Jason Queally

Ah yes… I remember this one. WindyBricks had an away game which involved a short commuter hop from Waterloo on a Saturday morning. I remember meeting our usual away companion and ZS (just back from a week working in New York) at the pub at the station. I remember walking down into the bar and heard the British national anthem as we walked in. I remember my mind whirring and saying “we’ve won a gold medal” to Dmitri not quite as old. “Who the hell would that be?”

Jason Queally set the Olympic gold medal bandwagon rolling and we haven’t stopped since….

Here is Eurosport’s coverage over two parts…

Again, compelling to watch the unbeatable Arnaud Tournant crumple under the pressure – something Chris Hoy did not do in 2004.

More British Sporting Greatness

Chris Boardman was the pioneer of British cycling. With apologies for the German commentary, here is Boardman’s dismantling of the 1996 Atlanta olympic champion Andrea Collinelli at the Manchester World Track championships…

Cycling has changed much, not least the superman position, but what a time!

Book Review – In Pursuit of Glory by Bradley Wiggins

This review has been held on the stocks as the internet connection at the holiday cottage in Cornwall has not been all it has been cracked out to be. To be honest, it has been bloody awful since Sunday as a more than decent holiday abode is turning fast into some sort of end of the pier show. Anyway, that’s for another time, as while the internet has been down I have decided to write my thoughts on this book that I finished in the first couple of days here.

The version being reviewed is the latest paperback edition including Wiggins’ take on his brilliant ride in this year’s Tour de France. It is a book that encapsulates the sacrifices needed to be made to reach the top while keeping Wiggins persona as some sort of ordinary bloke with extraordinary talent. Wiggins says he has a character that throws itself into something whole-heartedly (his anecdote about collecting, and then drinking, a large Belgian beer collection is a good one) and his tales of winning gold in Athens followed by a drinking binge that followed shows how he veers from one extreme to another.

Wiggins uses the book to detail his (non) relationship with his runaway father and he frames his response to this issue using his father’s violent death in 2008 as the starting point. Garry Wiggins was an Aussie who rode in Europe on the Six Day Tour circuit making money the hard way. Along the way he left his English wife with a child and then never contacted Bradley again until he had made it. Bradley clearly has no time for his antics but the persistent referencing back seems to indicate to me his need to compare himself to his dad. It is always compelling, and yet you know he is holding a lot back. While I’m not really into that family nonsense in books (and Bradley confesses the early days bits of biographies also bore him senseless) it is important.

I really liked the bits about his relationship with Chris Boardman. Everything you see with Chris is, it seems, a bit of a facade. He comes across as a genial affable kind of bloke, driven by something but not quite totally obsessed and as driven as you would expect. He doesn’t seem to be the hard task-master but Wiggins makes him sound like a total bastard! All the time in the book he gives off the views that it was all OK in the end, but it sounds like he hated him at the time – the part where Wiggins says he is asked to put together a year training plan, and after a ton of work he submitted it, only to have it virtually all crossed out within a matter of minutes is reminiscent of Dmitri’s experiences with an ex-line manager.  Boardman clearly drove Wiggins on, but then disappears after the 2004 Olympics as Wiggins goes on the road.

Wiggins comes across as totally against drugs and makes great play of it in his public pronouncements. It is more because he is quotable in his view than actually wanting to play the part of some sort of paragon of virtue. He freely admits in his book that he knows when people are taking the mickey with their drug taking – Vinokourov and Kashegin’s rides in the 2007 Tour for example, and yet he seems to give Michael Rasmussen the benefit of the doubt and is positively on the fence when it comes to the Floyd Landis affair (interesting he says that the superb ride he did was possible, but to be caught for testosterone made absolutely no sense). He freely admits to being a great friend of David Millar despite his drug confessions. He is categorically in the know when saying Rob Hayles is no doper despite his high haematocrit reading before the world championships in Manchester. It is always compelling to hear his views. His terror that something be found in his room after his Cofidis team-mate failed a dope test in the 2007 Tour is palpable.

All the Olympic and World triumphs are there, and all the better for Brad’s views. His 2009 Tour de France review appears a little rushed, but no problem for me as this still adds to the book. The bits about the team pursuit are also compelling, and on an individual level  the total disappointment that there was no-one to challenge him in the Olympics seems to offend his competitive drive – he believed he was in World Record shape but it made no sense busting a gut when no-one else could get within three seconds of him – so the details of the harder gold to win, the team pursuit takes over.

All told a magnificent book, and one I totally enjoyed and would recommend to anyone. Bradley Wiggins should be a sporting icon in this country, but we prefer to court mediocrity than laud superiority. Wiggins’ recounts being shunted off the front row at the 2004 BBC Sports Personality awards, and his medal hardly getting any recognition, and you sense his indignation. Even now, I believe as a result of his stupendous performance on the Tour and his legacy of achievement in the 2008 Olympics should put him near the top of any award chart this year. It won’t, of course, but I would love to be surprised. You know Wiggins would too.

