bike-pure: fighting for a cultural shift in cycling

I'm a romantic realist, and I can accept that doping will never be completely eliminated from sport - just like cheating is a regrettable facet of life for some people. However, thanks to Bike-Pure, fans of cycling can now unify their voices and deliver loud-and-clear the message that we do not accept the fallacy that to be successful in cyclesport you have to dope. We want clean champions and those sponsors that fund ethical squads are the ones that will enjoy our patronage.If you haven't already, join the bike-pure movement, and tell 'em I sent ya.

CyclingTorrents - Race Video Site

Let's say that you have more time to consume content than you have content, and you're a wicked fan of cycling. Maybe Jan Ullrich was your favorite racer, and you've never seen him win gold yet in the 2000 Olympics. What do you do? Well, back in the old days you might have tried to get a paper catalog from World Cycling Productions (WCP) in hopes that they might have a video of the event in question, which would have run you at least $45USD. Now, however, thanks to the wonder of the internet, if you're willing to tread through what the site's own founders admit is a "grey area," you might be able to download free of charge a copy of the Olympic Road Race via the truly amazing website CyclingTorrents.nl.

Using the site's very simple yet thorough search feature, you'll quickly find the torrent for the race video you desire: example. You're on your own as for how to actually get the video onto your hard-drive (I don't encourage any behavior that you might find unethical or of concern), but trust me, it's not that hard.

Enjoy the show. This is a really cool site and it has made accessible some footage that would otherwise be both lost and inaccessible to the masses.

Friendsumer

Much to my surprise, urbandictionary didn't contain an entry for 'friendsumer,' something I had to reassure a long-lost friend who recently contacted me looking for a referral on the Continent that he was not. I rushed through the "example of the word being used in a sentence" section, so I won't reproduce it here, but the basic definition of the word follows. Please feel free to share feedback to refine the definition or offer an alternative.

friendsumer - (noun): One who treats friends and the relationships that define them as expendable commodities to be consumed when convenient, depleted, used-up and eventually tossed-away without concern for the norms of social behavior and interaction.

Quick Reactions to Stage 4 and download some Torrents!

With today's fourth stage of the Tour de France in the books, there were a couple of interesting items that I think merited discussion, and which I'd like to (very briefly) highlight for you here.

1). Alessandro Petacchi's resurgence as a field sprinter - it brings a tear to my eye to see Ale-Jet reliving his past glories and winning a sprint against all of the best, fair-and-square. And it's reassuring to see that Petacchi's style is unchanged - he was always the type of sprinter to win with a long effort, one that wound-up to terminal velocity over 250-300m, as opposed to the punchy, explosive bursts of a rider like Cav'.

And though I cringe when I say it and it's dreadful to my ears, I'm 35, and Petacchi, McEwen and Dean were riders who I either tried to emulate growing up, or in some cases actually raced against (Dean). We're all long-in-the-tooth now, and it's somewhat sad to have to accept the fact that Petacchi and his erstwhile rival McEwen will be bowing out of the sport within the next two years, but what a pleasant shock to the system now to see Petacchi claw his way back to the top step of the podium after so many years in the wilderness. (Yes I know Petacchi won stages in the Giro last year, but riding for LPR was to be in the wilderness!)

If you weren't a fan of cycling back in the early-2000's when Ale-Jet was just getting fitted with those afterburners, and you don't know what all the fuss is about and why I think it's so magnificent to see him dominating the sprints thus far in the Tour, I strongly suggest you visit the CyclingTorrents website and download as much coverage from the 2003 Giro, Tour and Vuelta as you can. Petacchi's record in each:

Tour de France:

Winner stages 2, 3, 5 & 6

Giro d'Italia:

Winner stages 1, 5, 6, 13, 16 & 17

Vuelta a España:

Winner stages 3, 5, 12, 14 & 21

Oh, and in case you were wondering - yes, it is the geriatric Metamucil sprinter's Tour de France. According to cyclingnews.com, "The top five in today's stage boasted ages of 36 (Petacchi), 34 (Dean), 23 (Boasson Hagen), 38 (McEwen) and 33 (Hunter), with the Norwegian at least a decade younger than the next youngest man in the first five over the line" 

Lat year's bad-boy wunderkind Mark Cavendish, who finally it would seem is being force-fed a heaping serving of humble pie, should listen to Thor Hushovd and perhaps give the Norwegian's classy-style a test ride for himself. Again according to Cyclingnews.com, "Points classification leader Thor Hushovd (Cervélo TestTeam) was impressed by the performance of Alessandro Petacchi (Lampre-Farnese Vini) at the finish of the fourth stage in Reims on Wednesday, as the Italian celebrated his second Tour de France stage victory having already won in Brussels on Sunday. 'Petacchi is really strong,' Hushovd told Cyclingnews. 'He is absolutely the best sprinter in this race at the moment.'"

2). Payback is a bitch and she's about to bend Mark Cavendish over a barrel. It will be interesting to see whether Cav's public persona starts trending towards a more reasonable, respect-my-colleagues self-confidence, or whether he'll continue to be a brash little boor who denigrates and insults even his teammates. André Greipel certainly hasn't forgotten how Cavendish disrespected him in public and insulted his fellow HTC-Columbia sprinter in the press (image courtesy of NYVelocity, home of "As the Toto Turns").

The big (really big) German, who is racing the Tour of Austria while Cav' is in France, had this to say about the whining little Tommy:

"Scheiße! Cavendish ist langsamer als meine Mutter! Ich wünsche,dass ich in Frankreich war. Warum bin ich in Österreich, nicht in Frankreich?"

