. It seems as though this product is still in the beta stages of development, but a lot of people are excited about it.


Okay, three more bits of news for this week. We are still three weeks from Ironman Malaysia and four weeks from Ironman New Zealand, but Epic Camp NZ 09 is going on right now. For those of you who don't know about Epic Camp, it is ten-day training camp led by Scott Molina. But it is intense. And very, very Epic! It normally involves over 1000 kms of cycling, with daily runs and swims to add to the pain. And it is all done within a fairly competitive environment, with points tallied up at the end of each day. It is designed for fairly strong triathletes (5h30m or better Ironman bike split is a loose requirement) as a kick start for a early year Ironman. Personally, I love reading the blogs of the coaches and the athletes at the website. Makes it tough for me to take too many days off in a row...

Oh yeah, everyone's favorite German has a new coach. Normann Stadler has joined with Chris Carmichael's CTS Training Team. CTS now has Stadler, Simon Whitfield, and Craig Alexander on their triathlon roster, along with some dude named Armstrong on their cycling side. Pretty strong coaching resumes I assume. Stadler is interesting since he has already won Kona twice, and was leading in 2008 before fading late in the run. Hopefully some of Lance's mental toughness will rub off on Stadler...

Being a pro triathlete just got tougher. Not by qualifying standards, but by economic standards. WTC, which operates the Ironman events, announced last week that pro triathletes will no longer get automatic free entry into Ironman events. In the past, most (if not all) pro athletes got complimentary entries into Ironman races. In 2009, only athletes who placed Top 3 the previous year and a "limited number of complimentary entries" will get free spots. So this means that the days of 80 pro athletes showing up to race Ironman Canada might soon be over. I assume big names will always get those "limited number" of free spots, but for those young athletes who are trying to move up the pro ranks, it may get expensive to try and compete in a large number of events.

Okay, thats it for this week, i'll end with a cool video that Asics recently designed for their 60th Anniversary. I loved it!



Next week we preview the Tour of California!