Highly recommended. A really interesting book by a great British sporting achiever.

A Great Sporting Event

This was probably the most astounding performance by a British cyclist in history. Imagine being the favourite and seeing three people before him break the Olympic Record , and set the fastest three times at sea level. And you are the favourite…..

Staggering. Never gets enough credit.

Sort of Map of the Day 3

Not quite a map, but given I’ve just read the book on Robert Millar, and am currently engrossed in the Bradley Wiggins book, why not?

Book Review – In Search of Robert Millar by Richard Moore

The field of sports book writing is plagued with some absolute drivel. I avoid most football books like the plague, find many cricket books to be ruthless money-spinners (hey, Freddie, hey KP, hey Vaughan, I’m talking to you…) and while the American sports book I read are pretty decent, they do lapse frequently into cliche and hyperbole. In short, I have read plenty of old twaddle in my time.

So why read sports books? Because every now and then you come across a work like Mystery Spinner (Gideon Haigh) or The Death of Marco Pantani (Matt Rendell). In Search of Robert Millar can easily place itself right up there with the best books I have read on sports. Richard Moore takes his respect and blatant “fan-dom” over the diminutive Scottish cyclist of the 80s and turns a biography into so much more than a list of race victories and career achievements. The book is aided, not hindered, by the fact that Millar is so elusive now, has an obsession with privacy and has all but disappeared to all those not considered close enough to him. That’s Millar’s right, and his antipathy to the public scrutinising him is clear. But by not approving or authoring the book, Moore gets a free hand to do as he sees fit. With Millar’s input (save the e-mails at the end) missing the book has to take other’s perspectives, from his roots in Glasgow to the continent and beyond. Moore ties them together superbly.

The most compelling sections in the book are those that delve into the machinations of team cycling in the 1980s and especially the 1985 Vuelta, which was stolen from Millar by a combination it appears of bad luck, poor management, a knackered team and downright skullduggery. The book is also very revealing in detailing how hard it was for a Brit to break into the cutthroat world of continental cycling. His early skirmishes with Bernard Hinault were amusing. I liked the detailing of his career, but these facts were necessaily interspersed with details of what, at the time, appeared an eccentricity that cast Millar as “different” and his detachment from many around him.

The trail gets thinner towards the end, and some of the stuff on drugs left me a little cold – but that is just the slightest of criticisms and inevitably these books can drift a little – and the last 10 years of Millar’s life are, basically, missing. Moore’s e-mails with Millar a couple of years ago put the exclamation mark on the book. Moore spends his time trying to tease more and more out of the reclusive ex-cyclist; Millar gives matter-of-fact responses to virtually all he asked EXCEPT where he lived and what he does. He doesn’t address the sex-change rumours. He doesn’t say why he never attends public ceremonies / events. He is Robert Millar.

I came to the Tour de France in the late 80s. I saw the Roche tour up unti I went on holiday. I saw Delgado’s win when he got caught for a drug banned by the world authorities except the UCI. I saw the 1989 tour with LeMond and Fignon. I wasn’t really caught up with Robert Millar, although I do remember his Pyreneean stage win, and the story of his climb up the Col de la Bonnette, only to be caught, then come back, on the climb to Isola 2000. I do remember the time he was sent off course when set for a battle for the stage in the Pyrenees. He was the peripheral figure. I loved LeMond, and he was the man I wanted to win.

Millar’s career seems astonishing in hindsight – 2nd in the Vuelta twice. 2nd in the Giro d’Italia; 4th in the Tour de France. The country were rightly delighted – me included – that Wiggins got 4th this year in the Tour de France. Millar did this 25 years ago and was King of the Mountains to boot. An amazing achievement, overshadowed it seems by the exploits of Boardman and Cavendish, and of course the all conquering track team since. Millar was a big player in the 1980s, but no-one really seems to realise. Moore does, and does him justice.

A cracking read, interspersed with great insights from Roche (how Millar and his super-team Fagor got the hump with him over his knee injury in 1988 – and his approach to the hostility of the Italian crowds in 1987), his various managers, Pedro Delgado’s comments on the 1985 Vuelta, his brief encounters with Graham Obree, and his evident distaste for Peter Keen which seemed mutual (and briefly an off comment about  Boardman) and the antipathy to Millar the man felt by Phil Liggett (while commentating as if he was his biggest supporter) make this a brilliant read.

