Enrico Gasparotto (Barloword), Jens Voigt (CSC) David Millar (Slipstream), and presumably other riders were pretty adamant that yesterday’s uphill time trial at the Giro d’Italia, which featured over 5km of dirt roads and grades up to 24%, was too difficult. “Impossible”, said Gasparotto.

But, clearly, the stage was possible. Only 6 riders out 152 missed the time cut, and Gasparotto himself beat over 60 of them. The race director’s response was, “I think that we need spectacular shows in cycling to pull ourselves out of this mediocrities. Without something spectacular it would be normal, and this is something is extra.”

In a sense, he’s saying that it’s not enough just to run a clean sport. He’s right. You also need to put on a show that people want to watch, and this was a great show. Good for the Giro for pulling it off. To be fair, though, most of the complaints were not unreasonable and largely about the toll of consecutive mountain stages and long transfers.

Here’s an idea: let riders drop out of stages without dropping out of the race. Each rider could get an allottment of, say, 200km of the 3,323km total that they don’t have to ride. So you could do the first 32km of Stage 6 then hop in the team car, but you’d have to finish every other stage. Or you could skip the last 40km of 5 different stages. To keep it fair, there would be big time penalties for kilometers skipped, you still have to start every day, and you can’t skip a time trial.

I think it’s a realistic idea that would benefit the majority of the riders without asking the race organizer to water-down the event. What do you think?

via Cyclingnews

More evidence that bikes are cool, this time courtesy of Cannondale and jeans maker G-Star Raw. They get a little carried away talking about coolness (”The Cannondale BAD BOY, cycling’s original benchmark in coolness just got cooler.”) but this bike is really, really fresh. Check out the microsite.

This video, however, is not so fresh.

via PSFK

With the news today that Michael Rasmussen is suing Rabobank for wrongful termination, I went looking for his website to see if he had any specifics about the suit. While, it doesn’t have any recent news, it does have a listing for his vacation rental properties near Lake Garda! Check out the map:

View Larger Map

He’s also got a bike shop in the neighborhood, featuring “the t-shirt that support the real winner of the Tour de France 2007.” Sounds like a great venue for a team training camp!

Just got this flier emailed from Swagger LLC:

It took me a while to figure out that the race is in Stuart, Florida. The town is only apparent because it’s part of the name of the sponsoring car dealership, and the state is only named as part of the “Florida Cup”. I’m just saying…

Check out Cool Hunting’s list of “12 Bikes for Girls“, as selected by Sarah Huston. I’m not sure that the flat, swept-back handlebars on this Specialized Langster Seattle “scream racing style” as she claims, but it’s nice to see another notch in cycling’s Coolness Belt.

Nike and BMX legend Bob Haro have put together BMX-inspired art show, currently on display in Beijing as part of the buildup to BMX’s Olympic debut.

This kind of themed art show is a standard practice in skateboard and streetwear circles, so it’s great to see that sense of creativity, aesthetics and individuality make its way more often in the bike world. RVCA and Cinelli are planning a similar show for later this year with a track bike theme. And, of course, there’s my friends MASH getting big in Japan.

Not so long ago, bikes were for families, hippies and bike dorks. Today, bikes are fashionable, trendy, edgy, and legitimately cool… and we have the art shows to prove it.

via Cool Hunting

Brandweek has a story about how Levi’s has instructed its lead ad agency to change course in order to accomodate the success of this video:

“[Jumpin' In] was supposed to be a small seeding activity,” said Robert Cameron, vp-marketing at Levi Strauss, San Francisco. “We didn’t know it was going to blow up. So we’re meeting with [lead agency] BBH on how to chase this. What do we do to adjust the strategy and ride the wave?”

I think that’s the right way to look at it. You never know when this kind of video is going to blow up, and lots of campaigns misfired by assuming that theirs will. But you do get lucky, you need to move quickly in order to take advantage.

BRAIN had a quick story last week about how the Olympics aren’t really on the radar for the bike industry, except for the debut of BMX. The hypothesis seems to be that road racing revolves around the Tour de France even in Olympic years, while mountain biking has moved away from racing altogether, at least for the US market.

I couldn’t agree more. That’s why I suggested in the latest of my ROAD columns that, “instead of the gatekeeper to the Olympics being in charge of professional cycling, the people that run the Tour de France would be in charge of professional cycling.”

PSFK has a link to a New York Times piece with a really cool visual breakdown of US consumer spending according to official Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Go to NYT piece and zoom in on the lower left corner of Recreation (about 10 o’clock) - that’s Bicycles, with 0.3% of spending and holding steady from last year. Down and to the right is Computers, with 0.2% of spending and a 12% drop from last yeat.

I’m not sure what to make of this.

via PSFK

This being an Olympic year, USA Cycling has released a rather comprehensive 150-page media guide. As one might expect, it’s kind of a snooze. Maybe I’m naive, but it seems to me from having been around the biggest domestic races that there are enough knowledgeable journalists covering cycling these days that a more in-depth media kit might be preferable.

I guess I’d like to see a stronger sell. That’s not really USAC Communications Director Andy Lee’s style - much to his credit - but it seems warranted here in comparison to such a staid look. At least, some color photos might help sex things up a bit. And pitch the hell out of Taylor Phinney.

The Pro Cycling Tour has announced the teams for their Commerce Bank Triple Crown of Cycling. The roster includes a handful of marquee teams with US ties - High Road, Slipstream, CSC - plus a few random foreign teams (Sparkasse?) and then all the domestic teams down to DLP Racing. It’s not the Tour of California start list but if PCT president Dave Chauner can generate enough local revenue with this mish-mash of a lineup, then why pay all the expenses and start money to bring the Big Names over? The loftily titled Philadelphia International Championships is a big deal in Philly with or without, say, Tom Boonen.

Anyways, the press release also quotes Chauner as describing his races as “NASCAR on bicycles” and adds, “just like NASCAR, all three events will garner expanded live television coverage”.

Please. NASCAR sets a good model for cycling as a business model, but not as an entertainment. NASCAR’s appeal is about speed, noise, crashes, and the drivers’ nerves of steel. Cycling is about the riders’ endurance and effort, and how the races are embedded in the local landscape. The two are completely different products.

Cycling has its own set of unique and compelling selling points, but “NASCAR on bicycles” isn’t one of them. It doesn’t sound big; it just sounds like a crappy version of “NASCAR in race cars”.

via press release

There was much hoopla surrounding the opening weekend of Lance Armstrong’s bike shop/coffee shop/training center in Austin. MASH got to be a part of it, which was huge.

There are loads of articles and blogs to link to, but here is the most important (at least over time): Yelp