Wannabe Bike Girl

Has cycling finally cleaned up its act?

After every drug scandal journalists claim the only consolation is that professional pedalling has “now reached rock bottom”. Sadly, it soon turns out that what they thought was rock bottom was only a very narrow ledge above a fathomless chasm of deep blue sea. Many believe cycling cannot sink any lower into the drink without being crushed by the pressure, while others feel such a point will only ever be reached when the winner of the climb to Alpe d’Huez announces that his success is all down to the fact that last winter he had his lungs removed and replaced with those of a blue whale.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

With less than two weeks before the Tour begins, we’re back to this whole doping scandal. It’s more on the Petacchi thing, of course. It’s made CNN this time (well, CNN international).

Piepoli, Petacchi in doping probe

aunier Duval-Prodir team rider Leonardo Piepoli is under suspicion of doping at this year’s Giro d’Italia, two days after the Italian cycling federation said it was to investigate Alessandro Petacchi.

This is exactly what the sport doesn’t need. And after standing by Zabel, Milram has (rightfully so, mind you) suspended Petacchi. I cannot tell you how irritated I am about this whole situation. I had hoped that he was clean, and to be honest I will still believe it. But, god.

There’s another depressing story in that cyclingnews link about FDJ’s Joly, who apparently has a tumor and has quit cycling. I guess it’s back to just rooting for the smaller name cyclists.

Just a brief post. I’m adding this to the category of things that irritate me. I can’t tell, though, if I’m pissed off at Petacchi or the system. I hope he manages to sort this out before the Tour. The last thing I want is for him not to race. Also, this reflects badly on Milram, and after the whole Zabel thing, this is just what they didn’t need.

Petacchi protests his innocence

Alessandro Petacchi has denied doping after returning a “non-negative” test for the asthma drug salbutalmol at this year’s Giro d’Italia.

There’s so much going on in this sport that at times I have no idea what to talk about (whereas I could spend an hour talking about the start of Wimbledon). But today I read that Cofidis has selected their tour team:

Sylvain Chavanel, Nick Nuyens, Stéphane Augé, Geoffroy Lequatre, Cristian Moreni, Ivan Parra, Staf Scheirlinckx, Rik Verbrugghe and Bradley Wiggins.

As anyone who reads my blog (or even knows me) knows, Sylvain Chavanel is my favorite cyclist. As much as I’d like to see Vino win the tour, my dream is for Chavanel to win it.

That being said, no matter how much confidence Cofidis puts in him, he most likely won’t do it. I think that two years ago, when he was riding for BLB, he might have been able to pull off at least a stage win. But Voeckler ended up in the yellow jersey and Chavanel gave up any dreams he had of stage wins to defend the jersey and protect Voeckler. Perhaps the other thing holding Chavanel back (aside from the pressure of being French) is that his tactics tend to be a little off. I don’t know if it’s a problem with the way he sees the race or if it’s all in his head, or, hell, if it’s something to do with his team and manager.

I just hope that maybe this year will be different.

Just as a side note, I will be blogging the tour over at my TdF Diary. It’ll be a little different this year, more like 2005 than last year, because I’ll be working a lot more hours that clash with the tour. But that’s okay because I have a VCR and a lot of tapes. I plan to do my best not to spoil myself and watch the stages as soon as I can.

So, starting on July 7th, I’ll be doing my fourth blogging the tour. This is kind of really weird and awesome. This blog (Wannabe) started in May of 2004 and I blogged my first tour in July. One of these days, I’d like to blog the tour from France. But I have a lot to do first before that happens. And, hey, when it does happen, I hope to see Team Slipstream in the peloton.

A girl can dream, right?

So, I watched the Giro this year. It was pretty awesome, even if the person I wanted to win (Damiano Cunego) didn’t do win (or even do as well as I’d have liked without winning). I enjoyed watched Liquigas pull hard for Di Luca (who I also like). I thought that the course was pretty fun and the mountains really excited me (no matter how wrong that sounds, it’s true. Mountains are awesome). And, to be honest, I’m totally excited about the tour.

I know there are a lot of people who think that with all the doping scandals, it’ll mean the tour will suck. And I believe I made a post like this last year around this time. But once again, I’ve got to be honest. The more “big names” we lose, the better the race will be. I liked Landis and I wanted him to win, but that boat has sailed. I’ll hope for Vino doing well — but I in no way except him to dominate the race. And, again to be honest, I don’t want him to.

I want this race to be wide open and I want to have different stage winners each day. Unless Petacchi wishes to dominate, in which case I fully support that.

Last year during the Tour, I wrote for cyclingfans.com and this year I again have been graciously invited to write for the site again. Of course I’ve accepted, not only because I enjoy writing about cycling (though updates to this blog don’t show that — but I promise there will be more), but because I love the site.

For several reasons, none of which I’m going to get into here (at least for now), I did not renew my subscription to cycling.tv or pay for their Giro coverage. Instead, I relied heavily on cyclingfans.com. And if this sounds like an advertisement, it kind of is. Mostly because I completely love the site.

It’s a really great place — and it’s getting better. The focus of the site is basically to provide cycling fans with links to ways to follow cycling live online. I love it and visit it/use it all the time. And right now? It’s the place to go for information about the Tour de France live coverage.

So, yeah, check out cyclingfans.com. You’ll thank me for it, later. And there’s a link on my sidebar, just in case you need it later.