Soon...soon...

This year's banner proceeds apace. Unlike last year's reversible "Allez Wiggo/Super Super Cav" effort, this year we're going with a single-sided Cav banner, a fact which has nothing to do with various intractable positions being taken on whether side two should be in support of Evans or treacherous, treacherous Fwooomie. Honest.

Froome vs Contador, and other Tour de France Contenders

During yesterday's  Tour de France coverage I was relieved to hear Matt Rendell talking about the benefits Chris Froome will have received by riding for Bradley Wiggins. I've been saying for ages that the high placings Froome achieved in the 2011 Vuelta and 2012 Tour had almost as much to do with Wiggo's brains as Froome's legs.

I summed up my feelings on Wiggins and Froome's respective skills in this post and while I'll admit that Froome has changed and evolved since then, I still think he owes a lot of that evolution to Wiggo.

The ability to ride a clever, savvy race could be vital in the next three weeks. At present, it looks like Froome has the form of his life, while Contador has shown no form at all this year. You can discuss the possible reasons for his loss of form somewhere else, preferably somewhere with less stringent libel laws. Nevertheless, I wouldn't put it past him to have a resurgence: this is the chap who left the beach to win the 2008 Giro on a week's notice. When his form finally comes in, it comes in fast. If Contador finds his legs, there's much less to separate him from Froome physically, and it could come down to who has the better racing brain.

Once upon a time, the only small weakness Contador ever showed was in his race awareness. An on-form Contador climbs and timetrials like a world beater and occasional poor positioning was the only chink in his armour. He was caught behind a crash at the 2011 Tour and caught out by crosswinds in the 2009 Tour, neither of which should have happened if he'd been thinking about his positioning. (I'll admit, it's not as if being stuck in a distant echelon cost him the race in 2009.)

Froome, similarly, has been prone to misreading races, or just plain not thinking about what he's doing. Prior to 2011 he had a reputation for sitting at the back of groups he should have been at the front of, or for burning energy on fruitless early attacks. Then there's the story from his early days in Kenya, where he supposedly rode 50Km to take part in a 250Km race and wondered why he didn't have enough in the tank to compete. Or that moment in the 2011 Vuelta when the entire peloton was bemused to see him frantically attacking off the front in an attempt to secure the bonification at an intermediate sprint. Unfortunately, the intermediate sprint was a whole kilometre further up the road than Froome had thought.

The fact is, these are two guys who've traditionally let legs, lungs and strong attacking instincts do all the work for them. (As I type this, Chris Froome has just attacked on the descent into Ajaccio on Stage 2!)

If Contador recovered enough form for them to be physically matched, which would have the racing brain to make the difference? Froome has shown a little cunning on a couple of occasions this season, skipping turns and feigning tiredness before attacking his rivals from behind, most notably here at the Tour of Oman. Thing is, it does seem to be his only trick, and he's used it twice this year already.

Contador, on the other hand, spent all of the 2012 Vuelta being unable to beat a rampaging Joaquim Rodriguez on their traditional, late-stage, steep battlegrounds, before doing the unexpected and attacking instead on a medium mountain day, ridiculously early in the stage, when Rodriguez wasn't looking. In the process, he stole the race right out from under a stronger rider. If, and it's a very big if, Contador gets his legs back for this Tour, I reckon he'd be smart enough to nick it off Froome.

I sort of hope it does happen. Don't get me wrong, I've stopped holding a grudge against Froome for last year's "Fwooomie-gate", but that doesn't mean I want to see another Tour in which a dominant rider goes almost unchallenged to the victory.

If I'm entirely honest, I'd really like to see Cadel Evans win it. His transformation from petulant nearly-man to engaging, gutsy and aggressive World Champ and Tour winner has been one of the most enjoyable parts of being a cycling fan in recent years, and I'd love to see him reap further rewards. Similarly, I'd love to see the huge amount of excitement Rodriguez has generated over the last few years actually net him the top step on a grand tour podium for once. Sadly, I don't think it's particularly likely - the Tour gets ridden so much faster and harder than other GTs that riders who've seemed to be defying the aging process in other races can suddenly look old overnight. I fear that Evans and Purito can hope for a podium spot at best.

