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Is your bike still for sale? I’m 60.5″ with proportional legs and torso. I’ve been looking for a very small bike as my xs Cervelo R3 (48cm) is too big. Please contact me as soon as possible as I’m trying to get something nailed down in the next two days. Thank you so much!!

Short girls rule!

Shannon

“Instead of racing The Shiv for the first time, Contador instead will compete on a 2009 Transition TT frame that was modified to meet UCI requirements. Mechanics literally sawed off 2cm of two reinforcements off the bike to fall within the 8cm rule. The pieces could be trimmed off the Transition frame because they were not an integral part of the frame material. It would be impossible to cut them off the Shiv, however, without damaging the integrity of the carbon-fiber frame”

Yes, the UCI could have and should have responded to the request for approval in a more timely manner, and then there is the salient point of the rule itself. However, Specialized was told last year that a similar design was not acceptable. The loophole specialized was trying for was the ’structural integrity’ caveat. Generally speaking, aerodynamic design elements are considered legal if they are critical to the structural integrity of the frame, as is clearly the case with the Shiv. On the Transition, the portion was purely for aerodynamics. Still, the ruling about the 8 cm section is pretty clear as well.

This is where specialized and the teams are culpable. Instead of holding off development on the design pending approval from the UCI, they went ahead with development, handed the frames over to the teams to train on. The equipment directors and the DSs on the teams need to be more diligent about whether or not new products have been approved. They shouldn’t be spending time and energy on setting up and training with equipment that has not been approved. I understand the marketing aspect of having a new frame design every year, but specialized should have held off and given the teams last years frames if the UCI had not responded yet.

That said, I think the UCI should be held more accountable to bike manufacturers. I think a rule something like a) new equipment designs must be submitted to the uci six months prior to being used in competition and b) if the uci has not made a decision within six months of the application, the design shall be considered legal for competition’.

Of course that would need alot more tweaking, but you get the general idea. It wouldn’t be hard to set it up so that the UCI could _not_ come in at the last minute and force a change, while at the same time not impeding the development of the new product to any great extent. I suppose an argument could be made that forcing manufacturers to present designs 6 months ahead of time would dampen the time-to-marketing concept, but I don’t really see that as a big deal in this case. One of my current job aspects is regulatory agency approvals. there have been a few times where we have developed a product that has made it pretty much through the production pilot run, only to find out the agency claims it doesn’t meet some esoteric specification, that we interpreted it did when we read the spec. We build that lead time into our development cycle, and there’s no reason a bike manufacturer can’t do the same.

I mentioned several times, salaries aren’t what they used to be, however you might be surprised that a certain USA domestic rider was offered 30k to ride for a domestic team and it wasn’t our only domestic team with a UCI license either. So you might be surprised about who is getting what. Salaries are taboo, and hard to collect info on. However, correct, salaries today worldwide probably go more like this. Top UCI, and I am only talking about a very few are probably getting anywhere from 30 to 50k. Most are probably getting 5-15K. I did say 7k, but oh well, close enough. There are certainly some riders getting more but not very many. I did mention if you read what I wrote that many are only getting a few thousand dollars both UCI and domestic. I wish I knew more and could show all the salaries in a graph without naming names and that could really spell it out for us. A lot of roadies went to MB in the old days in hopes of getting their hands on that cash like Pia Sunsteadt, but the dreams have seemed to switch to cross. Times are tough and salaries will improve once the economy picks up, that could take years. We might re-live the period of 2000-2007 again, like 2012-2018, who knows, wait and see. I learned a bit more from reading all the posts, and if there is one thing it boils down to for me, IMO, its this. Women will have to build it themselves from the ground up. There is just not enough men that really care enough, and have the power to do it. WOMEN MUST LEAD THE WAY! If you didn’t know, there is a huge crowd of men out there who could care less, and hope the women fail. They are a very selfish and greedy lot, but there are so many men who don’t care about anything except their side of the sport. A huge problem of epic unfairness across the board.

ps-on the health insurance, that’s not something I know much about. I had heard they were covered usually by the teams, but maybe that’s not true anymore in these very lean times.

Nicole Cooke won the Olympic gold medal in road racing and then got the gold in the UCI world championships a month later. Not a single company sponsored her or her team. Her most recent team (Skyter) also folded. What does that tell you about what sponsors think of the importance of a gold medal in cycling? Instead, Sky – a UK Broadcasting network – dumped 20 million Euros into a men’s team. Sky also declined to sponsor Nicole Cooke despite a personal plea from her.

So all this Olympic nonsense is ruining the sport and comes across as very selfish of the women. Besides, the Olympics is just a one day race and has little bearing on who the best cyclist in the world given the limit of the number of cyclists allowed to attend the Games. Qualifying for the Olympics has monopolized the women’s side of the sport and is ruining the way they prioritize their races. The men don’t rely on an Olympic model and neither should the women.

Besides, the TV coverage of cycling in the Olympics is not like other sports. Women cyclists think it is, but it’s not. If you were to go to your local shopping mall and ask 100 people who Kristin Armstrong is, 99 will tell you she is Lance’s wife. So Lance’s wife is more popular than a female cyclist who wins a gold medal (by a factor of 99 to 1).

Here’s a list of gold medalists in cycling:

Connie Carpenter
Mark Gorski
Alexi Grewal
Pascal Richard
Sarah Carrigan
Kathryn Watt

And here’s a list of cyclists who never won a gold medal in the Olympics:

Lance Armstrong
Greg LeMond
Mario Cipollini
Bernard Hinault

——

Out of these two lists, which group do you think are better known around the world as both athletes and cyclists? Which group are the millionaires who sponsors seek?

So your Olympic dream is not what you think it is, nor will it give you the recognition you think it will even if in the unlikely case you were to win a gold medal.

