vice Versus

Here are a few notes from things seen or heard lately.

The Amgen Tour of California released race details yesterday. I get regular updates emailed to me from their site, and one awesome addition is that Versus (formerly OLN) will be broadcasting daily coverage of the ToC! Read their official announcement from yesterday and you'll see they are going to provide 14 hours worth of coverage for the eight day race. They even mention LIVE coverage on the weekend.

Can you believe this race starts in just over two months? Day one is on Sunday, February 18 in San Francisco and ends the following Sunday the 25th in Long Beach. What if you had to be ready to race in only two months? Uh, can you say "dropped!"

Go HERE to sign up for the ToC email newsletter.

A dedicated and loyal reader followed up on Tuesday's post about look-a-likes. Before I get to that I want to say I should have clarified who the non-cycling look-a-likes were before you linked. I could see where a couple of those names were unknowns, but if you linked to them you'd have quickly figured it out. Although, I had no idea who David Furnish was or that he was Elton John's partner.

So, thanks to Patrick for this one:

Tyler Hamilton meet Jackie Earle Haley (tough kid on Bad News Bears)

Check out this news link from Velonews today about "Back on bike, local cyclist blasts ‘dirtiest sport in the world’." Read the article and you'll see that it's about cyclist A.J. Smith, the guy who won the Race2Replace last summer. Winning that race gave him the opportunity to race with the Discovery Team in the US Time-Trial National Championships last fall.

I'm not sure if A.J. meant for his words to come across as though he turned down an offer to race with them in 2007. I don't think the writer has a full grasp of the big picture either as she alludes to A.J. as the "next Lance Armstrong." To top it off I'm also wondering if A.J. himself has a full grasp of reality judging by the quotes at the end of the article. I'll say it again, dream BIG.

I agree with Paolo Bettini. Professional cyclists should not provide their DNA unless they're caught in an investigation where blood was confiscated. I love his comments about a voicemail received from Ivan Basso.

Read this Cyclingnews interview with Jonathan Vaughters. He talks about what a professional cyclist faces when it comes to deciding whether or not to take drugs. I think he's correct in his rationale as he describes the culture as it exists today and the culture that must exist in order for cycling to overcome its polluted image.

It is definitely a culture problem, but it's going to take a lot more than theory talk to change the existing culture. Someone(s) is going to have to strip it down completely, expose all there is to expose, and then move forward with a pressure washer to hose away all the sludge. However, Vaughters is right, for it to be successful everybody has to come clean and own up to their disgusting contribution to the dirty culture.

Having said all that, Vaughters, like Andreu, knows a helluva lot more than he's telling.