With less than a month until the start of the most famous cycling race in the world, there is one question on the minds and lips of every enthusiast: who’s next? Yes, who’s going to be the next big name to get involved in a doping scandal. Sure they’ve done everything possible to clean up the sport (or so they say) but that doesn’t mean that we’re all not still waiting for the next shoe to drop. So here goes: make your suggestions in the comments section of this post and, although we really (and naively) hope that nothing will happen, we’ll see who’s right…
By the way, does anyone know where I can get this video game?
Here, thanks to a bike obsessed Australian, we have 2 minutes and thirty-five seconds of detailed examination of a Bottecchia Top Sprinter BS200 with a Campagnolo Xenon group and lots of el-cheapo Bottecchia branded components. With its groovy hydro-forming and ace puzzle piece paint job, this bike is sure to impress under informed shoppers as an example of cutting edge Italian design (a term that has become synonymous with outsourcing).
To be fair, although this is something I rarely do, this bike is a cut above your base model Bottecchia BS 100 – the bike with the black paint intended to look like carbon fibre from a great distance. The puzzle paint scheme is kind of nearly attractive, although the whole package is let down by the hopeless looking wheels.
Bottecchia’s marketing team, keen to emphasize the Italian heritage of such imported high markup items, will be glad to see that the You Tube poster has included their pride and joy in a series of equivalent products from the company’s competitors – products like the De rosa Idol, the Pinarello Prince, and most of the current Colnago range…
Be amazed as super cool Italians proudly demonstrate the performance of their Bottecchia city-bike. It pedals, it goes around in a circle, and it stops. Fantastico!
Now that the Giro has finished for another year, with the victory of Alberto Contador, the race’s management has been celebrating what they believe to have been a massive success. There were a series of spectacular mountain stages, high ratings on tv, and above all no doping cases. Well, except for Ariel Maximiliano Richeze, the Argentinian sprinter for super team CSF-Navigare who failed a test three weeks before the start of the Giro.
Although the squad had to start a man short, CSF-Navigare went on to massive success all the same. The clean team pulled off four big stage wins, including three of the mountain stages with Emanuele Sella. There is no doubt that Richeze’s erstwhile teammates were the surprise of the year. All of the drug-free riders for CSF-Navigare pulled off some spectacular feats in the mountains and were involved in most of the big breakaways. Fantastic.
The star system
The Italian press, always on the lookout for startling feats of heroism and courage, jumped on the Sella bandwagon en masse. Since the decline and subsequent death of Marco Pantani, an icon still mourned with numerous banners along the roads of the Giro, the local cycling journalists have been keen to grasp on to a new star to keep the tifosi interested in the sport. I’ve been told that the circulation of the specialist cycling magazines collapsed after the doubts began about Pantani.
The problem, of course, has been that every hero they nominate as his replacement has ended up in the mud too. Over the past few years, as I’ve had the chance to follow the races in Italy through my work with a major cycling tour agency, almost every rider praised to the hilt by the commentators on RAI tv has ended up in trouble.
Rai hype about Emanuele Sella as seen by his new fans:
With less than a month until the start of the most famous cycling race in the world, there is one question on the minds and lips of every enthusiast: who’s next? Yes, who’s going to be the next big name to get involved in a doping scandal. Sure they’ve done everything possible to clean up the sport (or so they say) but that doesn’t mean that we’re all not still waiting for the next shoe to drop. So here goes: make your suggestions in the comments section of this post and, although we really (and naively) hope that nothing will happen, we’ll see who’s right…
