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Podcast 2013 Episode 15 – All Riled Up
Holy fuck kittens/puppies/polar bear cubs, what a week in women’s cycling! It’s been totally fucking crazy. I mean really crazy, and it’s kind of got to Sarah and me this week. You can tell because we really do get all riled up. Languedoc Rousillon needs a good hard ranting, so we kick off with that. Then we rant California styles. Dan launches a new UCI ranked race for May 2014 and issues an open invite to anyone from the UCI to come on the podcast and tell him he’s wrong. After all that ranting we move into accentuating the positives and talk about a whole bunch of cool stuff. We especially want to mention Half The Road, the great documentary that Kathryn Bertine is putting together. Links down below, go donate now! We’ll wait for you to get back, promise. Now buckle yourselves in for some of the funniest ranting you’re likely to hear in the next hour and a bit. (1:15:21 MIN / 72.33 MB)
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Things we talked about this week
The Tour de Languedoc-Roussillon
- Sarah’s background on the story of the race (with links to pictures of the food!)
- EDIT! Interview with Emma Pooley about winning the race, on Velonation (thanks Bassface!) and blog about Stage 1 from Marijn de Vries
- Stage videos – with the first one (titled Stage 2, because it should have been) including the riders’ sit-down protest against the organisers (a thousand thanks to CyclingFlash of Cycling Fever for finding all of these for us! Check out the CF video pages for more!)
Why does the UCI get away with treating women’s cycling so badly?
This week has been frustrating for women’s cycling. There have been three big stories that demonstrate the difficulties the sport is in – but you’d never know that, from looking at the cycling media
Last Sunday was the Tour of ChongMing Island World Cup, where the result was decided not by great racing, but by a human error, when the last corner wasn’t marked, taking the peloton off course in the last kilometres and allowing an opportunistic attacker, Tetyana Riabchenko, to win solo. Reports differ as to exactly what happened (here’s the ORICA-AIS report) everyone describes it as an unfortunate mistake by an otherwise excellent race organiser, and of course the peloton may not have caught Riabchenko – but it’s incredibly frustrating that one of the rounds of the World Cup, one of the most prestigious competitions of the year, ends this way.
Podcast 2013 Episode 14 – Jealous!
What a week! It’s the 1 year anniversary since we started saying dumb stuff on the internet! We talk social media jersey, Tour of California, harrassment, racing and all sorts of stuff. Not to be missed!
Well sort of. As it turned out, Sarah and I recorded this week’s podcast literally about an hour before the news about the Tour of Languedoc. Anyway, that’s all turned to 147 different shades of shit, so make sure to check out Sarah’s post to try and help us work out what the fuck’s going on over there. It’s a longer episode this week but that’s only because we’ve got a lot of ground to cover. Pour yourselves a strong whisky (or whiskey!) and settle in. (1:15:32 MIN / 72.16 MB)
You can stream the best 1 year old women’s cycling podcast here.
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Happy podcast birthday! We’re one year old today!
Things we talked about this week
The Tour of ChongMing Island World Cup
On the cancellation of the 2013 Tour of Languedoc Roussillon
Today was meant to be the start of the 6-stage Tour of Languedoc-Roussillon. This should be a UCI 2.2 race, and was billed at the beginning of the return of the Tour de l’Aude, which when it as cancelled in 2011, was one of only three women’s races allowed over a week by the UCI.
The race has a dodgy history. Last year it was cancelled just two weeks before it was due to start, but the organisers have been telling everyone it was due to go ahead this year…. until yesterday, when riders had arrived, or were in the air/on the road, when they were told it was cancelled. Then they were told to stick around because it *might* go ahead, or might be a shortened race…. it’s completely ridiculous. Yes, of course it’s hard to organise races, but it shows no respect at all to the riders and teams not to give them some warning, before they book travel, let alone before they arrive.
This is very important because the women’s teams don’t have enough cash to be wasting money on getting to the bottom of France, only to have to pay to go home again. And it’s key preparation for the only Grand Tour left, the Giro Rosa, and there aren’t other races to swap to. But it’s also important because of what it says about women’s cycling – and how the UCI and cycling media sees it. If you looked on the UCI’s website, or on Cyclingnews, Velonation or Velonews right now, you’d find nothing about this – it’s not news. This is crazy! There are so many questions raised – like, what are the UCI going to do about the women’s calendar? Why do they give UCI rankings to races like this and the Exergy Tour, that are cancelled after the season starts, when there have been very clear signs that the organisations are in trouble? And yes, why will the news outlets go crazy about Wiggins talking about “riding like a girl” but won’t even mention that women are being prevented from riding?
Help a pro cyclist with a little experiment!
