Missing Races and Missing the Point

There was bad news from Australia as Sky's Chris Sutton had to withdraw from the Tour Down Under following his crash on the Peoples' Choice Classic the other day. He will be replaced by Nathan Earle on the Sky squad for the race proper. Other early season casualties include Thomas Voekler and Giovanni Visconti who broke his leg and had to undergo surgery. With bush fires having been putting the race at risk as well it's been a busy opener to the World Tour season.

In other news looking forward to the season Quintana has said he will not defend his second place finish on the Tour de France, focussing instead on the Giro d'Italia and Vuelta a Espana which are, afterall, more classically climbers' races. Does that leave things clear for yet another Sky win, with Froome and Wiggins appearing to be playing nicely.

I like to keep things balanced by looking at both ends of the scale of the sport, and so I'm including this bit of “comedy” from Philadelphia.. Actually this annoyed me for reasons that went beyond the fact that it's not really that funny. It irritates me, of course, when people use their lack of knowledge about something to make the thing itself seem stupid. For example in this bit of “wit” she moans that “steerer” should not ever be an adjective, when in fact “steerer tube” is an excellently simple way to identify the part of the bike, and that would make the words together some sort of a noun, wouldn't it? More to the point, she moans about the new bike she has and longs for a simpler time when she could use dubious coaster brakes and ignore two of her three gears on a bike that has a comfortable saddle and handlebars that reach out to her. These bikes still exist and I fail to see why her (or the friend who got her the bike) wouldn't have got her one of those as it's clearly what she needs, rather than the more racy model she has.

It's not cycling or bikes that have changed, she just got the wrong one. You wouldn't buy an Italian sports car and then moan about how you can't get your three kids and enough stuff for a week away camping into it, would you? My suggestion is that she either appreciates what she has, or uses some of the fee she got for writing this bit of lazy journalism to buy a bike she actually wants and will use. And, yes, I am aware that this in itself could be seen as lazy writing, but that's the internet for you.

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