Friday Group Ride #101
If you had asked me where the Willunga Hill was five years ago, I'd have probably guessed New Jersey. Now I know the aforementioned topography can be found in Australia, and serves as the major climbing obstacle in the Tour Down Under, the January kick off to the pro-cycling season. The TDU hits the Willunga Hill tomorrow and wraps up on Sunday with a circuit around Adelaide. Shortly, the world's top pros, the lion's share of them Europeans, will battle head winds and dash for finish lines in Qatar. They'll move on to Oman after that. There is a reason to this globe-trotting ...
2012 Season Preview
At Pavé, I used to begin each season with a team-by-team rundown of what I considered to be the top-20 teams in the sport, highlighting their goals, expectations, and offering my insights as to their prospects for the new season. But since I’m not sure Padraig has the time or the editorial patience for such an effort, I think I’ll take a bit more of a global approach to looking at the teams and riders you can expect to see building the major storylines of the 2012 season. Let’s get started with the 2012 Men of the Hour: Team BMC – After ...
Tuesdays with Wilcockson #2
Merckx on the Col d'Allos at the 1975 tour de France Grinta: the hidden ingredient of great racers The Italian word grinta has become so prevalent in cycling journalism that a Dutch-language magazine in Belgium chose Grinta for its title. Translated, it means grit, spunk, bravery, or endurance. And when European sportswriters use the word to describe an underdog’s performance in cycling’s Heroic Era of the early 20th century, they are likely thinking of all four of those nouns. They would certainly use grinta to describe how Eugène Christophe, when leading the 1913 Tour de France, broke his forks on the descent of ...
Tuesdays With Wilcockson #1
The typewriter … and other machines The French reporter was sweating profusely as he pushed the telephone into an acoustic coupler, one of those slow-speed, low-tech contraptions we used to transmit stories before sleek laptops and Wi-Fi were developed. He hit the “go” button over and over, but nothing was passing through the modem to his newspaper in Paris. It looked like his story on Jeannie Longo’s silver medal at the 1992 Olympics was going to miss its deadline. As he let forth a stream of “merde, alors” and “mon dieu”s, he tweaked the cables and forced the old-fashioned phone harder and ...
A Ride with Ritte
Ritte Racing's Spencer Canon has been on my radar ever since he started his blog. I didn't know who he was, but I knew he was one of mine. He had the knowledge of a lifer geek and a sense of humor that could rival BSNYC and Fat Cyclist. No easy task. I'd drop by the blog every now and then to get a laugh and then one day noticed, whoa, there are kits! There's a club? He's selling bikes? Spencer almost certainly doesn't describe the rise of Ritte this way, but in my view, he backed into a brand. When ...
Targeting the Market, Finding the Champions, Part II
Tom Danielson became a feared rider while contracted to Saturn. JP: When you look at the domestic peloton these days, what do you think about the health of the sponsorship scene? TS: Overall, cycling is healthy. Not racing, but cycling. The numbers are there for commuters, riders, racers. It's an aging demographic, but it works for lots of people. Most cyclists have no interest in racing. You don't need to be in racing to be a supporter of cycling. An advertiser can use a bike in their marketing without sponsoring racing. Racing leads to another layer of cycling which leads to people riding ...
Body
Friday Group Ride #101
If you had asked me where the Willunga Hill was five years ago, I’d have probably...
2012 Season Preview
At Pavé, I used to begin each season with a team-by-team rundown of what I considered...
Tuesdays with Wilcockson #2
Merckx on the Col d’Allos at the 1975 tour de France Grinta: the hidden ingredient...
Tuesdays With Wilcockson #1
The typewriter … and other machines The French reporter was sweating profusely...
A Ride with Ritte
Ritte Racing’s Spencer Canon has been on my radar ever since he started his...
Read More Posts From This CategoryMind
Friday Group Ride #102
January is a funny time of year for cyclists. Where July is all the same in the...
Baseball Cards
I bought my first pack of baseball cards when I was eight-years-old. It was 1979....
Tuesdays With Wilcockson #3
The blank slate When Red Kite Prayer founder Patrick Brady asked me if I would pen...
The Explainer: Father’s little helper
Is testosterone therapy the fountain of youth? If so, WWWD? (What Would WADA Do?) Charles, As...
SOPA & PIPA
I had planned for RKP to join the protest against SOPA and PIPA, but got...
Read More Posts From This CategoryMachine
Battle Royal: The Wrap-Up
Comparing anything in the bike industry is a dangerous business. There’s a long history of manufacturers expecting—and getting—reviews of just their equipment without having the results muddled up by any comparison to the work of a competitor. There’s also a history of pissed-off companies withholding ad dollars, not just in the bike... [Read more of this review]
Battle Royal, Part IV: SRAM Red
Had it not been for the entry of SRAM into the world of road component groups there would likely never have been a reason for me to do this series of posts. It’s their presence that makes this question interesting. How SRAM even came to offer a road group makes this conversation all the more interesting. After all, if you were a cyclist in the... [Read more of this review]
Hydraulics for Roadies
The Magura RT8TT Hoverboards. I can’t speak for every kid of the 80′s, but if there’s one future tech I was promised that science has truly failed me on, it’s the hoverboard. My bike sufficed—I could jump it off things and catch a little air while I waited for the hoverboard that my best friend’s older brother told me... [Read more of this review]
Battle Royal, Part III: Campagnolo Super-Record
Campagnolo wins. There, that’s one of the two acceptable conclusions it would seem most readers will accept as just. I’m willing to bet that for most readers the sentimental favorite, the group of components that if—for any reason, any reason at all—I fail to find Campagnolo’s Super Record group the absolute winner of this little... [Read more of this review]
Battle Royal, Part II: Shimano Dura-Ace
Let’s start with the 800-lb. gorilla: Dura-Ace. Shimano usurped Campagnolo’s position is the top dog in the OEM category on bikes even before Bill Clinton became a household name. The combination of smooth and simple operation plus high value made the Japanese manufacturer’s parts not just acceptable, but sought after. With the introduction of... [Read more of this review]
Battle Royal: Super Record vs. Dura-Ace vs. Red
When I’m out on the bike I get a lot of questions. Mostly they revolve around whatever the newest thing I’m riding, be it bike, clothing or what-have-you. What’s interesting is that the broader, more philosophical questions about equipment come late in a ride. They always have. After we’ve punched some tickets, gone cross-eyed and been... [Read more of this review]
Cervelo R3, Part II
The squoval tube shape takes some getting used to, at least, visually. My favorite bikes are of a piece. They’ve got sharp handling. They have enough stiffness in torsion that when I stand up at the foot of a short hill they yield the sense that not a watt is wasted in flex. They also impart a tactile sense of the road surface. That’s not to say... [Read more of this review]
Cervelo R3, Part I
The world changed when the bike industry moved to carbon fiber for fabricating most high-end bicycle frames. The shifts were myriad. Many of the bigger companies began employing engineers for the first time ever. Most of the bigger companies either started producing what was effectively their own tubing for the first time or had someone else produce... [Read more of this review]
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