Unless you've been living under a rock that doesn't have wireless access, you've probably heard that Lance crashed hard on Monday of this week. He broke his collarbone into 4 pieces, and put his immediate future into question. He is now back in Austin, had surgery on Wednesday ( you can see the 12 screws that are holding his collarbone together below), and is hoping to be back on the bike early next week. He probably won't be back into a bike race until late-April at the earliest, and with the Giro D'Italia starting on May 9th, there has been consideration discussion as to whether Lance would be ready to compete. All indications from Team Astana and Lance are pretty optimistic that Lance will be healthy enough to start the Giro. Whether or not he is in good enough shape to be "Lance" is another question.
Personally, I think that Lance will be using this as yet another rallying point. He has always stated that the Tour is his first priority this year, so if he decides to use the Giro as a 3-week training camp to get himself into race shape. Lance loves adversity and people telling him he can't do something. Surprisingly, Lance has never broken his collarbone in 17 years of bike racing. That underlines how his strategy of riding in the front of the peloton surrounded by his teammates has been so successful over the years. Anyhow, Lance will be back...you can see his post-operation video statement here...
Tons of cycling going on around the world. First off, Mark Cavendish did what many didn't think possible when he pulled out a sprint victory in last weekend's Milan-San Remo race. After almost 300 km and a few tricky hills in the last hour, Cavendish pulled it out at the line from Cervelo's Heinrich Haussler. The video below shows the action and the awesome acceleration of Cavendish. He is the cyclist to beat in any sprint finish today!
The other big cycling event this week was the Castilla Y Leon, which was the race in which Lance broke his collarbone on Monday. The race did have lots of big names, and had been won in back-to-back years by Alberto Contador. This year was supposed to be a battle between Lance and Alberto, but Lance's absence precluded any team issues. However, Contador was beaten by his other American teammate, Levi Leipheimer during Tuesday's time trial. Contador then helped protect Levi's lead during the last 3 stages of the race, and today the 5-day race ended with a Levi overall victory. Contador finished 2nd, while Garmin's Dave Zabriskie ended up 3rd. The race was essentially decided during the time trial as those 3 guys finished 1-2-3 in the time trial. Alejandro Valverde won two stages this week that ended with uphill sprint finishes but finished only 9th overall.
One last cycling note...American 18-year old Taylor Phinney won the world title in Individual Pursuit at the World Indoor Track Championships yesterday. This kid is unbelievable and could become an indoor cycling superstar while getting better on the outdoor circuit as well. As I have discussed before, both of his parents won Olympics medals in cycling in the 1984 Olympics, so an Olympic gold is 2012 is still Taylor's main priority. But since his father won a stage at the Tour de France as well, hopefully Taylor can get outside and become the next great American road cyclist when Lance-Levi-Tyler-Floyd-Zabriskie all retire in the next couple of years...Canadians also are competing in these World Championships, with Tara Whitten finishing 7th in the Women's Individual Pursuit and Zach Bell finishing 9th in the Men's Point Race. I have no idea what all these events actually include but I promise to try and figure it out over the next year or so...there are still lots of events this weekend (Keirin, Omnium, Madison, Time Trials, etc) and if anything exciting happens, I'll let you know next week...
Triathlon - not much to report on yet. The 70.3 series got started last week when Craig Alexander ran a ridiculous 1:12:46 to beat Chris McCormack by 3 minutes in Ironman 70.3 Malaysia. Wow. The women's race was won by Great Britain's Jodie Swallow in 4:19. She won the race by 11 minutes! Yet another crazy fast Brit. Hmmm....they seem to have this triathlon thing mastered....Wellington, Swallow, Dibens, Cave, Avil, Tucker - one of these week's I will have to look into Great Britain's Triathlon factory and figure out their secrets...
Next week the triathlon season really kicks off in the US with Ironman 70.3 California in Oceanside and Ironman 70.3 New Orleans. I will preview both of them next week...
What else? Oh yeah...I forgot to mention an uber-fast Canadian last week. At the big half-marathon in the Netherlands a couple of weeks ago (the one that Haile was trying to run a world record but got beaten at the line), Regina native Simon Bairu finished 10th overall with a 1:03:10 half marathon. Very fast...I have no idea when Bairu will attempt the marathon distance for the first time, but he now holds the fastest half-marathon time for a Canadian in at least the last 5 years, and he has a decent chance at breaking Jerome Drayton's 1975 Canadian marathon record of 2:10:09...
More running news as the World XC Championships are being held this weekend in Jordan. Canada has sent 21 athletes (including Chantell Widney and Chelse Graham of Edmonton!) to compete in the 4 events (senior men's/women's, junior men's/women's) to be held tomorrow. Remarkably, the Kenyans have not won the senior men's race since 1999 and are trying to "sweep the board" during Saturday's races. Good luck to all the Canadians...and to Bikey fave Steph Twell from Great Britain!
I also found a fun race for 2010...check out this ESPN story on the Krispy Kreme Challenge. Run 4 miles and eat 12 donuts and try to get it done in one hour. The video below is a promo video done by the race organizers but for comic relief, check out the ESPN video that I can't embed but you can find it here! Classic...
See you next week...
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