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Blythe Heads for BMC

BMC RacingIt has been announced that Yorkshireman Adam Blythe will be joining the likes of Philippe Gilbert and Cadel Evans at BMC Racing next season as he leaves behind Omega Pharma-Lotto. The team confirmed the 21-year-old’s appointment along with that of Belgian Klaas Lodewyck.

 

Blythe left the British Cycling Olympic Academy at the start of 2008 having taken gold medals in the team pursuit at the Junior European Track Championships in both 2006 and 2007. Moving to Belgium he won a series of amateur events before joining Team  Konica Minolta as a stagiaire (from the French for ‘trainee’) winning two stages of he Tour of Hong Kong Shanghai. He joined Omega Pharma-Loto – known at the time as Silence-Loto – in 2009 on a two year contract.

 

Commenting on the signing of Klass and Blythe, BMC President and General Manager Jim Ochowicz said: “We are pleased to welcome both Klaas and Adam to the BMC Racing Team family. They are both young talents that are fast, strong and ready to lend their skills to the BMC Racing Team. We will especially be looking to them to support our team leaders during the classics season and throughout the rest of the season.”

 

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Cavendish Crowned

UCI Road World ChampionshipsIn a near perfect show of team work, HTC-Highroad yesterday (Sunday, September 26) delivered Mark Cavendish to the finish line in Denmark that would make him World Road Race Champion. In a spectacular demonstration that took no prisoners and looked to have a single purpose – to speed Cav to that line – from the outset, HTC dominated across a largely flat 266km course that perfectly suited the Manx rider. Taking the Gold Medal and World Champion title – the first Brit to do so since Tom Simpson in 1965 – topped out an incredible year for Cavendish who, despite a small number of set backs, managed 20 Tour de France stage wins and the coveted green jersey.

 

Given not only this success but the all-round performance this season of HTC-Highroad their imminent demise, due nominally to lack of headline sponsor, seems all the more mysterious. The next few weeks is likely to finally put to rest the rumours as to where Cavendish will spend his next season – a season in which he will not only be defending a Tour green jersey and World Championship, but also chasing Olympic Gold.

 

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Pooley Loses Crown

UCI Road World Championships Yesterday (September 20) was not the day for Emma Pooley. At the UCI World Road Cycling time trials in a rain soaked Denmark she failed to defend her time trial world champion position when her rival, Judith Arndt of Germany, raced her way to the win across the  27.8km course in 37:07.38 with Pooley 24.13seconds off position and New Zealand’s Linda Villumsen taking second-place. It was a reversal of fortunes for Pooley who had beaten Arndt by 15 seconds in 2010, making her the first British female time trial world champion.

 

Speaking on BBC Radio 5 live Sports Extra Pooley refused to be despondent, saying, “I’m pleased with the result…I’m more of a climber. I would have liked there to have been some kind of seismic activity in Copenhagen, and a mountain to have appeared.”

 

The UCI Road World Championships continue in Copenhagen until Sunday September 15.

 

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Mexico City Protest

A Mexico City journalist whose outburst called for motorists to “squash cyclists” and “rid the city of a plague” has lost his job. Angel Verdugo, an economic analyst, delivered his tirade on Mexico radio program Reporte 98.5 after two cyclists had reportedly nearly hit his car on the previous weekend; Verdugo described them as “arrogantly” disobeying traffic rules.

 

Not only did the incident cost him his position at Reporte, but it also caused a backlash from Mexico City authorities who have worked hard in recent years, through the extension of cycle ways and the introduction of a bike-hire scheme, to make it an exceptionally bike-friendly metropolis. Authorities called the comments “backward” and subsequently more than 200 cyclists, in a protest organised via Facebook, gathered at the El Angel de la Independencia to make their feelings clear too.

 

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Boom Time

Tour of BritainYesterday (Sunday, September 18) saw a thrilling, if rain-soaked, conclusion to the Tour of Britain, which had begun on the Scottish Borders the previous Sunday. As rain lashed the capital, HTC’s Mark Cavendish  sprinted to victory in 1:59:13 with his team-mate Mark Renshaw in second to mark their third 1-2 result of the week; with Geraint Thomas and Ben Swift, both Team Sky, in forth and fifth it was a patriotic day for British cycling.

