Me and Alberto being chummy

Right after the Tour de France screeches to a halt in Paris, the transfer season starts. During the Tour we are teased with tidbits of information of where riders might end up. Rumors were rampant about the two hottest properties on the market: Alberto Contador and the Schleck Brothers (I know technically the two brother would mean the three hottest markets – but you get the point). Not only are athlete transfer news filling column inches but also any possible new team sponsors pique our interest. Will a small co-sponsor step up and replace the title sponsor? Will a cycling fan boy with money to burn finance a team. I sure hope so!

Bjarne Riis, the manager of the Saxo Bank squad had called a press conference earlier this week. He announced a surprise as shocking as the finale of the Bachelorette – Saxo Bank didn’t want to break up after all and had accepted the Final Rose (if you don’t know what this means ask your wife or girlfriend – she knows). While Riis was holding a press conference, Contador in his trademark laid-back style, released a statement sating he was joining Saxo Bank in 2011. Talk about a public relations downer! The most sought after signature in cycling and he does a mass e-mailing! Come on now! To me this was a missed opportunity to take the sport of cycling up a notch.

If Alberto had asked me what to do I would have taken a page out of the ESPN – LeBron James Decision special. Instead of Jim Gray I’d either have myself or Bob Roll sit across from El Pistolero as he divulged the information we were all on the edge of our seats waiting for.

Bob Roll: (Gesticulating wildly, the yellow Road ID bracelet a blur) So what’s new? How was your summer?
Alberto Contador: Well I won the Tour de France. Again.

Roll: What did you expect?
Contador: With Vino I hoped to win the Tour again but have a much easier time. Almost like a riding vacation. However there are somethings you can’t control – like Vino attacking me in stage 12 or having a día muy malo during the final time trial.

Roll: So how many people know your decision right now?
Contador: Mike Sinyard, the guys who paints my “El Pistolero” symbol on my bikes, of course my agent/brother, the guy who I buy my tapas from, the baristas at my favorite Starbucks, and my pigeon breeder.

Bob Roll: So Alberto what’s your answer to the question that everyone wants to know – what’s your decision?
Contador: Oh gosh, this is tough…Next year I’m going to take my talents to Saxo Bank/SunGard.

Roll: Saxo Bank/SunGard. This was the conclusion you woke up with this morning? Why?
Contador: I think this is going to give me the best opportunities to continue winning the Tour de France for three, four, five years. Not only to just win the Tour de France multiple times but win the Giro, the Tour and the Vuelta in the same year. The Schlecks are gone and Riis needed someone to replace them. I also have a personal deal with Specialized for several bikes with bad ass paint jobs so that was hard to turn down. One thing I learned from Lance is that when I ebay those rigs they are worth mucho dinero!

Roll: How do you explain this to the people in Kazakhstan?
Contador: It’s hard to explain to them because, well they don’t speak any language I’m familiar with. But there will always be a piece of El Pistolero with the people of Mongolia.

Roll: You mean Kazakhstan?
Contador: Yeah, sure, whatever. (Fade to black…)

Unfortunately as we all know it didn’t go down like that. But I’m throwing it out there to any pro who wants to make a splashy transfer announcement – I have a Ustream account and we could fire up my video camera at any moment.

The Tour de France is the most watched annual sporting event on the planet. The only other sporting events that surpass the Grande Boucle is the World Cup and the Olympics (as you know they are contested every four years). Like those other events it creates a sense of community among the participants as well as the viewers. The racers rolled off the prologue ramp in Rotterdam with clear rivals. As the race progressed favorites fell away and new ones were created. Most were on other squads, but some were the enemy within. But by the end of the Tour those rivals on the road are forgotten and what remains is the realization of a physical accomplishment that a very small percentage of the population could ever hope to complete.

It’s not just the racers who create a sense of community. Fans support their team or rider through thick and thin and cross borders to just get a chance to see them in person. If you’re in the States getting up close and personal with the Tour requires more planning than for our European brethren. Other than the obvious language barriers that can pop up there are the costs of following this traveling sporting event. To see more than one stage of the Tour requires planning and travel companions who won’t mentally drive you over the edge.

Read the full post at Versus.com.

Then Armstrong, in what later was described as a planned attack, joined a break that actually stayed away! The (virtual) cheers in the chat room were deafening – people not only wanted, but were literally willing Armstrong to victory. However this is no fairy tale story and the Texan was out sprinted to the line by Frenchman Pierrick Fedrigo (or as I like to say in the Versus chat room, “Random French Dude”).

Posted on the Team RadioShack blog Johan Bruyneel said that Armstrong’s lack of results these past couple of stages were on purpose.

