I saw an article at Cyclingnews that said that Thijs van Amerongen was disqualified from the Superprestige round in Gieten last weekend, after the fact, because he had a camera on his bicycle that was streaming live video.   The article says that because Thijs wasn’t “granted permission, before the race, the race jury booted him and his 12th place finish.

This is the first I’ve even thought about this, so it is just going to be my initial impressions.

1st,  I don’t know of any UCI rule that says that a rider can’t do live video while racing.  But there must be one.

2nd, do you think that he would have been DQ’d if he was just using the camera for video for future use and not streaming the race live?  This is the only reason that I can see that would make any sense is that they are worried about competition for their television rights.

I suppose the race owns the rights to the broadcast and maybe there is a clause in in the waiver that says that you can’t stream the race.  I wonder if that same clause is included when you buy a ticket to watch the race.  Would they have booted a spectator that was streaming the race from wherever they were standing?

I’m not sure where I stand on this.  I can see both sides of the issue.

I’m wondering if I would get kicked out of a UCI race that hadn’t sold TV rights and wasn’t being streamed live?    I very much doubt it.   But, they would really have to if they wanted to enforce the rules uniformly.  Your thoughts?

And I had just gotten a new Shimano camera a couple weeks ago.

Plus, Barfly camera mounts.

I am listening to NPR and they just said the the UCI had approved the use of disc brakes on road bikes for racing.  That is a pretty unusual way to hear about bicycle racing rules.   I haven’t seen that in print anywhere, but I have to assume that is going to be true.

I don’t really like the whole idea of disc brakes on road bikes.  I actually pretty much hate it.  I don’t see it as an innovation.  I see it as a hassle.

Putting together bikes nowadays is a hassle.  There are too many options for everything to really keep track of what parts you actually need.  There are numerous different bottom brackets.  Same with front derailleurs.  Now brakes.

Shops can’t keep replacement parts in stock for everything.  So, you have to wait to fix your bike on any given day.  It isn’t like when you crash on a weekend, you can go down to the local shop and get the part you need to make your bike work the same day.

Specially, disc wheels are a hassle.  I don’t understand the wheel change issue.  It is nearly impossible putting a different wheel in a bike and not having to adjust the brake caliber.  So when you flat in a race, how is that going to work?

And the spacing is changing too.  135 to 142.  Thru axle, quick release. How many different rear wheels do you need to compete?  Too many.

Flying with a bicycle is a hassle already.  Now with disc wheels, unless you have a hard wheel case, you’re going to have to remove your brake rotors so the airlines don’t bend them up during travel.  I guess it is fine if you don’t have a 6 bolt mounting system, but it is still 2 extra things to do disassembling and assembling your bike during travel.

I haven’t ridden disc brakes on the road much.  But, nearly every time I pull my brakes, I stop. That is the case off-road too.  Catherine was all concerned about riding V-brakes on her bike in Chequamegon.  I asked her if when she pulled her bike didn’t stop?  She answered that it did. What more do you need?  Pull the brakes and the bike slows and/or stops.   Seems that simple to me.

The one upside I can see to discs on the road is getting predictability when braking on carbon rims.  Especially at speed, descending.  Or even better, at speed, wet.

But the majority of us, really aren’t racing down mountain passes, on carbon rims, in the rain. And if we are, we most likely understand the capabilities of our brake systems.  If you don’t, then you probably shouldn’t be doing it.

And how about having a bunch of guys in the field with different braking capabilities.  One guy pulls his brakes and stops in 15 meters, the next guy 20.  I guess it is no difference than someone with aluminum rims compared to carbon.

Plus, according to this article at Velonews last year, disc brakes on road bikes take up to 8 watts extra power, due to wind resistance.  Don’t think a tt rider or triathlete would want to use these. Or any of us.

So, all our road bikes are becoming obsolete once again.  If you don’t have a tapered steering column with disc mounts, you might as well sell it on eBay for 10% of the price you paid for it.

