Cobbles Baby! is even premiering in Las Vegas. The Yanks have spoiled the Tour de France and now they're doing the same to Paris-Roubaix :((((((((((

How are we supposed to have a good weekend after this? :(((

Jeannie Longo was prominent for so long that we never thought any youngsters would come through in women's cycling. Then a 19 year old goes and wins the World Championship Road Race. Typical, bloody typical.

On route, Nicole Cooke made her usual tactical error of deciding to take on the work of three full strength teams, dragging every other rider along in the process. We'd have been stomping our feet in disgust that someone could let her do all the work and then outsprint her, but Marianne Vos put in enough work and attacks to make her victory acceptable. Plus she's Dutch, which is exactly what we like in a woman.

Here's the rest of the odds for tomorrow's Men's Road Race:

Alexander Vinokourov
Vino is popular amongst cycling fans, despite the fact that he's the most disgustingly selfish and aryan person since Nikki from Big Brother. If you're in a breakaway group and Vino wants to win, he'll chase you down whether you're in the same team or not. Kashechkin and company are unlikely to do anything other than work selflessly for their leader, however, so we should at least be spared that tedious part of Vino's dubious "tactics".
Odds to win: 8/1

Tom Boonen
Is Tom Boonen the largest world champion ever? He's a gladiator on a bike, not to mention being DerailedUK's most favouritest rider. Certain gold-plated Italians say that this year's course is too hard for Tornado Tom, but we know that the Ronde Van Vlaanderen and Paris-Roubaix are much harder. Besides, Boonen has to win -- he wears the rainbow jersey like he was born in it.
Odds to win: 17/2

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This year's Worlds has already been quite interesting, a feat made all the more remarkable by the fact that so far only the often eye-gouglingly dull time trial events have taken place. We're blaming the course for this shift from normality -- they've had the radical notion of including bits that go uphill this year.

Kristen Armstrong won the women's time trial, sparking the single greatest catalyst of cognitive dissonance ever to have graced the cycling media. "Hooray, a young, English speaking World Champion," they say, "this will keep us going with interviews for years." Whilst at the same time, they must've been thinking something along the lines of, "Poosticks, now she's made it to the big time, we can't write headlines that say things like 'Armstrong takes time trial win' just so we'll get a billion people hoping to read something about Lance."

Fabien Cancellara won the men's event, proving that people with big noses and rubbish haircuts can still win important things. His victory celebration on the podium was literally a two fingered salute to Bjarne Riis, whilst he screamed like a derelict about not being picked for the Tour de France. Not really, of course. Whether he'll get to wear his rainbow jersey in an event anyone will watch is one of those questions that'll probably keep him up all night throughout the off-season.

He won't be staying up all night thinking about winning the road race, that's for sure. So who will be?

Paolo Bettini
The Cricket has had a bit of a quiet year compared to normal. But he's still been up there in the single day races, won a stage of the Vuelta less than a month ago, and has the support of a talented Italian team. Bettini might be suave, but is the really suave enough to be able to get away with a gold AND rainbow decorated bike/kit/helmet/everything? If we were him, we'd be considering gifting the win the Danilo Di Luca and sticking with the simple Olympic Gold colour scheme.
Odds to win: 9/2

Alejandro Valverde
If there's one thing Valverde does more graciously than win, it's lose. He had so many kind words for Vinokourov at the end of the Vuelta that we were wondering whether he thought they were both on the same team. In the last three Worlds, Valverde has taken two second places and led out Freire for his win, so he's got plenty of experience. Will he get to wear the stripey jersey, or just look thoroughly contented to be stood on the second step of a podium again?
Odds to win: 6/1

Take advantage of these odds at Betfair. Go on. Winners always welcome at Betfair!

Tomorrow:
The odds for Vinokourov and Boonen to win, and something about the Women's Road Race.

With a performance destined to disappoint any people pathetic enough to habour hopes of America doing the double on the time trial gold medals, Fabien Cancellara won the Men's Time Trial with ease. It prompted an in-depth discussion amongst the commentators as to whether the Paris-Roubaix and World Time Trial Championships are similar events (their verdict: no) and we were treated to the opportunity to listen to Switzerland's not-very-interesting national anthem, so he was a reasonably popular winner at the DerailedUK camp.

Dave Zabriskie, with his strangely animated eyebrows, gained second place and Vinokourov third. We predicted Vino would do well, and we were totally right.

Sadly, we weren't right about Michael Rogers. Despite the fact that we don't like him all the much, we played up his chances for today's race. Then he finished eighth. Well done Mike, you lost your rainbow jersey and took our reputation with you.

