Ask me if I care anymore

What a week it has been for the sport of professional cycling. It started off with the Tyler Hamilton interview on 60 Minutes; now we hear that Alberto Contador’s Clembuterol appeal will now not be heard before the start of this year’s Tour de France.

The joint appeal by the UCI and the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) is against the Spanish Cycling Federation’s finding that Contador is innocent of clenbuterol use. The case to be heard by the Court for Glacial Arbitration in Sport (CAS) has been delayed at the request of Contador’s lawyers. Apparently they need more time to gather evidence.

This is ridiculous, cycling fans had been promised, and it was expected to be settled one way or another before the TDF. The man I feel for is Christian Prudhomme the man who puts on the Tour de France, what does he do now, let Contador ride or not? He is screwed either way.

I am to the stage where I don’t care anymore, and I think that is exactly the tactic being played by the UCI. The UCI failed to ban Contador when he tested positive for clenbuterol, but instead turned the responsibility over to the Spanish Cycling Federation.

When Spain found Alberto innocent, the UCI has to go through the motions of an appeal. But it is a half assed appeal, one they don’t really want to win. I don’t hear any loud protests from the UCI at this latest delay, and if you remember one of the reasons this case has gone on this long is because the UCI waited until the very last minute to launch an appeal. 

I predict that the whole matter may resolve itself; I think Contador will voluntarily withdraw from this year’s Tour de France. The reason; this year’s Giro d’Italia has been brutal over a route that has had an exceptional number of tough mountain stages.

After last Saturday’s stage 15. 143 miles (229 km.) featuring five big climbs over the Dolomites from Conegliano to Gardeccia Val di Fassa, Contador said it was the “hardest day of racing in his life.” (Video above.)

I don’t believe he was expecting to ride both Grand Tours. Remember he only has a month to recover before the start of the TDF. If he rides he will not be on top form, and he will have stronger opposition than he has had in the Giro. Could be interesting.

Another interesting tid-bit of news emerged today. Switzerland has more than 50 World Sports governing bodies based in its country. The UCI is just one of them. The Swiss Government is investigating corruption in those sport’s governing bodies. Good timing, I hope the UCI is up there on their list.

                        

Nothing Changes

I became interested in the sport of cycle racing in the early 1950s.

It was common knowledge that the top European professional cyclists competing in the Tour de France and the Giro d’Italia took dope.

Amphetamines to be precise. How did I know this? I was only 16 years old at the time.

It was not reported in the Cycling Press, there were no stories about doping in newspapers. It was obviously just passed on down from the top echelons of the sport by word of mouth.

It was never considered “Cheating.” After all if the entire TDF peloton was using dope, the playing field was level. These riders rode over the same mountain ranges they do today, when the roads were often no better than dirt tracks. Stages were often in excess of 250 kilometers, 156 miles, as a 16 year old I figured dope was necessary.

So if a 16 year old knew about it, then obviously the UCI knew of it, and also the cycling press. But none of them did an expose of the situation. Not until British cyclist Tom Simpson died on Mt. Vontoux during the 1967 Tour de France.

He died of heat exhaustion, but had pushed his body beyond its limits with the aid of amphetamines. The world's press was all over the story, and then the Cycling Press and the UCI acted in shock and horror, as if not knowing that this practice was going on right under their noses.

Doping in cycling has probably been in existence since the beginnings of the sport. Certainly since the start of professional cycling where there was money to be made, and promoters calling for faster and longer races. And if it was in cycling it was obviously there in other professional sports.

I am sure by now everyone in the cycling community has seen the Tyler Hamilton interview on 60 Minutes. If you haven’t seen it here is a short version. After watching it I feel like a fool, I really thought the sport was changing and they were at last getting a handle on the dope situation.

Now I find the only thing that has changed over the years is that is that drugs have become more sophisticated, and less easy to detect. And instead of being an open secret amongst the cycling community, as it was prior to the 1960s, it is now an open secret only among the professional cyclists themselves.

So here we are today 44 years after Tom Simpson’s death; the UCI still looks the other way, and wishes the whole doping thing (In particular the media talking about it.) would just go away. Should we really expect any different? The man at the top of the UCI is an ex-professional cyclist, am I to assume he never took dope during his career? 

