Road Cycling

[L19red]

intersting little clip of all the journeys made by boris bikes in London

5m London bike journeys mapped and animated | News | guardian.co.uk

[Champ]

intersting little clip of all the journeys made by boris bikes in London

5m London bike journeys mapped and animated | News | guardian.co.uk

I'm in there somewhere

[L19red]

heres a little story about track cycling

Marchand sets 100 kilometre age-related record at 100 years of age

[L19red]

Paul Kimmage comes out swinging in what was meant to be a private tweet to David Walsh from the Sunday Times

 

David, good news, found a real pitbull of a lawyer to go after those two fuckers.

[lifetime fan]

Paul Kimmage comes out swinging in what was meant to be a private tweet to David Walsh from the Sunday Times

 

David, good news, found a real pitbull of a lawyer to go after those two fuckers.

 

 

Not been following this. What's happened?

[L19red]

Paul is being sued by the UCI because he called them corrupt. He's right, here are a few well known examples.

 

In 1999 Amstrong tested positive, after the failed test his doctor provided a note about some treatment for saddle sores. That shouldn't be allowed, and his soigneur/masseur said it was a load if bollocks.

 

In 2001 Armstrong tested positive for EPO a month before the tour, the lab director was told that it was going nowhere and indeed it didn't. Shortly after one of Lance's companies made a $125,000 donation to the UCI. Tyler Hamilton also wrote about it in his recent book.

 

When Contador tested positive it took 2 months for anyone to find out, and even then it was a Germany paper that spilled the beans not the UCI.

 

The two fuckers are Pat McQuaid and Hein Verbruggen the current and former Chairman of the UCI.

Cycling fans are being very support of Kimmage because of his anti doping stance and have donated $40,000 for his defense fund. Its indicative of the UCI that they are suing an unemployed journalist and not The Sunday Times or L'Equipe who published the articles

[L19red]

Copy and paste of the David Walsh article in The Sunday Times today which explains a bit more about the case.

 

THE REPORT from the United States Anti-Doping Agency explaining why it stripped Lance Armstrong of seven Tour de France titles and imposed a life ban is expected to be sent to the world governing body of cycling, the Union Cycliste International, this week.

 

UCI will find the report is uncomfortable reading — it details the doping conspiracy that underpinned the success of the world’s top cycling team, US Postal Service and its leader Armstrong, from 1999 to 2004.

 

Two riders are believed to have given affidavits that Armstrong told them he had a positive test swept under the carpet at the 2001 Tour of Switzerland and another has sworn that Armstrong told him he could use his influence with UCI to circumvent cycling’s anti-doping laws.

 

UCI is suing the former Sunday Times journalist Paul Kimmage for suggesting Armstrong was protected, an action that has outraged cycling fans and prompted them to contribute more than £26,000 to help defray the journalist’s legal expenses. Now, according to three former teammates, Armstrong himself claimed he got special treatment from UCI. Given its eagerness to go to the courts to protect its reputation, UCI may want to sue Armstrong after it has read USADA’s report.

 

But its overriding reaction to the report is likely to be dismay that doping should have been so integral to US Postal’s modus operandi and wonder that it remained undiscovered for so long. UCI will also realise it missed many opportunities to investigate what was going on within the team and that this failure meant the team could go on doping for as long as they wished.

 

For example, in 2003 the former US Postal soigneur Emma O’Reilly told The Sunday Times she remembered many incidents that convinced her Armstrong and the team were doping. In particular she recalled an evening on the 1999 Tour when giving Armstrong his evening massage. She overheard him and two team officials concoct a story that, with the aid of a backdated medical certificate, let the rider escape punishment.

 

O’Reilly claimed at the time that she’d been told Armstrong had taken cortisone during a race the previous month and that it had stayed in his system, causing him to test positive in the first week of that Tour. Support for O’Reilly comes now in an affidavit from the rider who says it was known in the team that Armstrong used Kenacourt, a trade name for a long-acting synthetic corticosteroid.

 

At the time of her revelations, UCI did not feel any need to interview O’Reilly and see if her many examples of US Postal’s cheating could be verified. Now UCI is having verification thrust upon it.

 

In another rider’s affidavit there is a story of Armstrong’s concern at scar tissue on his arm caused by injections of EPO as he was about to go for his medical test before the 1999 Tour. According to this rider, he asked O’Reilly for make-up so the scar could be concealed and that she had applied the make-up to Armstrong’s arm. This story was told in precisely the same detail by O’Reilly years earlier.

 

What will alarm UCI is the detail contained in multiple recollections of Armstrong’s teammates. One rider tells a story from the 1998 world championship at Valkenburg in Holland when cortisone pills, wrapped in tin foil, were given to the Postal riders on the US national team for the road race. According to the rider’s affidavit, the pills were wrapped in the foil and handed out by Kristin Armstrong, the champion’s former wife. “Kristin is rolling the joints,” one rider joked at the time.

 

Another rider recalls a telephone call from George Hincapie, a teammate of Armstrong’s in all seven Tour wins, saying he had been stopped by US Customs while returning from Europe and that EPO had been found in his luggage. He lied that it was prescribed medication and they accepted this story.

 

Adding to the sense of authenticity is the consistency that runs through the reports; incidents recounted by one rider that involve others are backed up in the accounts of those involved. There is also an overriding sense of Armstrong’s central role in the conspiracy to use illegal drugs. He and his former wife used to refer to EPO by the codename “butter,” says another rider’s affidavit, because the drug was in the butter in the fridge.