Five stars, no hesitation, and I have throughly enjoyed reading this on the way to work in the past week. The book finishes the way that  seems appropriate. Robert Millar concludes the e-mail back and forth in the epilogue with “No More Questions”.

Moore answered many throughout the book and done his hero great justice. Top stuff.

The 2009 Tour De France – Rage Hard

The 2009 edition of the annual running of the French Tourist Board’s dream certainly had more off the course drama than had been seen for a while. The outcome of the race wasn’t truly in doubt once Alberto Contador attacked up the Andorra Arcalis mountain to put some time between him and Lance Armstrong (and the Schleck brothers), because then he stated, out loud, who was number 1, and who was the leader of the team, and for Armstrong to fight against him would be treachery (and I know that is rich coming from a LeMond fan after his run-ins with Hinault). Once Contador had the lead, he kept it comfortably, holding off his rivals up to Verbiers, and keeping a close eye on them up Mont Ventoux. It is important for Le Tour that the best rider wins, and he did.

Sport is always about opinions, and you can only really go by what you are given by the media when forming opinions. Alberto Contador is the star of world cycling at the moment, and pretty much everyone knows he is the best grand tour racer in the world right now. So why would Astana (a) pick Lance Armstrong to ride for their team and (b) then not unequivocally say that Armstrong, if he was racing for Astana, would be there for their number one talent? Once Armstrong fractured his collarbone early in the season, that position had to be easier, didn’t it? But they didn’t do that, and frankly, if I’m Contador, having signed for Astana knowing he would not be able to defend his crown in 2008, I’d have expected a bit more support.

I make no secret of the fact I despise Lance Armstrong – I never warmed to him, and desperately wanted him to lose. For him to accuse Contador of being ungracious in victory is truly enough to make you spit out the food you might be eating. This champion was as graceless, surly, taciturn, moody and downright rude as they came. He had one goal each year – to win the Tour – and could set his own team up around that aim – he wasn’t interested in the Giro, the Vuelta, and in his latter career, the World Championship. I loved LeMond because in 1989 he won the Tour, a few weeks later narrowly missed out on the Classic in Zurich, and then later won the World Championship outsprinting Sean Kelly. Not for him a one trick pony who did nothing else.

Armstrong, when he started his career, won a World Championship in Oslo, but never figured in the Tour in his early career. He got cancer, and got great. I really, really, really want to believe that he did it clean, but in an age when all around him were doping and couldn’t hold his wheel (and they were fit, healthy young men), I’m not really, really, really sure he was. Armstrong would not have any truck with a potential rival in his team – you think, for example, a great climber like Roberto Heras would have been allowed to make a break for it under Armstrong’s leadership? So why be so bloody temperamental and undermine the current star in Contador. His surly reactions to the media were of the usual variety – as if Lance is the only one worth bothering about – and when Contador, having alluded to the problems throughout and understandably concerned that the team might be working against him (as possibly given evidence by the early break in the field on which Contador was the wrong side of), mentioned them, he is the one who has lessons to learn?

Before the end of the tour, when it was evident Contador was going to win, Armstong announced he was leaving Astana and forming his own team. Nice bloke. Nothing like upstaging your team mate… You could have left it until after the tour to do so, but instead you think you are more important than that. I’d like to see them both do battle next Summer, and Contador can put the old man well and truly in his place with no excuses, because, make no bones about it, Contador can, and will, get better.

Outside of the Armstrong / Contador schmozzle, it was a fabulous tour for Bradley Wiggins. I hope the British media don’t go too overboard on his hopes for next year because realistically the three men who finished in front of him should (unless Lance drops off some more) beat him next year too – they are all better climbers, and Andy Schleck apart, better long-distance time triallers. However, Wiggins finishing fourth is a truly magnificent performance and in my view is worthy for Sports Personality of the Year status. However, no-one cares about cycling really, so it won’t happen. His climb up the Arcalis gave the clue to his condition; his living with the big boys in the Alps was fantastic, and his survival on Mont Ventoux showed the guy’s character. We don’t get stars like this, riding like this. We should be proud.

And so to Mark Cavendish. Six wins out of six bunch sprints in which he was involved shows his dominance. Pettachi and Cipollini were awesome on their day, but nothing quite like this, and if I recall correctly, neither got to Paris to display their dominance. Cavendish’s sprint up the Champs Elsyees is the stuff of legend – as awesome as Usain Bolt in the Olympics for the distance between him and the rest. Watch it, if you don’t believe it…. I know he’s not the most television-friendly of interviewees, nor does he appear to be the friendliest of chaps (he seemed to be a bit stroppy after Beijing) but he is an absolute star on the bike and British track cycling’s success is now moving onto the road, and long may it continue.