That means that our best hope for an actual GC battle in this Tour comes from Contador rediscovering his legs and then matching wits with Froome. I hope that happens, and if it does, I'll happily cheer for Froome.

London to Oxford Bike Ride for St Mungo's

http://www.justgiving.com/Jamie-Ewbank

I'm doing the London to Oxford bike ride in aid of St Mungo's, a charity that helps homeless people, and I've been trying my utmost to train every day. "Train?" I hear you ask, incredulously, "For a sixty miler? Why?" But I'm doing the ride with a couple of guys who are competitive athletes rather than laidback pootlers like me. Last time I went for a ride with them, I spent the last half of the ride hanging 100 yards behind them working like a dog to keep them in sight. The distance may not be too scary, but I've a suspicion it's going to be ridden harder than I'm comfortable with.

In any case, once it's over I should get some nice posts out of it on the training process, my discovery of "ileotibial pain", the ride itself and a little something I'm thinking of as "A Tale of Six Pedals" which will hopefully be amusing to anyone who has ever struggled with the switch to clipless. In the meantime, however, I'm hoping that some of you might tear yourself away from the Sensa Umbria Tiagra review that brings in most of this blog's traffic in order to sponsor me, please:

http://www.justgiving.com/Jamie-Ewbank

Half The Road: Help Crowdfund A Documentary on Women's Cycling

As usual, Blogger is being irritatingly picky about what it will or won't embed, but what you should hopefully be seeing below is a promo for Half The Road, a documentary about women's cycling that's currently seeking funding via Indiegogo. Follow the link and you'll see a trailer for the film, which features the likes of Emma Pooley, Marianne Vos, Kirsten Armstrong and Connie Carpenter. If Blogger is still being rubbish, you can watch the video here: Half The Road.

Judging by the trailer, the documentary will consist of professional cyclists being mean to Pat McQuaid, something which I will happily pay good money to watch, so it's got to be worth a pledge, eh?

Ned Boulting On The Road Bike Review

"I was speaking at a dinner in the winter, talking about his 2003 prologue, and my memories of the drama of my first ever day reporting on the Tour de France. David Millar sat to my right, as I spoke, and quite suddenly interrupted me, mid-sentence. 

'I was doping, Ned.'

It rather took the wind out of my sails."

There's something missing from that extract from Ned Boulting's latest book, On The Road Bike, that will infuriate purists, but sums up why the rest of us enjoy him so much. There's nothing to indicate when it took place. It comes at the end of a two-page spread that includes up-to-date interviews alongside recollections of past conversations.

Taken as read, it could suggest that in 2003 Ned Boulting had a scoop that the rest of cycling journalism wouldn't get for another year. It comes as part of a chapter which is typical of all three of Boulting's books on cycling: it's written to be conversational. In fact, it reads best if you imagine it in Ned's voice, with his characteristic pauses and deadpan delivery. Like conversation, it tumbles out in a slightly chaotic fashion. Each word summons up further recollections that have to be bolted into the emerging sentence on-the-fly.That's how you end up with a chapter that bounces around between up-to-date interviews with Avril and David Millar and recollections of past confessions, with very little signposting as to where the revelations fit in to the overall picture.

It isn't a cycling almanac. The point for Boulting isn't to present a detailed timeline of events, it's to show how different elements come together to influence the way we feel about British cycling and its stars. If you're going to be bothered by the occasional hint of vagueness in the chronology or an odd mis-remembered date, then you'll probably want to give On The Road Bike a miss, but that would be a shame, as it's a wonderful book precisely because of these little headlong tumbles over the fine details.

Have you ever had a conversation with someone and been surprised to discover how much you had in common? One where every sentence is fuelled by your enthusiasm to find out what other coincidences you share? For a British cycling fan, this book is one side of that runaway conversation.

Inspired by a British Cycling Hall of Fame dinner at the Manchester Velodrome, Boulting sets out to visit and interview the touchstones of British cycling, the people and places that underpin the sport in this country, and in the process discovers that they're not only heavily interconnected, but also how plugged into the rest of cycling they are. Not only is it a book in which practically every interviewee has ridden with, worked with or argued with at least half the others, but most of them have crossed the path of everyday cyclists as well.