"Shit! Cavendish is slower than my mother! I wish I was in France. Why I am in Austria, not in France?"

Ouch. 

Don't forget to follow us on Twitter, where we tend to more frequently comment on the bike game and share hints of scandal and intrigue to come. It's anomalous that so much content has been posted here in the last few days, but credit the Tour-effect for that. Lastly, Pappillon is in desperate need of motivation and a task-master to push us to follow through on a full plate's worth of stalled projects. If ANYONE has any suggestions (even vulgar ones) as to how we can reinvent ourselves and find the focus required to get back on track, please share via comments. Thanks.

On Vino and Contador

“It was impressive, I’m happy that have won Vino, it’s as if I had won”, said Alberto Contador after congratulating at the finish line Alexander Vinokourov after his victory in Liege.

There's been some mumbling in the forums that Vino stabbed Alberto in the back yesterday during the Tour de France's pavé-laden third stage, and tried to drop him inside the last kilometer. Everyone is entitled to their beliefs and opinions, but that's one I don't share. No - Vino is simply the man. There have been several very plausible explanations tendered for what might have happened to result in Contador's being dropped-off the back of the Vino group in the final 500m, and I don't buy the claim that Vino attacked Alberto.

Vino is not, like Armstrong, a PsyOps warrior - and the only rider who would make an attack against his teammate - akin to throwing down the gauntlet and betraying his loyalties - when there was so little time to be gained is a rider like Armstrong. He would see the psychological value in stealing a few seconds from 'Berto while really trying to make him feel abandoned and alone - in hopes of shaking his confidence or weakening his resolve (even though we know that Contador is stronger than that).

Vino is like the Tasmanian Devil - he just "goes" and goes and goes and goes. His attacks are flamboyant and either suicidal if they fail, or brilliant if he comes off with a win. A calculating attack against his teammate with 750m to go is totally not his style - and that alone tells me that he didn't intend to gap Contador, and if he did push on to the line thinking that AC would get the same time as a result of a mechanical having happened inside the final 3km, when that really wasn't the case, it's a fog of war issue, plain and simple.

Plus, the claim that Vino flicked Contador totally ignores the epic amount of work he did on behalf of the Spaniard to guide him over the cobbles when the race was imploding.

Nahhh, leave Vino alone - don't pull a Phinney on him. Vino is no Lance (Thankfully) - and ex-Soviets of Vino's generation don't go for that petty bullshit, sneak-attack-in-the-final-1km ruse - no, they just whip out a knife and slit your throat and are done with it.

Trust me, I know from experience!

The only time I've ever been ejected from a race and arrested afterward came during the UCI's Vuelta a Chile, when one of Vino's future-teammates and I came to blows after a stage (at the finish line, broadcast live on TV) and were hauled off by the coppers. Classic stuff. But those Kazakhs aren't subtle bastards - they fight like hell and aren't concerned with mind-games.

Just my two cents. Oh, and here's the rest of that post-Liege quote from Contador:

“It was impressive, I’m happy that have won Vino, it’s as if I had won”, said Alberto Contador after congratulating at the finish line Alexander Vinokourov after his victory in Liege.

“It was the result of the team work and I’m very happy”, he continued. “We had talked before the start we played with two options, mine went through attack at St. Nicholas or the Roche aux Faucons. There I started a little late, I got go with Andy Schleck, but we have been taken and when Vino is gone, I tried to make the maximum braking, especially with the Schleck brothers and Joaquim Rodriguez”.

“I’ve seen that Vino was very strong and had very touched listening how they cheered him on the radio. When I heard that he has won, I’ve been very happy”, he said. Contador also congratulated the team for their work. “We have been very compenetrated [sic]. We had two good chances of winning and when Vino goes ahead it was clear to me: I had to do what Saxo Bank did with Andy Schleck last year. The result was perfect”.

Fallacy: Slippery Slope (The Camel's Nose)

The fact that I even have a need to Google different types of fallacies should be evidence enough that there is serious unchecked insanity in my life - and not all of it is directly doping related! If I had my druthers, I would just tell the idiots who come at me with these fallacies to go eff themselves, but nowadays the level of scrutiny that I'm subjected to is...too great. How I long to be but a dumb, pathetic bike racer hiding out in Europe.

Alas, by virtue of the definition, the arguments I face daily are often times devoid of logic and thus no response is necessary (other than to point out that my interlocutors are fucking insane), but intellectual curiosity and a man-crush on Sun Tzu leads me to hope to better understand my enemy by researching his preferred method of attack. To that end:

The Slippery Slope is a fallacy in which a person asserts that some event must inevitably follow from another without any argument for the inevitability of the event in question. In most cases, there are a series of steps or gradations between one event and the one in question and no reason is given as to why the intervening steps or gradations will simply be bypassed. This "argument" has the following form:

1. Event X has occurred (or will or might occur).
2. Therefore event Y will inevitably happen.

This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because there is no reason to believe that one event must inevitably follow from another without an argument for such a claim. This is especially clear in cases in which there is a significant number of steps or gradations between one event and another.

Examples of Slippery Slope

• "We have to stop the tuition increase! The next thing you know, they'll be charging $40,000 a semester!"
• "The US shouldn't get involved militarily in other countries. Once the government sends in a few troops, it will then send in thousands to die."
• "You can never give anyone a break. If you do, they'll walk all over you."
• "We've got to stop them from banning pornography. Once they start banning one form of literature, they will never stop. Next thing you know, they will be burning all the books!"