December 9/09 11:11 am - Cycling (in the) News

Posted by Editoress on 12/9/09
 

"If you worried about falling off the bike, you’d never get on." - Lance Armstrong

Biggest wheel of 'em all
A blur of yellow, red, blue, black and white swept past Loews Ventana Canyon Resort, and a small pack of cameramen chased after the cyclists as they ended their afternoon ride.
For this week, Lance Armstrong, the world's most famous bicyclist, is in town.
Armstrong and his new Team RadioShack are training in the Old Pueblo until Monday, riding each day and mountain-biking twice during the camp. The 26-member team represents 16 countries, and Armstrong, 38, is the oldest.
Read more at AZ Star


Lance Armstrong says he will not be Team RadioShack's main rider
Lance Armstrong believes it would be "irresponsible" for him to be the central rider of Team RadioShack, the squad he launched in Arizona yesterday.
Read more at Guardian


Pereiro, Astana OK one-year deal
Former Tour de France champion Oscar Pereiro has agreed to a one-year deal to ride for Astana in 2010.
The Spanish cyclist will join the Kazakh team's training camp in Pisa, Italy, on Thursday, where he will be united with defending Tour champion Alberto Contador.
Read more at ESPN


Lotto was not right team for Evans: teammate
A FORMER Silence-Lotto teammate of Cadel Evans' has said the two-time Tour de France runner-up would have been unlikely ever to achieve his ultimate cycling goal if he had stayed at the Belgian professional team.
Matthew Lloyd, a climbing specialist who won the Australian open road title in 2008 and was recruited to Silence-Lotto to support Evans, said he wasn't surprised when he jumped ship last month.
Read more at The Age


UCI tries to get on track with IOC goal of gender equality at 2012 London Games
Cycling's governing body confirmed Wednesday it will deliver proposals to the IOC for a track race program at the 2012 London Olympics that offers equal gold medal opportunities for men and women.
The news means American phenom Taylor Phinney would likely be denied a chance to compete in his specialty event.

The Dec. 3 meeting with the International Cycling Union will work toward an International Olympic Committee target of gender equality at the Games, IOC sports director Christophe Dubi said.
Read more at Yahoo


Phinney tries to save individual pursuit
Taylor Phinney is getting some last-minute help in the quest to keep his specialty event on the Olympic cycling program.
Hard copies of an online petition with 4,408 signatures were sent to the International Olympic Committee on Monday, just two days before the group's executive board is to convene in Switzerland for a meeting.
The IOC meeting is Wednesday and Thursday. Changing the Olympic cycling program, with moves that would eliminate endurance track events such as the individual pursuit, from the 2012 London Games is expected to be among the items on the agenda.
Read more at ESPN


Why is the IOC discussing changes to track cycling?
The International Olympic Committee is meeting in Lausanne this week and will discuss radical and controversial proposed changes to the track cycling program for the 2012 Games.
Here are some questions and answers on the issue.
Read more at Universal Sports


Pendleton: Don't blame me for Olympic cycling changes
Victoria Pendleton, the woman who has led the campaign to ensure that female cyclists are given the same opportunities at London 2012 as the men, has claimed that she fears the row she sparked after last year's Olympics in Beijing have overshadowed her achievements.
Read more at Inside the Games


Olympic champion Romero prepares for event to be axed
Olympic women's individual pursuit gold medallist Rebecca Romero says plans to drop the category from future Games make no sense.
On Thursday, the International Olympic Committee is expected to make changes to ensure males and females compete in an equal number of events.
Read more at BBC News


Celebrating and cycling for change
Every month, they come on their bikes and ride around the city.
It’s a group of friends, friends of friends and the occasional newcomer. They amiably talk about the weather and other places they have cycled.
Riding bikes is what brings them together — not in protest of cars but, rather, in celebration of cycling.
Read more at Kamloops this Week


Program axing not due to results
The consolation for national mountain bike coach Neil Ross yesterday was that his program's axing was not a results- based decision.
In the two years since the qualification period for the last Olympics, Australia's world ranking in the sport had rocketed from 22nd to 10th.
It formerly had two women in the top 100 and one man, now it has half a dozen in both.
"I'm very disappointed because I think our results speak for themselves," Ross said.
Read more at The Examiner


'Road Rage' Case Highlights Cyclist Vs. Driver Tension
Bicycling magazine called it "the road rage incident heard 'round the cycling world."
A driver in Los Angeles was recently convicted of using his car as a weapon against two cyclists. And the case is focusing attention on the often uneasy relationship between motorists and bicyclists who have to share the road.
Read more at NPR.org


Pan Am costs over budget
The city is already preparing for higher costs than budgeted for the Pan Am stadium.
The terms of reference for a business plan designed to fit the west harbour site says the $10 million set aside for land acquisition, servicing and remediation is "likely insufficient."
It asks consultant Deloitte Canada to make a case so the city can go to other levels of government and private partners to cover those costs and the anticipated $50 million needed to upgrade the 15,000-seat stadium to 25,000 or 30,000 seats.
Read more at Hamilton Spectator


