What’s with the news of hiring a PR spin strategist? Mark Fabiani is the strategist hired by Lance and this is the same dude who worked with Bill Clinton during his presidency. A quick search of Mr. Fabiani reveals that he was only an adviser. Who knows what his role was but we all know of the Monica Lewinsky Scandal that hovered around the presidency. The strategy so far has been distraction, distraction, and more distraction. Rather than addressing the issue head on, the statements have been centered around, “is this investigation worth it?” There are so many problems facing the federal government that the accusation of doping and lying should be of such small interest to anyone that it’s not worth looking into. Shouldn’t the tax payer be more concerned with the wars and diseases confronting the country?

If Lance truly had nothing to fear and nothing to hide from then he wouldn’t be arming himself to the teeth with legal defenses. It’s like walking around with a grenade launching, just in case something should go wrong.

Lance is walking around with an A-bomb.

This doesn’t give the right appearance, Mr. Armstrong.

First, let’s look at the “losers”…

Lance Armstrong: Holy cow, did Lance lose big or did he lose huge? Expectations were high for the Texan and many hoped and believed he would walk out with an 8th TdF victory. Not only did he walk out empty handed but he got bruised and pretty much gave up. It started with a flat tire and ended with three crashes (in one day). The accusations from Floyd Landis did not help any and I’m sure it shook Lance up a bit. Despite a strong performance in Stage 15, any hope for a personal victory was lost. Lance claimed that age and karma had finally caught up to him. The media hype surrounding Lance dried up and all eyes were focused elsewhere. Ouch.

Levi Leipheimer: I like Levi as a personality but I am disappointed in his determination. He seems to give up too easy, like Lance Armstrong did in this years TdF. Rather than continuing to fight, he concedes that he may not make the podium. He rides simply to finish not too far down. Why can he not attack the TdF like he does the ToC? Go Levi or go away. Please, win!

Alberto Contador: I listed Alberto but I’ll include Andy Schleck and Carlos Sastre in this too. The whole messy question of waiting (or not waiting) for a rider turned into a tweenage spitfest. I mentioned it before in this blog. Seriously, grown men squabbling like kids? Ok, I’ll admit that cycling is a gentleman’s sport and squabbling is part of the atmosphere, but only to a point. Rather than admit poor sportsmanship, everyone swept the whole waiting issue under the rug. Hopefully it will stay there. Will everyone play nice now? Yes, cycling is a “nice” sport. If you want “rough” then go for Mixed Martial Arts or American Football.

Now, the winners…

Chris Horner: What a classy act! I have always thought that Chris is one of the most underutilized cyclists in the peloton. Here is a rider who can climb very well, put out decent time trials, and will support his team to the very end. Johann Bruyneel should have made Chris the team captain. With the entire team riding for him, Chris could have at least made the podium. He never brings in age as a deterrent to his performance. Instead, he says that he is one of the top riders in the world. I say that he is the top rider in the world!

Greg LeMond: Here’s a surprising entry. Greg’s image had really taken a sharp nose dive in the past months/years. Many people think he turned into a bitter whiner with his outspoken opinions of who is and who isn’t doping and how to detect it. What good does it do to run around squawking, “I didn’t see you dope but I know you did. There’s evidence out there. I just can’t find it.” Pointing fingers is never nice unless you have something to back it up with. He took another black eye during his lawsuit with Trek. I admit that I was a detractor but I was once a fan like many who witnessed his victories in ’86, ’89, and ’90. Seeing him reconcile with Floyd a bit was the first step. The second thing that helped was reading his blog posts on cyclingnews.com. They were good and insightful. Lastly, I think time helped soothe perceptions. Although I still wouldn’t ride a LeMond branded bike, I am willing to listen to him more now than before. His imagine has been rehabilitated.