We love Gracie Elvin on this site – her blogs and videos about life on the road with ORICA-AIS have made us happy all year. And of course Dan and I both want more women’s cycling on tv – so we want to spread the word about Elvin’s little social media experiment.
A little experiment: RT, Favourite or Like if you want to see more Women’s Cycling on your TV or computer screens…
— Gracie Elvin (@gracieelvin) May 10, 2013
If you want to help too, click through to her twitter and either RT or like, or both – it’s an interesting, simple little thing to do – and I’ll be interested to see what the results are…
How to follow the 2013 ChongMing Island World Cup
On Saturday Sunday 12th May, it’s the fifth round of the UCI Road World Cup, the Tour of ChongMing Islandin China. This is a race on the long, wide, flat roads of ChongMing Island in the Yangtze river, connected to Shanghai by the beautiful bridge and tunnel, and the race uses both.
It’s very definitely a race for the sprinters. The “mountains” point comes when they ride up the ramp onto the bridge, and the roads have meant while riders have dropped off the back, and there can be echelon-ing, it ends up in a bunch sprint. It is usually very rainy, though, and the wind can make it a very tough race indeed – certainly no easy ride, this one!
The website is mostly in Chinese, and google translate hates that, but there’s some information on the parcours in English in this report of the press conference (google translated into English) – but if you want some more on the race, Melissa Hoskins has a race preview on the ORICA-AIS website of the World Cup and and the Tour of ChongMing Island stage race, which ran 8th-12th May. Because the Island isn’t a large one, the stage race runs on a lot of the same roads. Here’s the video we’ve had of that so far, and much more info below the jump:
Podcast 2013 Episode 13 – Women’s Cycling Fans Are Better Than Normal People
Hello sinners! Welcome aboard for a slightly unusual week of podcasting fun and adventure. This week Sarah baits Dan mercilessly with accusations of Queenslandishness, we’ll leave it to you to decide if he doth protest too much. We also do a quick whip around the racing all over the world (there’s quite a bit of it). Dan gets excited about research reports (and possibly owes Daniel Benson an apology). There’s a bunch of other stuff, including a fair bit of laughing and a whole lot of swearing, so grab a beer, settle in and get ready to press play! (1:02:23 MIN / 59.88 MB)
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Sarah’s compiling links for you right now (aren’t you Sarah?!)! Come back in half an hour or so to have all sorts of things to click!
Sarah edit! OK, that took more than half an hour (sorry!) but here’s what we talked about this week…
Last week’s racing:
Knokke/Bredene
It takes two – The Right Dessert
We’re back again and ready to dish out the sweetest love/relationship/racing advice you’ve ever heard! (Or possibly not – I’m not a professional at this stuff). Anyway, the oracular Heather Nielson and I are here to answer your questions in simple language that we can all understand. As ever, if you need advice in how to perfect your experience of love then leave us a comment below.
Anyway let’s get on with it. Here’s the latest relationship-saving advice to help you win at love.
Jimbo asks:
I have been married for over 10 years to a smart and beautiful woman who i adore. She is loving and patient, she is a wonderful mother to our children, and I love her deeply. We are very happy. Here is my question: Recently I bought a new cross frame. What brand of wheels should I run on it, and should I go tubeless? If so which brand do you recommend. Also, handlebar tape color?
Videos of last week’s racing (and other things)
Thanks to everyone who gives us links – especially Bassface!
If you want to read about last week’s racing, check out my report on Total Women’s Cycling
Last week’s racing:
Festival Luxembourgeois du Cyclisme Féminine Elsy Jacobs
Prologue video:
Post-prologue video interviews (in English) with Annemiek van Vleuten, with Nettie Edmondson and with Christine Majerus
Podcast 2013 Episode 11 – Digressions
This week Sarah and I digress. A lot. It’s like this game I used to play when I was at university and someone would be trying to tell a joke and I would interrupt them to ask really specific and deliberately pointless questions. Like, they’d say “A priest, a rabbi and a cowboy walked into a bar…” and I’d say things like “An orthodox rabbi?” and “What sort of priest? Catholic or Episcopalian?” or “Did the cowboy have pearl-handled pistols?” This week’s episode is exactly like that.
We also talk about a bunch of races including Omloop van Borsele, Dwars door de Westhoek, Sea Otter, Gracia Orlova, Elsy Jacobs and more. There are some excellent blogs from Ashleigh Moolman and Marijn de Vries. But even if none of that stuff grabs your attention, you should at least listen to hear Sarah try to explain what she knows about bikes. It’s fucking hilarious. (1:13:46 MIN / 70.83 MB)
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Things we talked about this week
Last week’s racing – read Sarah’s report about it all on Total Women’s Cycling.
