Chasing wheels

A quick mid-weeker to pick up on one of those quotes that guaranteed to infuriate me.

I was reading Richard Moore's latest piece on Team Sky in The Guardian Bradley Wiggins dismisses claim that pro cycling hates Team Sky.

It was this section about Marc Madiot's annoyance that infuriated:

"Other criticisms, such as those made this week by Marc Madiot, team manager of Française des Jeux, seem to owe more to the fact that Team Sky, through Facebook and Twitter are communicating with fans using all the means at their disposal. It irritated Madiot that Sky ­publicised work in a wind tunnel. 'We also put riders in wind tunnels,' said the former double winner of Paris‑Roubaix, 'but we don't put out a press release about it.'"

Well perhaps if you did put out a few more press releases then perhaps your team might be a bit more visible. Or perhaps if you paid attention you'd see one of your riders gaining a cult reputation on Facebook after the Tour Down Under: Arthur Vichot.

Cycling needs to sort out its PR, not just on the doping front but on the fan front. The most successful of the new teams in the last few years have realised that a few autographs by the team bus just doesn't cut it these days.

A successful online presence doesn't take much more than internet access, a copy of wordpress and a five quid a month hosting deal to get started. Yes that seems to be beyond the abilities of a lot of top flight teams.

Sky got their online media presence right by investing the same time, effort and thought that they claim in their race preparation. There's plenty that Madiot could learn from them off the road instead of playing the humpy French team card.

I'll set aside the issue of someone who is employed to write for the team site writing about the team. I'm not the only person out there who thinks there's something odd about the issues of conflict of interest when it comes to Sky's reporting on the Team. Moore is a great writer and journalism but he writes for their official website and so I'm also a bit uncomfortable with his reporting on the Team.

When the sun comes out Hillingdon is always busy and everyone seems to wheel out their sunny day bikes (expensive carbon frame, top-end groupset, deep section wheels). Either that or we're getting towards the end of the series and the beginning of Spring.

(Photo by British Cycling on Flickr)

So the 4ths set off with a big field. That usually this guarantees a bunch sprint and a slightly twitchy atmosphere as everyone sits in and saves themself for the final three laps.

I've been on antibiotics all week which has somewhat limited my training. Sadly I can only use that as a stand-in for "not having done anything about improving my fitness" temporarily.

But I did get in one attack which was nearly the death of me. Cold air is heavy air and hitting the front hurt like standing on a plug: avoidable and stupid, as well as darned painful.

The only regular variable in the 4th Cat race is how much effort people put in before the cavalry charge. This weekend there was plenty so the race clipped along at a fast but not brutal pace with little attacks getting away now and again until a dangerous one looked like sticking late on as legs tired.

Tired legs usually means tired minds and that always heightens the risk of a crash in a finale. Or as Lance Woodman puts it

"The trouble often happens late when tiredness impairs judgment and ambition outstrips common sense ('I can win from the middle of the bunch')."

(Lance is currently sporting a magnificent beard which meant he was all but invisible to me in the bunch. Funny how you learn to recognise your fellow riders solely on the basis of the lower half of their face as you can see it out the corner of your eye.)

Sure enough with one lap to go there was a touch of wheels and a scattering of the pack as several riders went down hard. One chap was wheeled off to hospital with a suspected collarbone fracture. Speedy recoveries all round I hope.

As ever, I was behind the crash but managed to get round it unscathed. My teammate Rich was just ahead of it and had his back wheel clipped but not by enough to bring him down or stop him storming to 5th.

Richard Gearing's perspective on finishing in the points

And there's usually someone who gets a puncture. This week it was the Cycling Silk, Martin Porter:

Martin Porter gets a puncture but still finishes well

As the days lengthen so the time for riding grows. Music has always filled my head when I ride, regardless of whether I'm wearing my headphones or not.

Some tunes fall into the category of CHOON! and recur on playlists and preferences at certain times of the year.

Waterfall is inextricably a Spring song.

It's the guitars that make it one. That swirling chorus effect that underpins the crispness of the riff, played through what sounds like a Vox AC30 amp (Perry help me out here).

The hushed, unforced vocals and harmonies are for me the audio equivalent of enjoying the sight of your breath condensing in front of you.

The precise interlocking of the rhythmic bass pulse and metronomic high hat has pushed me up the hills and along the lanes for many years now.

• Download from Amazon.co.uk (£0.89)
• Download from iTunes
• Listen on Last.fm
• Listen on Spotify (12" mix)

(Photo by Lucy @ Imperial RT who organises the Winter Series)

There I am, another futile attack, this time trying to go after the mid-race prime. Went too early in pursuit of my friend James Curry (on the right of shot), both of us reaching our limits well before the line and were swamped by the field.

So I've no idea what the prize was. I'm now determined to find out before the end of the series. It seems like a reasonable alternative to trying to score points. Priorities? Yes, I know.

The rest of the race consisted of throwing a couple of digs in and trying to work on keeping myself positioned in the middle to front third of the bunch which always feels like the least safe place to be in a 4th Cat race.

The back third is of course where the real trouble and on the last lap someone had "a moment" in the middle of the bunch and squirted off across the U-bend at the start of the lap. Cue scattering riders heading onto the grass and hauling on brakes in desperation.

Yes I was behind it, no it didn't affect the likelihood of me scoring points. I rolled across the line in the stragglers. Next week, there is always next week.

A lot of people have seen the signing of Oscar Pereiro Sio as simply an attempt to bolster the Astana squad with an experienced rider who can be there when it matters in the high mountains.

His ability to sacrifice his own interests in working for Alejandro Valverde over the last few years will have been a characteristic that appealed greatly to Contador. This isn't a guy who is going to give him grief or take off in search of a stage win while the real battle is happening behind.

That's pretty vital to a guy who has lost his trusty domestique Sergio Paulinho to Radioshack. Contador still faces having to ride on someone else's team with the return of Alexandre Vinokourov to "his" Astana team.

What is so brilliant about signing Pereiro is that it's a very astute political move given the situation.

We can assume that ASO are going to be asking questions about Astana's inclusion on the basis of Vinokourov's presence. They've not forgiven him for his actions in 2007 which essentially amounted to kicking them in the balls while they were out cold after the Floyd Landis debacle.

Now name the only team in cycling with two Tour de France winners on their roster.

The answer is Astana with Alberto Contador and Oscar Pereiro.

The former is the defending champion who was unable to defend his title in 2008 because of the repercussions for Astana of Vinokourov's ban.

The latter is the rider robbed of his moment of glory on the podium in Paris as a result of Floyd Landis' ban.

In pure political terms the weight of their achievements/history combined may be the necessary counter to Vinokourov's disgrace, which still drags like ten tonnes of shit behind Astana.

We know that being defending champion in 2008 wasn't enough on its own to swing the balance in Contador's favour, albeit the politics then included Johan Bruyneel on the scales.

Given the passing of time and their record, the two riders may be enough to convince ASO not to exclude Astana this year.