April 19, 2005
The Beauty of Cycling
Unfortunately I haven't been showing you so much of my love for cycling. Since I have very few classes at the university this semester I have been able to follow Eurosport's nearly* excellent coverage of the 2005 season's first races. The Swedish commentators Roberto Vacchi and Anders Adamsson aren't just two big cycling freaks. They also possess a great knowledge in describing what's what in their fave sport. A couple of hours are enough for them to get you through the jungle of transfers, new teams, new sponsors, new ranking systems, and most importantly new designs of the jerseys. They do it all in quite a subtle, fun, and not at all non-critical way.
So even if you never thought of cycling as a spectator sport, try to turn on Eurosport tomorrow, Wednesday 20, for the classic La Flèche Wallone. It's a 200 kilometre hilly race which ends with a 1 kilometre climb of 12.9% on average, to the summit of the Mur de Huy. I'll be cheering for Kim Kirchen of Fassa Bortolo.
As for the picture above, it's a destructive way of showing my cycling interest. Last Friday the race Indiana University Little 500 was held in Bloomington, Indiana, and the photographer Mark Zalewski caught the whole course of events in the worst crash I've ever seen. The whole series of pictures is available here.
* On Sundays they have to show some motorcycling, which shortens down the cycling broadcast to sometimes just a 30 minute summary.
Posted by iensu at April 19, 2005 12:24 PM