2006 in review: We miss the days when you didn't need a degree in law to understand the latest cycling news :(

Happy New Year and all that
Here's hoping 2007 will offer far fewer false-positives, complex legal procedings, and boring website debates that use the phrases "trial by media" and "innocent until proven guilty".

Any hopes that this site would remain to be the last corner of the internet not writing about cyclo-cross have been well and truly scuppered. If it deadens the pain a little, you can always imagine that it's just a result of our predilection towards all things preceded by the word "super".


Macclesfield isn't like the other homelands of cyclo-cross -- it doesn't have the illustrious cycling history of Belgium, nor the lax attitude towards drugs and prostitutes of Holland. What it DOES have is a shopping trolley in a pond and some used needles behind a tree, but that's not much of a marketable asset really.


When we were kids, riding around a park was easy. Times have changed. The course was very demanding of the riders, with lots of those hills and corners and other things that make us not like riding our bikes. In fact, we were feeling very sorry for the riders after the umpteenth time we watched knackered people ride straight into the posts they were supposed to jump over.


It was like a festival of cycling, which we liked. We weren't so keen on all the deep section carbon fibre rubbish, but we kind of appreciate that this was one of the few instances where riding a steel fixed gear bike wouldn't be a good idea. We're warming to this cyclo-cross stuff, you know (and given the weather conditions for spectating, we never thought we'd be using any variation of the word "warm" in the race report).


Phil Dixon won it with a truly awe inspiring epic ride. Landis's breakaway in the Tour? Please, this was better. Even the commentator agreed that Dixon's ride would go down in the annals of history.


Liam Killeen rode hard for second place. We met his mum!


And Rob Jebb got third place. It was all very exciting.

So that was Supercross. And we loved it, even though our fingers got so cold they felt like they might drop off. The traffic on the way home made us Fairlycross, but it was still an excellent day out. 7/10

Script extract: 2006 Tour de France Christmas Musical


(Enter OSCAR PEREIRO. Cue medley.)


(Enter JOHN LELANGUE, Phonak team manager, and FLOYD LANDIS. JOHN LELANGUE continues the song.)


(JOHN LELANGUE and FLOYD LANDIS step into the shadowy back of the stage, and dance around a cauldren. Enter ANDREAS KLOEDEN.)


(Enter a television COMMENTATOR.)


(Floyd Landis steps back into the spotlight, music takes a sombre tone.)

Since this is a self-professed lazy couple of weeks whilst we're off doing more interesting things (such as pretending to like the socks our grandma gave us for Christmas) it's probably going to be a bit rubbish. But you'll still choose reading this over watching Shrek for the umpteenth time or that Christmas film with Tim Allen in it, face it.

Lazy update #1 - YouTube links we've been sent

Colin Sturgess in the 1989 world pursuit final

That keirin race where everyone falls off

Bike girls (PLEASE stop sending us this one)

"Keirin carnage"

Vietnam traffic

Human powered roller coaster

Valverrrrde! Valverrrde!

Fixed gear spin

Gavia 1988 (shockingly, someone sent us a link to something we actually wanted to see)

Theo Bos. In Dutch.

Marco Pantani winning the Tour, with Stephen Roche banging on about goretex in the background

Has nothing at all to do with cycling?!

Phew, all done. Everybody can stop sending us these links now. And as fun as it is to receive links to videos we've already written about, we're far too busy being influential cycling journalists to, you know, care. So stop doing that too.

Tomorrow
More laziness!

He didn't do it because he didn't have the right bike. Sounds like a massive excuse to us. But Landis got bucked off a track bike when he went to do a couple of laps of the track, which makes things better. Get used to riding fixed, Floyd, you'll be working as a bike messenger next year.

Meanwhile:
All kinds of track records have been broken by the proper track stars competing in Moscow. DerailedUK favourite Theo Bos set the new world record over 200m in the sprint, clocking in at 9.77 seconds. Track World Cup: 1000 times more interesting than bloody cyclo-cross (take note, cycling media).

Dave Zabriskie will be having a crack at the Athlete's Hour record tomorrow. That's cool -- as kids of the 1990s, DerailedUK has long been fascinated by the hour record, and Dave Zabriskie's peculiar mannerisms have kept our non-cycling friends entertained on more than one occasion.

But it's not as good as it sounds:
- He's actually going for the AMERICAN hour record. Which currently doesn't exist, meaning all he has to do is stay upright on the bike for an hour (admittedly a feat that could cause him some problems, considering his performance in the 2005 Tour).
- It's taking place in December. So no, he won't be on peak form.
- It's something to do with raising money for firefighters, which we're not especially opposed to. But rumour has it that Floyd Landis is also involved somehow, which we ARE especially opposed to.

Dave Z's hour record attempt: 4/10

By "that thing" we mean the Predictor-Lotto team, or as a certain website has not-at-all-wittily dubbed it, You're Pregnant-Lotto. The new sponsor -- manufacturers of pregancy test kits, if you hadn't guessed -- is the source of all this "humour", presumably because obstetrics is just that much funnier than laminate flooring.

Mind you, for those familiar with the brand, the suffix "-Lotto" won't inspire too much faith in its reliability.

Anyway, the new team kit doesn't look so bad. Fairly swish. 7/10

Today's phrase: English-speaking riders.

English-speaking riders? Yes. But not Tom Boonen. Or Frank Schleck. Or most of the riders who speak English.

What does it mean? Riders from Anglophone countries. Or, more precisely, riders representing the countries in which the footage is broadcast or the magazine sold.

So it's a means of creating a transnational identity between four or so countries that are thousands of miles apart, just to sell more magazines? Yes, and we wish we'd thought of that. Screw DerailedUK, it's time for DerailedEnglishSpeaking.

Cheer up, miserable face. Just because it's Christmas doesn't mean you have to be depressed. Here's something that'll make you happy:

Tour de France first-place finisher Floyd Landis said he would quit the sport if he received a long enough suspension in his doping trial.

Eurosport

The International Professional Cycling Teams (IPCT) have voted to exclude Discovery Channel and Manolo Saiz' company Active Bay from their group.

So Floyd Landis is going away as soon as he's confirmed as an ugly cheating dullard, and everybody hates Discovery Channel! Happy face!

Revolution 15 capsule review
Graeme Obree is fucking cool.

More words
Best Revolution ever. We were going to write a full report, but we thought we'd just do a list of highlights instead. We really love lists.

Things we liked about Revolution 15:
- Graeme Obree and Franco Marvulli doing the worst madison time trial EVER
- Craig Maclean winning every round of the sprint omnium
- Wiggins and Marvulli winning the Isaac Galvez Memorial Madison
- Obree riding a pursuit against four youngsters
- The Italian family who were waving their tricolour and cheering for the Italian riders
- Obree riding Old Faithful around the track

A special shout out has to go to the two guys who crashed in the Isaac Galvez madison. With everyone upset about Galvez's tragic death, that's the one event where you can crash and graze your shoulder a bit and still not get any real sympathy from anybody.

Things we'd like to see at the next Revolution:
- Someone riding a pursuit against an animal
- Something to do with unicycles
- Topless keirin omnium
- A load of CSC riders