Photo FAIL

This morning may have been my first complete race photo FAIL. Completely without planning I went out to take some shots of the Hills of Somerset County Road Race. I shot this race last year from two different spots and actually ended up with one of my favorite shots from last year:



The lack of planning and motivation killed any opportunity I may have had to repeat that effort. And so I this is what I ended up with:


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Back from My Unplanned Hiatus

So my goal of posting every day for 30 days has obviously gone by the wayside. I decided against taking my laptop to California and blogging from my phone seemed too risky without access to a computer to fix any messes I may have created. Now that the dust has settled maybe I can get back to business.

There has certainly been no shortage of cycling governance issues cropping up in the past week or so. My first day at ToC, at the time trial in Solvang, the news about George Hincapie having testified broke. I'll need some time to compose my thoughts on all the issues surrounding the Armstrong allegations. In the meantime, here is a photo I took of Jim Ochowicz in Solvang. He appears to be receiving some unwelcome news.


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Traveling

I'm all packed and ready to check out the Tour of California. I'm not optimistic about my flight leaving on time but if all goes well I will be in Solvang for the time trial tomorrow morning.

I opted against taking a camera bag plus overnight bag for the three-day trip. We'll see how that works out.

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The List II

Pat McQuaid released an open letter in an attempt to explain the recently leaked list of TDF riders ranked by how likely they are to be doping. I read the letter as an attempt to reassure the riders that the UCI will protect their privacy in anti-doping activities. It's one of the most measured and professional communications to come out under McQuaid's name in a long long time. Of course he can't help but chide the riders a bit for being upset about the existence of the list.

I am still curious why the list was leaked at all. Presumably the leaker felt that something about the list needed to be brought to light. Its mere existence is not terribly controversial. In McQuaid's letter he promises to find and punish the leaker. Maybe if it comes to that we will get more information about the reasons. But considering the UCI's new litigious turn, we may not learn much.

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The Fourth Grand Tour

It's not exactly a cycling governance issue but here goes... When you hear commentators saying that the Tour of California is the "fourth grand tour" they are engaging in a bit of hyperbole. This is surely a message put forth by marketing types to pump the race up a bit for American audiences.

The Tour of California is a great race with a lot of long-term potential. And as long as it continues it will attract a top-flight field. But I suspect this is (at least for now) primarily due to the high value of U.S. market exposure for so many of the sponsors. I just saw an ad on American TV for Rabobank that said they have 120 branches in California. Who knew?

Flipping things around a bit, consider how many teams target the Tour de France before they even have sponsor, let alone a sponsor who is targeting the French market. It's not the French economy that draws them.

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Upcoming Races

If all goes according to plan (it won't) I will shoot ten races in the next three weeks. That's counting stages of the Tour of California as individual races. Here is the schedule:

May 20 - AToC, Solvang, CA
May 21 - AToC, Mt. Baldy, CA
May 22 - AToC, Thousand Oaks, CA
May 27 - Manville Madness, Manville, NJ
May 28 - Somerset Road Race, Somerset County, NJ
May 29 - Bound Brook Crit, Bound Brook, NJ
May 30 - Tour of Somerville, Somerville, NJ
June 2 - Base Camp Int'l, Basking Ridge, NJ
June 5 - TD Bank Phila Int'l, Philadelphia, PA
June 5 - Liberty Classic, Philadelphia, PA

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Sunday May 15th

I decided to skip the Team Challenge today in Trenton. This may come back to bite me as I still need some practice with the new camera. I noticed at the race in Prospect Park that the controls on the Nikon are much more prone to accidental pushing. For example while in shutter priority mode my shutter speed mysteriously dropped several times. I think a trip out to Floyd Bennett Field on Tuesday evening may be necessary.

On the upside I did get in a long, if humid ride.


UPDATE - I just realized Floyd Bennett is Thursday. I guess I'll have to work everything out on Friday in Solvang.

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Lucarelli & Castaldi Cup - Prospect Park

I got up at 5 am this morning so that I could go shoot the Lucarelli & Castaldi cup race in Prospect Park. I need to get as much practice with my new set-up as possible before Friday. By 10 am I already had a set up on Flickr. This sort of thing is not likely to become a habit.

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The Leak

The story of the day, at least until the AToC press conference started, was the leaked UCI document which categorized the 2010 Tour de France rider list based on how "suspicious" the UCI was of their having doped or not. Cyclingnews.com has the story here. I initially found the list fairly encouraging because so few riders were scored high on the suspicion scale.

Of course, my initial assessment makes a fairly big assumption that I wouldn't assign a probability of 1 or anything close to it. It assumes that the UCI is honest about doping and acting in good faith. I'm not a conspiracy theory theory buff but I do believe in incentives. And the UCI is has an incentive to sweep doping under the rug as much as possible. So after some reflection my initial enthusiasm is tempered.

But regardless of whether the UCI's list is accurate or not the leak itself poses a danger to anti-doping efforts. According to the reports much of the data used to determine suspicion is based on the biological passport. I don't have first-hand knowledge of the process that led to the implementation of the biological passport but it is hard to imagine that privacy concerns were not an issue. This situation reminds me a bit of the list of steroid-using ballplayers that Major League Baseball possesses. They have been under pressure for years to release the full list (it has been leaked in bits and pieces) from journalists and fans who say they have a right to know. But that list wouldn't exist if the players had not been promised that the results of the testing would be completely confidential. Releasing the list sends the message that such agreements are worthless and that the players should not trust management in future anti-doping efforts. And the leak of the UCI document does the same.

In that context it is hard to see how the leak is helpful. Either it is accurate and the riders will be more reluctant to cooperate with anti-doping efforts in the future, or it is corrupt and riders will be more reluctant to cooperate with anti-doping efforts in the future.

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About This Blog

I am planning to use this blog for two main purposes: 1) A place where I can organize and express my thoughts about governance in profession cycling. 2) A diary of my experiences photographing bike races. This is a personal blog so I expect there will be all sorts of other distractions as well.

I am not a natural diarist. I don't know how long or how consistently I will be able to keep this up. In order to get things jump started I am pledging to myself to post at least once per day for the next 30 days.   

The meaning of the name of this blog is open to interpretation. Mostly I just like the way it sounds.

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