Trek Founder Passes Away at 73 March 14, 2008
Posted by Steve in : Tour De France, Breaking News, Cycling , add a commentThe sport of cycling has lost a true pioneer. Richard Burke, a founder of the Trek Bicycle Corporation, which capitalized on the luster of Lance Armstrong’s victories in the Tour de France to reshape the way top-of-the-line bikes are manufactured, died Monday in Milwaukee at 73.
It was on a $6,500 carbon-fiber Model 5500 bike built by Trek that Mr. Armstrong won his first Tour de France in 1999, the first of his seven straight Tour titles. With that, Trek became the first American bike company to win the Tour and the first to build a carbon-fiber bike that won the Tour,” John Bradley, a senior editor and the cycling expert at Outside magazine, said Wednesday. “It was a watershed moment.”Racing bikes must be as light and stiff as possible. Before being made of carbon fiber, which has the best stiffness-to-weight ratio, the bikes were made of steel, titanium or aluminum. (more…)
Cycling: UCI…Bring It On! March 9, 2008
Posted by Steve in : Tour De France, Cycling , add a commentI am a HUGE cycling fan and we are now experiencing the fallout of a blood feud between the ASO and the UCI. The ASO controls the Tour de France race and the UCI controls the season-long Pro Tour. So now we get to this week’s Paris-Nice cycling race and both sides refuse to budge and the ASO has basically said, “UCI…Bring it on!”. Can someone please reign in these 2 year olds for the benefit of the sport?
The Paris-Nice race is set to start Sunday even though teams that participate face sanctions from cycling’s governing body, which says it is fighting for its “survival” and ability to regulate the doping-marred sport. International Cycling Union (UCI) president Pat McQuaid has urged riders to boycott the season’s first major stage race, calling it “illegal” because the race organizers—the Amaury Sport Organization (ASO)—are holding it under French laws and outside UCI rules.
McQuaid has threatened teams with six-month suspensions, fines of up to $9,700, and bans from the track world championships this month, which would affect cyclists (more…)
Floyd Landis Shows His Cards October 12, 2006
Posted by Steve in : Weblog, Tour De France, Breaking News , add a commentIn a novel approach that could challenge the conventions of sports anti-doping disputes, the winner of this year’s Tour de France took his case to the public today with an online multimedia presentation at www.FloydLandis.com. Here are the Floyd Landis Legal Submittal 1 and the Floyd Landis Legal Submittal 2 he is getting ready to file. Floyd Landis, the Mennonite cyclist who is accused of having high testosterone to epitestosterone ratio during the Tour, provided a PowerPoint defense and 350 pages of material from the French laboratory that handled drug testing for the world’s premier cycling event. Landis, who recently had hip-replacement surgery, faces a two-year ban and the loss of his Tour title. He won the race in dramatic fashion July 23 after faltering during one of the final mountain stages.
After repeatedly maintaining his innocence, Landis has now taken the unprecedented step of supporting his statements with documents. Check out Trust but Verify for a comprehensive blog of all facts and the current status. The defense’s central arguments are the French laboratory mishandled his urine samples, did not follow standard protocols, and (more…)
