Velominati Community Profile Archive

Velominatus: Al__S

Order: Level 2 Velominatus

@Al__S's activity:

Merry Festum Prophetae

This photo is perhaps the greatest of all time; it shows The Prophet riding in the 1969 Ronde van Vlaanderen, kit and machine perfect. Rule #9 conditions in abundance. He’s gone off the front with some 80km left to race, which predictably sent his directeur into a rage. Ordered to return to the bunch, Merckx calmly suggested he go screw hi...

@Al__S's posts:

  1. @Mikael Liddy wooden? when you can get carbon with an internally routed brake cable? A steal at €1,499. »

On Rule #43: Notes for Bike Inspectors

This week’s Guest Article comes from our friend, @blacktoolpower (l) and our editor Drummond Moir (r). In anticipation of our book’s imminent release, these two donned their lab coats and headed out to the streets of London to assess the state of Rule Compliance in the city’s commuter crowd. Always remember: leave this kind of ins...

@Al__S's posts:

  1. The inspectors would be rather overwhelmed in Cambridge… but I’ll admit to my commuter not being rules compliant. Apart from anything, it was bought before I knew of the rules. It doesn’t yet deserve a full new groupset, so it can stay on a triple. And … »

The Way of the Cycling Disciple: Publication & e-Book Sampler

Every once in a while, you stumble across a quote that changes your outlook on how you approach life. Of course, this requires that one does a good deal of “reading”, which is a problem for me, as reading anything that isn’t Cycling-related feels the same as doing “work”. I do the odd bit of it nevertheless, and in a r...

@Al__S's posts:

  1. ooh, whilst I have a Kindle, this looks like the sort of thing I should get in dead tree form. I’m currently juggling “Slaying The Badger” and Ned Boulting’s new book in e-form.This? It’s my birthday next week. This can be a late birthday present. »

Velominati Super Prestige: Giro D’Italia 2013

Twiggo is dreaming of a Giro-Tour double. He has sent out mixed messages about his Tour ambitions. Will he use the Giro as the ultimate Tour preparation or will be burn all his matches in May and hope he can find another pack for July? He has abandoned his successful 2012 Tour run-up strategy of winning every stage race he entered the previous spri...

@Al__S's posts:

  1. I’ve seen a lot of whining on other sites about the weather “ruining” the race. Are these people mad? The weather, apart from when it has caused a stage to be entirely canned, has made it epic. Anyone finishing- let alone doing well- is pretty damn hard. … »

  2. taken the huge points hits. Might as well. VSP PICKS (2nd Rest Day Swaps): 1. Uran 2. Nibbles 3. Cuddles 4. SANTAMBROGIO 5. SCARPONI »

  3. So two out of my five out on the same day. As with many I guess. »

Velominati Super Prestige: Giro d’Italia 2013, Stage 10

Day 5 of the Six Days of the Giro continues with an impromptu VSP event.Lets have a look at where we are in the 2013 Giro. Wiggins must have spent time training in Luxembourg because he’s been descending like a Schleck when things get dodgy before disappearing into the team van to have a cry about it. Hesjedal has put in some good moves and...

@Al__S's posts:

  1. VSP PICKS: 1. Wiggins 2. Nibbles 3. Henao 4. Uran 5. Scarponi »

Velominati Super Prestige: Giro D’Italia 2013

Twiggo is dreaming of a Giro-Tour double. He has sent out mixed messages about his Tour ambitions. Will he use the Giro as the ultimate Tour preparation or will be burn all his matches in May and hope he can find another pack for July? He has abandoned his successful 2012 Tour run-up strategy of winning every stage race he entered the previous spri...

@Al__S's posts:

  1. Is there a prize for the hardest-to-map picks? I thought my top 3 were pretty bad, but some are positively artful »

  2. Pretty sure Wiggins and Froome have to personally check with Sir Dave before they so much as shit, let alone talk to the press. VSP PICKS: 1. Sir Wiggo 2. Nibbles 3. Cuddles 4. Ryder 5. Henao »

La Vie Velominatus: Lean Properly

There are always at least two ways to accomplish any task: properly and improperly. Drinking beer from a glass, not the bottle; carrying a full umbrella instead of a miniature fold-up; stirring your gin martinis, not shaking them; wearing french cuffs with a suit, not button cuffs. The Velominatus, of course, is drawn towards doing things Properly,...

@Al__S's posts:

  1. If one was to be picky about Wiggo’s bike parking, he did park it drive-side to the wall. »

  2. hah, I was scrolling down through the comments to see if anyone Wiggo’s wig-out… »

Velominati Super Prestige: Luik-Bastenaken-Luik 2013

There is something to love about a race that makes a deviation to its route for the simple joy of sending a fleet of professional riders up a fiendishly steep and narrow ramp. The Cote du Stockeu offers zero benefit to the route from a logistical standpoint – in fact, all it does is complicate things. On the way down from the Cote de Wanne &#...

@Al__S's posts:

  1. Why’s Peter not on the start list? VSP PICKS: 1. Gilbert 2. Gerrans 3. Martin 4. Nibali 5. Froome »

Velominati Super Prestige: La Flèche Wallone Féminine 2013

Last year we saw Evelyn Stevens out-last Marianne Vos at the top of the Mur de Huy. The take home message is don’t start one’s charge too early. Vos should know this finish, having won it four times already. It’s hard to know who is on form in the professional women field as the races are too far apart to infer much from the last...

@Al__S's posts:

  1. VSP PICKS: 1. Borghini 2. Armistead 3. Vos 4. Johanssen 5. Van Dijk »

Velominati Super Prestige: La Flèche Wallone 2013

We came tantalizingly close to adding a foray up the Mur de Huy during our excursion to Liege-Bastogne-Liege during this year’s Keepers Tour. But good sense and The Anti-V prevailed, as they are wont to do, and only two of us were left wanting a dig at the most notorious finishing climb in the Classics season.I write this, then, woefully igno...

