Yes, back from Desert heat to Tropics humidity and, heat. Its global hub time and thankfully, back on the bike. Fair to say its been an average couple of jet lagged days of riding and more than a few hiccups on the equipment front (see yesterday), but its the start of a new week, so bring on some decent mileage! Right, into the round up.
Today is a sad start unfortunately. Tragic news last week from Hong Kong, Colin Robertson from Direct Asia was the victim of a terrible accident and lost his life whilst out training in HK. Its always awful to hear of the death of a cyclist, but this felt particularly hard to process as I had raced against Colin (by ‘raced’ I mean marvelled in awe, he was an incredible rider). I didn’t know him as well as some of my team mates, but my lasting memory of him was seeing how happy he looked after the final stage of Tour of Bintan in 2012, where he finally secured the overall win he had been after for a number of years. He sat at the finish tent, resplendent in the yellow jersey he earned through a great TT performance and then marshalling his team on the final day (their 8 man terminator train one of the most impressive things I have seen in amateur cycling) to defend yellow and take the overall. Cycling in the region, and his team mates or anyone that rode with him will miss Colin and thoughts go out to his young family. RIP Colin. It goes without saying to please stay safe everyone doing the sport we all love.
On that sport that we love, its been a rather full on weekend of action as well. First up, how about Santa Cruz rider and all round legend Greg Minnaar clocking up DH World Cup start number 100! Given there are only 7 or max 8 per year, that’s a good effort… not to mention his 78% or so podium finish stat, WTF on how consistent that is! Looks the gear to on the V10C dream bike:
I’ll just have everything Greg rides with thanks
On the topic of Santa Cruz legends, I can absolutely recommend the new Steve Peat Documentary, ‘Won’t back down’. I’ll be honest, when I downloaded it from iTunes I felt it was a bit overhyped and was a little sceptical. The first hour is pretty good, especially if you’re into the history of the sport of DH MTB, the 90’s were a crazy time. However, the last hour of the film is senfuckingsational! A fantastic film in the end… I was seriously impressed and I dare any cyclist or anyone who has trained or focused hard on a goal to watch the moment when the film culminates and not feel some form of powerful emotion attached to it. It really is an excellent piece of film making of a fantastic story when you look at over the 20 year period of his career – Great to see:
Get to iTunes, lock away two hours and soak up the history
Bridging the gap from RAD mountain bike shredding to the road world, well, sort of, I am going to commit an act of Lemming here, but everyone is playing this one, so I may as well to. You’ll see why in a moment. Mofo is maaaaad with this shit on a road bike. Its been semi done before, but fair to say this dude has a reasonable tolerance for heights:
From MAD shit to MAD money, with the Giro wrapping up recently, I know you’ve all been sitting around thinking “Fuck that Giro was hard! So cold… I wonder how much cash they get for winning it?”, well, fear not, I have stolen that very piece of information from out of the cyberspace that is PRO cycling useless facts on line to regurgitate here. But, its by team earning’s from prize money (stage wins, KOM wins, sprints etc). Wonder if the boys at Katusha got a call from Putin after only pulling in a crummy 5k Euro, rubbish… Wouldn’t even pay for the 3 week supply of gear post race piss up:
Katusha – Mildly out earning the paper boy
And now you get to vote… So, the release of XTR Di2 has proven to be historical, not only some very cool & clever engineering, but also it won both the mens and womens Elite races at its first World Cup race, bang bang. However, the marketing/cunt department clearly aren’t at the same level at Shimano HQ, with some rather odd ways to usher in such cool new technology, both of which were on display at the last world cup round. So, what was slightly weirder/more out of place:
A) Dubious eastern block hookers models in PVC ‘dresses’ at the “Di2 Experience centre”
The faces of Digital Integration: “Hi girls… just what’s available at the ‘experience centre’?”
OR
B) Super questionable fake tattoos put on to really skinny dudes
The World Cup downhillers look on is despair… “Keep our weekends separate please UCI”
Or perhaps it’s C: The weird fake Tattoos on the promo girls. You be the judge:
And that’s it for this round up… Sure, there is the big WIGGO spat and tantrum in the PRO cycling world, but its a bit of a yawn and hardly a surprise. I will also spare you the low down on my rather average and low key return to riding, I really do need to pull finger on account of A) I have some more of that work related travel coming up and B) the next DN Mission’s are drawing closer by the day! Yikes… Must maintain some semblance of shape, other than the shape of a tea cake.
Have a good week!
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