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:
err.. the 13th Giro delle Pesche Nettarine di Romagna
factory team Bedogni Natalini Gruppo Praga Monsummanese wears the Bottechia name with pride in the race dedicated to nectarines
Bottecchia enthusiasts disappointed by the company’s absence from that other Italian Giro will be proud to know that the cycling icon is still dedicated making its presence felt on the national racing scene. Team Bedogni Natalini Gruppo Praga Monsummanese will be fighting for the prestigious maglia verde of the Giro delle Pesche Nettarine on the roads of Emilia Romagna, passing through noted regional centres like Imola and Ravenna. Let’s cheer on our team.
By the way, given the utter lack of cycling apparel for Bottecchia fans (in comparison with the abundance of fashionable shirts for Bianchi and Wilier), it might be nice for the company to start offering Team Bedogni Natalini Gruppo Praga Monsummanese shirts and shorts for sale on its website and through its dealers.
Lots of crashes marked the final stage of the 2008 Giro d’Italia in Sicily, with significant injuries eliminating Bradley McGee and Stuart O’Grady from Team CSC and young Italian star Riccardo Ricco suffering a dislocated finger. Much of the problems were blamed (especially by the riders themselves) on the uneven road surfaces already seen in the first two Sicilian stages:
Queste strade sono terribili … asfaldo viscido, viali stretti. Ma mandano qualcuno a vedere le strade, prima di disegnare un Giro?
These roads are terrible … slippery asphalt, tight streets. Do they send someone to look at the roads before they plan a Giro?
My supercool souvenir: a Crono water bottle from Slipstream
With my august position in the world bicycle industry, one of the perks is the possibility to attend the opening stages of the grand tours of professional cycling. This year I decided to watch the opening team time trial of the Giro d’Italia from Mondello, rather than the hospitality tents in the centre of Palermo, because of the promise of a great seafood pizza after the race. Mondello is the seaside playground of the Palermitani and the town’s beach and nightlife transfers there during the summer months.
Gilberto Simoni tries out the course before the time trial
As we staked out a place a couple of hours before the start, without meeting much competition, we had the opportunity to see many of the teams surveying the course, preparing their strategies for coping with the sharp curves and uneven asphalt.
Lampre compare the vintage and new asphalt
At about 3:45 pm the teams started to pass one by one by our post along the seafront. Despite all the hype in the media here about the “typically passionate welcome of the Sicilians”, the locals seemed pretty blasé about the whole thing. The only passion I witnessed came from two sources: 1) a lady and her daughter enraged by the prospect of walking the final 42 m to their front door and 2) an old guy who didn’t want me take some pictures of his ramshackle Bottecchia (I was keen to show Bottecchia’s only presence at the Giro this year…).
Liquigas moved through the quickest but lost time on return leg
The stage was won by Slipstream featuring Canada’s own Ryder Hesjedal, who came through wearing the red and white of the national time trial champ. I grabbed a water bottle that flew nearby as they passed - much cooler than the “Ghiro d’Italia” keychain with a stuffed toy rat.
See you along the course.
[Bottecchia Race Update: Thanks to the news section on Bottecchia's fab website, I've learned that Bottecchia was racing yesterday - represented by Bedogni Natalini Gruppo Praga Monsummanese in the 9ª Coppa Comune di Castiglion Fiorentino. Wow!]
From a time before the UCI took all the fun out of bike design
Produced for display at Expo86 to demonstrate the company’s technological prowess, with a sculptured and streamlined carbon fibre frame and wheels, computer controlled variable transmission, and cool space age gear levers.
Of course, the current management of Bottecchia continues to be on the cutting edge of biking innovation in 2008.
b) BS110 “Top Sprinter”
Complete BS
The use of black paint on the seat stays of the all aluminium (well except for the steel forks) BS110 is a brilliant technogical solution to the market demand for carbon fibre, ensuring lightness, ease of production, and aesthetic performance.
A recent post about the 1994 Bianchi for the Paris-Roubaix on PezCycling News caught my attention not just because of the innovative attempt to apply mountain bike design principles to a road bike, perfect for the famous pavé of the bouncy race, but for the fact that it was a project of the then North American branch of the Italian company. The post quotes Robert MacNeil, the Product Manager for Bianchi Canada at the time:
Bianchi Italy started to let Bianchi USA and Bianchi Canada start designing product for other countries. When the Director of Bianchi Italy would come by our offices he would see our bikes for our markets and he realized that we were more in the know then they were.
Like many Italian bike manufacturers, Bianchi is undergoing a period of “reorganization”. That said, as I will discuss in a future post, the Canadian presence at this year’s Giro d’Italia will be greater than ever before.
When I started this blog, I intended to write a lot about my favourite department store chain, the well loved and utterly defunct Eaton’s, but these days the last big iconic Canadian store is now Canadian Tire. With shrewdly patriotic advertising, the more than just wheel rubber guys have staked a place for the company in the retail corner of the Canuck heart while Timothy Eaton’s management challenged heirs have nothing better to do than sip Happy Hour Pina Coladas in off strip Las Vegas casinos.
It’s not just marketing. For although Eaton’s went bust a good number of years ago, leaving numerous warehouses full of unloved orange and brown North Country polo shirts, Canadian Tire’s management has to be commended for being able to sell a bike that costs little more than what the dead department store offered them for in the early 1970s. A children’s bike, albeit endorsed by Gordie Howe, went for $84.99 in 1973 at Eaton’s. Even after over thirty years of stagflation, inflation, recession, and the departure of Dave Hodge from Hockey Night in Canada, a CT Supercycle will go for as low as $99 - if you are too desperate to wait for the sales.
Expensive- but it had a cool stick shift
The problem, of course, is that we are talking about two very different bikes. Despite all the advances in technology, department store and supermarket bikes have been getting crappier than ever. Apart from the cool 70s name, as you can see from the Eaton’s page on the remarkable Raleigh Chopper tribute site, the $84.99 Mach II from Eaton’s was distinguished by cutting edge design and high quality components - like the superbad Sturmey Archer stickshift gears. These bikes were virtually indestructable - my dad finally got rid of mine by loading it up in the truck and carrying it off to some cousins of ours in the woods who were rehearsing for Deliverance 2. There was nothing wrong with the bike - my dad had just got sick of looking at it for some reason…
When you think gears, think Falcon
On the otherhand, as demonstrated by the aptly named bike of doom blog, your CT bike has a shorter shelf life than a Food Basics chocolate snack. Clearly an expert in bike maintenance, the thrifty blogger proudly admits to spending more than the bike cost in repairs and replacement parts in one year of ownership (although to be fair to CT he has done thousands of kilometres in that year on a bike made for 2 trips around the subdivision per summer). Apart from the entertainment value of seeing what can go wrong (and how little can stay right) on a Supercycle, the blog is a celebration of the underappreciated arts of wheel truing and spoke replacement.
My infallible rule for identifying an el-cheapo bike used to be the presence of the word Shimano on any part of the frame - the logic being that if a bike company felt obliged to identify the presence of parts from the monopoly player in the bike gear biz the rest of the bike must be rough. I have to admit that the Falcon gears chosen by CT are new to me - and do not appear on any of Bottecchia’s products (I hope).
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…
