Does RP Cycling need a Tour today?

Make no mistake about it, I love bike racing in any form especially if it’s the Tour ng Pilipinas or its iterations. But with two groups still fighting for the legitimate leadership of RP Cycling, and each group organizing its own version of the TnP essentially for pogi points, I think that RP Cycling has gone south.

Showing folks that they can organize a Tour or that they can give out the biggest prize money is not the answer to the problems besetting RP Cycling today. The simple, but hard to follow solution, would be for both sides to sit together in one room, (but not before checking their baggage’s on the door) and later come out of the same room and sing to the same chorus of a unified RP Cycling.  

We cycling fans have been used to an irregular TnP schedule so we wouldn’t really be missing a lot if the race will be scrapped this year. What we need right now is a unified cycling body, not a bike race. I believe that good things will follow, like a more exciting TnP, if our leaders can get their act on the same page. That’s basically what the voice told Ray Kinsella in the flick, “Field of Dreams”. I’m positive that they will come, if “they” will build it.

The Lance Armstrong Updater

Lance Armstrong’s performance in the recent Tour of California was a disappointment, at least for me. I know that asking the 37yo, 7-time Tour de France champion win a big race 3 years out of retirement would be too much but I still think that he should have placed better in the final 24km ITT, instead of being at 14th place and 1.16 minutes behind teammate and eventual champion Levi Leipheimmer.

In the early part of the 1999 and 2005 season Armstrong usually kept a low profile. He lets his soldiers win in the small races so that when July comes for the TdF, they will gladly die for him in the inclines of the Alps and the Pyrenees. I would like to think that he is following the same formula.

The only thorn in Armstrong’s side, is Alberto Contador, his teammate and currently the best stage racer in the world today, the same title held by the man from Texas for 7 straight years. How his team director, Johann Bruyneel, will make one work for the other this July in the TdF is probably the most anticipated story than the TdF itself. Other than Phil Jackson, Bruyneel is the best when it comes to pushing the right buttons of his riders so it would be interesting to watch how he does it.

Stolen bike

Lance TT bike and 2 bikes of his teammates was stolen after the prologue in the ToC. Maybe the thieves were so stupid or maybe they didn’t know what they were stealing, for how could they sell a one off bike without everybody knowing about it? It’s just like stealing the Mona Lisa! Good thing that the cops recovered the bike just in time for the final ITT.

Jong Sepulveda’s COLNAGO EPS

Congratulations to Jong Sepulveda, for finally deciding to pull all the stops and get the most storied and the winning-est bicycle frame on the face of the earth – a Colnago. There are a few Colnagos here in Cebu but before Jong’s Colnago, only two were top of the line models for the particular year it was acquired. One is owned by Capt. Frank Kangleon and the other is owned by Titay’s Rosquillos CEO Dodong Frasco.

My chances of owning a Colnago is probably zero to none at this time but I hope that if I ever get to own one, I wouldn’t be too old to use it! – THE FREEMAN