Finally, the route. I doubt the Tour will be doing that again, because the second week was as deadly dull as you could get. By hitting the Pyrenees so soon, the tour went into a dreaful lull as the transition stages seemed to pile on top of each other. Even the Alps were disappointing. Leaving Mont Ventoux to last was designed to get a showdown, instead, Contador had won, and no-one really changed positions. I think, as Chris Boardman said on the TV, we’ll get a more traditional tour (starting in Rotterdam) next year.

One of the Great Sporting Moments…

This was amazing, watching it live on Channel 4… (well, sort of live). A sporting hero of mine was created…

This isn’t the greatest clip of the action, but I remember it so well…

A Non-Alcoholic Bike Ride And Ramble…

I’ve been a bit quiet on here recently, I know. With the Ashes in full flow now I’ve been concentrating the blogging on the cricket and little else, so time to redress the balance and speak about other things.

Nice to see my WindyBricks colleagues wish me a happy birthday. Some of them harbour grudges that warp through time, others make unsubstantiated remarks about me, but let them be. The vast majority of the chaps and chap-esses there are top people, so there’s no need to be resentful or perpetuate the hate any longer. I can’t imagine what drives some of them.

I’ve been following the Tour de France, while sipping from my cafetiere of course, and so far it has been a bit of a phony war as the organisers effectively wasted two mountain stages by giving the cyclists long distances to the finish after them. Hence the iconic Col du Tourmalet climb, where I remember a great stage with LeMond, Delgado and Indurain (on the way to Luz Ardiden) in 1990, is just a footnote in this tour as the main men kept their powder dry for the Alps and the last-but-one day climb up Mont Ventoux. The buzz is, of course, around the Astana team containing the young champion Alberto Contador and the seven time winner Lance Armstrong (who, it will come to the surprise of no-one, I can’t abide). Contador laid down a marker on Andorra Arcalis by jumping from the pack and taking time out of the rest of the top runners, including Armstrong. There then followed a session of media rounds where Armstrong claimed he could have caught him but it wasn’t the right thing to do, and he’s clearly miffed that the “team leader” actually acted like one. Armstrong would surprise me intensely if he works at all for Contador from here on in. He’s got too competitive a streak, he’s too ruthless, he’s too savvy and he’s too egotistical to just come back to ride the tour “for his cancer charity.” Armstrong is there to win, and if Contador’s ambition has to be suppressed, so be it. After all, what better way to hamstring your greatest rival and the man you’ll fear most, by making him, in some way, worry about you in your own team? Contador showed some balls by making his early statement, and I am very much in his camp. He sacrificed defending his crown last year by joining Astana, and his team repays him by bringing in Armstrong to stuff things up. Contador must be seething.

Also in the tour, while Mark Cavendish is getting lots of plaudits for winning three stages, and he clearly is unstoppable in a fair sprint. However, quietly posting the best ride in the overall standings by a Brit since Robert Millar is Bradley Wiggins, who surprised everyone, and possibly himself, by keeping up with the big climbers on the Arcalis. In the coverage on ITV4, the pictures of him thumping the team van with sheer joy and pride at his performance was one of the best things I’ve seen in a while. This bloke, while not unknown, has three Olympic gold medals under his belt, and yet is hardly mentioned at all by anyone. Ask a person in a street to name a British Olympic pursuit champion, and they’ll probably name Chris Boardman. Wiggins has personality, ability and strength. The only conceivable reason he isn’t a megastar here is that we’ve become complacent about gold medals. Here’s hoping Wiggins continues his great form and gets his desired top 20 finish.

Other football, and what, precisely, are Manchester City doing? BBC Sport listed them this morning – Tevez, Robinho, Caicedo, Bellamy, Benjani, Bojinov, Roque Santa Cruz and Evans (yes, Evans) – and now Adebayor is taking a medical. Has someone told this mob you can probably play three of them, maximum, at one time, and knowing his attitude, Bellamy knows he will be one of them! This is ridiculous. Manchester City may have a very entertaining team, but their pursuit of John Terry makes the whole thing even more of a joke. I know it is funny watching Chelsea in the position of disbelieving host to a cash mad predator, but what is this all about. At a time when the economy is diving more emphatically than Greg Louganis, Manchester City are spending like sailors on shore leave. It is utterly classless, but then again, what does anyone expect with the Premier League these days?

It is a cracking weekend of sport, with the Tour de France heating up, the Lord’s test and the Open golf championship. Add to that Boston will be trying to keep their three game lead over the Yankees as they head off on a six game road trip after the All Star Break (and if Boston get to the World Series they’ll have home advantage after the American League won again last night). Lots to watch, see and do.

Hope this message finds my readers well and in positive spirits. Talking of spirits, I have not touched alcohol for 8 days and the intention is to make it to 31 (British Beer Festival). Here’s hoping I do it!