“Now that he’s not in contention for the general classification anymore, you try to save strength.” I wonder what Levi thought of that strategy when it was announced on the team bus? I continue to ponder how that plan would have gone over during the halcyon Armstrong days? Probably not well.

Read the full post at Versus.com.

If you are participating in my Versus Tour de France daily online live chat (and if you’re not shame on you!) print out the list below (or view it on the Browne Eye Mobile app) and on the corresponding stage listen for Paul and Phil’s catch phrase or random comment. When you hear the phrase take a strong pull on your morning beverage of choice. Depending on the stage and my mood, I may be drinking a bloody mary, coffee chased with espresso and/or my fav beer of the week.

One added caveat to this game is that you are not allowed to leave and relieve yourself of any internal biological pressure that may be building due to the inordinate amount of liquid you are ingesting. What I mean is you can’t get up to pee – you need to hold it.

Also, some phrases are worth double gulps**, so be prepared with enough of your beverage to continue throughout the whole stage. If you run out of your drink before the stage is over is considered a rookie move and shows a lack of planning. Don’t be that guy – plan ahead.

For the hard core players, I’m adding the option of drinking a Red Dragon for sightings of the infamous Devil.

As an added bonus I’ve included a couple of Tour de France ring tones. Amaze your cycling friends and annoy your co-workers with the Versus Cycling theme song and a Tour de France car horn. (To use these as your ringtones, download the files to your PC desktop and drag them into your iTunes library.  For further assistance, I suggest Googling for instructions.)

In the short term he’s still racing the Tour and with his chance of winning the overall completely gone, his only opportunity is to go stage hunting. Bill Strickland, author of Tour de Lance, picks stage 13 as the most probable.

Strickland points to the final climb of the day, the Cote de St. Ferreol, as the location where Armstrong could make his move.

“Armstrong knows that climb well: The last time the Tour finished here was in 2005, and Armstrong, along with favorites such as Jan Ullrich, Alexander Vinokourov, Ivan Basso and others, powered an escape that held a 20-second gap over the field to the finish.”

Stage 13 could be lucky for Armstrong, however it might be a gut reaction for the peloton to mount a chase and not allow the Texan out of sight. I’m wondering if Team Sky might just not organize to assure he never gets more than a couple of pedal strokes ahead of the bunch. I haven’t heard about any war of words lately between Garmin-Transitions and RadioShack, but they might take this as one last opportunity to stick it to Armstrong. But hey, maybe Garmin-Transitions director Matty White is a bigger man than me – I’m just a vengeful guy who enjoys sticking it to a rival.

After the peloton rolls into Paris, they complete their ceremonial hot laps on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées and Armstrong unclips for the last time, where does he go from there?

Read the full post at Versus.com.

Coming out of a roundabout, the seven-time Tour champion clipped a pedal and went down. The footage shown on television doesn’t do Armstrong’s crash justice. Across the street, and from the sound of it a couple of bottles of wine into their spectating day, a fan caught the moment on video: Armstrong sliding on his back at about 60 kilometers an hour (I’ve included the YouTube video at the bottom of this post). As we all know, Armstrong remounted and finished over 11 minutes behind stage winner Andy Schleck–effectively ending his last chance of winning the Tour de France.

With an 8th Tour win out of reach, will Armstrong now be embraced by the French? Johan Bruyneel said, “the French love the loser more than a winner.” Looking back at cycling history we can see that is a fairly accurate statement. Five-time Tour de France winner Jacques Anquetil was never as popular with his countrymen as Raymound Poulidor, who was known as the eternal second. Here in the States, we put winners on pedestals, which is where Armstrong has resided for the past ten years. The struggle of an also-ran strikes a chord with the French.

Read the full post at Versus.com.

Landis on the prowl for cans

Out of the blue I received a phone call. My source – code name “Balls Deep” was on the other end speaking Pig Latin.

I’ll spare you the Pig Latin, but translated my contact relayed this exciting bit of information, “Word from behind the car wash is that Landis is riding again.”

What?! I made him repeat it again. My source is still recovering from a recent bike crash, so I thought the meds might be playing havoc with his mind.

“He’s racing in Nevada City. Talking about attempting to tie Armstrong for the amount of wins,” he excitedly explained.

“A friend of a friend who knew this guy said he heard Landis talking shit about how well his left-turning ability is. Plus he’s grown in a really bad ass goatee!”

Shit this was serious! A bad ass goatee is in Landis terms like a pirate ship running up it’s skull and crossbones flag – it means war.

