Update: for reasons that are unknown (to me at least) Floyd Landis did not take part in yesterday’s Ventura races. Don’t know about today’s session, but the all-knowing twitterati will likely fill in the blanks later.
Looks like a few of the Team OUCH guys will be racing again this weekend in Ventura, California. The Inaugural Ventura County Stage Race takes place today and tomorrow. And from what little “accurate” info can be gathered from twitter Floyd Landis, Rory Sutherland, Jonathan Chodroff, John Murphy, and maybe Roman Kilun(?) will be taking part. Who knows? Apparently it’s a “casual race”. If any news results are forthcoming we’ll be sure to let you know.
Here’s the official website of the race.
In other news, Giro racers neutralize the Milan crit stage.
There’s a whole lot of stupid going on here, from both sides.
First, the Giro organizers design a series of questionable finishes and seem to punctuate that point by including a stupid crit stage in a Grand Tour – complete with insufficient barriers, cobbles, trolley tracks, and random parked cars along the route. However, the organizers point out that the Milan circuit is less dangerous than the Amstel Gold Race or Liege-Bastogne-Liege.
Second, this is the point on which the riders are suddenly forming solidarity and taking noteworthy action in an effort to improve their working conditions? If so, it was a weak and poorly chosen point. It’s not one to hang your hat on. It’s no coincidence that the riders and DS’s generally lack advanced educations. If they had exercised their collective gray matter a bit better, perhaps there would have been a more positive outcome today? There are certainly more important issues that a unified peloton could be advocating.
Some argue that fatigue coupled with an emotional reaction wrt to Pedro Horrillo’s fall and serious injuries were closer to the real motivation to neutralize the crit stage. Whatever the case, here’s a wish for a full recovery for Horrillo and a wish that the soup, the race organizers, and the racers will make better use of that which is between their ears.