You sound like Sarah Hammer. Now that the UCI eliminated the individual pursuit in the Olympics, what is she going to do?

You shouldn’t be basing your career on the Olympics. It’s fools gold. It’s not a good sponsorship model for the future of women’s cycling. Cycling isn’t gymnastics or figure skating and women shouldn’t be trying to turn it into either.

The richest woman in cycling is Sue Haywood and not Kristin Armstrong.

However on the 2003 race, the three hard mountain stages were covered somewhat, very nice. Also some great shots of Olga Zabelinskaya on the bike before she retired. I love that tall Russian rider! After the mountains, the rest of the video was the flat stages mostly, and not too entertaining, although the podiums were good. Also Pierre Boue published a book on the tour already many years ago. I have that book, very well done with nice photos and stats in the back. I would actually have to watch the 2003 video again and read the race reports to refresh my memory, but it was the last great tour for epic battles in the mountains with Luperini, Brandi and Somarriba. While I loved the mountains climbs and the climbers, I just thought the tour was too long based on the reasons I stated before, but otherwise the first five stages were awesome to watch!

Quickly, I agree. If you read again what I said, UCI salaries have been reduced significantly since the golden years between 2000 and 2007. Anyway, I got to get to those Tacos now!

Cheers!

I am going to squeeze in a quick one before making Tacos. If you notice, the Olympics cycling coverage has not just been reduced, but almost eliminated. I’m not sure about total coverage of 2008 track and road-TT games in UK or Europe, but in America is was beyond dismal. If it’s the one big ticket of exposure for women as you claim, then NBC should have covered it. What I saw of Track and the RR-TT was so minuscule and cut up into tiny slices of nothing more then 15 minutes here and there separated by hours sometimes, that not even the most hard core nerds of cycling could follow it.

The RR was like half hour total cut up in several very tiny segments over many, many hours. The TT, worse, I think it was 15 minutes on NBC. On the Internet, yeah, the RR was shown in its entirety, but there was no commentary, only video with ghostly creepy sounds of the rain and mostly distance sounds of shouting chinese fans who were regimented into their chants roadside. All Mac users without intel processors were shut out by Microsoft Silverlight software.

If the Olympics is the grand shining moment for cycling, then it should be covered, but instead I think the networks overlooked cycling became of the all the bad press from the doping scandals. It wasn’t a good ticket for network coverage. Consider this, in 2004, USA channel also had the road race in its entirely, but it was on TV, not the internet. Add to that, it had excellent commentary with Paul Sherwin and his guys, can’t remember was it Phil Ligget?, but still. On Eurosport, it was David Duffy and Russell Williams. They pulled out all the stops for the women in 2004. So what the hell happened? Well, relentless doping scandals for one, so cycling was all but cut out of the Olympics in the American household on TV. The friggin women’s triathalon has more coverage of the cycling part then the Olympic road race for crying out loud! Add to that, Maria Isabel Moreno tested positive for EPO, and it’s possible that could of hurt the coverage, I don’t know.

But Skip is right about the fields. Not only that, if you look at what countries are riding in the road race, its really a cosmopolitan field or more like a cultural extravaganza then a bike race. You have these tiny little countries with riders in there that don’t belong in there cause for one, they are not (ALL) the worlds best, and two some are dangerous to other riders. Case in point, the Korean rider who took out Jennifer Hohl and a bunch of other riders in that ditch, which was by the way, dangerous as hell.

I can’t believe the Chinese left that ditch open like that. But the road race is a one day lottery that comes every 4 years and if you look at who wins it, it hasn’t been a field sprint in many years but usually breakaways. You couldn’t predict who could win it any more then drawing sweepstakes tickets out of a hat. The idea that anyone trains 4 years to win the road race is ludicrous to me. While training for the TT is a much better gamble, which Armstrong did, the RR is very, very open to chance or luck. While Cooke put all her cards on the games and finally won it, that’s a big four year gamble.

Also the endorsements are not too great either right now for women who win the gold. I think the biggest thing about winning the Olympics is the gold medal, not the silver or bronze, and whoever wins it, that is a big dream for sure. However women’s cycling is the bigger picture worldwide and its so lacking in so many respects, and I think we should fix that first instead of putting all the hopes and dreams into this one day lottery that comes every 4 years.

Like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, if you followed it as a little kid, then you remember it was a even changing goalpost, not a reality. I agree, the world championships is MUCH more realistic goal, and that comes every year. I agree with Skip that what Hausler did last year was worth its weight in gold, even more, just incredible! However if Track is you dream and you are already into it up to your neck, then you might as well follow it through. But if things don’t improve by 2012, then you might want to rethink your cycling career, especially if you don’t medal.

I did a bit of research as I was writing and came across a diary report by the rider Helen Kelly. In her diary of the day she reports that the day after the Vars, they looked in the paper to find out about the road blockages. It was not reported so they thought it was some sort of spoof by either the organiser or others out to get the organiser! A double negative courtesy of…..
“Olympic year” had very little to do with the reason the race did not go ahead in 2004, so I was told. Publicity is the oxygen. Starved of publicity – no life. The 2005 race was a very different affair. However perhaps we will find out more when Mr Boues book comes out.
http://www.helenkelly.com.au/racereports/tdf03.html

Beryl’s autobiography is in print again.http://cyclingweekly.ipcshop.co.uk/shop/books/personal-best—the-autobiography-of-beryl-burton. Again, she makes complaints that ring in our ears as relevant today. The web story from the same journal on Nicole Cooke’s plight, post Skyter, is somewhat shortened from that which appeared in the hard copy. Hard Copy states that Cooke is not on a wage but will ride for Team GB Sky. I guess that brings down the average wage for the top riders even more. And if she wins, well it will do Sky no harm.

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