Bikey goes swimming, and the Jinx of Bikey?

Hi All,

I thought about a bunch of titles for this week's entry, since there was actually a ton of highlights from the past week, but decided to give some love to the ugly stepchild of triathlon, swimming, since it gets very few highlights in a given year. But there is lots more this week too...


First off, let's give some swimming love to Canada's (and Edmonton's) own Annamay Pierse, who did something that Canadians almost never do - set a FREAKING World Record in the pool last week! And she did it with perfect timing. Huh? What? Yep, in the first National swimming meet since Pontiac Canada announced that they would give a free Pontiac Wave to any Canadian swimmer who sets a new world record in any event. This announcement was made on February 24th and the first eligible competition began on March 11. And Annamay Pierse decides on March 14 to lower the world record in the 200m breaststroke (shortcourse) to become the first Canadian since 2002 to set a world record. The world record had been held since 2003 by Leisel Jones (2:17:75), the Australian superstar who has 5 Olympic medals, but Pierse knocked a whole quarter-second of her time. This is an unbelievable progression for Pierse, who set a Canadian record in the Olympics but still finished over 3 seconds behind the winners. Major kudos should go to her coach Josef Nagy, the Bulgarian inventer of the Wave breaststroke technique who came to Canada 4 years ago to help our country's swimmers. And now Pierse has something that even Michael Phelps has never had, a breaststroke world record! If you want to watch a grainy video of Pierse's record it is below...



Other swimmers were not so lucky. Sweden's Therese Alshammer set a new world record in the 50m butterfly but then had her record taken away when she was disqualified for wearing 2 swimsuits. Apparently, FINA (swimming's governing body) just added the rule a month ago, but Alshammer thought that she was allowed to wear a swimsuit underneath for "modesty" purposes. Apparently two swimsuits might increase buoyancy and/or compression, so FINA has decided that no world records will be set by wearing multiple swimsuits. A British swimmer was also disqualified for wearing briefs underneath swimming tights too.

Speaking of bad swimming experiences, a lifeguard swim competition in Australia made international news when safety boats were needed to fend off a inquisitive hammerhead shark. This video tells the whole story...unbelievable.



On to the Bike-Y world, where I succeeded in jinxing Alberto Contador after last week's blog. After deciding that he had wrapped up Paris-Nice during Friday's Stage 6 domination, I forgot that the race wasn't over. With about 15 km left in Saturday's Stage 7, a group including Contador, Frank Schleck, Sylvain Chavanel, and Luis Leon Sanchez broke away from the peloton and appeared to be the decisive break. But Contador bonked after repeated accelerations on the last 4 km climb, and lost almost 3 minutes (and the race lead) to eventual stage winner Sanchez. Sanchez and his team Caisse d'Epargne were able to hold on during Sunday's final stage to win the week-long race. Here is a 3-minute highlight package...

The bigger news is that Contador and Team Astana were unable to hold on to a lead, and has led to a rash of questions about his future and whether the team is solidly behind Contador. Hmmm. Is Team Astana looking for an excuse to make Lance their team leader for the Tour? Is Lance's history with Bruyneel going to split the team? So many questions to be answered...

Last week's other classic race was in Italy, where 3 Canadians competed in the week-long Tirreno Adriatico. This race also didn't go according to plan for Team Astana, where Andreas Kloden took the lead in the time trial but also could not handle the responsibility as Michele Scarponi, Stefano Garzelli, and Ivan Basso teamed up to drop Kloden on the last difficult stage. Not a great week for Astana...Canadian Ryder Hesjedal finished 8th overall for the second year in a row.

Speaking of Team Astana, they are back in the spotlight tomorrow in the HUGE Spring Classic known as Milan-San Remo. It is the 100th anniversary of this race, and is more newsworthy than normal since Lance is racing for the first time in Europe since 2005. He won't likely be a factor, since MSR most often comes down to a sprint finish, despite it's 295km (!) length. Yep, 295 km, 3 pretty tough hills, but normally the peloton is all together and the sprinters have to dig deep after 8+ hours in the saddle...last year was an exception, when Fabian Cancellara got ahead in the last 2 km and outkicked everyone. Cancellara is out with an injury this year, as are injured racers like Frank Schleck, Oscar Freire, and World Champion Alessandro Ballan. The race will feature all the big sprinters, and according to the betting site Unibet, the fave is Italian Daniele Bennati, just ahead of Tom Boonen and Alessandro Petacchi.


Cyclingnews.com previewed the race by looking back at some epic MSR finishes. While I won't bore you with the details, i did want to show the pictures of Mario Cippolini's amazing zebra striped outfit in 2002 and the 2004 finish when Erik Zabel prematurely celebrated and Oscar Freire nipped him at the line. Awesome!



I also found a cool Trek blog where they show off all their cool custom paint jobs for Lance, Levi, and Alberto. You can see the whole group here...i like Levi's custom TT bike.

Couple more quick things this week...a new Ironman event was announced this week. Ironman is back in Utah and will be held in May 2010 in St George, Utah. This comes 8 years after the first try at Ironman Utah when a swim death occured and the event turned into a long-course duathlon.

3 races of note this weekend...Macca and Craig Alexander go head-to-head at Ironman 70.3 in Malaysia. 3 big names in marathon running (Sammy Wanjiru, Martin Lel, Robert Cheruiyot) are among 10 sub-61 minute half-marathoners who will compete in the Lisbon Half Marathon. And if you want to "experience" the Tokyo Marathon, some crazy (or enterprising) guy is going to live-stream his run in the marathon by wearing an iPhone on his head. I encourage you not to watch...



See you next week...if you want to watch Milan-San Remo, wake up early on Saturday and log on to www.cyclingfans.com. Cheers...