Dave Millar watch:
Millar finished... somewhere. In case you were bothered. He was probably saving himself for the road race. Yeah.

Tomorrow:
We'll have stopped writing things for other people and spending 90% of our time in Chinese restaurants, so we should be able to return to full, hilarious, service.

What's going on here? Not only did Nicole Cooke prove that we can be correct in our predictions, American riders also took first and third in the Women's Time Trial. Americans aren't supposed to win at the Worlds, they're supposed to display poor form all season then lap the field in the Tour de France.

It's been a bit of a torrid time for the Americans of late, but this looks ominously like an omen that they're all going to come good in the Worlds. Today's course must be too hilly for Zabriskie though, right? In fact, Rogers's reasonable climbing ability could mean that he takes the rainbow jersey AGAIN today. And he's not even very good at time trialling! Vino could also be up there today, if he hasn't spent the whole time since winning the Vuelta just drinking Rioja (or possibly a more expensive wine, we're not sure what kind of a budget he's working on) in celebration.

Anyway, we're very pleased with this year's Worlds course. The road race on Saturday should be a very satisfying watch.

Later:
We might do a wrap up of the time trial. Might.

According to an e-mail we got sent, the site was down yesterday. We didn't notice because we were too busy not thinking about cycling, but you can rest assured that we won't let the whole situation affect our not-quite-daily update schedule for austere cycling "news".

Anyway, the World Championships are here! Which means the cycling season is almost over! Which means we have to find something interesting to fill the website with for the next five months! Cripes!

Still, let's enjoy it while it's here. Tomorrow (that's Wednesday) is the Women's Elite Time Trial and the Men's U23 Time Trial. That's good, because a whole day of watching time trials is bound to be interesting, right? And apparently grown women are still not as good at sports as little boys either -- the time trial distances being 26km and 40km respectively. Please, Jeannie Longo could beat any one of those kids riding the Men's U23 event, and we all know it.

Nicole Cooke is the big hope for the women's time trial, but we're expecting her to do much more in the road race. So we don't know who'll actually win this one, largely because there's absolutely no coverage of women's racing whatsoever, but we're betting on someone from a Slavic country. You heard it here first.

Tomorrow:
A better, less hastily written update, with actual funny bits and everything.

Next season:
We'll be writing lots more about women's cycling. Yeah!

Stages with the final summit still 20km from the finish are supposed to be rubbish. All the favourites go over the top together, a couple of other people rejoin them and there's a half-hearted sprint at the end.

But not yesterday, when everything stopped making the slightest bit of sense. The main contenders were spread across the final mountain, with rapidly increasing gaps between each. Valverde dug deep to cut the gap back from the Vinokourov group to 7 seconds at the summit, but Vino flew the nest on the descent and opened up a gap wide enough for him to take the race lead. What's going on there, then?

Here's the renewed odds, because otherwise we're going to look hopelessly out of date:

Alexandr Vinokourov
If we'd known that one of Vino's ridiculous attacks would actually work and lead to him taking over the maillot oro from Valverde, we'd have been advocating that he be thrown out when he missed that dope test. To make matters worse, his attack was so optimistic and ruthlessly efficient that we can't even begrudge him the jersey. Damn you, Vino.
Odds for the overall win: 2/5

Alejandro Valverde
Ah, Valverde. Before yesterday's stage we called his race lead insurmountable, and implied he was invincible. Now we know the truth: good looking men cannot ride bikes. A similar rule plagues women's cycling, but with Landis's sort of win over Pereiro in the Tour and Valverde's dramatic loss of the race lead here, it seems apparent that the top step of the podium is reserved for the uglies, regardless of gender. (And don't mention the Giro -- all Italians are naturally good looking, so it doesn't count.)
Odds for the overall win: 2/1

Carlos Sastre
CSC think that they can still win this race, even though Sastre has looked hopelessly ineffective against Valverde and Vino in the mountains AND against the clock. He might've been the best climber in the Tour this year, but that's looking increasingly likely to stand as evidence of how much better that race could've been with Valverde and Vino in it.
Odds for the overall win: 54/1

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You've got to hand it to the Vuelta, it's never a predictable race. Sixteen stages in and the gap between first place and third place is still a mere minute and forty two seconds. And with Vino and Sastre on exactly the same time, it's looking likely that the organisers are just going to turn them all back when they reach Madrid and make them do another lap of the country to sort it all out.