Fabian Cancellara: Motorman Cancellara! I just love watching and reading about his time trials. Stage 19 was simply awesome. Just awesome! Stage 19 was 52 km long, which translates to about 32 miles. Fabian rode it in one hour and fifty six seconds! Can you average 32 MPH for an hour? This is starting to get close to the World Hour Record. I think Fabian is going to pick up where David Zabriskie let go and where David Millar left off and we will see some impressive records from Fabian.

I made a prediction that we’d get some more doping confessions and we got at least one. Rudy Pevenage confirmed what the world was already suspecting. Jan Ullrich was doped up to the eyeballs by Dr. Fuentes. Should we put some more asterisks in the TdF standings? It’s all sad because it’s all past history. We can’t change it and yet we as riders and enthusiasts suffer from the fall out. Maybe we should have  a Truth and Reconciliation Council and just get over it.

Another grand slam is the modern day HED H3. The H3 is a rather old wheel in today’s world of dimpled 404′s and torodial Stinger 9′s. It was developed back in the 80s by Specialized and duPont. duPont filed a patent for the wheel on October 12th, 1988. The patent was issued on April 24th, 1990 as US4,919,490.

From concept:

Here is the HED H3 on paper.

To reality:

And here it is in reality.

The H3 was a gold standard of aerodynamic performance for a long time and the design hasn’t changed in 20 years. Sure, the carbon is lighter and the hubs are smoother but the shape of the wheel today is the same as it was back then. It’s still considered to be very aerodynamic. You can buy a 10 year old used H3 for way less than the cost of a new one today and you will get the same aero performance.

Everyone wanted to copy it but they couldn’t because the design was patented. Patents are really interesting documents. If you can get past all the legal mumbo jumbo then you can learn a lot about a product, an industry, or an invention. I like to think of them as mini instruction booklets on how to build something. The patent protects the inventor from being copied for a period of about 17 years, assuming the inventor/assignee pays the patent renewal fees. After 17 years, technology and thought should have progressed enough to make the patented material obsolete. It becomes “prior art” and sort of enters the public domain. It is impossible to renew the patent beyond that. At that point, the invention can be copied.

Planet-X has picked up on this well known fact and they made their own version of the H3. They don’t hide the fact that they made a replica. In fact, they advertise it!

The H3 isn’t the only patented wheel. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of patents for bicycle wheels. Does this image look familiar?

It's not the most popular wheel on the race circuit but it is in production.

It should. This wheel is Nimble’s Crosswind trispoke wheel.

As you can see from the patent, the wheel is protected by patent US6,086,161. The novelity is the tapered spokes that start wide by the rim and get narrow by the hub. Is there any data that shows this wheel is aero?

Not all inventions are good inventions, at least in their time. Sometimes an idea is great but the implementation is poor. Check out this graphic from US5,104,199.

Famous or infamous?

Everyone ought to recognize this as the Spinergy Rev-X design, or some close variation thereof.

You have to admit that if you didn't know about this wheel you'd think it's prety cool.

It was a great concept and the wheel was ridden by Francois Simon in the 1999 Tour de France. Everyone wanted one until they all started to fail.

Is that blood on his fingers? It could be from crashing after a Rev-X failed him!

Ooops! By the way, you can check out more gory carbon breaks at the Busted Carbon blog.

Take note that the patent was filed in 1990 and issued in 1992. The wheel came about around soon after but production officially ceased in 1999. This technology, at least conceptually, is at least 20 years old. What could be done differently today with that same design? Alas, I think we will never know since the design now has a huge prejudice around it.

I’ll put up one more example and then I’ll bring this to a close. Here’s a design that’s been around for while.

This one may be a little less familiar.

This is the very familiar shape of the old Zipp 3000 as seen in US5,090,776.

From Velonew's historical review of ZIPP. Here is their 3000 wheel.

You can find a similar design in the Corima trispoke.

The design is still around.

The ZIPP 3000 was ZIPP’s attempt at copying the H3. After seeing they could not overcome the patent or the loss of power from the spoke passage by the fork blade, they took a new route. We all know where that led them.

