I Just Can't Leave It Alone.

This post is gonna be a bit different than the others. Because this time I'm gonna talk about one of my favorite sports: Cycling. The reason is that this years Giro d'Italia is coming to an end with the right winner but surrounded by riders, teams and episodes that are all impossible.


First off I can't explain why I like cycling so much. Cycling is something everybody can and do at some point in their lives. But there is something about seeing men race across mountains with up to a 25% climb and in sprints with 60 plus kilometers an hour that is so fascinating. As long as I can remember I have spent my entire July watching the Tour de France with my dad and one of the earliest memories I have of anything is watching Bjarne Riis win the 1996 Tour de France. I can remember how a danish singer/songwriter named Anne-Dorte Michelsen sang a song about him and Denmark was in a state of euphoria. And from that moment on I have been hooked on cycling. It's a sport I don't follow all year but during the grand Tours and some of the Classics it's more important than anything to me. There has been one rule I have followed almost my entire life as a cycling fan: What Bjarne does and says goes. Bjarne Riis is to me one of the greatest sports names to ever come from Denmark. he did something nobody had ever done before and he beat the machine; Miguel Indurain. He later admitted he had used doping and that leads us to the next part.


To me Doping in cycling is not important. I don't care if they us it or not. The reason why is that it takes so much talent and skill to ride that fast, Hard and skilled for so long that I just want to see some good action. But it should be equal to all. They should use the same drugs and at the same levels. So when Bjarne admitted he had used doping during the 90's I didn't give a fuck. he was still the best of the bunch that year, and that was a year where everybody was doped out of their minds.

I have always had favorites in the peloton. The first rider i really adored was the Australian sprinter Robbie McEwen. He was an artist on a bike and was a fierce rider who did't back down from anyone. He was very charismatic and won the green jersey in the Tour de France 3 times in the early 00's. Then came along the greatest bike rider of all time: Fabian Cancellara. When i spotted him on the Italian team Fassa Bortolo in 2004 I saw something special and the something turned out to be the most complete rider I have ever seen. He was the best Time Trialist ever. You can throw them all out and say Tony Martin a or David Miller, but when Fabian was best there wasn't anybody any better. His triumph at the world championships in 2009 was insane. He steamrolled everybody and when he destroyed all the other favorites in the 2010 Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix was out of this world. Later on I have gotten a more broad view of the riders and have gotten a lot of love for the old man Alessandro Petacchi and his sprint train on Fassa Bortolo. I have never seen anything like it ever since. He was unbeatable in 2003 and 2004. But through the years the riders on Bjarne Riis' team has had a star in my book. But in 2011 when he signed Alberto Contador it was really special.

Contador is the biggest Grand Tour talent to ever walk this earth. He can do it all. has the power, the technique, can ride downhill, has some brutal accelerations up hill and has the toughest mental mind I have ever seen. He is the only man to beat Lance Armstrong at his own game. You could see it in him when he was a young guy riding for Liberty Seguros that he had something in him nobody els had.And then came the 2007 Tour de France. This is hands down the best cycling race ever. Fabian destroyed everybody in the streets of London and won another stage later on. McEwen won a stage and MIchael Rasmussen was leading the race and had a fierce fight with Contador in the mountains. It ended a catastrophic and all but the cycling was epic. Contador ended up winning the Tour and now has a total of 9 grand tours (though where remove duy to the UCI being as dumb as ever and having no concept of what clenbuterol does to the body). But if I have learned something from cycling it is that you can't dig yourself up from a pit, and you can't appear from thin air.

In 2008 Stefan Schumacher, normally a one-day-race rider with decent skill, started beating everybody in the time trails in the Tour de France. He had never done anything like that before and he rode like a mad man in breakaways. He rode for the Gerolsteiner team and his teammate Bernard Kohl was suddenly the king of the mountains. Nobody new the young Austrian before but suddenly he was the best climber of them all. The young Italianstar Riccardo Rico, who rode on Saunier Duval, had won a stage like he had done in the Giro, it was an uphill sprint finish, but some days later he took of and left everybody behind on a mountain stage. His teammate Leonardo Piepoli was winning stages like he did back in 2006 in the Giro d' Italia. He hadn't been this active in the Tour since 1996 and was suddenly back.in 2007 Alexander Vinokourov had crashed and lost time the intire race but killed all the competition in the first time trial. He then lost even more time and won yet another stage. All the riders mentioned above got busted in drug testes either during or after the Tour de France. And now all of this is happening again.

One of the riders I hate the most all time is Chris Froome. in 2011 saw hime jump out right at you with a second over-all finish and then suddenly he was better then everybody els at everything. He started out racing for Kenya, where he was born, and my god was he terrible. Froome has no tactical abilities, he has no technique at all, looks like an idiot when he's on a bike and is a prick through and through. He came from nowhere and is suddenly the "best" of the best. During last years Giro d'Italia Fabio Aru was the best rider only second to Nairo Quintana. Nobody new him but here he was, riding like Pantani all over again. Two years ago a wave of Columbians rolled through the cycling world. They had a form peak that stretched more then 2 months.Quintana rode like an idiot in the Vuelta 2011 and looked like he wasn't sure how a bike worked and 'puff' then he could beat Tony Martin in Time Trails. Carlos Betancur won almost every race he entered from February until June in 2013, when he was useless for his team Aqua & Sapone the year before. During this years Giro d'Italia Team Astana could have won the race with 7 different riders on the team. They were all better then anybody thought and rode everybody to bits until Mikel Landa, a guy I hadn't heard of until a week before the Giro was the best climber ever. I have never seen him race before the Giro but he was better then Contador and Aru combined in the mountains. And I could go on and on forever!

Cycling today is a sport that needs cleaning. Somebody's cheating so much it isn't funny anymore. Team Sky turns crabby riders and second grade talent into stars daily and team Astana could win every race of the year with their squad of nobodies. Talent or hard work makes a good rider. Not the blink of a eye or a change of team colors. UCI needs to stop fucking around and turn it around or els the sports is gonna ruin itself in guys like Aru and Froome, who cheat so obvious it just looks pathetic.




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