The last communication I’d had from him was that he was holed up in his shack behind the car wash and thinking of going back to his “Quiet Please” sign holding career at the local golf course. “That job really helped me clear out the clutter in my mind,” Landis once told me in one of his contemplative moments. I had no idea he was thinking of throwing a leg over a bike again other than as a mode of transportation to pick up aluminum cans along the south bound I-5.

Bad ass goatee? Check!

I grabbed my phone and called the Floyd Landis hotline. Over the din of spray hoses and honking car horns signaling dried cars, Landis answered.

“What do you want?! I don’t have time for this right now – Hey douche your car is dry!”

I asked about what I heard and if this was true.

“Listen if I got something important to announce to the world I’m not going to tell someone whose website is slang for ‘ass!’ Shit I’ll talk to Wall Street Journal. They give me free copies which I use to line the walls of my shack. That paper is thick and absorbent.”

And then there was the click followed by a dial tone. My conversation was over. So is Floyd Landis racing in the Nevada City Classic? I don’t know, but if you’re in the area I’d grab a spot on the corner, grab a cold one and watch it all go by. That’s what I’ll be doing.

George trying to get to the start

My G’ville buddies made the hop across the pond to Belgium, the home of the Classics, witnessing the Tour of Flanders first hand. And when your connections include Rich Hincapie of Hincapie Sportswear, clothing sponsor of BMC, you know they got hooked up. Randy Owens had his trigger finger on the camera and shot some cool photos from Flanders. Check them out here.

The official Lion of Flanders

This past weekend the cyclocross world championships were held in the Czech Republic. In a sport dominated by Belgians it was not surprising to see the Lion of Flanders flag throughout the course, at times practically draped across the course forcing riders to almost ride through the symbol of the Flemish. This weekend at a party I was once again reminded of the flag as the host had a Lion of Flanders flag autographed by the Lion of Flanders himself, Johan Museeuw. As fans of cycling we all know this iconic image: a black lion with red claws and tongue on a yellow background. However, as with all flags there is a symbolism behind the Lion of Flanders.

There are two different types of Lion of Flanders flags and as a fan of cycling you want to make sure you buy the correct version. The lion with the red claws and tongue is the flag that is most commonly seen flying at races. However, don’t mix this up with the all black lion. This all black Lion of Flanders is a symbol of a separatist movement of Flanders that wants to remove itself from the Belgian government. From here the symbolism of the all black lion gets murkier depending on who you talk to. This all black lion is associated with a right-wing political groups and if you wave it around indiscriminately you could be headed for a rather heated political discussion that you want no part of. Today, the red claw and tongue lion is the official Lion of Flanders, but occasionally the all black lion is also used in conjunction with the “official” Lion of Flanders.

This version is associated with the Flemish separatist movement

To understand the Lion of Flanders requires a brief lesson on Belgium. The country is basically split into two distinct areas: the northern Flemish who speak Dutch and in the south the Wallons who speak French. Tensions between these two groups occasionally flares up and until 1967 the Belgian constitution was still not translated from French into Dutch, giving the impression to the Flemish that the Dutch speakers were second class citizens. When I traveled to Roubaix, I cheered “Go Belgium” to a bunch of Lion of Flanders waving fans. I was told rather bruskly that they were not Belgian but Flemish. Whoops, my bad, and I quickly slunk away before they decided to hang me from the flag. Just to muddy the explanation more there is another term used almost interchangeably – Flandrien which is a derogatory term for the people from the north of France. There was a lot of poverty in these areas at the beginning of the 20th century and the people from Flanders went to work in northern France. The French thought they were taking jobs away from their own people and sarcastically called them “les Flanderiens”. These Flanderiens were stereotypically considered hard workers. This term was picked up and romanticized to describe the Flemish cyclists. So when you are in Belgium and you spot the roadside vendor on the Muir you now know which version of the Lion of Flanders flag to spend your Euros on. Oh, and pick me up one as well.

Get your Lion of Flanders gear here

Poster of Belgium’s most famous one-day race – The Rhonde aka Tour of Flanders

Landis takes his first win of the season - Tour of the Bahamas PHOTO: John Segesta

If you read my previous post you know that Floyd Landis is participating in the Tour of the Bahamas this weekend. He just emailed me the hot news from day one of the race – the time trial.

“All that drinking is starting to pay off. I beat the course record set by Zman [David Zabriskie] two years ago and I was on somebody else’s road bike with clinchers and no aero clothes. Take that f@*#ers”

Check out the video Floyd sent of him just prior to the time trial start. UPDATE! Additional Floyd Landis videos posted below.