Better Late Than Never?

If you’re a “fanboy” or “fangirl” of all things cycling then you’ve probably come across one or all of the items below. In the eventuality that you haven’t, then permit me to take you on a wild ride.

Elkish Cash-terium
I didn’t coin the term, but it certainly suffices for the seemingly disproportionate amounts of prize money being given away for some criteriums these days. It’s not an entirely new concept in sports, as appearance fees or prize money has been used to draw the prominent names to less than prominent events. Mind you, it doesn’t mean that any of these none too easily recognizable events aren’t great races, they just might fall outside a riders schedule or racing program.

In any event, one of our featured races this past weekend was the Alexian Brothers International Tour of Elk Grove, in of all places Elk Grove, Illinois. The two day event featured a stage race for the male participants, which consisted of an opening 4.5 mile prologue and then two criteriums. On the women’s side, there was a lone criterium held on Sunday the 12th.

The men’s races were to feature the debut of Ivan Stevic’s (Toyota-United) “B” World Championship Blue and Rainbow colored jersey, but he was a DNS due to some knee issues. The Toyota-United banner, however, was held up during the weekend by another Ivan, Dominguez in this case, as he made easy work of the field on Sunday.

Easy Rider Ivan Dominguez
(Photos: Kurt Jambretz/www.actionimages.cc)

The overall was taken by Australian Nathan O’Neill (Health-Net presented by Maxxis), who rode to victory in the Prologue and finished respectably in the subsequent crits. For his efforts, O’Neill garnered a whopping $31,000 [that is not a misprint]! Evidently, the victory made the 32 year old O’Neill a hot commodity, as he inked a contract earlier this week to ride for the second year American Continental Professional team, BMC. He joins Antonio Cruz (Discovery Channel) who also signed with BMC for the 2008 season.

The first and longer Saturday crit was won by Predictor-Lotto’s “Fast” Freddie Rodriguez who was led out perfectly by his teammate Chris Horner. As expected, neither seemed to be feeling any ill affects in their legs from their Tour participation.

Fast Freddy Center Stage
(Photo: Kurt Jambretz/www.actionimages.cc)

As for the women, it ended up being a very cheery afternoon as Cheerwine swept the podium. Catherine Cheatly cruised to victory, while Laura Van Gilder and Kelly Benjamin were the best of the bunch to take 2nd and 3rd place respectively.

Cheerwine's Podium: Van Gilder, Cheatly, Benjamin
(Photo: Kurt Jambretz/www.actionimages.cc)

Lance-less in Leadville
The on again, off again, on again, scheduled match up between Lance Armstrong and Floyd Landis (Photo: UltraRob) in the Leadville 100 never materialized as Lance withdrew. Although race co-founder, Ken Chlouber held out every semblance of hope saying, "The deadline for us mortals was February, but for Lance it will be 30 seconds before the starting gun goes off. Actually, let's make that 10 seconds." If Lance shows up, he'll be in the front row right alongside Floyd Landis."

Of course, as news came out of Discovery’s folding before last weekend; Lance probably had more urgent matters to which to attend.

The race was won by 5 time winner, Dave Wiens who broke the 7 hour mark for the first time in Leadville history. A few minutes behind was Floyd [who probably could have pushed Wiens in the finale, if not for an early crash], who for all intents and purposes [thanks for the catch tbv] showcased his form for any team that might need his services. That is if he isn’t suspended in the foreseeable future.

Wrong Rectified
The following definitely falls under the main header of better late than never, but it really speaks to something that should have never been done at all.

If you haven’t been following the mini saga of British mountain biker, Jenny Copnall (Photo: Jenny Copnall), she was earlier excluded from the British roster of riders to compete in the World Championships being held on September 3rd through the 9th, in Scotland [on home soil no less].

Did British Cycling suddenly forget that the 4-time British national cross country champion was the country’s best placed rider in World Cup events for the past 5 years?

The indiscretions didn’t end with Copnall’s exclusion, however, as they chose not to include any of their elite women in the cross country events.

None to surprisingly, after a uproar from the UK mountain bike community, British Cycling has now updated their roster to include Copnall and several other cross country racers.

Seriously, what was British Cycling thinking to begin with? Had they all of a sudden reverted back to some type of “good ole boys” network mentality? Women, bikes, dirt…how will they ever make it through without getting their knickers in a bunch?

Cup of Sand
One of the more memorable dialogues from the Michael Douglas presidential movie, the aptly titled, The American President, was this exchange with Michael J. Fox’s character, Lewis, regarding leadership.

Lewis: …People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand.

President Andrew Shepherd: Lewis, we've had presidents who were beloved, who couldn't find a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight. People don't drink the sand because they're thirsty. They drink the sand because they don't know the difference.

Two months after its completion, the Versus channel has decided to air footage of the Nature Valley Grand Prix. The stage race held in Minneapolis from June 20th - 24th was won by Kristin Armstrong (TEAm Lipton) and Ivan Stevic (Toyota-United), respectively. For me, an ardent fan of cycling, this scheduled showing amounts to nothing more than the proverbially cup of sand. Was the racing great and entertaining? Sure. But, it happened so long ago, you could probably find the video out on DVD.

So as it goes, are you thirsty enough to view something Versus could have shown us in June or will you drink the Versus kool-aid because you don’t know the difference?