December 28, 2016

Christmas Quiz 2016

The winner takes it all, right? Well, in cycling that often isn’t the case. Some of the most iconic moments in the history of the sport have involved riders who did not win. The identity of the actual winners often gets forgotten with the passing of time.

So the question for each of the following 20 photos is simple: on the day that the famous incident occurred, who won?

For stage races, I’m looking for the winner of the stage that day, not the winner of the overall race.

Send me your answers via email only please to mail@irishpeloton.com. Let’s not flood the comments below by giving away answers to potential rivals. ~ Continue reading ~

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November 26, 2016

An Inconvenient Truth

Irish journalist David Walsh was interviewed recently by Matt de Neef on the CyclingTips podcast. All the topics you would expect are covered – Armstrong, Team Sky, TUEs, Wiggins, Froome.

It’s well worn ground at this stage but the interview was interesting nevertheless. Not least given the context of Walsh’s stated belief that Chris Froome is a clean rider.

Thus far, there has been no tangible evidence to suggest Froome is not clean. But why Walsh deemed it necessary to publicly declare his belief in him has been a source of bafflement for many. He speaks about having a ‘choice’ on whether to believe in him or not. However, journalistically, beliefs are not a prerequisite. What are a prerequisite are facts, which Walsh was alarmingly loose with throughout the course of the interview.
~ Continue reading ~

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July 19, 2016

Yellow and Green – The old one-two

On Stage 11 of this year’s Tour de France we witnessed something on the streets of Montpellier which is extremely rare in the history of this great race. We were treated to the sight of Peter Sagan winning the stage in the Green Jersey ahead of Chris Froome in second place wearing the Yellow Jersey. The leaders of the two most important classifications finishing first and second on a stage of the Tour de France is something which has only happened on six previous occasions. ~ Continue reading ~

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June 28, 2016

The Big Red Button

Monica: And Ross, if it weren’t for Rachel’s rumor, I mean, no one in high school would even know who you were. She put you on the map!
Ross: As a romancer of the elderly!

Imagine you’re staring at a big red button. If you push this button it would mean that all doping would be magically eradicated from cycling’s past, present and future. If you pushed it, it would mean there was no Operation Puerto, there would have been no Festina affair, Lance Armstrong would have ridden clean for his whole career. So would everyone else. There would have been no doping up until this point and there would be no doping from now on. ~ Continue reading ~

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June 22, 2016

The Tour Preparation Puzzle

Nobody knows. You don’t know. I don’t know. Christian Prudhomme doesn’t know. Chris Froome doesn’t know. Even David Brailsford doesn’t know.

Nobody knows who is going to win the 2016 Tour de France.

My day job is in sports betting. Even if you have solid mathematical models taking all of the previous 102 editions of the Tour into account you’d still be nowhere near knowing who will win. If you had the results of every cycling race ever, the performance data from every training ride of every rider, analytics on tactical performances of every team and the biological passport data from every rider in the race, you still wouldn’t know. ~ Continue reading ~

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March 22, 2016

The big Milan-San Remo let down

Football is boring. Cycling is interesting.

Football is simple. Cycling is complicated.

Cycling is better than football.

This is how we’re all supposed to think isn’t it? Cycling is the reserve of the sporting connoisseur whose palate for action is more distinguished and refined than simply watching 22 dunderheads kicking a ball around a field. There is more subtlety on two wheels, more going on than any of us can see or realise, therefore it’s harder to understand, therefore you need to be more intelligent to understand it. ~ Continue reading ~

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