Not really, that's a daft idea -- it'd overrun into the World Championships. Anyway, the constant battle for overall Vuelta victory has been overshadowing pretty much everything else in the race. The time trial in which Vino was expected to take a pile of time out of Valverde's lead didn't prove fruitful for the Kazahk -- he took a tiny 8 seconds, the same amount of time that Balaverde earned from the previous stage's time bonus. They don't call Valverde "El Imbatido" for nothing, Vino.

But Vino hadn't learned this lesson over the rest day -- he spent today's stage trying to drop the Green Bullet. Knowing that Vinokourov is exactly the kind of rider who'll let you work on the front until you tire and then attack you relentlessly, Valverde refused to cooperate with Vino when they broke away from the other main contenders. As a result, Vino called Valverde a workshy dago, then Valverde did an impression of Borat.* And it all escalated from there, really. Their reasonably aggressive stalemate would've been much better viewing if they hadn't slowed down enough to let chubby Tom Danielson catch up, but you can't have everything your own way. Here's the latest odds for the overall:

Alejandro Valverde
Since when has a 1'42 lead in a grand tour looked insurmountable? Since DerailedUK's joint favourite rider took the lead, that's when. The only way Valverde could possibly lose this race is if he winds Vinokourov up so much that Astana's Kazahkstani oil barons take out a hit on him. It's not very likely, but you might still want to put a little bit of money on Vino for the win. You know, just to be sure.
Odds for victory: 2/11

Alexandr Vinokourov
Despite the fact that he's stocky, selfish and frightfully aryan, Vino appears to be hugely popular with cycling fans. We appreciate that he's almost single handedly dismantling the catenaccio racing style, but he just reminds us of a particularly obnoxious preteen attacking everyone on a club run. Oh Vino, were you never hugged as a child? Or were you hugged too much?
Odds for victory: 4/1

Carlos Sastre
Poor Sastre. Even in his breakthrough year, he's had to spend it in the shadow of Valverde. It's a problem that must only be antagonised by the fact that the combativity jersey and CSC shorts serve to make him look exactly like Valverde has since he picked up the ProTour leader's jersey. Unless he cracks on a grand scale, Sastre should finish on his second grand tour podium of the season -- but how can he cope with the fact that he'll never, ever be Spanish cycling's favourite rider?
Odds for victory: 9/1-10/1

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* We made that bit up, we're sure neither rider would resort to racial slurs.

With a ride that would have surely inspired millions if Eurosport had come on air early enough to show it, David Millar comfortably (a huge gap of a few miliseconds) won the first time trial of the Vuelta.

Apparently he's recently returned from being banned for two years. Who knew? Luckily, every cycling site and magazine will be on hand to inform you of this fact, as well as making a rubbish pun on the very-out-of-date, only-a-bit-funny-in-the-first-place catchphrase "It's Millar Time."

Whatever. For winning, he was allowed to select two raven haired women from a crowd and have them rub their noses on his cheeks. He certainly looks pleased with it, which isn't surprising since he's been denied any hot nose-on-cheek action for over two years. Well done Dave. We hear the rewards for winning the World's are even better, if that's any incentive.

Yeah, yeah. Image stolen from CyclingNews.com. Now we've gone all anal about copyrights we've been informed that we have to say this whenever we use something that isn't ours, otherwise we risk getting sued and things.

Now and then something happens that takes you by such surprise that you just don't know how to react. 9/11. Somebody actually making a film called Snakes on a Plane. A Vuelta breakaway that doesn't feature a Caisse d'Epargne rider. Truly, these are capricious times.

Of course, the breakaway didn't make it to the finish today. Wonky legged parrot fanatic Alessandro Petacchi put Milram's Italian contingent on the front to work for him, possibly in the desperate hope that he'd be able to manage to do something to convince us all that him going to the World's would be a good idea. What he didn't bank on is Alejandro Valverde attacking off the front after the break surrendered, and tearing the race to shreds on the way. With a downhill attack from Samuel Sanchez escaping from the somewhat nervous leaders in the front group, the main contenders were forced to sprint for the second and third place time bonuses.

Valverde took the time from Vinokourov, but spent most of the last kilometres and the final sprint worriedly watching him. Is this year's Vuelta the Valverde and Vinokourov show? Let's see what the odds think.