Despite patents protecting the inventor from cheap copycats and infringement, it really isn’t hard to get around a patent. In the case of the wheels, you can see how many variations there are of the spoked aero wheel. All you need to do is change one thing and suddenly you have a new invention. The Corima wheels are obviously not identical to the Zipp 3000. There is enough of a difference between those two and the Crosswind and the H3 so that all four are unique inventions. Yes, they are similar and I’m sure they were inspiration to each other but they are different. The question is, which one is really novel? Is one better than the other? Only HED publishes some kind of data and ZIPP has proved their performance in the races. Who really knows?

Sometimes the patents you find aren’t even the actual invention you may be researching. Patents are bought and sold all the time. Some patents are “improvements” on older designs and the figures will look very similar. Even the patents I reference here in some cases are not the actual patents of the wheels shown. For example, the ZIPP 3000 patent is was not a ZIPP patent. It was issued to someone in the Netherlands. You need to read through the claims to see what the novelty is.

I invite you to do some patent searches and see what you can find. Search with keywords that you think make sense but be careful. Some inventors purposely use arcane titles and keywords so that their patent is hidden. Then they can spring on the unsuspecting. Would you have known to search for “Vehicle Wheel” if you were looking up the H3 patent? It’s a complicated world and I do not profess any expertise here. All I have is enthusiasm.

Here’s my thoughts, for what it’s worth.

Bike racing is a job with financial rewards. You do what you must to win. After all, who wants to sponsor a rider to lose? It’s that mentality that fuels the doping culture in the sport. However, bike racing is also steeped with precedent, culture, and respect. You don’t kick a man when he’s down and that has applied to the yellow jersey. Who can forget Lance Armstong’s crash on Stage 15 during the 2003 TdF? Lance’s handlebars were caught in the strings of a musette bag and he went down pretty hard. The tailgating Iban Mayo rode over Lance and fell down too. Jan Ullrich, who was not too far behind Iban, barely managed to swerve around the crash. Like Andy, Lance was “disabled” so to speak. It was a sloppy crash but he went down (I always thought he should have been riding closer to the center of the road).

Question: should everyone have waited for Lance or should they have continued like Alberto?

Here’s what happened.

Jan did not attack.

Jan did not accelerate.

Jan waited!

More than that, Tyler Hamilton waved his hands to the front group to signal that the yellow jersey went down. Translation: you slow down!

Lance was certainly what I would call the great Padrone of the Tour. He was a champion and he owned the Tour after his previous four consecutive Tour wins. Without a doubt, Lance commanded respect. You simply did not cross him.

Alberto, in the case of Andy on Stage 15 this year, chose a different path. He mounted an attack and continued. I’m not sure how much he looked back except to see that Andy was not behind him. With race radios as prevalent as they are today, I really doubt that Alberto had no idea what was going on. Alberto could have slowed and waited. He could have waved his hands like Tyler. Alberto could have nullified the attacks. He could have at least tried. I think if he had tried then other riders would have responded. Although he is young, he is still a champion of sorts.

From the limited video that I saw, Alberto’s victory will go down in controversy. There may not be an asterisk by his name like Bjarne Riis. but what he did was not heroic. So what if they kissed and made up? That’s what little kids do. They fight, the squabble, they hurt each other, and then the parents tell them to apologize.

Hopefully Alberto will grow, mature, and step into the role of a great champion.

The cycling world had been watching the TdF with especially keen interest and it’s been that way because of a certain Lance Armstrong. Lance famously retired in 2005 after winning the TdF seven consecutive times. I always thought his retirement was a mistake. He was at the top of his game and he set it aside. I always thought that what he should have done is simply change his focus. Rather than spend every waking moment concentrating on the TdF, he should should have turned his attention to races in the US. The ToC was starting to pick up steam as a serious world class event and there are several one to three day races all across the country. His presence could have highlighted a lot of races that normally don’t even get a consideration of a yawn.

