Tuesday, August 31st, 2010
Former Tour de France winner loses fight against cancer
Laurent Fignon has passed away after losing his fight against cancer, French television has announced.
The Frenchman twice won the Tour de France during his career. He was 50.
Fignon disclosed in June 2009 that he was undergoing treatment for cancer. It is said to have started in his intestine and then spread further through his body. He continued to commentate for French television on the Tour de France this summer despite a tumour affecting his vocal chords.
“I don’t want to die at 50,” he said, earlier this summer. “All I know is that my cancer isn’t evolving. I’m still fighting.”
Fignon won the Tour de France in 1983 and 1984, and a total of nine Tour stages. He also won the 1989 Giro d’Italia. He famously finished second in the Tour in 1989, famously losing to American Greg Lemond in 1989 by the slimmest margin ever in Tour history, a mere eight seconds.
Fignon was diagnosed with cancer in May 2009, and he revealed his illness it shortly thereafter. He had been very open with the press and public about his illness. In his book, “Nous étions jeunes et insouciants” (We were young and carefree), he confessed to having doped during his career. Later, he discussed the possibility that his cancer was linked to his doping.
Saturday, August 28th, 2010
The Vuelta begins today.
Be sure and watch the Vuelta unfold on one of these great sites:
Velo News
SteepHill
Cycling News
La Vuelta official site
The Schleck brothers, Denis Menchov, Tyler Farrar, David Millar, David Zabriske and Mark Cavendish will lead an all-star cast at the 2010 Vuelta a España, which clicks into gear August 28 in Sevilla.
Andy and Frank Schleck (Saxo Bank), Tour podium-man Menchov and sprinting ace Cavendish are among the confirmed headliners for the Vuelta, which will be celebrating its 75th anniversary this summer.
Javier Guillén, director general of the Vuelta, said the 2010 edition will have a “magnificent level of participation.”
“We doubt Contador will come. He’s just finished the Tour, which was very hard for him,” Guillén said. “History has shown us that it’s difficult for the Tour winner to come to the Vuelta, even though Carlos Sastre did it (in 2008), something that we’re still grateful for.”
Other big names expected to start include Tom Boonen (Quick Step), Oscar Freire (Rabobank), Philippe Gilbert (Omega Pharma-Lotto) and Filippo Pozzato (Katusha).
Friday, August 20th, 2010
By Charles Pelkey • VeloNews – Updated: Aug 20th 2010 4:55 PM EDT
Increasingly concerned about news leaks and the apparent focus of a federal investigation involving doping, Lance Armstrong has added more muscle to his legal team, that of former White House special counsel Mark Fabiani.
News media reported in July that Armstrong had enlisted the services of former assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Daly of the Los Angeles law firm firm Sheppard Mullin Richter and Hampton in response to a federal investigation headed by the same investigators and prosecutors who ran the BALCO investigation. While news reports of Fabiani’s participation in Armstrong’s defense team emerged only this week, Fabiani told VeloNews that he’s been working with Armstrong since early July, even visiting the Tour de France at one point.
Armstrong is currently the apparent focus of a federal inquiry into doping in cycling, particularly during the years when his team was sponsored by the U.S. Postal Service. The investigation is headed up by Food and Drug Administration Criminal Division investigator Jeff Novitzky, who was a key investigator in the federal case involving the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (BALCO). Assistant U.S. Attorney Doug Miller, who prosecuted many of the criminal cases that emerged from that investigation has also been assigned to the case.
Fabiani served as special counsel to the president from 1994 to 1996 and served as deputy campaign manager for communications and strategy for former vice president Al Gore during the 2000 election. He acted as campaign spokesman during the controversial Florida recount.
As president of his own law and PR firm, Fabiani has taken on difficult jobs throughout his career, including the Herculean task of trying to clean up image of the investment firm Goldman Sachs. Indeed, his involvement in some of the most controversial news stories of the past two decades has earned him the label “Master of Disaster,” which may be why Armstrong hired him.
The current federal investigation shifted its focus to Armstrong in April when Floyd Landis admitted to having doped throughout his career and alleged that he had learned methods to avoid detection from Armstrong when the two were teammates on U.S. Postal. Armstrong has repeatedly denied the allegations.
While Novitzky and Miller have declined to comment on the record, several former riders and their attorneys have confirmed that they have been contacted by federal authorities.
Fabiani said he was reluctant to comment on the case, but offered an observation he’s shared with others in the media, noting that Novitzky, a former IRS investigator, is now employed by the criminal division of the FDA.
Trek Travel
“At a time when salmonella is forcing the recall of 380 million eggs, we’re all scratching our heads trying to figure out why the FDA is paying for a multi-million dollar fishing expedition, based on the word of the disgraced Floyd Landis, into international cycling events that occurred years ago,” he noted.
Wednesday, August 18th, 2010
By: Daniel Benson, Cycling News
There’s an American hero in town and he’s lighting up a bike race with a performance soaked in everything that makes racing so exciting. It’s a ride of panache, guts, grace and a pure bloody-mindedness that says, today I’m going to leave everything out on the road.
