Kirsten Wild (Argos-Shimano) won the second stage of the Ladies Tour of Qatar ahead of Specialized-lululemon’s Ellen van Dijk and Trixi Worrack.

Ladies Tour of Qatar, Stage 1. Chloe Hosking of Hitec won it from a four-up break. Hosking, who rode for Specialized-lululemon in 2012, is new to Hitec, and is also studying journalism.

Fun bit of video from the Cannondale Pro Team. Yes, the roads are nice around Westlake once you get out of the car-surburbia zone. The climb is the Rock Store climb on Mulholland.

Bonus! Proof at around 2:40 that I actually ride bikes. Because I know you were concerned about that!

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Specialized-lululemon’s Gillian Carleton hit the track last week for the World Cup in Mexico. She and her Canadian team mates won the team pursuit, Carleton won the individual pursuit leg of the omnium, and she finished fourth in the omnium. Sarah Hammer won the omnium.

Carleton will ride her first full season on the road this season, after winning a bronze medal in the team pursuit in London. From Victoria, BC, Carleton got her start playing bikes with alley cat races, that mad crazy game of racing single speeds through city streets.

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Who is that masked man?

Yes, it gets cold in California. Once in a while.

Ivan Basso, Cannondale Camp, January 2013.

The Armstrong Oprah Interview: Same as it ever was

In the dizzying run-in to Armstrong’s appearance on Oprah, speculation centered on whether he would tell the truth of his career at last. In the opening minutes, Armstrong shot off a series of yes answers.

Yes, I used doping to win the Tour de France. Yes, I used cortisone. Yes, I started doping sometime in the ’90s.

But that was where the truth ended. Despite those brief moments of truthfulness, the Oprah interview unfolded in typically manipulative Armstrong style. The Big Lie came around halfway through the interview, and with it came the rationale for Armstrong’s willingness to sit down with Oprah in the first place.

What was the big lie? Armstrong claimed that he stopped using in 2005. So while he said kissed those seven Tour victories goodbye, he made a desperate, hail mary play for a reduced sanction. The comeback years, the 2009 and 2010 Tour, he rode clean, claimed Armstrong.

Conveniently, 2005 was outside the eight-year statue of limitations. Even a back-dated sanction would free Armstrong to compete pretty much tomorrow.

There’s never been any doubt about Armstrong’s audacity or his hubris. He seems to think that he can still control the narrative, that we will still after all this time, believe his word.

Right man, you were totally clean in 2009. That’s why your biopassport numbers showed constant, rather than declining, numbers during the Tour. That’s why… Well, never mind.

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Now for something a little different from the Mid-Atlantic kids. Some bike racers - including Joe Dombrowski, Jeremiah Bishop, and Ben King - got together in a barn and made some music. Not only does Joe Dombrowski climb pretty fast, he apparently also plays a pretty mean fiddle. Thanks to Mark Blacknell for sending this one my way.

US Women's Cycling Changes →

USA Cycling announced on Tuesday that it has created a “pro team structure” for women’s cycling. It all sounded a bit confusing. So, let’s see if we can sort it out, shall we?

Without getting on the phone and calling a bunch of people (because this is tumblr after all) here are the key points of the changes and some analysis of their significance.

The easiest to understand change will shift the women’s national championship to the same weekend as the men’s pro championship. Also, the women will race for equal prize money.

This one has been a long time coming. For years, the women raced the “elite nationals” (in Europe known as elite-without-contract), which received considerably less media coverage than the men’s US Pro Championship.

Now, women who are on elite and UCI-registered teams and who carry a category 1-2 license will race the same weekend as the men. The same change applies to the US Pro Criterium championship. Also, I’m just going to go ahead and say, fuckyeah equal prize money!

Under the new rules, the U23 women will get a separate national championship race. In the past, the U23 women raced with the elite women, but were scored separately. Confusing, right? And not especially awesome for the younger women trying to make names for themselves by winning nationals. So now, the U23 women will race the same weekend as the U23 men’s race and have their own chance to shine. This is an important change for developing young riders for the future.

The “pro team structure” is less easy to understand, because in the immediate future, it does not appear to change much of anything. This change is aimed at the future and at building the women’s side of the sport into a more professional and logical structure.

Currently, there is no “pro license” for women. Women race as “elite” and the top license category in the U.S. is category 1 for women. Women’s teams are registered through the national federations in much the same way as men’s continental teams. There are technically no “pro teams,” though obviously, we tend to consider teams such as Specialized-lululemon, Marianne Vos’s not-Rabobank team, and Orica-AIS as professional.

The creation of a “professional team structure” opens the way to offering a “pro license” for women. This would also presumably in time create a more coherent structure for professional teams. As the sport grows, the women could have a separate national championship races for the elite and the professional riders in the same way the men do.

For now, the change sounds intangible and symbolic, but in the long run, it opens the way for the pro teams to become more professional, while the elite non-pro teams serve to develop riders and prepare them for the professional ranks. It also should create a distinction between elite and professional riders, a change that potentially makes the top level more competitve and more straightforward to sell to sponsors.

For now, this measure doesn’t change much. In the future - and it’s unclear what the time frame might be on this development - it almost certainly will.

Last, the USA Cycling announced the creation of a new race category 2.HC. The Exergy Tour will run under this designation. UCI-registered teams and national teams can both  race in the 2.HC races.

(Updated! I removed some stuff here about race categories, because I still don’t quite understand the changes that are in place for next season.)

These downhill videos are like crack. Can’t. Stop. Watching. Also, OMIGOD THAT STAIRCASE YOU GUYS!

I think I’m pretty much totally addicted to these urban downhilling videos. Also, gap jumps are scary.