There is always beer.

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The big man (ok, 176, but who’s counting?) is a bit blue. Beer helps. Trust me.

[Edit: I’m afraid I wasn’t very clear: I meant to say Cancellara is 176 lbs. I got a text message telling me I was too thin! I am closer to 215. Rest easy, I’m still plenty big. Like husky.]

“For sure, I am disappointed. In the end, I said, OK, I will give everything, but to lose something by three seconds,” Cancellara said. “When you watch the race and see that, to lose by such a small margin, that’s why I have something to calm me down. “

To “calm” him down, Cancellara was sipping his first beer of the Tour. He wasn’t exactly drowning his sorrows – that will come in Paris – but at least it was helping to take the edge off of his disappointment.
Source: velonews.com

Did Contador get a little motorcycle assistance this morning?

The reigning Olympic time trial champion doesn’t lose against the clock very often when he’s on form, and Cancellara said he had a pretty good idea of why he lost.

Cancellara shook his head in disbelief as two French police motorcycles drove ahead of Contador through a sea of cheering fans. The big Swiss time trial specialist wasn’t making excuses, but he said the two bikes would provide an advantage that might have tipped the odds in Contador’s favor.

“(Contador) had two gendarmes motorcycle right in front of him,” Cancellara told VeloNews. “When I saw the time differences to Wiggins, I knew it was going to be close. When you watch, at the front, when you have two (motor) bikes, I don’t say it’s done. When I saw those motorbikes very close while watching on television, then I think, OK, then it’s over.
Id.

Something ain’t right when the likes of on on-form Cancellara is bested on a course that suit him. And then you have the whole ducking the dope question thing as well. Oh, it just feels like July, now don’t it?

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About big jonny

The man, the legend. The guy who started it all back in the Year of Our Lord Beer, 2000, with a couple of pages worth of idiotic ranting hardcoded on some random porn site that would host anything you uploaded, a book called HTML for Dummies (which was completely appropriate), a bad attitude (which hasn’t much changed), and a Dell desktop running Win95 with 64 mgs of ram and a six gig hard drive. Those were the days. Then he went to law school. Go figure. Flagstaff, Arizona, USA

31 Replies to “There is always beer.”

  1. I remember a similar advantage for Pharmstrong on a time trial up Alp D Huez a few years ago.

  2. LeMond is not the asshole here. I commend him for his continued effort to uncover blood doping that *still* exists, even as mass media closes their ears to it.

  3. LeMond may be having the mid life and then some, but his ideas on VO2 are dead on. For Cunt – adore to act like his shit, or cyclings shit for that matter does not stink anymore, that he is above that question is unreal. WTF? Puerto… Liberty Seguros, Manaolo Saiz, come on. Birds of a feather… speaking of, I remember a chicken like rider a few Tours back that crushed a TT out of the blue and go – figure , had some ‘splaining to do……

  4. I like question #2

    2. You were the fastest up Verbier, and now you’re the fastest in this time trial. Can you explain that ?”

  5. If he’s on the juice, then he isn’t doing it alone.

    Everyone these days has shit in the closet. Except Wiggo. He’s the beast.

  6. dead on july johnny. good to be back, I’ll be here all weekend tip the bar staff.
    what if he is juiced? and pissed off johan enough that he’s ‘allowed’ to get popped?
    what if they search shleck bro’s pa’s wagon again?
    what if radio shack got into cycling?
    what if I just go back to watching for the racing, damn the torpedoes of the free press?
    ah, july.

  7. LeMond is like the crazy uncle that no one wants to come to the party, but is always secretly happy when they arrive.

  8. In 2008, Stephan Schumacher beat Cancellara in both TTs, the second time following solo attacks on mountain stages. And Schumacher was hepped up on goofballs.

    You just don’t beat on-form Cancellara after multiple mountain stages, especially someone who was a mediocre TT rider in 2007. I predict that whoever places second overall at the end of the day Saturday will ultimately be declared the winner of the 2009 TDF.

  9. The power data on Verbier is suspect . 1/2 K variable and there was a tail wind . The in run was long and fast , it also was calculated in the accent rate when it should not have been . Old fashion ass whoopin ……..