This isn’t Lance Armstrong winning one of his seven Tours, nor Greg LeMond trailblazing through Europe as he skittles through the opposition.
Instead, a second-year professional is dazzling the crowd at the Barclay’s Global Investors Grand Prix in San Francisco on a sunny summer’s day in 2005. He won’t win the race and despite his antics he’s about to be swallowed up by a hungry bunch. In fact by the end of the day a big DNF will sit next to his name in the results sheet. Yet for now, for the briefest of moments, he and the thousands of fans on Fillmore Hill don’t care. They’re cheering as if he’s dropped everyone on the Tourmalet, soared away from Marco Pantani or smashed Laurent Fignon in a time trial.
Five years later, the summer of 2010, and the same rider picks up the phone in his home in Colorado Springs. “So, do you want me to write the truth or do you want me to write what you want people to think about you?” I ask.
He’s not yet had his morning coffee and his gravelled voice trickles through the receiver. “Shit man, you can’t give me that as your first question. Come on, dude. Come on.”
We’re back to that summer’s day in 2005, and Mike Creed stops at the top of the Fillmore Hill and the crowd reach fever pitch. He unclips, gets off his bike and in the same movement lifts his frame above his head. The race is a circuit of 12 miles covered 10 times and for the last three laps, Creed, who knows the game is up, has pulled the same stunt.
“Go Creed. Go Creed,” they chant.
Finish story here.
Sunday, August 15th, 2010
NPR Morning Edition’s Ari Shapiro provides the below:
The band Blind Pilot literally rode a pair of bicycles to success. The folk-pop outfit, formed by singer-guitarist Israel Nebeker and drummer Ryan Dobrowski, has taken two bike tours, playing its music all along the West Coast. The first of these two tours was supposed to run from Vancouver all the way down to the Mexican border. Unfortunately, the trip was cut short when the band’s bikes were stolen outside San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art.
“It was a fine ending to that tour,” Nebeker tells Morning Edition’s Ari Shapiro. “Ryan took it a bit harder than me.”
“Yeah, because Israel got his bike back,” Dobrowski says. “He found it on Craigslist for sale, so he bought it back for like $50, and I lost my bike forever.”
They recently finished a second bike tour with a couple of additional bandmates, hugging Highway 1 down the coastline. One of their most memorable scenes occurred at a tiny grocery store in Leggett, Calif. As the group played, a crowd began to gather around it, including a handful of unexpected onlookers.
“It was great, because all these truckers said that they’d seen us for the last few days,” Dobrowski says. “We were playing music and having beers at this little grocery in the middle of the woods.”
Finish story here.
Saturday, August 14th, 2010
By JULIET MACUR and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT
NYTimes
Federal prosecutors have intensified their criminal investigation of the cyclist Lance Armstrong since the end of the Tour de France last month. They questioned many of his former associates, including cyclists who have supported and detailed claims that Armstrong and his former United States Postal Service team participated in systematic doping, according to a cyclist who has been interviewed and two others privy to the inquiry.
Jump to NYTimes to finish story.
Friday, August 13th, 2010
I get this in an email today, “PS, don’t get the Angry Birds game. It will suck your life away.”
So, I am beginning to see a trend. A friend gets an iPhone and they disappear.
Surf sessions are missed because they stay up late uploading apps. They spend hours playing ‘angry birds.’ At a dinner party with cool music they keep on yelling out the band, song and album name because they are obsessed with ‘shazam.’ I get it. Technology has captured us. And I kind of dig it.
Think of it this way. The next time you paddle out at trestles it might be empty. Because everyone is playing with their iPad. You are out for a trail run and the single track is in great shape because no one biked it during the rain tearing it apart. They weren’t biking in the rain because they were playing with their new apple product.
What do you think?
Last mental picture, you train for months to prepare for a half-marathon. On race day you find yourself passing dozens of people on a small climb. As you pass them you look over and see that everyone is playing with their iPhone. They didn’t do the training because they were playing with their iPhone4 32G. So now they are hunting for a song to pump them up and get them over the hill.
Tell your friends about the new phone and then join a club to keep yourself motivated so you can beat said friend at the next 10K.
Thursday, August 12th, 2010
By Ben Delaney, VeloNews.com
Defending champion Lance Armstrong will not start the Leadville Traill 100 this year. Armstrong decided Monday to pull out of the high-altitude mountain bike race. His manager Mark Higgins told VeloNews that Armstrong was still feeling the effects of the Tour de France, during which he crashed a few times.
“He is still suffering from a nagging injury to his hip from the Tour de France,” Higgins said. “His girls will also be in Aspen with him this weekend so he will be staying at home.”
Armstrong won last year’s event in a record time of 6:28:50. Six-time race winner Dave Wiens finished second. A stacked field is still expected for the Leadville 100 this year.
As for Armstrong, Higgins says the Texan has no other races on the calendar as of now for 2010, but he will participate in two Livestrong events – a Philadelphia ride on August 22 and the Austin Challenge in October. And on September 26, Armstrong will do the fundraiser ride for Aspen’s Wapiyapi, a non-profit that offers free, weeklong camps to children with cancer and their families.
