Velominati Super Prestige:
Giro D'Italia 2013
Author Archive for frank
Frank Strack, Founder and Editor

A lifelong Velominatus, the history and culture within cycling fascinates Frank (pronounced in Dutch and Flemish as “Fränk”) and, if given even the vaguest of excuses, will discuss it ad nausium. A devoted cycling aesthete, the only thing more important to him than riding a bike well is looking good doing it. Question? Email me.

Descendeur

by frank / May 15 2013 / 123 posts

We close out the 6 Days of the Giro with our sixth and final installment.A body at rest, stays at rest. A body in motion, stays in motion. Things get a bit more ambiguous when it comes to a body on a bicycle tearing down a twisty mountain descent at speed, particularly in the rain. But it is here, on the boundary between clarity and ambiguity, wher...

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

by frank / May 13 2013 / 213 posts

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...

Self-Chosen: Il Pirata & Il Giro

by frank / May 6 2013 / 151 posts

We continue our Six Days of the Giro series with a look at the troubled bond between Marco Pantani and the Giro.Some were meant to be tormented, as though it were preordained that their brilliance should be balanced with fatal flaws. These are tortured souls, whose dramatic highs are equalled only by the devastating depths of their lows. Continu...

Velominati Kit Redesign: Half Turbine, Half Hazard

by frank / Apr 29 2013 / 74 posts

Change creeps in slowly, it has a way of taking the seemingly immutable and eroding it over time. It’s inevitable; if the great canyons were carved from the solid rock of Mount Velomis by such a soft thing as water, then it should come as no surprise that the Velominati V-Kit would also change with time. As David St. Hubbins says, “Th...

The Weight of a Moniker

by frank / Apr 26 2013 / 40 posts

Young riders rise through the ranks with such promise. We all know the story; the rider who borrows a bicycle and enters a local race and wins. He decides he might be good at going batshit fast on a bike. Mom and Dad buy him a klunker for his birthday and he takes out a license. He starts winning most races he enters locally and rises to the region...

La Vie Velominatus: Lean Properly

by frank / Apr 22 2013 / 181 posts

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,...

Velominati Super Prestige: Luik-Bastenaken-Luik 2013

by frank / Apr 18 2013 / 224 posts

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 &#...

Velominati Super Prestige: La Flèche Wallone 2013

by frank / Apr 15 2013 / 238 posts

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...

Cobbles, Carbon, Silk, and Dust

by frank / Apr 12 2013 / 100 posts

I hadn’t planned to ride them every day. In fact, I had planned to only ride them once and let other people ride them. But, genius that I am, I forgot my ceramic brake pads and had to source some new ones which was a maddeningly difficult process given that Europe observes something in the neighborhood of 363 holidays per year.I was more than...

Cogal Report – TDU Cogadelaide 2013

by frank / Apr 8 2013 / 21 posts

While the Northern Hemisphere Velominati were busy arguing about who injected what in the old races they’d been using to distract themselves during their indoor torture sessions, down South a bunch of like minded strangers from the internet decided that coffee, hills, sunshine & beer seemed like a great excuse to meet up for a ride̷...
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