Information-free Times article about our early morning and late evening training “partners.” I guess New York Times noticing them makes them real and significant. Most striking are the statistics, that “…there is an estimated population of hundreds of raccoons in Central Park.” Good thing only 3-4 of them are true fans of our pacelines.
Archive for September, 2008
Central Park raccoons have arrived
Thursday, September 25th, 2008We are winning!.. Wait, this is not supposed to be a war.
Wednesday, September 24th, 2008
Before you jump with joy of “my ’team’ is winning” or of “green revolution is riding up,” consider this - what were these 130 million bikes and where are they now? Are they produced and, their large percentage unsold, discarded? Are they transportation mode vehicles of the third world countries, kids bikes, fitness enthusiasts’ steads bought and forgotten, or they represent typical accumulation of Western amateur athlete (“I need road, TT, cross, MTB, commuter “beater” and fixie bikes.”)? So are these bikes transportation, fitness equipment, hobbies or collectibles?
Monetizing WTC/Ironman
Tuesday, September 9th, 2008Providence Private Equity just bought the World Triathlon Corporation (the owners of the Ironman(tm) trademark and affiliated events) from Dr. Jim Gills and family in an all-equity transaction. No terms were disclosed. Providence’s N.A. portfolio includes, among others, Warner Music, MGM and Yankees Entertainment and Sports (YES) Network. The new entity will be named World Endurance Holdings.
Welcome to the brave new world. Potential positive and negative possibilities for athletes are unlimited.
Another one bites…
Tuesday, September 9th, 2008
Dmitri (other spellings: Dmitriy, Dimitriy) Gaag was one of those “hard men” of the Soviet Russia sports developmental system. A part of the state swimming program in Kazakhstan from age 7, he moved in the late 1980′s into pentathlon. From 1991, after the break up of the Soviet Union, he represented Kazakhstan (yes, the country made recently more known by caricature of Borat) and moved into triathlons. Good runner for a triathlete, he raced in two Olympic Games (4th in Sydney in 2000 and 25th in Athens in 2004), and was the ITU world champion in 1999.
But either his age (at 37, he is one of the oldest ITU guys that still perform) forced him to, or reliance on a sloppy protocol, but it lead to EPO bust. Earlier this year, ITU performed an out-of-competition test in Des Moines. An “adverse analytical finding” of recombinant erythropoietin(EPO) in his “A” sample was followed by ”B” sample testing which confirmed the ”A” sample. With the Olympic Games imminent, ITU provisionally suspended him and imposed the two-year ban.
Why am I sad? Because I want even now to believe that silent, stoic, serious “hard men” of endurance sports from Russia, UK and its “affiliates”, Belgium, Netherlands, etc. (as cycling Andrei Tchmil, Sean Kelly, Eddy Merckx, Viatcheslav Ekimov, Phil Anderson) neither looked to nor took easy paths.