Carlos Sastre
Despite the fact that Sastre is riding his fifth grand tour in a row, he still went into this year's race considered to be the joint favourite for victory. Last year nobody would even give him a second glance, but this season he's suddenly become quite a superstar. That status might be more short lived than Carlos would like -- he's plummeted all the way down to fourth favourite to win overall, even though he's looking very comfortable in third place on general classification. So it's been a bit of an up-and-down past 18 months for Sastre, really. Cycling fans: you're such a fickle bunch.
Betting odds: 7/1

José Angel Gomez Marchante
Fourth placed José Angel Gomez Marchante has looked fairly convincing, even in his vomit-yellow team kit -- he's climbed well alongside Sastre and Valverde, despite being clearly weighed down by having to carry the largest name in the peleton. The much publicised wind tunnel tests that Saunier Duval undertook recently didn't prove very fruitful in the Tour de France, but if he can put in a decent time on Saturday he could still be in with a shout.
Betting odds: 16/1

Janez Brajkovic
We never thought we'd ever say this about a Discovery Channel rider, but we sort of like Brajkovic. Not because his suffering is oh-so-human and difficult to watch. Not even because he's the only Discovery rider who doesn't walk around with his nose in the air claiming it's his God-given right to win at any cost and if you disagree you'll be facing a huge lawsuit. No, the reason why we like Brajkovic is because his fine performance in this year's Vuelta has pissed all over Tom Danielson's rather unfortunately named "coming out party". The New Lance (tm) isn't even the best child in the team, it would appear.
Betting odds: 25/1

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Later: the odds for tomorrow's time trial. Maybe.

We often marvel at the unique ability of the Vuelta organisers to create a race route that's equal parts bewildering and exciting. To be able to design a parcours that consistently results in the final stage deciding the overall winner, yet still not being able to understand that taking the riders in a straight line along a closed motorway is a bit naff... well, that takes a very special kind of mind.

Despite us not giving it very much coverage, the Vuelta has been trundling along with its fingers in its ears to block out all the doping badness for 12 stages now. And it's been an absolute cracker of a race so far. With three potentially decisive mountain stages already behind us (as well as a flat stage that actually featured a bend in the road), the distance between Valverde's lead and Kashechkin's second place is still a mere 27 seconds. To give you a sense of scale as to how small that is, it's roughly the same amount of time as Tyler Hamilton spent thinking up his "phantom twin" defence. Tiny.

The race will take a further step towards giving us an insight into who could be a potential winner during Saturday's short time trial, but in the meantime here are the latest betting odds for the win.

Alejandro Valverde
The Green Bullet lived up to his nickname during this week's two summit finishes (well, half his nickname -- he's not green). First he took a stage win from Vino, sprinting for the line as though it were completely flat, then he dropped everyone bar Vino when he tried to do the same two days later. Since he picked up his race leader's jersey his team has played the old "dump a rider in the breakaway and tell the other teams you're not going to do any work to pull it back" routine on every stage, simultaneously making Caisse d'Epargne the least popular team in the whole peleton AND keeping his riders fresh for the hills. But he's lost stage races over shorter time trials than the ones he'll face in the remaining stages of the Vuelta, it's all still to play for.
Betting odds: 4/5

Alexandr Vinokourov
Surprisingly, the stocky Kazahk has suddenly found himself second favourite to win the entire race overall, despite sitting in a lowly fifth position on the general classification. Vino displayed his famed predilection towards acting unilaterally on stage 9, when he broke away with Kashechkin, then a mere 17 seconds behind Valverde, seemingly under the guise of intending to catapult his compatriat and team mate into the leader's jersey. Then he dug deep, dropped his team mate and held off for the finish line to become a "contender". We're not convinced, but with two time trials to come and his confidence still through the roof, those odds must look pretty tempting.
Betting odds: 7/2

Andrei Kashechkin
For about ten minutes, Kashechkin must've thought that Vinokourov was actually going to act unselfishly during this year's Vuelta. Sadly not. Despite the fact that Kashechkin had a huge lead over him in the overall, Vino decided he was still the team leader and put the hurt down. The odds, too, have decided that Vino is still the team leader. Poor Kashechkin. Even when Vino has retired and become a DS, he'll probably still try to outsprint his team's riders at every race to prove that he's the best. Get out of Astana while you can, Andrei, or you'll always be number two.
Betting odds: 6/1

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Tomorrow -- the odds for Sastre, Gomez and Brajkovic to win. Unless this format proves incredibly unpopular (it will).

How to play:
1. Draw a little bike on your finger.
2. Move finger around the picture above, at about a minute and forty-five seconds a lap.
3. Continue for three hours, whilst imagining that David Duffield is talking about Dutch tractors in the background.

If successful, you have now completed the first stage of the Tour of Poland!

Bonus tips:
To make it even more realistic and add to your enjoyment, why not try printing this page off and playing the game in a real life Polish industrial estate, just like the riders had to?

Let's all try and erase the badness of stage five from our memories and just focus on today's final stage. Deal? Good.