Nearly twenty years ago, I bought the Purple Peril from Maurice Burton at De Ver cycles. Maurice and De Ver get a chapter. De Ver sponsors Herne Hill Velodrome, where I've ridden a couple of times. Mick Bennett gets a mention, as do Hugh Porter, the Bec Hill Climb, Sportives and Chris Boardman's attendance at trade shows. Even an utterly average cyclist like me found a familiar event, fondly remembered location or a person whose hand I'd shaken on almost every page. For more dedicated cyclists, it must feel like Boulting has authored  their own personal scrapbook. Every page provokes an "I've met him" or an "I was there too" or at the very least a "yes, my eyes have popped on a big hill as well".

Like his previous books, On The Road Bike hops around with too much enthusiasm to be contained by even the barest attempt at a structure. Where Yellow Jumper's Lewisham Hospital interludes attempted to provide at least one thread that was moving chronologically from which all the other chapters could hang, On The Road Bike, like a good ride, goes where it pleases. On the way it provides a potted history of cycling in this country that often shines a new light on familiar tales or reveals connections that had previously gone unnoticed. Unsurprisingly for a Ned Boulting book, it will make you laugh, but more unexpectedly, it can be very moving as well. Maurice Burton's poor treatment in Belgium and Ned and Mick Bennett welling up at the crowds of cheering fans lining the route of the Tour of Britain are just two of the many anecdotes that will make most readers pause to reflect on where cycling has been and where it's going.

Far from exhaustive and enlivened by its scattergun approach, On The Road Bike ends up feeling almost like a collection of blog posts, a selection of short writings on the subjects that most enthuse the author, rather than a meticulous point-to-point slog through the sport. It has a similar feel to both How I Won The Yellow Jumper and How Cav Won The Green Jersey, much lighter and chattier than, say, The Cycling Anthology (the second edition of which is out later this month and includes a contribution from Boulting). It's particularly nice to read a book about cycling by a man whose tone is that of a bemused outsider despite having the insights of an experienced insider.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/On-Road-Bike-Nations-Cycling/dp/0224092081/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369134604&sr=8-1&keywords=on+the+road+bike

Oops...

Perhaps the most predictable blog post of all is the one where the blogger returns after several quiet weeks and writes a post about having been too busy to post. This is my version of that. Over the last few weeks I've started and abandoned a Giro preview, a piece about the Wiggo/Froome rivalry and a piece on Sagan's creepy arse-pinching, none of which have been finished before the events they were related to became old news.

On the other hand, there's plenty of stuff I have finished lately, it's just that most of it is to do with cameras, camcorders or indie film-making, and therefore has no place on this blog. I say most of it, as there is one piece of cycling-related work I've finished recently, a little wander over old ground that you can read here.

I'll be back with something fresh and relevant soon. Or perhaps I'll just add some long-term details to the Sensa Umbria review, as that's what brings in all the traffic these days!

A Passing Thought...

I hate myself for it, but I must admit, there are occasionally times when I miss the era of ridiculous, drug-fuelled performances in cycling. My memories of Riis on Hautacam, of Pantani's in-the-drops attacks, of Jalabert building up nearly 11 minutes lead and still having almost half of it by the summit of Mende, they all seem so much more exciting than the current trend towards a short sharp burst in the final 2 or 3km of a mountain climb.

Today, however, I watched Fleche-Wallone and got to see a well-drilled chase from BMC, an attack from Carlos Betancur, a chase by Philip Gilbert, Peter Sagan, Joaquim Rodriguez, Sergio Henao and Daniel Moreno. I saw Gilbert drop Sagan, J-Rod fall back, and Moreno and Henao come over the top of Gilbert and Betancur. Ok, it was all pretty last minute, but it was lively.

Fleche-Wallone is the race where cycling fans first got wind of something seriously wrong in cycling. It was the race where doping went from being a way for bottle-carriers to survive races to a way for middling-to-top level riders to boost themselves to untouchable levels. For some reason none of the embed codes are working, but the link below has the pivotal moment for cycling, when four riders from a team tended by Dr Michele Ferrari just ride off the front, and three of them go on to hold off the might of a chasing peloton. And you know what? Compared to yesterday's Fleche Wallone, it's boring. What a relief.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=D3rZphEtzSM

(Edit: Yes, I know it jumps from "Today's Fleche Wallone" to "Yesterday's Fleche Wallone", that's how long I've been trying to get the video to embed!)