@Al__S's posts:

  1. VSP PICKS: 1. Hesjedal 2. Henao 3. Valverde 4. Gilbert 5. Gerrans »

Velominati Super Prestige: Amstel Gold 2013

Yes it is a race named after a barely drinkable Dutch beer. I have enjoyed Amstel beer, brought to our table by a nice waitress, sitting outside in the Dutch spring. Atmosphere is everything. Do the Dutch brew awesome beer? I drank some good stuff in Amsterdam last spring but I’m pretty sure it was Belgian.Now we begin the Ardennes three race...

@Al__S's posts:

  1. VSP PICKS: 1. Sagan 2. Gilbert 3. Gerrans 4. Sergio Henao Montoya 5. BOOM »

Velominati Super Prestige: Paris-Roubaix 2013

It looks so easy on the television. Well, no, actually it looks pretty bloody hard. We think we have some understanding of how they suffer, how their bodies can take the continual beating. But we don’t really know. Not even by riding these abominations they call roads twice in the space of a few days can we understand the scale of the thing...

@Al__S's posts:

  1. @Dr C Clearly not that confident he isn’t going to finish if you’ve included him anyway… »

  2. Not that I wish ill on Spartacus. Just figured I’d take a punt on him maybe going down. After all, if a wildly odd slate comes off you look like a genius… VSP PICKS: 1. Stannard 2. Phinney 3. Dempster 4. Chavanel 5. Boom »

Velominati Super Prestige: Ronde van Vlaanderen 2013

Imagine a world without the little things we take for granted; a house without a roof, a pub with no beer, a Keepers Tour without any clothes. The last one is a reality for me at the moment, five days in and still no trace of where the hell between Wellington and Paris my bag (filled with V-Kit, shoes, helmet, everything) is. The other thing that h...

@Al__S's posts:

  1. I’ve just been watching the highlights on Eurosport (I went riding whilst the race was on…). That attack. That ride away to the finish. Blimey. Incredible- stunning. As for Sagan? Yes, hugely inappropriate. But surely the photo op with the two lovelies… »

Velominati Super Prestige: Ronde van Vlaanderen Féminine 2013

Marianne Vos has never won this? She who wins everything all the time has never won this? Is it not hilly and tough enough? This seems like a tear in the time-space continuum. Someone is going to be wanting to add this to her palmarés. Weather sounds like a cold but dry day for racing. This is a big one, maybe worth two bumper stickers, so ponder...

@Al__S's posts:

  1. VSP PICKS: 1. Vos 2. Armistead 3. Bronzini 4. Becker 5. Cromwell »

Velominati Super Prestige: Ronde van Vlaanderen 2013

Imagine a world without the little things we take for granted; a house without a roof, a pub with no beer, a Keepers Tour without any clothes. The last one is a reality for me at the moment, five days in and still no trace of where the hell between Wellington and Paris my bag (filled with V-Kit, shoes, helmet, everything) is. The other thing that h...

@Al__S's posts:

  1. VSP PICKS: 1. Stannard 2. Cancellera 3. Sagan 4. Dempster 5. Boonen »

The Lexicon

The Velominati have our own set of nicknames and terms which have developed over time through posts and correspondence. Some of these are names of landmarks or terms in cycling; others are nicknames for some of the riders in the pro peloton. While not intended to be offensive or derogatory, the nicknames in the list represent the riders’ pe...

@Al__S's posts:

  1. That should have been “Brandy”, not “Brancy”. »

  2. New entry suggestion? In the wake of a reported incident in a hotel where a cycling brother was supposedly “tired and emotional” in a lift, I’ve seen references to “Brancy Schleck”. However, I’d like to make a case for “Shandy Schleck” instead. It has ext… »

Sur la Plaque: Rule #9

As many of you know, there’s been a lot of synergy between BIGRINGRIDING and Velominati for several years now. Though BRR and Velominati have very different flavors, we work on a similar principle: foster passion for the sport through a mix of knowledge, history, and humor tempered with a healthy dose of irreverence, all while obviously makin...

@Al__S's posts:

  1. MSR was definitely 9 to the power 5 in the unpleasantness stakes. Frankly, everyone that got back off the buses should recognised as the Hard Man that each everyone is. Anyway, Monday morning, freezing fog on the way to work. Had an inner tube pop than… »

Velominati Super Prestige: Milan-Sanremo 2013

Finally, we have Milan-Sanremo. I hope pedale.forcetta is ready to shoot some pictures, especially black and white because it will be cold and possibly wet. Throw in a little wind and a race of this distance will weed out the less hardy. Recently, but not too recently, this race would be won out of a decent size field sprint. And yet, besides Fabs...

@Al__S's posts:

  1. Phinney because of that performance on the T-A stage-of-death, rather despite it. B-H because of a shot of him Sky posted looking decidedly Casually Deliberate. There is no science to my picks. There maybe madness. Well, apart from Sagan to win, because,… »

Passista

My first article on Velominati was to introduce one of my favorite cyclists, Eros Poli. I refered to him as a domestique on the Mercatone-Uno team. This faux pas was properly pointed out much later by @KaffeineKeiser, a commenter who suddenly surfaced and unfortunately submerged just as quickly, like Das Boot in the Straits of Gibraltar.*I do tak...

@Al__S's posts:

  1. Definitely not a  Passista, but as bottle carrying goes, Cavendish demonstrated ably last year that wearing a white top with rainbow stripes doesn’t stop you being sent back to the caravan for supplies. That was perhaps a case of a team having too much st… »

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