By Guest Author • 16th May 2013 • Posted in Racing
Words by Bill Strickland | Photos by Jeremy Dunn
The Tour of California was born the same year as Twitter, a coincidence that happens to be significant because it illustrates how thoroughly and pervasively we have been able to follow the race. It comes to us, and always has, in high-definition streaming TiVo plasma podcast coverage, and in likes and pokes and gifs and bit-torrented vids and hi-res flickers, and an approximately infinite amount of blogs. The riders tell us themselves what they’re thinking right before a stage, and right after, and on the rest days they share the rest. We can know everything about the race, and always have and always will. It is the first great tour of the information age, so thoroughly tagged, tweeted, totaled, transmitted, tumbled, and televised that our collective appreciation of the race is built not on hoary fables but on verifiable facts. Had he been at the crest of Diablo, ten thousand hashtagged instant communiqués would have told us that, actually, Bahamontes hadn’t stopped specifically to get an ice cream but, rather, only because his spokes had broken. There’d have been plenty of six-second videos to prove it, too.
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By Jeremy Dunn • 14th May 2013 • Posted in Racing
Photos by Julie Krasniak
In temperatures that should simply be described as hot, the 2013 Amgen Tour of California rolled out of Escondido, California. The first start for the quaint Californian town, but the seventh year for America's cycling fans to come out in their droves to cheer on one of the biggest races on the calendar. As well as the racing action to satisfy any cycling fan's appetite, the Tour of California, as one of the world's more 'intimate' stage races, provides a few stories that surround the riders.
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By Simon Mottram • 10th May 2013 • Posted in Racing
This is year four of Rapha’s panache review, celebrating those rare acts of audacity, risk and flamboyance that get us jumping out of our seats and shouting at the screen. Almost halfway through the season and it’s time for a progress report. But I’ll start with some people who definitely won’t be getting a panache award:
• Peter Sagan has been devastating so far this year. His win at Gent-Wevelgem was the pick of the bunch, riding away from his escape partners before they could be caught by the peloton. But his panache on the bike has been undone by his complete absence of cool at key moments. Pinching a podium girl’s bottom was bad enough (the podium at bike races is a pretty panache-free zone, anyway) but Sagan's wheelie over the line was unforgivable and, for that, he forfeits a panache award.
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By Chris DiStefano • 4th May 2013 • Posted in Racing
Photography by Daniel Sharp
Mauro Mondonico has served as the driver for the Chief Commissaire of the Giro d'Italia since 2001. His family hails from Concorezzo, a small town on the outskirts of Milan, and it is a family passionate about bicycles and bicycle racing. His grandfather, Giuseppe, founded a bicycle manufacturing and repair shop in 1929 and, from day one, supplied frames to local racers. Giuseppe's son, Antonio, Mauro's father, took to the craft early and became renowned for fabricating racing frames. Upon the passing of Giuseppe, in 1973, Antonio worked with other builders, namely Gianni Motta and Ernesto Colnago, eventually reopening the family shop in 1979. Mauro, the third generation of Mondonico builders, came of age as a framebuilder in the late 1980s and early 1990s, building custom racing frame sets with his father and using many of his grandfather's tools.
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By Guest Author • 22nd February 2013 • Posted in Racing
Words and images: Inner Ring
The Spring Classics start this weekend with the double-header of the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad on Saturday, followed by Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne on Sunday. No more Arabian nights in five-star hotels or photo-ops with kangaroos – now it’s cobbles, narrow roads and wintry weather. There’s no gentle introduction here. Time for the hardmen to fight.
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