What did he do instead? He decided to bounce all over the world and boink every girl he possibly could in between his commitments to his foundation. Who doesn’t remember the shameful poses of him with random Hollywood starlets every week? I suppose it was a like a big stress relief for him but it was such a waste of ability and talent. Eventually, all of that must have caught up to him in his mind and he realized that he ought to be riding. Sure enough, he un-retires and gets back to work. We see a new Lance Armstrong but is it good or bad?

I say it was for the worse. Lance got sloppy. He started crashing more and he famously broke his collar bone. Some would say that this is all just bad luck. I disagree. Getting a flat tire is bad luck. Having a spectator knock you down like Giuseppe Guerini had happen to him in the ’99 TdF is bad luck. Clipping your pedal on a roundabout and crashing is sloppy. Crashing two more times in the same day is just beyond words! I will give Lance credit for getting back up and finishing the ride. Most riders would have tried to get back up, limp along, and then withdraw from the race. He did none of that. Bravo!

He was around 11 minutes back. So, what does he do? Does he devise a plan to to take a risky break and gain back time on his opponents? After all, the world wrote him off and said his tour is over. What a great lever to pull if he whizzed ahead! No, he gives up. He loses more time every day until he becomes that middle placed rider that nobody will remember. No offense to any pros here, but who remembers the man who finished 56th in last years TdF? Does anyone even care?

And what’s all this noise about gifts? He calls himself an ‘old man’. At the youngish age of 38, he still has a lot of heartbeats ahead of him but in his mind he is old. That tells me that he’s reached the end of the line. He is mentally fatigued and he is finished. The media picked up on this too. At the beginning of the TdF there was a lot of fanfare about Lance. Now? There’s barely a stir except for all the doping allegations. He should have stayed retired. Do or do not do!

Oh, doping? Yes, the ever persistent thorn in his side. Lance has never officially tested positive for anything and he has never confessed to a banned activity. Then again, we all know Floyd denied everything too. Others who doped said that it wasn’t banned at the time so it must have been OK. The US government is now breathing down Lance’s neck and this may be the real reason for his mental fatigue (despite his denial of it). Whether the allegations are true or not, the allegations take up concentration and mental space. Think of it this way. If you need to let out an avalanche of shit during a presentation at a conference then no matter how much of an expert you are in the subject being presented you will sound like a doof. Why? Because you can’t think about your presentation. All you want to do is void your bowels.

Much remains to be seen about Lance’s future. Whatever happens, I think he will be remembered like Icarus. With wings of wax, Lance soared and escaped from the most brutal trappings of the TdF. He wanted to know how much higher he could fly so he came back in ’09 to the cycling world. I think he might have flown too high and his wings melted without him knowing it. His only indication was his falling to earth.

When riders were real!

HTFU, dear riders!

Lance showed some of that grit here. From Velonews.com….

I can almost taste the grit here.

Show the world 21 days of riding like this. Shorten the stages to discourage doping. 60km to 80km is enough of a distance. What do you think?

The smoldering embers of Floyd Landis continue to glow red with WADA stepping up an investigation based on his confession. Oye! Wouldn’t be something if he turns around and say, “I was just lashing out at the world. Forget everything I said.”

Chris Anker Sørensen is today’s lanterne rouge. Personally, I think he’s got promise. At 25, he’s racked up some wins. Could anything happen when he’s 30? Who knows?

Fabian Cancellara lost the yellow jersey but it was almost expected. The yellow jersey will bounce around like a hot potato during these first few stages before it settles down. Then again, anything could happen in the TdF and we may see another race determined by a margin of seconds.

Voices are being raised in the negative about the lack of TVs in the cars for the team directors to watch their teams. While I am not against all the radios and TV and the like, I am against all the whining about them. How was the Tour conducted in decades past? This isn’t a new event. Riders survived through much more with much less. Honestly, stop! Let go of the security blanket. Just do your jobs and ride! Oh, and use your brain!

