2013 Pro-cycling season thread

^ OK!

'The Stork' presenting Blanco-Giant's team kit:

not bad at all, considering it must have been knocked up on someone's lunchtime

In no particular order.

Contador won by being the cleverest not the strongest.

The Blanco team bike is sweet, but the kit is awful.

Jonathan Price is a fat prick who seems to know nothing about cycling.

Wiggins and Froome hate each other, which should give us some good stories this year.

I quite like a strip, reminds me of Inter Milan in the 90s

Swifty just tweeted this pic. That's a whole mess of Pinarellos

Meh. Grupetto rip off.

https://twitter.com/swiftybswift/status/280333081947295744

In other Sky news: Wiggins describes his challenge for the season, wants to win both the TdF & Gd'I

http://www.velonation.com/News/ID/13514/Wiggins-says-he-wants-to-achieve-rare-GiroTour-double.aspx

I think I am right in saying Wiggins did not mention Froome at all last night on SPOTY. Admittedly he did not mention any team mate by name but the fact that it was a British one-two might have been worth noting. Not that Froome is any more British than Zola Budd, of course.

Good to see Wiggle as a title sponsor for the Honda ladies team with Laura Trott et al. on board.

I would prefer to see Aon, AIG, Samsung, Siemens or another globab corporation with huge resources bunging big money at the spoprt and women's racing in particular.

No disrespect to Wiggle, who are doing something others are not, but for women's cycling to catch up and potentially overtake men's, big money sponsors should be being courted.

Cue objections to multi nationals.

management put the spoty back into his cage

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/cycling/9752351/Bradley-Wiggins-happy-to-ride-for-Sky-team-mate-Chris-Froome-at-Tour-de-France-following-tilt-at-Giro-dItalia.html

Ballan fucked up and Nissan run not walk away from RSNT

UCI... Gerard Vroomen spot on again; "This makes no sense"

http://gerard.cc/2012/12/21/second-tier-ethics/

No IAM Cycling either.

Kimmage gets stuck into Wigginss and Sky now.. Oh dear..

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/kimmage-unconvinced-by-sky-and-wiggins

Cav in new attire, http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/cavendish-in-new-omega-pharma-quickstep-kit
looking forward to seeing how they manage with Cav and Boonen...

Like that it's got his twitter account on it.
Cool that.

World champ bands are spoiled by sponsor though

Also Sky:
http://road.cc/content/news/72596-first-pictures-released-rapha-team-sky-jersey-video
bit bland IMO, wanted to see some pink in there.

Kimmage gets stuck into Wigginss and Sky now.. Oh dear..

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/kimmage-unconvinced-by-sky-and-wiggins

Surely he's missing the point that although the tactics are the same, the numbers they're putting out are much lower.

Cav in new attire, http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/cavendish-in-new-omega-pharma-quickstep-kit
looking forward to seeing how they manage with Cav and Boonen...

Looking back to his chunky best. He's going to suffer in the Tour de San Luis.

Well RCS can certainly do transparency; press officer tweets pic of Giro wildcard voting results

Love that. The writing seems to be on the wall for Katusha. Wonder if they'll make it to any GT. Presumably Rodriguez will jump ship as well

Can't see them getting into a GC. Inrng is usually pretty spot-on with these things and seems to think they're fucked.

J-Rod will be off elsewhere hopefully. He can't win the Tour because there are no time bonuses but he will make summit finishes more exciting and pick up a stage or three.

11 summit finishes in the Vuelta this year! That will suit him

Strong comments from Nicole Cooke. I wonder who she was talking about?