Tyler Hamilton’s claim that Lance Armstrong’s positive test in the 2001 Tour of Switzerland was “made to go away,” by the UCI, has a ring of truth to it. Because Alberto Contador’s clenbuteral positive was at first kept quiet by the UCI.

The UCI knew of it within days of the test in July 2010, but failed to make it public until September 2010, when the story was leaked by the testing lab. Had the story not been exposed, would Contador’s positive been made to go away also?

I still don’t see doping a cheating. It appears all top professionals are doing it so they compete on more or less equal terms. The only ones being cheated are the fans being led to believe the sport is clean.

However, doping is bad because young athletes see the pros do it and think it is okay to use that stuff, and it is not, especially using it unsupervised. There are some dangerous consequences.

The only way to stop drug use in professional sport is to make shame and the consequences of being caught not worth the risk of doing it.

                        

Chaos

I remember some years ago in the UK, I believe it was during the 1970s, the British Government decided to do a study to find out why pedestrians did not bump into each other, or cause a huge gridlock in the middle of the street when crossing the road at a light.

In big cities like London during rush hour, large numbers of people would wait to cross on opposing sides of the street. When the light turned green, they would all cross at the same time, in what must have appeared to traffic engineers, complete chaos.

Someone in their wisdom decided to do a study, because that’s what engineers do when they don’t have answers. After spending several tens of thousands British Pounds, of the tax payer’s money, they came up with this astounding discovery:

“People just go around each other.”

Walking, the original means to get from A to B, just putting one foot in front of the other. Look down on any busy street in any large city and it appears to be chaos, with people going every which way. However, beneath the chaos there is order, each individual has a destination and is just taking the route necessary to get there.

Now watch the video (Below.) of Market Street in San Francisco in 1905. Into the mix of people walking, has been added horse drawn vehicles, automobiles, and bicycles.

The same chaos prevails, but people simply go around each other. 

The reason it works is because there are less people and everyone is going very slow. I wonder how long it took in 1905 to get from one end of Market Street to the other, and I wonder how that time compares to today?

The strange thing I find is that there is more sanity in the chaotic street scene above than I see in a typical rush hour street scene of today.

It is the huge variation in speed between people walking, bicycles and autos that cause most of the problems in our large cities; both accidents and traffic hold ups.

If pedestrians pretty much kept to the sidewalks, if cars slowed down to closer the speed of a bicycle, I believe everyone would get to their destination just as fast; not to mention a lot less stressed.

Try making that argument to the guy who has spent thousands on the latest car that does zero to 60 in seconds, it will never happen. But please, allow me my flight of imagination.

                         

Kirkpatrick McMillan

Growing up in England and going to school there I was taught that a Scottish blacksmith named Kirkpatrick McMillan (1812 – 1878) invented the first pedal driven bicycle in 1839.

The story goes that McMillan (Right.) saw a Hobby Horse being ridden near his home in Dumfries, Scotland; he decided to build himself one.

On completion he realized it would be an improvement if the machine had a means of propulsion so it could be ridden without putting his feet to the ground.

Cranks were attached to the rear wheel; movement was by connecting rods attached to pedals worked in a reciprocating motion by the rider’s feet. The exact same principle can be seen on a child’s pedal car to this day.

Today there are doubts cast on the claim that Kirkpatrick McMillan was the first to build a pedal driven bicycle. The problem was that McMillan never patented his invention, and it appears never even exploited the idea for profit.

Another Scottish blacksmith, Gavin Dalzell from Lesmahagow, copied the idea in 1846 and produced so many that for almost 50 years he was thought to be the inventor.

Then in the 1890s a wealthy corn trader named James Johnston, who just happened to be the nephew of Kirkpatrick McMillan, decided to throw a lot of money into proving that his uncle, now deceased, was indeed the inventor.

He unearthed all manner of neat stories, including one where in 1842 his uncle rode his bicycle 68 miles from Dumfries to Glasgow. While in the Gorbals District of Glasgow, McMillan colided with a young girl after she ran in front of his bicycle, injuring her slightly. He was fined five shillings.

A story was said to appear in a Glasgow newspaper reporting “An anonymous gentleman on a velocipede was fined five shillings.” Johnston claimed this was his uncle. However, there are doubts today that this incident actually happened or that the newspaper article even exists.

This is the problem; James Johnston said a lot of things but never backed it up with documentation.

