COG Keirin School Slideshow

Head over to the COG Magazine site immediately to take a look at a slideshow of photos from their excellent Keirin School feature. The pics are amazing, set it up to run fullscreen. Good work again from the COG crew.

ChiCrossCup Book!

A bunch of Chicago photographers have put together this excellent book chronicling the mud, sweat and beers of the 2009 ChiCrossCup series, so if you raced in Chicago this season and you want to see if you're immortalized in its pages, or if you didn't and you just want to look at some great photos of muddy cyclocross action, get the book here.

Thanks to AndrewFY again for the headsup!

Cadence Winter

Expect to see this Cadence bobble-hat keeping my noggin warm around Chicago, Dublin and London this winter. That's right, I'm finally leaving the tropics and heading to the lands of ice, snow and drizzle. I'm actually looking forward to it!

Seen on Tracko. Check out the full Cadence winter line here.

Rollercoaster

There's something really great about how certain wooden velodromes resemble old rollercoasters and fairground rides, because really, racing around a wooden track with a bunch of friends, feeling the gravity when you're right in the turn, the roar and noise of the pack as it passes the crowd, is there another sport which so perfectly evokes an old-fashioned thrill ride?

Photo by James Deavin, available here.

Thanks to AndrewFY for the headsup!

Life Needs No Brakes

You know, a few years ago people would have been going crazy for these shirts, but now people seem more interested in one-upping each other over whose bike looks most like something a hobbit would ride around Middle Earth. Pity. I'm sure the "no brakes" message will send some message-board granddads into fits of apoplexy too. More details on the shirts here.

No more points race, no more Madison.

Joan Llaneras of Spain riding uptrack of the peleton in the Men's Point Race. Save this photo, because you won't be seeing action like this at any future Olympics.
DANIEL GARCIA/AFP/Getty Images.

Well, that's it, then. The International Olympic Committee has confirmed a complete reorganization of Olympic track cycling events, meaning they've ditched the Individual Pursuit, the Points race, and the Madison, and added women's keirin, team sprint, team pursuit, and omnium for both men and women. The move is, ostensibly, about gender parity, having the same number of events for both men and women track cyclists, but in reality that could have been achieved by adding more events for women without cutting some of the best and most interesting race formats, i.e., the Madison and the Points race. The Olympic track racing programme has now become, almost entirely, a sprint-fest, and is much more boring as a result.

In my opinion, this is less about gender parity than it is about loading the track racing programme with short, explosive races that can be televised easily and require less attention from the average viewer. No disrespect to the sprinters, and definitely no disrespect to the female cyclists who absolutely deserve to race the exact same programme as men, but seriously, getting rid of the best endurance races is a joke, and reduces track racing to just one of its many aspects, all in the name of "good television." Okay, so, there are still World Championships every year, and lots of World Cup events, but the Olympics has always been the global showcase for the variety that makes up track racing, the one opportunity for non-cyclists to watch a bit of mental Madison action, and I think it's a big mistake to cut these events.

Oh, but they added 7-a-side rugby, a game played by almost nobody and followed by literally hundreds of people around the world. So, that's great...

Outlier Dress Shirt

This dress shirt from Outlier sounds really great. It's called the Pivot Sleeve Shirt, and it's specially tailored to fit better while riding, which, as anyone who's ever worn a dress shirt while cycling will know, would be helpful. Here's the word from the folks themselves: "The basic challenge was straightforward, when you lean forward on a bike a buttondown shirt stresses. It pulls uncomfortably taut across the shoulders. The sleeves pull up exposing your wrists to the cold, and the tails pull out of your pants, leaving you either untucked or with a blooming blouse of a shirt. Our solution is the patent-pending Pivot Sleeve, a completely reconstructed buttondown that retains the traditional look and feel of a dress shirt while working equally well both on and off the a bicycle." Perfect for cyclists like me, who are eventually going to have a job that requires clothing slightly more formal than my current work outfit of cargo shorts and flip flops. What? I work at a beach, basically. More details on the Outlier Pivot Sleeve Shirt here.

In Tom Boonen's dreams...

"I'm riding through cocaine! Yay!"

Photo from Cyclocross Magazine. Thanks to ffonst for the photo.

Seasons Beatings!

Chicago, Saturday, December 12, 2009 at 12:30pm

Two days of racing, two nights of parties, one good cause. This is a fund raiser for the members of the Tokyo BMA, who are currently $34000 in debt after hosting this years Cycle Messenger World Championship.

Friday night alleycat, info to come.

Saturday, registration at the Blue Frog, 676 N. Lasalle, 12:30pm. $10 to race, $7 for poker race only. Race begins at 2pm! There will also be a poker race for those who don't have the guts to go nuts.

Coppi Tribute Jersey

Nice vintage design/modern materials for this Fausto Coppi tribute jersey from Prendas/Santini. I need to get one of these so I can fool myself into thinking I'm riding l'Eroica everyday. Available at Prendas.