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!)

All In A Good Cause...

Check this lot out: http://www.25years25counties.co.uk/.

These guys are doing between 75 and 85 miles a day for a week with some hills thrown in, and they're a mix of day cyclists and beginners. Just short of a century every day for a week. That's tough for a serious club rider, inconceivable to a dedicated potterer like me, and insanely challenging for these guys. You've got to be pretty brave just to set out on something like that. When they finish, they're not going to be able to walk for a day or sit comfortably for a week. And they're doing it all for Leukaemia and Lymphoma research. That's worthy of a donation, surely?

The ride is being organised by Dan Exelby, who suffered from Leukaemia as teenager and is celebrating  25 years since being given the all clear. Every time I read about it, it's this line from his Mum (former Tomorrow's World presenter Judith Hann) that gets me:

"Despite all my contacts in science and medicine, at the time I could not find any families who had a success story to tell about a teenager with leukaemia."

I can't even imagine what it must feel like to be told that your child has Leukaemia,but to have to cope with that knowledge without being able to find anything to give you hope, not one surviving teenager to make you think that possibly everything would be ok, I don't know how you do that. Again, I think it probably just comes down to immense bravery.

So basically what I'm saying is that there's a bunch of guys who have gone tap-tap-curly-wurly and are doing something wacky-brave in memory of when a family had to be stoic-brave. Again, worth a donation, surely?

http://www.justgiving.com/25years25counties

Hero of The Week: Ian Stannard

Seriously, he rode like a trooper in the atrocious weather at Milan-San Remo. When the finishing sprint comes, look at the state of Peter Sagan's legs, look at how slowly he winds up the power, he's got no strength left. That's from chasing Stannard's repeated attacks. Well, that and riding 300kM. Here we are, less than a week later, and who is it powering the breakaway at Dwaars door Vlandeeren? Ian Stannard again. Hard as nails and totally fucking relentless. It's like having Sean Yates back in the peloton, except without the earring, dodgy dye job and dubious acquaintances.

When is a race too tough?

I'm very fortunate to work from home. Most cycling fans find a way to watch the Classics and the Grand Tours, but it's a rare office that will let you put Eurosport on the telly mid-afternoon, so many of the smaller races get missed. Back when I was in an office, I really only saw the Tour and a few of the Monuments most years. I much prefer being able to organize my working day in  order down tools mid afternoon and watch stuff like this:

That's a climb, signposted as 30%, widely quoted as 27%, which they went over three times. Some riders got off and walked. Team cars were held back at times so they could tackle the hill at speed rather than burning out their clutches trying to move at the pace of the peloton. It destroyed the breakaway, strung out the pack, and eventually allowed for a race changing break to develop featuring Vincenzo Nibali, Peter Sagan and  Joaquim Rodriguez. It was probably the most dramatic day of racing so far this year. Funnily enough, race organiser Michele Acquarone pretty much instantly renounced it, saying, among other things:

"If you lose half your peloton, you just have to be honest and learn from mistake"

" If riders are not happy, fans are not happy and I'm not happy too. Sometimes it's not easy to find the right balance"

"I loved it too, but it's a matter of balance. Without balance you fall down. After Prati di Tivo and Chieti it was too much."

In fact, those quotes are from his Twitter feed and were addressed at fans and journalists while the race was still going on. Acquarone is a smart, likeable man who genuinely seems to have cycling's best interests at heart and has bravely wrenched the Giro d'Italia and it's sibling races away from the dead end pursuit of ever crueller climbs. If he wants to avoid stages like that, then it's fine by me.

Having said that, I do think that balance, as Acquarone says himself, is the key. Whenever there's a great big monster of a stage like this, fans go nuts for the spectacle of it all, riders complain that it's too much, and doomsayers announce that difficult stages are an incitement to doping.

I have to say, I look at Tirreno-Adriatico stage 6 and think of it as being akin to a Spring Classic. Three ascents of a hill that hits 27% is brutal, but think of the Tour of Flanders. Ok, the steepest hills in that top out at 22 to 24%, but there are a damn sight more than three of them. I seem to recall an edition not so long ago that had over 20 climbs in the last 50km, many of them breaking the 20% mark. No one says the Tour of Flanders is too much, or an incitement to doping. And why? Because it's not in the middle of a stage race.

Tirreno-Adriatico stage 6 wasn't a bad route, but it did come the day after the queen stage to Prato di Tivo. Had the route found a way to isolate the two stages from each other, they would have been acceptable. Ok, there would still have been some grumbling simply because Tirreno-Adriatico is stage race ridden by stage racers, who have a different skill set to you typical Flandrian hardman classics specialist who would normally specialise in terrain like we saw on stage 6. Bu the complaints wouldn't have been the angsty "we'll never do it again, we promise" display that we actually got. Of course, Tirreno will always struggle to separate stages like that from each other due to it's point-to-point nature. It's not like Tirreno can head East, East, East, then suddenly head West to create a break between mountains. It's got to go from the Tyrrhenian to the Adriatic coast, that's its raison d'etre. But the larger point, the point that applies to all races, still stands: tough days aren't the problem, it's lack of balance that causes trouble.

Take this year's impending double-ascent of Alpe D'Huez. No sooner was it announced than doomsayers were crying all over the internet that going up Alpe D'Huez twice in a stage was too much, that it would force the riders to dope. I'm not sure where all those PED-predictors have been in previous years, when Alpe D'Huez has been preceded by a run over the Col du Galibier. Do they think that's a speed bump? Again, peppering a race with hard stages isn't an incitement to doping, it's just a challenge for certain specialists to exploit, while others try to survive in order to exploit other parts of the parcours. That's part of the joy of stage racing, that hitting someone on the terrain or day that best suits you doesn't mean they won't strike back later on. Three mountainous days in the Pyrenees separated by a week and two rest days from three more mountainous days in the Alps isn't an excessivley brutal incitement to doping, it's a selection of opportunities for riders to attack and defend.

Of course, if you want to see race route that's left balance far, far behind and would have pretty much anyone reaching for the bags in the 'special fridge', then look no further than this year's Vuelta. It will feature 41 climbs including the awe-inspiring 28% slopes of the Alto del Angliru, split over 13 mountain stages. Yep, 13 of the 21 stages will be mountain stages. That, I'll admit, might be an inducement to dope. On the other hand, it might also be an inducement to defensive riding, survival tactics and a general agreement to keep things tranquilo until the final few Kms of each stage. It might turn out like 2011's Giro, where everyone was so afraid of what was to come that the first decisive attack pretty much won the race on stage 9 and left us with a loooong procession to stage 21 in Milan. Oh, and a lengthy court case, garbled rulings, reversals and the eventual stripping of the title from Alberto Contador. But that all came later. The point is, just because a race route is hard doesn't necessarily mean you're going to get a Tour De France 95-style fizzing drug fuelled battle in which even porky sprinters contest the race lead over the mountains. You might. But equally, you might just kill the race stone dead. I think it will probably say good things for cycling if this year's Vuelta is ridden defensively, but even if it does turn out to be a suspicious battle of the supermen, it won't be because a given stage was too hard, it will be because the race itself is deeply unbalanced.

Anyway, that's my rant in praise of brutal stages and opposing brutal stage races. In the meantime, here's the full TV coverage of the stage that inspired it: