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PLEASE NOTE: The Reality TV World Message Boards are filled with desperate
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As entertainment critic Roger
Ebert once said, "If you disagree with something I write, tell me so, argue
with me, correct me--but don't tell me to shut up. That's not the American way."
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"Cycling 2013"
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AyaK 10126 desperate attention whore postings DAW Level: "Playboy Centerfold"
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05-14-13, 01:18 PM (EST)
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2. "Sponsorship" |
Of course, the big story in cycling this year has nothing to do with action on the roads. Since the Armstrong blast last year, sponsors have been fleeing cycling like rats from a sinking ship. ZZZZOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM, there they go. Bye, Nissan! Bye, Rabobank! Bye, RadioShack! Bye, DCM! Bye, Livestrong! Bye, all! Will the last one left please turn out the lights?If the powers-that-be wanted to destroy the sport, they couldn't have picked a more effective way of doing it. Looks like bike equipment manufacturers and BSkyB may be the only sponsors left at the end of the year.
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AyaK 10126 desperate attention whore postings DAW Level: "Playboy Centerfold"
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05-18-13, 05:45 PM (EST)
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5. "RE: Withdrawals" |
Agreed. Just when U.S. cycling was finally starting to take off, it's been struck deader than a doornail.
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AyaK 10126 desperate attention whore postings DAW Level: "Playboy Centerfold"
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05-20-13, 01:15 AM (EST)
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6. "Tejay wins; America yawns" |
American Tejay van Garderen won the Tour of California for the BMC team. Outside of the riders themselves and a few professionals who make their living covering cycling, no one cared. What a difference from last year.
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trigirl 2849 desperate attention whore postings DAW Level: "Howard Stern Show Guest"
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05-22-13, 11:13 PM (EST)
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9. "I am sad that the sport has suffered" |
I feel so sad that the general populace has associated cycling with lance with drugs. We have gotten over the Marion Jones, Ben Johnson and that Irish swimmer (remember her?). Watching a grand tour, you realize that cycling is an unbelievable display of endurance.In saying that.... It will be interesting to see how other sports respond. Look out Tennis, you are next. I have enjoyed this Giro. It has been a sufferfest! You have to follow @ukcyclingexpert on twitter for a cheeky view of professional cycling. Makes me smile.
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Starshine 4952 desperate attention whore postings DAW Level: "Stuff Magazine Centerfold"
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05-23-13, 03:52 AM (EST)
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10. "RE: I am sad that the sport has suffered" |
It isn't newI started watching Le Tour whilst Miguel Indurain was winning (early '90s), and there have been continual scandals since then, Big Mig blood doping, Bjarne Riis on EPO, Jan Ulrich involved in a number of doping scandals and later banned for doping, Narco Pantani, at last a colourful rider! Expelled from the Giro the year after be won the Tour for "health reasons" which some have interpreted as EPO, Lance..., Floyd Landis, the most amazing leg I have ever seen on the tour apparently assisted by testosterone, Victory given to the second place finisher Óscar Pereiro despite positive drug tests for Salbutamol (an asthma drug, It is alleged that the International Cycling Union gave Pereiro retroactive permission to use the substance on medical grounds after the positive tests.), Alberto Contador although cleared of charges has been found with banned substances in his blood, and was disqualified from the 2010 Tour which was then given to Andy Schleck who seems clean but his brother and teammate Frank has been caught doping. Which leaves us with Carlos Sastre, Cadel Evans, Bradley Wiggins and (probably) Andy Schleck as the only 100% clean unquestioned winners of the tour since 1991, 4 wins out of 22... (and it is possible that things may turn up on Evans, Wiggins, and Schleck in the future). So I still love watching the Tour despite all the scandals, and hope that as it gets cleaner that it will become even more exciting!
It will be interesting to see if Tennis will put itself through the pain of getting itself drug free. I used to work with a chap who had been a minor team domestique in the early 90's he denied doping himself but said that he thought that everyone in the big teams did.
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AyaK 10126 desperate attention whore postings DAW Level: "Playboy Centerfold"
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05-29-13, 07:02 PM (EST)
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11. "RE: I am sad that the sport has suffered" |
Yeah, there is no question that Indurain represented the first of the "new wave" of cycling druggies -- better living through chemistry, indeed. There had been drugs in cycling since the 1950s, but EPO was the first drug that made a day-after-day difference to the rider. When Indurain came in, the first US renaissance in cycling ended, because American riders of the time did not dope. It only changed when American riders adopted European doping protocols to put everyone back on the same level again. Let's give Carlos Sastre credit: Sastre winning the Tour in 2008 (with Contador banned) convinced Lance that a clean rider could win the Tour after the crackdown on doping, and Lance wanted to give competing clean a try, which is why he came back with Astana and then RadioShack (and we've discussed this before). Astana under Bruyneel in 2008-09 was a no-doping team, but it's impossible to believe that Contador wasn't doping anyway during the 2009 Tour, especially after he blew away Superman (Cancellara) in the last time trial. I'm completely certain that Jim Ochowicz wouldn't lead a team of dopers -- which is why he folded the 7-Eleven/Motorola team in the first place in 1996 -- so I have little doubt that Cadel Evans was riding clean when he won. I at least want to believe that the same was true of Wiggins and Andy Schleck.
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AyaK 10126 desperate attention whore postings DAW Level: "Playboy Centerfold"
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07-10-13, 07:42 PM (EST)
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14. "Tour de France" |
After the first time trial today, the TdF looks like Sky's British/Kenyan/South African rider Chris Froome in a walkover, finally giving him the Grand Tour victory that he should have had in the 2011 Vuelta (but didn't win because he had to support Bradley Wiggins). He could win by a "Lance Armstrong 1999" margin.
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aethelstan 4355 desperate attention whore postings DAW Level: "Jerry Springer Show Guest"
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07-12-13, 11:22 AM (EST)
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16. "RE: Tour de France" |
Today was certainly one of the most interesting flat stages I've ever followed. It's like the peloton decided it was doing the breakaway. Froome lost 1 minute to Contador but it will still come down to the mountains and Froome should have no trouble there. Tomorrow they are in the foothills. Did anyone expend too much energy on this flat stage that they'll be hurting in two days up the Mont Ventoux? I'm guessing that is why Froome didn't worry too much about Contador and others cutting a minute into his lead.
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AyaK 10126 desperate attention whore postings DAW Level: "Playboy Centerfold"
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07-19-13, 09:59 PM (EST)
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21. "Through stage 19" |
LAST EDITED ON 07-19-13 AT 09:59 PM (EST)Froome narrowly won the time trial on stage 17 for his third stage win. Then be bonked when almost through with the second climb of L'Alpe-d'Huez and needed Richie Porte to lead him to the finish line, which cost him the stage win. On stage 19, Froome finished in a group with all the top contenders -- after they let a 40+ break group go on the Glandon, which produced all the top finishers in the stage. However, the announcers discussed him as if he'd bonked again, which he most definitely had not done. Nevertheless, Froome takes over a 5-minute lead into Stage 20 and still also has the lead (by 1 point) for the KOM jersey (which I think he can win by winning the finishing climb on stage 20 up to Annecy-Semnoz). Although it isn't an Armstrong-1999 lead (over 9 minutes), it's as big of a lead as we've ever seen in a Tour where all the top challengers competed. It amazes me that Froome unknowingly suffered from schistosomiasis (caused by the bilharzia parasite, which is carried by infected water) contracted during his youth in Kenya until he first received treatment in 2010 -- and he still qualified for the 2008 Beijing Olympics despite that (but the Kenyans wouldn't release him to compete for Britain). He still takes medication and has checkups every six months because the bilharzia parasite is still present in his system.
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trigirl 2849 desperate attention whore postings DAW Level: "Howard Stern Show Guest"
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08-19-13, 05:29 PM (EST)
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24. "Transfers" |
So far the biggest news seems to be that Jens Voigt is NOT going to retire and come back for one more season. They guy is 41 years old. Man!I think Rigoberto Uran to Omega Pharma seems like a fairly big move. Going to have be about more than Cav? Peter Stetina leaving Garmin after being there from the beginning. Chavanel and Kloden going to IAM. What is going to happen to all the Euskatel boys? Also of note, my secret boyfriend CVdV is retiring this year. <sob>. Transfer List
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AyaK 10126 desperate attention whore postings DAW Level: "Playboy Centerfold"
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08-20-13, 03:57 PM (EST)
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26. "UCI battle" |
...so the focus of cycling outsiders has become the "Blame Lance" campaign.Brian Cookson, head of British Cycling, is running for head of UCI on a campaign that blames current UCI head Pat McQuaid for not having done enough to catch Armstrong. In particular, he's focusing on the $100,000 donation that Armstrong gave to UCI, claiming that UCI was compromised by accepting that donation. Cookson is a nut. But he may win.
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AyaK 10126 desperate attention whore postings DAW Level: "Playboy Centerfold"
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08-31-13, 04:36 PM (EST)
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27. "Vuelta" |
Dead, even though American Chris Horner (riding for the soon-to-be-defunct RadioShack-Trek team) is running second behind popular Irishman Nicholas Roche (son of former TdF winner Stephen Roche) after the first week.Anyone know who won the Tour of Utah? Or the USA Pro Cycling Challenge? Did any ProTeams compete? Well, the answer is that American Tom Danielsen of Garmin-Sharp beat Horner in the last stage (now Stage 6, two stages less than last year) to win the Tour of Utah. Five ProTeams, all of which ride North American-made bikes (Orica-GREENEDGE (Scott bikes), BMC, Garmin-Sharp (Cervelo), Cannondale, and RadioShack-Trek) competed. And Tejay van Garderen of BMC beat Danielsen to win the USA Pro Cycling Challenge. Seven ProTeams (dropping Orica-GREENEDGE and adding Argo-Shimano (Felt bikes), Saxo-Tinkoff (Specialized bikes) and Sky (the one ProTour team competing that didn't use American bikes, riding Pinarello (Italy)) competed there. But who cares? Thanks to the Armstrong publicity, cycling is deader than dead. It's hard not to blame Garmin-Sharp for this mess.
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AyaK 10126 desperate attention whore postings DAW Level: "Playboy Centerfold"
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09-03-13, 03:42 PM (EST)
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28. "RE: Vuelta" |
LAST EDITED ON 09-03-13 AT 03:43 PM (EST)At the halfway point (the rest day after stage 10), 41-year-old American Chris Horner is in the lead in the Vuelta by 43 seconds over Vincenzo Nibali, with Nicholas Roche having fallen back to third. Looks like RadioShack-Trek might win its last Grand Tour and then fade away. Does anybody in the U.S. even care any longer? The only cycling story I saw all weekend was about the release of the Lance Armstrong documentary "The Armstrong Lie". http://variety.com/2013/film/reviews/the-armstrong-lie-review-venice-1200596005/
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AyaK 10126 desperate attention whore postings DAW Level: "Playboy Centerfold"
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09-09-13, 07:52 PM (EST)
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31. "RE: Vuelta" |
LAST EDITED ON 09-09-13 AT 07:53 PM (EST)Horner never rode in a Grand Tour until he was 33, when he joined Saunier-Duval and qualified for the 2005 Tour. When he first rode, he received a lot of press for saying that Armstrong's teams couldn't stay together the way they did unless there was doping going on. In fact, I always figured that the reason Bruyneel brought Horner to Astana was that he wanted to associate his teams with a person who had a reputation for being clean, because he was going to be clean from now on. So, no, I don't believe that Horner is doping now, especially when his career was (according to the rumors of the time) set back by his refusal to dope when he was younger. (By the way, that's one of the reasons that I've always believed that the charges of Lance doping after he came back were bunk -- because my assumption was that, when he saw that Horner and Leipheimer could be competitive when clean, he thought he probably could be, too.) As far as the "squealing" charges, I haven't seen anything about that and don't believe 95% of what I see on Twitter. But my nasty comments about Garmin-Sharp are actually in the same vein. See, Jonathan Vaughters decided, apparently pretty much on his own, that he was going to confirm the story of doping from his time with USPS and was going to require his riders who were former USPS riders to tell the truth as well. He also told his ex-teammates such as Lance, Levi and George that he was doing so, which was a big reason why Levi and George gave statements to the investigators. Vaughters thought that, since cycling had moved beyond doping, telling the truth about what had happened in the past would be the best way to move forward. He was wrong. Instead of creating a new era of openness, which Vaughters thought would happen, he embroiled the sport in a welter of recriminations and suspicions that has pretty much killed it. Part of that was due to the fact that, outside of the USPS people, everyone else was keeping quiet -- so, even though it seems safe for those of us familiar with the sport to say that, going back to the 1950s at least until Operation Puerto, no one who wasn't doping won a major stage race, there is not any such acknowledgement of that from the cycling powers-that-be . . . and there won't be, after seeing the untold damage that the Lance reports did to the sport. Instead, what happened was that USPS was publicly portrayed as some sort of rogue program that uniquely violated the rules that everyone else followed. Hogwash -- but that's the view of the public. Sponsors, meanwhile, just see a perhaps-irreparably damaged brand and flee. As a person trying to line up sponsors, Vaughters knows perfectly well what the fallout of the Lance investigation was. His original attempt to limit the fallout was to find a way to keep Lance in the sport, but that failed because of the overwhelming anti-Lance backlash, both from people who hated Lance for being a prick (which he was) and from people who hated him for being successful (which was little more than either jealousy or the desire to cut him down to size). At the same time, the double-barreled backlash (both from people who hate them for being part of Lance's "circle of corruption" and from others who hate them for breaking the cycling vow of omerta) has driven both Leipheimer and Hincapie largely out of the sport. Leipheimer, for one, hadn't intended to retire, but he couldn't find any team that would take him for this season. If I were Vaughters, I wouldn't want to talk much either.
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AyaK 10126 desperate attention whore postings DAW Level: "Playboy Centerfold"
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09-14-13, 06:23 PM (EST)
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33. "Horner for the win!" |
Who would have thought that the first American to win the Vuelta would be Chris Horner riding for the FORMERLY American RadioShack-Nissan-Trek team, even though RadioShack and Nissan have disassociated themselves from the team?At least RadioShack and Nissan can say that they got a Grand Tour for their money. Horner made up all but a few seconds on Vicenzo Nibali on stage 18. On stage 19, Horner gained 6 seconds and took a 3-second lead into sage 20, which closed with the make-or-break climb of L'Angliru, one of the toughest climbs in the Grand Tours, with an overall grade above 10% and a significant section above 23%. And Horner finished second on the stage, 26 seconds behind Kenny Elissonde from FDJ (who was part of the break on the day, which got out to a huge lead before disintegrating at the end) ... but 28 seconds ahead of Nibali, giving him (with the time bonus) a total 37-second lead. Proving teammates may be overrated, Horner was unsupported on the climb, while Nibali went into it with two Astana teammates. Astana attacked relentlessly. It didn't work.
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AyaK 10126 desperate attention whore postings DAW Level: "Playboy Centerfold"
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09-10-13, 06:48 PM (EST)
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32. "RE: Documentary: The Armstrong Lie" |
Did you get to see it?
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trigirl 2849 desperate attention whore postings DAW Level: "Howard Stern Show Guest"
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09-23-13, 12:25 PM (EST)
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35. "RE: Documentary: The Armstrong Lie" |
No. Darn RL getting in the way. Got a lot of press here though. Hope it comes back to the HotDocs film fest.
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