Maybe it’s an upgrade.  Just maybe.  But the hassles outweigh the benefits, in my view. When they solve the wheel compatibility and ease of wheel changing issues, then I’ll reconsider my stance. Until then, I’m sticking with my views.

You can get this bike, with built in sensors, along with carbon disc rotors, for a mere $27,500.

The Abu Dhabi Tour just published an article that said that at the Abu Dhabi Tour, the teams at the race used 25000 water bottles.  That is just for a 4 day stage race. Divide that by the 107 riders that started the race and it comes to nearly 60 bottles per day/per rider.  Anyone going for this?

So if you were the water bottle fetcher for one of the teams, you would have had to drop back, say, 50 times, if you could carry 6 bottles back to your team, 300 total, plus the 60 that you were going to use.  That means you would have 2 miles on a 100 mile stage to drop back into the caravan, get the bottles and pass them out again.   Pretty much a continuous rotation.

Maybe they are counting all the water bottles they gave out to the public for souvenirs during the race?  But that wasn’t what the article implied.   Maybe just an inflated number?   Guess they think that is an impressive thing?  Shows me it was just really hot, no matter what the real figure was.

And the Tinkoff team brought their own bottles, it seems, so we need to refigure the number.

I have trying to avoid the doping deal as much as I can.  It is like beating a dead horse, which, sounds really creepy. ( I wonder who came up with that saying.)  Anyway, it is so old.

But, the Pro Tour team, Trek, hiring Ryder Hesjedal, is something different.  I wrote a post, probably more, about Ryder and my general feeling about him.  I’ve had numerous personal encounters with him in races, where, admittedly, he was doping.   I hated it then and maybe even more now.

But, this isn’t about that.  It is about a road team that is financed mainly by Trek rehiring a rider that doped when they previously employed him.  You see, Ryder started his meteoric rise to his stardom in cycling when he was sponsored, pretty much exclusively, by Gary Fisher, a brand of Trek.

I know this happens all the time over in Europe, with other Pro tour teams, but this is different. Ryder started his career here, in the US, beating up on a bunch of MTB riders.

He,  Roland Green, and a few of their friends from up North, started the destruction of sponsorship for American riders for international mountain bike racing.   And years after this, way after Ryder confessed his sins, and had been, according to Ryder himself, been racing clean, Trek decides that he is a perfect fit for their professional road program.

This just rubs me the wrong way.  But, I’m just me.  I wonder why all these cycling specific media people never ask Trek, the pro tour Trek team, or Ryder himself, what was going through their minds when they came up with this great idea?  I guess they assume that no one really cares.

I could come up with a bunch of old MTB racers that care.  It would be easy.  I personally can come up with many friends that were greatly financially affected, to the negative, by Ryder doping his way to the Pro tour level of road cycling.

You probably don’t remember, but Ryder was in contention to win the Olympic games in 2004, but he flatted out.  I wonder if anyone would care more if he had won the Olympic games, during, according to Ryder, “the dark past of the sport”.  Here is a link to his confession at Cyclingnews.  He does apologize to his sponsors.  Maybe Trek thought this was directed exclusively to them?

I know, some will say, let bygones be bygones.  Ryder paid penalty for “dabbling” in doping, during his MTB time.  But, no, that isn’t true. Other than having to “confess”, nothing happened to Ryder.  He still has all his results, his money, his World Championship jerseys.

I’m wondering if Trek has a little exhibit up in Waterloo WIsconsin with some of Ryder’s old Gary Fisher bikes that he used to, so fairly, win the World Championships?  Maybe an exhibit showing the relationship they’ve had with him for so long, spanning close to 15 years.  It is such a nice story.

This guy, Dave Walker, beat both Ryder and I at the Iceman cometh. That should be really embarrassing for Ryder, since this was during his “dark past”. I wrote a post about it.