 

There is an account of how unhappy he was with team doctor Pedro Celaya through much of 1999. According to one rider’s affidavit, Armstrong believed Celaya wasn’t giving the riders enough performance enhancing drugs. “We might as well be riding clean,” he is quoted as saying at the time. Celaya was replaced at the end of the year by another Spanish doctor, Luis del Moral.

 

Some of the evidence against Armstrong and the team is provided by teammates who have already come forward such as Floyd Landis, Tyler Hamilton and Frankie Andreu but there is also incriminating detail from riders who haven’t spoken in public. Riders such as Hincapie, Christian Vandevelde and Levi Leipheimer are all believed to have testified honestly and confirmed stories that Armstrong and his team participated in a sophisticated doping conspiracy.

 

In an interview with L’Equipe in France, the head of USADA, Travis Tygart, said he believed all the witnesses his agency interviewed had told the truth and that there had been “confirmation” of this. Tygart might have been referring to the presence of US Justice Department official Mike Pugliese at USADA’s interviews with witnesses.

 

During the interviews, Pugliese sat silently but with transcripts of interviews these witnesses had given before a Grand Jury or to federal officers in the case against the team that was dropped in February. “As you gave an answer to a question,” one witness said, “you were very conscious of this guy checking it against the answer you had given to the Feds, so you really wanted to make sure you got it right.”

 

USADA did not receive any material from the aborted federal case and Pugliese sat in on the interviews solely to check if witnesses confirmed accounts given to federal officers and to see if the Justice Department should open a civil case against Armstrong and the owners of the team.

[Champ]

FAO of anyone with nothing better to do...I'm really enjoying my cycling, I bought a hybrid bike earlier on in the year but am now considering buying a road bike through the bike to work scheme. Anyone recommend a 'decent' bike and/or the best bike I could get up to the scheme's max spend of £1000

Thanks in anticipation

[Lario]

In all fairness to the lads here in my local shop, they advised me to get a road bike when I went in for a hybrid. They said the amount of fellas that come in after 6-12 months looking to use their wife's BTW scheme to trade up to a road bike is ridiculous!

After much haggling, I bought a Cube Peleton Race which was just over the €1000 limit for us (I paid the difference). Absolutely love it. Shimano 105 and Ultegra running gear, carbon front fork, etc. Next bike up with the same gear was another €400+! Cube really do have the best VFM in road bikes.

Here's the spec from Cube CUBE Peloton Race

I got the white version CUBE PELOTON RACE, Richardson's Cycles

 

I couldn't recommend it highly enough.

[Lario]

Stupid double post!

[Champ]

Have also been recommended

 

2013 Specialized Dolce

[Sweeney287]

In all fairness to the lads here in my local shop, they advised me to get a road bike when I went in for a hybrid. They said the amount of fellas that come in after 6-12 months looking to use their wife's BTW scheme to trade up to a road bike is ridiculous!

After much haggling, I bought a Cube Peleton Race which was just over the €1000 limit for us (I paid the difference). Absolutely love it. Shimano 105 and Ultegra running gear, carbon front fork, etc. Next bike up with the same gear was another €400+! Cube really do have the best VFM in road bikes.

Here's the spec from Cube CUBE*Peloton Race

I got the white version CUBE PELOTON RACE, Richardson's Cycles

 

I couldn't recommend it highly enough.

 

Feel the same, however trying to justify spending another £100 per month if I do it again in May is difficult. Might get another when the kids are out of nursery and in school.

[L19red]

Go Italian, Bianchi or Colnago. My next bike will defo be one or the other of them.

 

Bianchi are eternally cool because they are the bikes ridden by Coppi and Pantani. Ernesto Colnago is widely recognised as the best frame builder in the world and while you wont be getting one he made for a grand, its still a Colnago.

[L19red]

Have also been recommended

 

2013 Specialized Dolce

 

looks decent, if you can afford it then get a Carbon Fibre Frame instead of alloy

[gingerhulk]

Currently riding a claud butler hybrid, but looking at buying my own (this bike is my mates).

 

Don't have a massive budget, somewhere around the 300quid mark.

 

Any ideas chaps?

 

Ta

[lifetime fan]

I got the Dawes entry level road bike for under £400.

[VladimirIlyich]

I got the Dawes entry level road bike for under £400.

 

Any chance of a photo? A similar model from a catalogue would be ok.

[lifetime fan]

Out with the dog Vlad, I'll stick one up in half hour for you.

[Guest The Big Green Bastard]

[YOUTUBE]gC3rB9f7DaU&feature=fvwp&NR=1[/YOUTUBE]

[VladimirIlyich]

Out with the dog Vlad' date=' I'll stick one up in half hour for you.[/quote']

 

No rush. I'm just interested as to what 400 can get.

I'm hoping to get one around xmas or the new year myself.

[Champ]

If you look back through the thread about May/June (I think) its up there, as is mine

[lifetime fan]

Any chance of a photo? A similar model from a catalogue would be ok.

 

 

Here you go Vlad. They've a newer model out now for £399.99, that may have a better spec if you wanted that or I'm sure you'd be able to get this model reduced.

 

 

[cloggypop]

TRIBAN 3 B'TWIN - All Bikes - On sale on Decathlon.co.uk

 

300 quid . Great reviews .

[Champ]

Currently riding a claud butler hybrid, but looking at buying my own (this bike is my mates).

 

Don't have a massive budget, somewhere around the 300quid mark.

 

Any ideas chaps?

 

Ta

Do you want a hybrid or a road bike?

[VladimirIlyich]

Here you go Vlad. They've a newer model out now for £399.99, that may have a better spec if you wanted that or I'm sure you'd be able to get this model reduced.

 

 

 

Nice.

 

Are those tyres like mountain bike tyres or racer tyres or somewhere in between?