 

Despite the final day’s victories it was Dutchman Lars Boom of Rabobank who finished the week crowned king of the ToB with an overall time of 26:57:35, with Team Sky’s Steven Cummings second on +36 and of NetApp Jan Bárta with +55 in third. Earlier yesterday Boom had  scored a second place finish in the Time Trial Stage, 5 seconds behind stage 8A winner Alex Dowsett, to consolidate his week’s points and all but guarantee overall success.

 

Full ToB results available at: www.tourofbritain.com 

 

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A Short Ride Around the World

Vin CoxThose weekend sportives no longer proving enough of a challenge for you? Bored of the same old bike commutes to work? Then perhaps you’re ready to take on a real challenge. Organised by Vin Cox, the current holder of the world record for circumnavigating the world by bike (163 days, since you ask), the Global Bicycle Race aims to pit as many riders as possible in an attempt to peddle at least 18,000 miles around the planet. Anyone interested in taking part will need to organise both their own headline sponsor, general support and choice of route (so long as it’s largely in the same direction) whilst niceties such as media exposure, mass depart and “a place in history for all involved!” will be taken on by the organisers.

 

The Global Bicycle Race is slated to begin on Saturday February 18, 2012 exactly 160 days before the start of the Olympic Games in order to give a fighting chance for the eventual saddle-sore winner to return to the capital on, or around, Sunday July 22. Organisers anticipate that the 160 day target will be broken down into approximately 140 days of riding and the remainder divided between transit, logistics and rest.

 

Interested? For full details visit www.greatbikeride.com. Go on, you know you want to…

 

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Alex Rasmussen: Dope

Alex RasmussenFour-time track cycling world champion Alex Rasmussen has been unceremoniously dumped by his HTC-Highroad team for failing to attend a doping test. The 27-year-old Dane, who was a member of Team Saxo-SunGard in 2009 and 10, has had his licence suspended by the Danish Cycling Union and will now miss the upcoming road world championships in Copenhagen (September 19-25), where he was due to compete in the time trial.

 

HTC, currently riding high in the Tour of Britain having taken a one, two with riders Mark Renshaw and Mark Cavendish on Stage Five, dismissed Rasmussen as soon as the missed dope test became apparent. Team manager Rolf Aldag commented: “These are clear violations of the team’s code of conduct. We act on these violations immediately.” An official statement further confirmed: “Upon notification of a missed test, Alex Nikki Rasmussen’s contract with HTC-Highroad has been terminated with immediate effect for breach of the team’s code of conduct. The UCI, NOC and Sports Confederation of Denmark notified the team today that a missed test occurred and has been verified by a UCI review. The team was also notified that Rasmussen had two missed tests in 2010 prior to joining HTC-Highroad that had not been previously reported to the team.”

 

However the bad news doesn’t end there for Rasmussen. With the effective disbanding of HTC at the end of the current season due to lack of headline sponsor he was due to join Team Garmin-Cervelo for 2012, but with Garmin having built their reputation on a strong anti-doping stance they too have decided that Rasmussen is no longer for them.

 

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Big Apple, Big Plans

With the continuing global success of high-profile cycle sharing schemes news reaches Cyclo that New York City is about to join the swelling ranks and as you might expect from a metropolis that never does anything by halves the Big Apple’s version is going to be on a pretty impressive scale with an initial role out in 2012 of 10,000 bikes. Although you might not think of the city as particularly cycle-friendly (all honking taxis and heavy foot-fall) both the Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, and the New York City Department of Transportation have made massive strides in recent years to rectify this with figures showing that commuter cycling has risen by 13% in 2009/10 in line with the addition of 200 miles of bike lane since that date. Impressively the goal is to achieve 1,800 miles by 2030.

 

The new cycle sharing scheme, which was announced on Tuesday September 13, will include 600 docking stations to accommodate the 10,000 bikes and is being run by Alta Bicycle Share. Alta, based in Oregon, already successfully manages similar schemes across the world in cities including Washington DC, Boston and Melbourne.