Friday Group Ride #4 Wrap

And we thought that ugly jerseys were a thing of the past

Well, this was sort of a lay up, wasn’t it? What sort of a pessimist would say the coming season wasn’t going to be as good as last? Who could sell the future out so early in the year?

It’s curious to me that so many people, in stating that 2010 would be better, cited the coming Tour de France battle between Armstrong and Contador. Is it that the TdF is the biggest race of the year, and so, on some level, the single biggest arbiter of the season’s quality, or is it rather that this is the main Euro race people book time to sit down and watch?

Personally, I am really interested to see how the new super teams do, Sky, the Shack, BMC. They take to the battle alongside other fairly new squads like Cervelo Test Team and Katusha. I wonder if we’re not entering a new era, where sponsors with more global vision join the sport. For every behemoth like Sky that joins the fray, we seem to lose a quixotic contributor like Milram.

And how will today’s young superstars like Cavendish, Contador, Schleck, Boasson-Hagen, Martin, Nibali, et. al. plot their career paths? Will some of them follow the Armstrong/Bruyneel model, prepping and training for one big event each year, whether it’s the Tour or a single Classic? Or will they seek to flesh out their palmares a bit more, a la Merckx, Hinault, et. al.

So many questions. I guess this is what the weeks before the season begins are supposed to be like, full of frenzied anticipation. Or maybe I just need to drink less coffee.