I saw a few articles about Bobby Lea’s 3rd place finish at the Track World Cup in London this past weekend.  This was following his winning a World Cup a few weeks ago.  He is leading the omnium World Cup overall competition now.  This is pretty unprecedented for US track cycling. Pretty great.

It got me thinking about track cycling and how it has pretty much disappeared off the radar screens of cycling fans.  Road, cyclocross, even MTB racing has a greater media and fan base than track cycling does currently.  I’m wondering how that happened.

I know that, here in the US, the USAC doesn’t put any emphasis in track cycling.  I know that they would disagree with that statement, but I know of no organized track program, which doesn’t mean that there isn’t one, but it has to be pitiful ,at best.  I would bet that Bobby Lea’s success this track season is because of his individual efforts and training and nothing to do with a USAC track program.

I have a friend, Jim Thiele, that has been going over to England the past few years to compete in the Master’s World Track Championships in Manchester.  He told me that when the British track team takes over the track for training, it is amazing.

The riders are riding their full race equipment, with telemetry on each rider’s bikes and the track, with guys with laptops looking at real-time data as they train.  He said there were probably 5 support for each rider.  And this was just for training.  He compared that to our sprint program where there is a half empty apartment in LA for the riders and having to pretty much fend for your own.

He said that there is no way that the US riders have a chance to compete with the British, taking the two programs into consideration.  I would have to agree.

But the organized track program doesn’t make the sport seem a fringe sport, even compared to other aspects of cycling, which is a fringe sport on its own.   It has just fallen off with popularity, which is too bad.

Track cycling is super fun to watch, in person.  Maybe it is because there are so few tracks where spectators can go and see it live?  I dont‘ know.

Bobby comes from Lehigh Valley where the Trexlertown Velodrome is located.  They have a super healthy track program going on and Bobby can train and race at a level that is much superior to the rest of the United States.  But, it still isn’t Britain or Australia.  These two countries track programs are off the charts superior to ours.  And the results show it.

Anyway, if you have a chance to catch so track racing, in person, I think you’ll be surprised how exciting it is.  Bobby Lea is currently doing something unprecedented in US track racing, for men.   It will be interesting following the rest of the World Cup season, which is one more race in Columbia, in January.    Wishing Bobby good luck!

You know when all the best, new generation riders of American riders, say how clean the sport is, and how we need to believe, and then a current, systematic doping program is exposed within the Astana program, then it is all bullshit.

It’s not such a surprise that there are still full teams of riders doping, it is distressing that guys like BMC’s Tejay Van Garderen and Garmin’s Andrew Talanski say that the peleton is clean and we just need to believe.  They are experiencing the results of the doping first hand and they go and say it is all normal.

Tejay says – “I think the sport has turned a corner.” When asked about doping within the peloton.

And here are a couple tweets from Andrew after Danilo Di Luca, who contributed greatly  to the Padova investigation, made some public statements about doping within the pro peleton. –

I feel genuine hatred towards Di Luca. He’s a worthless lying scumbag making false statements that hurt the sport I love.

Thankfully his statements are delusional. I wouldn’t be in this sport if it was not possible to succeed at the highest level and do it clean.

I guess Andrew, you were wrong and Danilo was right.

Here is a link to today’s Cyclingnews article about the results of the Padova police investigation released in Italy.   It says that Vino and his guys are still doping and dealing with Dr. Ferrari and his son, Stephano.   17 guys on the Astana team are using their services.   And yes, Tenerife is one of their favorite locations for blood transfusions etc.

Here’s a full list of the guys that are named in the investigation.  Vino is last, but not least.

Full list of riders:

Leonardo Bertagnolli, Simone Boifava, Diego Caccia, Enrico Franzoi, Marco Frapporti, Omar Lombardi, Fabrizio Macchi, Marco Marcato, Andrea Masciarelli, Francesco Masciarelli, Simone Masciarelli, Daniele Pietropolli, Morris Possoni, Filippo Pozzato, Alessandro Proni, Michele Scarponi, Francesco Tizza, Giovanni Visconti, Ricardo Pichetta, Andrea Vaccher, Mauricio Ardila, Volodymyr Bileka, Borut Bozic, Maxim Gourov, Vladimir Gusev, Valentin Iglinskiy, Sergei Ivanov, Vladimir Karpets, Aleksander Kolobnev, Dimitri Kozontchuk, Roman Kreuziger, Denis Menchov (Rus), Evgeni Petrov, Yaroslav Popovych, José Joaquin Rojas (Spa), Ivan Rovny, Egor Silin, Alexandre Vinokourov

So, UCI, it’s Wednesday.  Let’s hear what you have to say about all this shit.