Get your business socks on… Its Monday, so you know what time it is… That’s it, loosen up, prepare to lose a few points off the IQ and indulge in the weekly RIMing that’s been carefully prepared (AKA – thrown together while nude) for you. With a lot happening in the cycling world, there is plenty of Random Information to poke your tongue at as well. So, ignore the people around you working on internal reports that no one will ever read or care about and settle in for all sorts of tongue tingling randomness.
Starting with the RADNESS, the big news over the weekend was of course the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup DH finals, being held on what is arguably the scariest course of the year. I tend to watch these races and think “I would love to have a rip down there on the Demo“, but fuck, that’s the last thought I have when I watch the Val Di Sole footage, instead I wonder at which point in the track I would break both my arms and how I would go about asking people to wipe my furry ass for a few months.
To emphasis my point, hit it onboard with one of the coolest mofo’s around, Santa Cruz Syndicate legend Greg Minnaar, check it as he pumps the V10c Dream bike down this absolute beast of a race track. Fart noise set to high:
Hard man of the weekend award? I may be more than slightly biased here, but Brook MacDonald makes a pretty good candidate I suspect. So, yeah, he dislocated his knee in a crash… Put it back in… Self taped it for quali and so on and so forth. All pretty admirable, especially when you consider most of us would have cried and asked for a stretcher.
But not the Bulldog – Zero fucks given, just got on with it and then pulled out a 4th place finish in the finals for his best result of the year. Respect it. If you didn’t see his run, yes, he was fully pinned the whole way and yes, it was hard to not watch and wonder if that knee was going to hold up as he went at that beast of a trail with a baseball bat:
No, actually harder than nails
Apparently there was some Bandit racing on as well the day after the DH, which is really just code for everyone wanting to see pics of Emily Batty warming up apparently. This oddly coincides with the only time a Red Bull cap is dished out to an XC racer…
Quite eXC apparently
To prove we’re an equal opportunity website, of sorts, here’s a pic of one of the dudes to balance things out… Julien Absalon coming second for the third race in a row, which must be getting a bit shithouse for a guy used to winning.
But I think we have finally traced the reason why he’s not managing to KOM first, turns out his support team likes to take the piss by dangling his gels out there at that perfect angle where you realise both how much you need it, but that its impossible to actually grab it, commonly known as the Scottish feed zone protocol:
#howtofuckwithbandits
Not wanting to be outdone with all the rad Dirt action in Italy, the organisers of the Vuelta decided to throw in a bit of ENDURO for the opening team time trial stage, nothing like swapping off turns with 9 dudes in… Hmmmm… Sand?
Its true the Vuelta is always a little chilled, but they’ve gone nek level here to essentially hit ‘Mojito’s on the beach’ status. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t take long for toys & TT bikes to be thrown into the sandpit, and rightly so:
PCN as fuck
Things then got weirder by organisers acknowledging “Si si, this is as dumb as fuck“, deciding then to neutralise the results for the GC… Ok… So therefore defeating the purpose of holding a TTT stage? As far as we know, there is no truth to the rumour that the Big S actually did ask their teams to hit the stage aboard Fatbikes/cuntwagons.
Think that shit is crazy? Well, hold the beach towel, as it doesn’t even rate when compared to wassssup over at everyone’s favourite Eastern Bloc cuntnest PRO team. In true old school fashion they rocked up with 3 leaders and suitable ambiguity about who would be given the preferential treatment on the road… Not unlike a corporate executive ‘team’ then where everyone thinks that they’re in charge and the other guy is a bit of a cunt… Good times:
“Has anyone seen my sticky bottle?”
3 leaders (well, initially) and 6 poor gimps that will have to get plundered for 3 weeks like kids caught up in a bad threesome break up. Someone in that photo is going to end up deep throating a saveloy, aren’t they Prime Minister?
“Technically you can’t rim a hot dog, but I’ll show you the next best thing…”
But hold the phone! Turns out that not only did someone end up with an hDog in their mouth sooner than we could all have expected, but we’ve lost a contender on stage 1 already! Yup, waking up this morning to the news of Nibbles being given the boot from the Vuelta for holding onto the team car.
“Big deal, yawn… Holding on to the team car is business as usual” was my initial thought, nothing unusual there and lets face it, a pretty minor offence from a team managed by Vino. But… They didn’t mention at the time it was a Tour OF Bintan style tow, to the point of actually being comical. Its not often you say this about a road racing video, but this is a must watch:
HOLY FUCK is right… More blatant than slapping your diddle in the race commissaire’s face essentially. May as well have stuck Nibbles on a moto and given him a lift all the way back to the peloton. There’s bending the rules and then there’s taking your morning piss all over them, and the poor fuckers you leave behind in the chase group. Its an understatement to say its a tough day to be a Nibbles fan.
If you think that’s all very weird, spare a thought for Roman ‘pretty sure that’s not my blood bag‘ Kreuziger, he won a stage of the USA PRO Challenge and quicker than he could look confused as to why his team mate is saying hi to his German Granddad in Argentina, they fed him to a ex-cheerleader cougar… Apparently the en vogue thing to do at the moment:
Roman remaining tight mouthed at the thought of the party he’s going to end up at…
Its not all weird shenanigans and Cougar’s in the PRO ranks though, how about the coolest win in recent memory? Welcome back Taylor Phinney! Out of action for over a year thanks to another random act of Moto madness, he nailed his comeback win last week and in a way that had so much fairytale juice smeared all over it even Walt Disney was like “Damn ma fugga, that’s some hero shit“.
Yes, how about winning in the same town and manner as your PRO as fuck father did many decades ago? True story, even have the montage to prove it:
The whole Oakley marketing team are wet right now
On the topic of smashing it, in this weeks Random Maintenance section we examine how long a SHAM Narrow/Wide chain ring lasts when you ride everywhere at an average of 400w on the mountain bike. Not something many of us have to worry about, but when you’re the 1994 Welsh Junior MTB XC Champion and like to ride everywhere out of the saddle, it doesn’t take you long to turn a narrow/wide chain ring into very narrow/not wide at all. In reality it takes about a week.*
Use this picture as an excuse to rush out now and replace your drivetrain people and yes, if asked (insert cliche jokes about your partner having melt downs about cycling related spending here), it IS a safety issue:
“Did you see that poor Welsh chap, dreadful teeth…”
*Editorial note – Every single data point in this section may have been completely erroneous, embellished or just straight up whack BS. But its a cool pic and a sweet excuse to update your drive chain.
Speaking of random gear action, Das Wolf had to clean behind his couch cushions on the weekend and accidentally found a few spare parts lying around. Just remember, the first step in dealing with addiction is recognising you have a problem.
It may be a give away that when you find enough kit down the back of your couch that you need to hire the local hockey turf to lay it all out, that there could be some issues… Stay tuned for the dates for the garage sale. Like, actually need a garage to hold everything:
“Fuck… Wonder if I should also clean out the shed?”
And on that note, time to wrap up the randomness and get back to the Shredit production… Keep the week rad and remember, cunts are lurking everywhere so keep it tight and if in doubt that you’ve been infected, get checked out immediately as its never too late to be cured. Unless you own a folding bike:
Dirty health alert – Don’t leave it too late, get checked regularly
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