Today’s Lanterne Rouge is Andreas Klier of Germany. He’s another fine soldier who is probably here to simply make it. I can’t ask anything more out of any rider. Godspeed, Andreas!

Tomorrow should be a real treat. Cobbles! The Tour will finally get “hard”.

Sprinters scare me. Seriously, these are the people that are not afraid of anything. It’s like they are high on narcotics. Oh wait, one of them was. So much of the victory depends on luck rather than strategy even though there is some strategy involved in positioning. Personally, I can’t wait for a good mountain stage!

So is Fabian clean? Seeing that he’s not a GC contender I would say that he is indeed clean. His ranking will fade quickly and his next time in the spotlight could be on July 24th during the 19th stage. It’s a good long TT where the riders will have to very carefully balance “pushing it” to “recovering” to “maintaining” to “final surging”. If Fabian takes it easy during the other stages he may shine here. Then again, so will the toughest climbers who can grind through anything.

Also notable with the prologue is his bike being scanned for motorized doping. Fabian had something to say about that.

“‘You better scan me, because I am the motor.”

Touche!

Notable is the performance of Manuel Cardoso. Does the name sound unfamiliar? It might since he is the last place finisher here at 6:20.00 back. His average speed was about 20.3 MPH if I did my math right. That’s hardly anything to whoop about but who knows what lies ahead here.

The soft drama between Lance and Floyd continues. I say let them have at it. After all, who cares about the ride, right? Maybe they should have hot dog eating content. The winner is declared the truthful one and the loser is the liar… until the rematch.

Someone will get caught doping. No exception. If they don’t get caught right away then they will get caught later or confess even much later out of a guilty conscience.

Let’s pick 1996 and work our way forward.

1996 – Bjarne Riis, winner of that edition of the TdF doped like a race horse

1997 – Marco Pantani, may his soul rest in peace, won that edition of the TdF and doped plenty during his career.

1998 – The Festina scandal erupted like a high pressure water balloon.

1999 – Richard Virenque, winner of the polka dot jersey, doped plenty in his life and Frankie Andreu confessed to doping that year in 2006

2000 – He’s not a heavy hitter like others but Emmanuel Magnien’s name pops up for testing positive that year.

2001 -Bo Hamburger was caught by a new EPO test.

2002 – Igor González de Galdeano was caught in 2003 for doping in 2002 and missed the followin year’s TdF.

2003 -Philippe Gaumont comes out with his confession of rampant doping.

2004 – David Millar is caught fair and square.

2005 – Roberto Heras and Danilo Hondo, both big names for the TdF, get nailed for drugs.

2006 – Operacion Puerto snags Jan Ullrich (’97 winner) and Ivan Basso. Basso confessed to trying to dope. Let’s not even bring up Floyd Landis anymore.

2007 – Iban Mayo, Patrick Sinkewitz, and Alexander Vinokourov all get caught red handed.

2008 – Without even mentioning Michael Rasmussen, Riccardo Riccò was caught using the latest generation of EPO.

2009 – Tyler Hamilton, although not riding in the TdF anymore, is caught doping one more time. Tom Boonen is snorting cocaine. Thomas Dekker and Danilo Di Luca’s names both pop up for doping as well.

2010 – Your guess is as good as mine.

So in the last 14 years we have had at least one major doping violation with a big name in the TdF. They may not get caught during the TdF but they do get caught eventually. Isn’t this just sad?

Now before you call me an eternal pessimist, let me tell you that I am still cheering for the race and the riders. The race is a beautiful ride through a wonderful country. Both the TdF and France deserve better. I will be cheering for the riders that barely make the cut off times and those opportunists who race for points. There will be the time trial specialists like David Zabriskie. Let’s look for that new fresh face like all great riders were at one time. Will there be some young 25 year old like Thomas Voeckler who will seize the yellow jersey and bravely hold on to it for 10 days?

We can only hope for the best!