He even had a blacksmith named Thomas McCall build a replica of his uncle’s machine for the 1896 Stanly Show.

Today this same replica can be seen in the Bicycle Museum at Drumlanrig Castle. (Above left.)

Thomas McCall had himself been building these machines since 1869.

The McMillan replica in the museum looks an awful lot like those attributed to Thomas McCall. (Picture right.)

Right down to the horses head carved on the front.

So is this a true replica of McMillan's original, or did McCall take Johnston’s money and then sell him one of his old stock models?

These would have been obsolete by the late 1800s, and McCall would have been more than happy to unload one of his old machines. Especially as he was 62 years old by then, maybe retired and could use the cash.

James Johnston may have been fully aware of this and knew that the Thomas McCall bicycle was not a true McMillan replica. This is only speculation on my part, but it was these attempts by Johnston to prove McMillan was the first by any means, or at any cost that now tends to cast doubt on the claim.

Was history re-written; dates fudged? It was certainly accepted as fact in Great Britian during the first half of the 20th. Century, and is still stated as such in many books and articles.

I like to keep an open mind. The point is even if it can’t be proved McMillan was the first, it probably can’t be disproved either. Kirkpatrick McMillan it seems was a modest man who never sought fame and fortune from his idea.

In spite of this his name will continue to have a place in history, along with the other names associated with the building of this type of machine; the ones I have mentioned here like Gavin Dalzell and Thomas McCall. Rightly so, because these men were all early pioneers of bicycle building.
 

                         

Only in America

Only in America is a cliché and like all clichés it is founded on truth.

Don’t get me wrong; I love America, I have lived here 32 years.

But having grown up in England then moving here in mid-life enables me to observe this county, and the people who live here, from a different perspective.

When I saw ElliptiGo Bike, (Above.) I thought, “Only in America.” I wrote about it yesterday trying to put a humorous slant on what I saw as the absurdity of it.

I realized that “Only in America” is made possible by the fact that this country is huge with a lot of people, over 300 million the last time I checked.

The other factor is that a great many Americans have a lot of money and too much time on their hands. The too much money part is changing rapidly.

What this has meant in the past is that anyone can come up with any harebrained idea or product, and because there are so many people with discretionary income to draw from as potential customers, there will always be a few who will look at this crazy product and say, “That is really cool, I have to have one of these.”

I really shouldn’t knock it; I now realize it is what led to my success in the United States as a framebuilder, after I had struggled for many years to make even a meager living at it in the UK. Most of the frames I built were bought by people who were attracted by fancy paint and glitter, and just had to have one.

But after riding it a few times realized it was a lot of work, their butt hurt and they never persevered to reach a fitness level where they could appreciate the full potential of such a bike.

So the bikes I built and sold with a certain amount of pride, are now languishing in garages and basements, and sadly many have ended up in landfills. How many ElliptiGo bikes are destined for landfills? I doubt they will become future collectables.

Back in the 1800s when America started to grow and people headed west; some grew wealthy and as soon as they did there were Snake Oil salesmen, con artists as well as legitimate entrepreneurs ready to relieve them of that excess wealth.

Snake Oil salesmen are now huge corporations who advertise medications on TV every night; cures for dubious ailments like Restless Leg Syndrome.

We even medicate our children for Attention Deficit Disorder. (ADD) When I was a kid if we didn’t pay attention we got a slap up the side of the head. That got our attention. Did it harm me any more than medication today? I don’t think so.

When money is easy to come by, people think it can buy happiness. Everyone is looking for a quick and easy fix. People are unhealthy because of poor diet and lack of exercise; with a little work they could fix it, but they would rather spend money on pills to make them slim, or cure what ails them.

I’ll except that I am probably wrong to criticize ElliptiGo and the people who buy it; after all it is a free country and it is their money. But I realize that the majority of people who buy these machines and indeed many who bought my bikes, their happiness was short lived.

After they were less happy, they had less money because they had wasted some of it. Money cannot buy happiness, but then again neither can no money. This recession means that many people will be even less happy.

On the other hand, many will make do, scale back and start living a simple life. They will start walking and riding a bike to get to places. This will lead to better health, which will lead to a sense of well being. It is a sense of well being that brings happiness, with or without money.

The key is not Wealth and Happiness, it is Health and Happiness; and that is true anywhere, not just “Only in America.”