When Fumiyuki met Andy

The final twist in the unusual contract saga of Fumiyuki Beppu came yesterday, when Skil-Shimano released him from the final year of his deal. He’ll now join Team RadioShack. Despite headlines like “Skil bow to power of Armstrong”, pressure from Lance or Johan Bruyneel would have been unnecessary. Thanks to Andy Webster, that’s been well established in European football (aka soccer).

Cracks in the hegemony of high performance?

The bike industry knows that the overwhelming majority of serious cyclists don’t race, at least not formally. Nonetheless, the common assumption has been that these consumers desire the same qualities in their bikes, components, and accessories as professional racers do. But this assumption is eroding.

LeMond v. Trek at the precipice

Here’s my take on the soon-to-be-really-really-ugly lawsuit between Trek and Greg LeMond. Once Lance won his first Tour, there was no way that Trek could pursue the massive opportunity of its association with Armstrong without putting the LeMond line on the back burner. That’s what doomed the partnership.

Postmodern road cycling and VDB

Here are a few excerpts from my next column for ROAD Magazine. The topic is the new dichotomy in cycling between the hegemonic modernism - driven by the notion that high-end cycling consumers want increasingly high-performance, race-proven equipment - and the new postmodernism - which filters simplicity, camaraderie and iconic elements of cycling’s past through an artistic lens. I’ve also collected a few thoughts about Frank Vandenbroucke’s passing.

Puma: Coming soon to an IBD near you? (updated)

Back in December 2008, I interviewed Puma CMO Antonio Bertone about how that brand has become involved in bike culture on multiple levels. He had less than glowing things to say about the bike industry. So, 9 months later, I was surprised to see Puma exhibiting a fixed-gear at Interbike. My interpretation is that, despite the bike industry’s growing efforts to reach the new urban consumer, Puma sees interest in bikes increasing even more quickly.

What social media can’t tell you

Robert Gourley of Mojave Interactive recently posted this analysis of social media performance during the Tour de France for Trek, Specialized, Cannondale, and Cervélo. What the study fails to address is that Cervélo is a title sponsor of Cervélo TestTeam, whereas Trek, Specialized, and Cannondale are the bike sponsors of Astana, Saxo Bank, and Liquigas. The way I see it, metrics like those used by Mojave are extremely valuable but I think they’re much more useful when tracking single brand’s social media footprint over time.

Tour de France team & sponsor video battle!

Especially during the Tour, teams and sponsors are generating some interesting documentary-style video coverage of pro cycling. But who’s got the best content? Let’s figure it out! I’ve posted sample videos below from five well known teams and brands. Watch them - or better yet, use the links to check out the full series - and complete the poll to give each a rating. Then vote for your favorite. Voting will be open until the end of the Tour and I’ll post the results next week.

An evening at the Bicycle Film Festival

As of last night, I have broken my unintentional streak of missing the Bicycle Film Festival. Brendt Barbur and Friends try to select film that cover the breadth of the bicycle universe and, over the course of a Saturday evening, I watched more than a dozen ranging from 1 to 75 minutes. Here are my impressions.

Quick update from Indy

Today Zipp’s engineers gave us an all-access tour of the in-house manufacturing facility where every Zipp rim is made by hand. Having worked with Zipp for over a year, what really impressed me was that they put the same level of engineering and technology into their processes as they do into the products themselves. Many of their machines and tools are custom-built. Unfortunately, I can’t really show any pictures of those.

Gone from performance cycling, adidas goes fixed-gear

The sneaker world has been abuzz this week with news of a limited-edition adidas fixed gear shoe, which is an interesting development given adidas’ departure from the cycling business at the end of last year. Granted, adidas Performance and adidas Originals are very different brands and separate parts of the company. But symbolically, it’s an intriguing statement for the bike industry

Who rakes cycling’s muck?

Herman and Chomsky’s ‘propaganda model’ of media posits that “the news” is simply a means by which to put advertising in front of people with buying power. The product is the audience, not the content, and the customers are the advertisers, not the readers. So stories that make people not want to buy stuff or that speak ill of advertisers may be subject to “filtering.” The problem of filtering affects all media but is compounded in cycling, where there’s basically nothing to write about except the products and sponsored athletes of current and potential advertisers.

Zipp drops the new 303

I work a lot with the good folks at Zipp but I don’t always get a chance to see the products up close, let alone ride them. Yesterday was an exception.

Zipp introduced a new version of the 303 wheelset to the assembled media at Sea Otter, with technical background from engineer Michael Hall and racing stories from marketing manager Andy Paskins. As you can see, the new 303 has a wider new shape that yields all sorts of benefits - strength, stiffness, comfort, and aerodynamics. After writing lots of copy and interviewing Thor Hushovd about the new releases, it was great to take them out for a spin with Andy, Michael, SRAM’s Michael Zellmann, and Road Bike Action’s Zap Espinoza.