  10. Lemond has a point. In all the doping controversy, the doping of one’s own blood is the 500LB gorilla in the room. The emphasis needs to be on the phrase “one’s own blood”. No reliable test exists for this. Not only is this cheating, but a top lever racer who saves his own blood for doping must structure his entire training program around the blood removal, since giving blood weakens the body for several days at least. So these people are not only cheaters, but they plan this cheating all year long!!!! The Fuentes ‘affair’ gave us the proof for almost all of the top pro peleton, but aside from actually busting the athletes or doctors with the sacks of blood, what can we do??

  11. I am getting cynical. I figure it has been a very quiet tour so far in regards to doping. This makes me think either the cycle of doping is in the rider’s favor right now and the testing needs to catch up or those in power are keeping things under control to avoid one more Catastrophe de France.

    Contador sure does seem really strong. Does he drink FRS?

  12. “I predict that whoever places second overall at the end of the day Saturday will ultimately be declared the winner of the 2009 TDF.”

    Damn. Bob wins. (sigh)

  13. How bout we just watch and enjoy the sport?

    I like watching quarterbacks get the snot knocked out of them. Do I care if the defensive end delivering a bone crushing hit is juiced? No and I actually HOPE he is.

    I like seeing someone rise up out of the saddle on a 7.5% grade and laying out the hurt, especially on Armstrong.

    I also agree with singletrack maestro. I just think on the road there are too many variables that we don’t have micro-second exact data.

  14. …damn! I love me some Tour de France. I still think they should do two: one clean and one dirty.

    How cool would it be to see pencil armed dudes with legs like Lou Ferrigno ripping the roads to pieces, beating the hell outta anyone in thier way because of the insanity of over-doping, followed by regular guys suffering like a mofo. I would actually like to see some chemically built machine of flesh, hammer like a god, doped to the gills, ascend the Alps like Icarus, pounding all others like club riders with superhuman strength…

    oh wait… we did…

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n9FFPLdC5A

    I love the Tour

  15. Also, seriously…..Cav?

    Alberto wins two stages and is asked to prove he can do it…while Cav destroys other sprinters like Pettachi or Cippolini did in their “prime” and then no one asks questions?

    All I’m saying is I’d be a little bitch about it too.

  16. If Cavendish gets popped, young Tyler wins two stages in his debut Tour. Go, Tyler!

  17. …”senor contador, can you explain your results in…???”…

    “otra pregunta”

    …”alberto, what about…???”…

    “otra pregunta”

    …”ohhh juicy…chew got son esplainin’ to do !!!…

  18. …lemond whining about anything & eveything is par for the course but i gotta admit, senor contador seems to be handling any & all ‘on the road’ situations w/ no problem whatsoever…kinda superman-ish…hmmm…
    …quick aside:- even when hinault whines, ya notice HE never talks numbers…it’s just “i had bigger balls…i ate glass & spit out wins ‘cuz i attacked, attacked, attacked !!!)…

    ..personally, i hope to bejeebus that contador is just better prepared than anyone else but to clobber spartacus at his specialty after ‘toying’ w/ the schleck’s the day before, well gosh darn, fingers crossed for good luck, there, ‘berto…musta been the motos…

    …& when i say toying, i had the feeling that ‘berto held himself in check on that last climb while he was patting backs & “no, please, after you”–ing, when it looked like he coulda seriously clobbered everyone, not just taken some time out on most a the wrong guys !!!…

  19. Aw, poor Fabian. Maybe he’d get more motorcycle support if he wasn’t in 82nd place going in.

  20. “Aw, poor Fabian. Maybe he’d get more motorcycle support if he wasn’t in 82nd place going in.”

    P@J— Ha! I laughed out loud at this, thanks.

  21. A hundred years ago le Tour was raced largely on dirt on fixed gear bicycles. Now THAT I would pay to see.

  22. Welcome aboard, Dan. The more, the merrier I always say.

    Seriously, it has been my dream since childhood to tour la belle France on a bike. Kid’s in college and my brothers in suffering at work seriously need me, but someday…

  23. And you know, I’ve heard there are folks over there that cook almost as good as my Grandma did. It don’t seem humanly possible, but if it’s even half true that alone would make the trip worthwhile.