Tag Archive for 'lance armstrong'

Sleepness nights begin

Published
by
Robert Merkel
8 months, 3 weeks ago
in Sport
. 71 Comments

It’s going to be one of those weekends where too much sport will indeed barely be enough, if you’re a sports-watcher.

In the AFL, it’s the home-and-away matchup of the year. While there have been longer winning streaks in the league’s history, never before have two undefeated teams met in the fourteenth round of competition. Geelong is the benchmark team of the competition, winning a premiership in 2007, narrowly missing out in 2008, and hasn’t lost a game this year. St. Kilda’s season has been remarkable not only for its undefeated streak but the margins of its victories; its percentage of 177.5% is the kind of thing you expect to see in the Manangatang District League third-division competition, not the elite competition with its player draft and salary cap as balancing mechanisms.

The Championships will come to their climax at the renovated Wimbledon. While Lleyton Hewitt’s run has ended in the quarter-finals, the prospect of two more displays from the most elegant player of the modern era, Roger Federer, should be worth waiting up for.

But, unsurprisingly, my eyes will be on Monaco for the start of the three-week carnival of cycling that is the Tour de France. If the drama and intrigue during the race gets anywhere close to the pre-race fun and games we’ve had, it should be a cracker.

Continue reading ‘Sleepness nights begin’

The most-publicized training ride in history

Published
by
Robert Merkel
1 year, 2 months ago
in Adelaide and Sport
. 22 Comments

Lance Armstrong is a hell of a cyclist. But the anticipation surrounding his ride in the Tour Down Under in Adelaide is just bizarre. He’s not here to win. He’s here for a glorified training ride.

Lance Armstrong is a rider who was (and may still be) perfectly suited to the Tour de France. He excels in two disciplines. He was exceptional at long time trials, an individual race against the clock, and mountain climbing – particularly the extremely long but not ultra-steep climbs of the Tour. The overall winner of the Tour de France must be amongst the best in both of these disciplines. Armstrong trained exclusively for the Tour, practising the climbs and the time trial courses again and again until he knew them perfectly. And he had a team featuring many of the best riders in the field, who rode not for their own glory but purely to support Armstrong.

In other races – indeed, in flatter stages on the Tour – Armstrong just rode with the bunch; his particular gifts didn’t help him when the road was flat and he’s riding with other cyclists. Indeed, for many one-day races, he acted as water bottle-fetcher – domestique – for his teammates. Throughout the period where he won the Tour, the only other races of note that he won were the Dauphine Libere – a traditional Tour warm-up featuring a mountainous course, and the Tour de Georgia – the closest thing he had to a home race, one featuring a couple of challenging climbs, and one in which he might be expected to put in a particular effort.
Continue reading ‘The most-publicized training ride in history’