The Marco Pantani Movie finally made it to RAI International only a few days after its Italian premier on RAI. I set my DVR to record it but was unable to get enough time to watch until Monday when I came down with a cold and was at home with a few hours to kill.
The Marco Pantani Movie was produced by RAI and has the same qualities as any major network “Movie of the Week”. The story follows Marco’s life through a flash back that is bookended with Marco smashing a plate glass window during the 1999 Giro at Madonna di Campiglio when he found out that his Hematocrit level was above 50%. The 50% threshold required that Pantani take two weeks off from cycling as a health precaution. This meant that he was booted from the Giro where he was dominating.
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(pic from Flickr)
The second edition of the Tour of California is in the record books with another win by a hometown racer. Levi Leipheimer took the reigns over from Floyd Landis as the next Tour of California champ. The race proved very popular with fans though it did not break the record of most attended sporting event in California. It just missed by about 100,000 or so.
The race continued to attract record crowds, besting its own record of 1.3 million fans last year, and shoring its place as the most attended cycling race in the U.S.
Not that 1.3 Million is a shabby number at all. The race continues to grow and it is a good chance for domestic US Pros to rub elbows with Euro ProTour Pros who are just starting to find their legs for the season.
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(pic from Yahoo News)
“I am ending my active career,” Ullrich said.
He criticized the way he had been treated by cycling officials in Germany and Switzerland and by the German media.
“I feel like a serious criminal although I have nothing to reproach myself,” he said.
Ullrich said he was still fit and had received offers from seven teams to race this season, but had decided to move on.
Jan Ullrich announced his retirement today at a press conference in Hamburg, Germany. Ullrich will now take on a new job as Media Consultant/Advisor for the Volksbank team.
Ullrich’s retirement comes despite having numerous opportunities to get back to racing this year.
“I could ride again immediately, I could get a license, I am fit, as fit as last year and could immediately have a team. I have seven offers, including ProTour teams.” –cyclingnews.com
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Go Clipless has a nice writeup on a recent USA Today article that talks about how cycling is growing in the US. The fans lining the roads of the Tour of California definately show that there is a large interest in the sport, but just how large is this interest?
Race organizers are predicting that the eight-day event that ends in Long Beach Sunday will attract more than 1.3 million spectators and break its own record as the biggest sporting event held in California since the 1984 Olympic Summer Games.
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(Levi warming up from flickr)
The Tour of California is the dominant cycling news at the moment. The second edition of the race is a mix of excitement and controversy. There was great action on stage 3 with breaks happening all day, and a great victory by Jens Voight who was in most of those breaks. Small controversy arose with the Stage 1 crash and the decision to neutralize the race since most of the field was caught up in a freak crash.
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(Jan Ullrich bikes…discounts available?)
Jan Ullrich has scheduled a press conference for next Monday and speculation has been ripe on just what Der Kaiser will talk about. Rumors have been heavily leaning on an Ullrich retirement announcement since Ullrich has yet to get a license from any national federation.
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The Tour of California bike race is in its second year and growing. Latest word is that the organizers want to grow the race to become a major Grand Tour. Of course with a successful bike race following the same format for two years in a row, the organizers have nothing to do but dream of ways to make the race grow. In the past thoughts of growing the race to step on the toes of the major Grand Tours would be met with scoffs, laughing or at least a “we can dream can’t we” type of response. Not this year though as cycling as a sport is at a major crossroads where everything is up in the air for its future.
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The Amgen Tour of California site seems to always come up with very innovative ways to show the race. Last year the Tour Tracker provided real time pictures and some video to help with the race coverage. This year the Tour Tracker made a technological jump by providing live streaming video in a dashboard that overlays the course profile, GPS location and live flickr photos.
The combo is very impressive. The video is in full screen mode which makes the picture a bit pixelated, but can be accommodated by resizing the screen to a smaller size. The video feed is fairly smooth for web videos. Just about the same quality that you would get on Youtube. I am impressed with their decision to go full screen which looks very slick. (Sorry for the Bob Roll-like gushing)
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CSC is putting some of its technology on display at the Tour of California. Several riders will wear an OmniLocation device that can track the racers in real time. As WIRED News reports the device is more than a GPS:
“This is more than just GPS,” says CSC’s Identity Labs chief technologist Dan Munyan. “This is object field tracking. We want to be able to focus on a field of objects in motion, looking not only at where they are on the route, but also where they are relative to each other.
“It’s much cooler than the nüvi in your car telling you when to turn left and right,” he says.
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The year is 1997, the race is the Criterium International. 20km from the finish a horse decides to join the race.
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