Italy probes ex-cyclist Bettini's tax returns
Olympic cycling gold medalist Paolo Bettini has been placed under investigation for alleged tax evasion in Italy.
Ernesto Ceccarelli, an official with the tax police in the Tuscan town of Livorno, says the now-retired Bettini is suspected of evading taxes on nearly $16.6 million.
Read more at Associated Press


Hipsters repaint bike lanes in brush off to Hasids
Groups of bicycle-riding vigilantes have been repainting 14 blocks of Williamsburg roadways ever since the city sandblasted their bike lanes away last week at the request of the Hasidic community.
The Hasids, who have long had a huge enclave in the now-artist-haven neighborhood, had complained that the Bedford Avenue bike paths posed both a safety and religious hazard.
Read more at New York Post


Cyclists Redraw the Lines in Brooklyn
New York’s bike lanes have become sources of civic pride and controversy as of late.
The city has been adding hundreds of miles of lanes, routes and paths in the last few years, thrilling much of the city’s growing number of bicycle commuters. But when it recently removed a 14-block stretch of lane on Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn, many cyclists were not happy and took action.
Read more at New York Times


Schools pay price of success
Bolton's schools cycling track championships have had to be scrapped — because of the popularity of the sport The championships were held every year for three different age groups at the Manchester Velodrome, involving almost 400 children every year.
But the increasing demand for the use the Velodrome has resulted in the axe falling on the Bolton competitions
Read more at Bolton News


Australian cycling tour turf war brewing
A major turf war is brewing in Australian cycling between two of its most important events - the Tour Down Under and the Herald Sun Tour.
Cycling Australia (CA) is conducting sensitive negotiations over a bid by the Herald Sun Tour to move from its annual October timeslot to February.
Read more at Big Pond News


Big Cities Urge Bike Friendly Streets
Congressman Earl Blumenauer; New York City Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan; and artist/musician David Byrne joined city officials from Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington D.C. to launch Cities for Cycling, a new effort by city governments to promote best practices in urban cycling and to increase the use of bicycles to improve urban mobility, livability and public health while reducing traffic congestion and CO2 emissions.
Cycling is booming in cities across the nation. Based on the American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. census bureau, cycling as a share of transportation is up in major cities by as much as 72% from 2007-2008, with an average growth rate of over 30%.
Read more at Bike Portland


San Franciscan Cyclists Turn The iPhone Into A Powerful Tool To Change Their City
First Boston launched its CitizensConnect app in June, giving its citizens the ability use the iPhone to tag locations and upload photos of potholes and other urban hazards; now San Francisco is using the iPhone to build a better city too — through tracking cyclists with its CycleTracks app.
The express purpose of CycleTracks will gather data on cycling trips throughout San Francisco, to help the city better design its bicycle infrastructure.
When activated, the app uses the iPhone’s GPS receiver to record the details of a ride, then uploads the data to a central database — and that method of gathering that kind of data is probably unique in the nation, said Billy Charlton, Deputy Director of Technology Services for the SF County Transportation Authority, in an interview with CoM.
Read more at Cult of Mac


Green odyssey takes cyclist to Copenhagen
An Australian cyclist who has spent 16 months cycling from Brisbane to the UN climate talks in Copenhagen says the journey has given him a host of accounts of how global warming is changing lives for the worse.
Read more at ABC.net


SANYO 'eneloop bike' Honored as CES Best of Innovations 2010 in Eco-Design and Sustainable Technology Category
SANYO North America Corporation (SANYO), is pleased to announce that two SANYO products have received International CES Innovations 2010 Design and Engineering Awards. The SANYO "Synergetic Hybrid Bicycle", CY-SPA600NA, model of the eneloop bike, a pedal-assist electric hybrid, was honored as Best of Innovations having received the highest overall score in the Eco-Design and Sustainable Technology category. The high-definition waterproof Dual Camera Xacti, VPC-WH1, was selected as an honoree in the Digital Imaging category.
Read more at Newswire


GB Cyclists Go Faster with CFD
Great Britain's 2008 Beijing Olympic and Paralympic medal haul confirmed cycling as one of the nation's strongest sports. But some of that success is owed to Formula One.

CFD, the "wind tunnel in a computer" technology used to design superfast cars, helped improve British cyclists' race times by reducing air drag.
Read more at Dexigner


Advanced Sports To Aquire Oval Concepts
Advanced Sports, Inc. (ASI), which owns Kestrel and Fuji Bicycles among others, is adding Oval Concepts to its lineup. Based in Switzerland, Oval Concepts manufactures Aerobars, Forks, Seat posts and other parts and accessories for triathlon, road and mountain bikes. ASI intends to add to this lineup with plenty of new products.
Read more at xtri.com


Anti-doping agency approves 'athlete's passport'
The World Anti-doping Agency (WADA) on Wednesday approved its 'athlete's passport' scheme, which allows sporting authorities to detect doping by studying an athlete's biological profile.
"It is a great step forward. It is not the end of all our problems, but it is another tool," said WADA president John Fahey.
Contrary to traditional anti-doping techniques which involve looking for traces of banned substances in an athlete's blood or urine, the passport seeks to discover abnormal variations in the athlete's biological profile.
Read more at AFP