We all knew the stage was going to run along the Tour de France route for next year, and we all knew that it was going to finish with several laps of a small circuit. What we didn't know was that it'd turn into a pseudo track event, with riders taking laps out and others losing huge amounts of time because fixing punctures took so long (there's a tenuous link to tubular tyres there, see). We've not been so perplexed by a road event since the first time we saw Paris-Roubaix, so it's probably fitting that today's winner was Tom Boonen. Rumour has it that his sprint was tequila fuelled, although the last time we tried to ride a bike after drinking tequila we fell off in front of a group of teenage girls and nearly got run over because we forgot to turn our lights on, so maybe don't try it before your next big race.

The verdict on the BBC's coverage of today's stage:
It was good. Although it was a shame that they filled the gap inbetween the stage finishing and the presentations with 45 minutes of people mincing around on horses and Jo Brand making a big deal out of running three miles, it wouldn't be a televised cycling event unless there was a bit of disappointment.

The verdict on the Tour of Britain as a whole:
Fantastic. All the boring fat track riders using the internet to whinge because the hills weren't hard enough couldn't even put the event down (and, on the contrary, gave us an opportunity to use the oft-overlooked retort, "How many hills are there on the track, Chunky?"). Hammond and Pozzato took fabulous victories; Willems provided us with controversy; an opportunistic breakaway from three promising young riders proved decisive; Chicchi's duel with Cavendish just about saved a disasterous stage; and Boonen nabbed the final stage whilst wearing the rainbow jersey. There's never been a better line up of riders in this country, and you all know it. Roll on next year.

Race starts are bit rubbish really. The superstars hide away and only turn up for the final minute of signing in, whilst the busy people under employment by the teams find themselves having to work around all the mouthbreathers taking photographs of the car and asking stupid questions.











Race finishes are bit rubbish really. You stand shoulder to shoulder with other spectators in a tiny area with a very limited view of anything other than the enormous head of the person in front of you, whilst the wives and kids of the organisers are lording it up in the hospitality section right on the finish line and not paying the slightest bit of attention to what's happening. Then the riders flash past in a blur and you smile and go home and tell everyone you think you saw Frank Schleck and then you feel stupid a week later when you find out that Frank Schleck wasn't even riding.









The obligatory "things we didn't get a photograph of" bit:
-What would've possibly been the most ironic photograph ever: an ironic photograph of a photographer taking an ironic photograph of a photographer taking a photograph of two podium girls. Sadly we thought about it too much, and they'd all gone their separate ways by the time our head had stopped hurting.
-Millenium Point. In particular, the view from the top floor of. We rushed up there rather than going to the jersey presentations because we knew it would make a great photo, then discovered that our camera's battery was dead. We fail at "journalism".

The previously unseen "people we did get a photograph of but are saving for the long winter period when there's nothing better to write about" bit:
Tom Boonen, Juan Manuel Garate, Tom Boonen, Michael Rogers, Tom Boonen, Dean Downing, Tom Boonen, Mark Cavendish, Tom Boonen, Igor Astarloa, Tom Boonen, Nico Mattan, Tom Boonen, Tom Boonen, Tom Boonen.

A disclaimer
Despite what we've said, going to the starts and finishes of races is actually very, very good. And yes, this is even the case when they're taking place in the Midlands. Try it yourself: it's a bit like reading this website, only you have to think of your own snidey comments and you'll probably get backache from all the standing around.

Media accreditation has done terrible things to us. Our fears of becoming integrated into the fairly standardised (and very cliquey) world of cycling journalism proved to be entirely justified, as we too began to be not actually all that good at following a race. Our plans for the day went from "go to the start and the last climb" to "just go to the last climb" to "if we can average 100mph on the M1 we might just make it to the finish line in time." Sheffield turned out to be fairly good for ligging in anyway, even if the course was on a busy shopping district that was still operating. Our two least favourite social groups are elderly women carrying Spar bags full of groceries and goths who stand outside HMV comparing one another's hair, so there was a moment of resentment before we forgot our prejudices and got down to doing the "cycling journalist" thing (which is to say, taking ironic photos and looking smug because we had a bit of laminated cardboard).



















We also found:
A bar full of the crew from the Belgian teams, just near the team vehicles. We didn't dare go in, because we reckon Johan Museeauw would be a really mean drunk.

TOMORROW:
We'll wank a load of pictures out from today's stage (Wolverhampton-Birmingham) to finally get all this picture gallery rubbish out of our system. Writing about things is more fun than trying to think of funny captions for boring photographs.