Thoughts on LeTour 2025

 

LeTour 2025

TdF 2025 jersey winners

Zio Lorenzo thinks the above photo pretty much sums up the Tour de France 2025, including the empty mountain points jersey. That's Jonas Vingegaard.

All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Jonas in yellow again. They executed various plans with various levels of efficiency, but no matter what, Visma's boy could never seal the deal. Even Pogacar seemed to grow bored with it all, only coming back-to-life once the race was over with 50 kms left to go in Paris.

Without the Dane glued to his rear wheel, Pogacar returned to racing and almost pulled off the win but CHAPEAU to Wout Van Aert, one of only two Visma team members to win a stage while their leader went winless and never wore the yellow jersey.

And what about Ben Healy? Ben O'Connor and even Quinn Simmons, who proposed to his future wife on the Champs? CHAPEAU!!!!

Vive LeTour!

Monferrato fun 2025

 Fun in Monferrato 2025

Buying new bike

Enjoying great food and wine

What's not to like? Our friends Don & Cindy are here for another week while Zio Lorenzo goes home on Sunday. They liked our e-bikes enough to consider buying some for themselves. Zio took 'em to LaBici, same folks who so nicely helped us with our MAHLE X35 bike issues.

They had Cindy's size on-hand plus a trekking model they will convert to drop bar for Don. Neither really NEEDS all that help on the climbs like Zio Lorenzo, but it's probably when rather than if, so they're going electric now.

But still eating and drinking well as you can see posing with the nice folks at La Ca Nova.

W Italia! W Vacanza!

La Mitica 2025

 La Mitica 2025

We missed this last year, choosing instead to see LeTour in Bologna, so we were determined to be there this year, despite Zio Lorenzo's recent health issues and the record heat.

We flew to Milan, rented a car and zoomed off to our old home-base Hotel Ariotto. The next day our old friends and former clients Don and Cindy arrived. They'd ridden La Mitica with us back-in-the-day so we left them to ride around Monferrato and enjoy lunch.

Sadly, the record heat really cooked us both..so much that we walked the famous Rampina climb near the end, pausing under bits of shade along the way. After taking a break at the ristoro at the top, neither of us savored the idea of the steep 3+ kilometers to go, so we hitched a ride with a local lady in her beat-up Fiat. We left the bikes at the aid station and came back for them once we got the car at the finish in Castellania. Since we walked over the finish line and didn't ride the entire route, we skipped the pasta party and awards ceremony.

Because of all that we're posting photos of interesting bikes with names we've never heard of. The plan was to get more details on them post-ride, but that didn't happen. If you have details, share them in the comments.

PELOSO

ZAPIER

 PAGANI

                                                

                                                                           CALDARO

?

                    

                                                                              LEONE

                                                                           MAGGIONI

FIORELLI

                                                                        BIANCHINI

?

GANNA

?

LEGNANO (fairly well known, but pretty)

DINO CHIESA

?

Then there's Zio's GIOS. The history of this bike is it was built by the maestro Giuseppe Pella for the DREHER cycling team. When Dreher pulled out, the team continued as BROOKLYN and some of their team bikes were simply repainted in the classic blue. This is one of those. If you've seen the classic "Sunday in Hell" documentary, you've seen Aldo Gios in action with this team.

Mille Grazie to Pietro Cordelli and his amazing crew! La Mitica continues to be our favorite vintage rally, though perhaps it needs to happen in a cooler period of the year?

GIOS Raduno 2025

 

"il blu di famiglia"

Heather with Aldo Gios and Zio Lorenzo

We look forward to this every year. The blue family shows up from the world over to ride, talk, eat, drink and pay homage to the people who still keep the brazing flame burning in Italy.

Go HERE if you want to see the actual event, fast-forward to around 38 minutes where the riding starts. It was fun to be escorted through the streets of Torino and do a lap or two around the famous Motovelodromo.

Heather at the Motovelodromo

This was the 8th edition and Zio Lorenzo thinks he's been to 6 of 'em though he'd guess some like Patrick Blom have probably been to every one.

Heather thinks this edition may have been the best one yet while Zio missed the usual part where special guests are introduced and special thanks are said to everyone involved in putting this thing on.

Mille grazie e ci vediamo in 2026!

Catching up with April

Blog Update

Zio's MV e-gravel bike

April? Who is April? Is she related to Art?, Nah, but how long has it been since this blog's been updated? That's too long!

March was hell. Heather went to Greece to do some academic projects after our 35th wedding anniversary celebration in Rome while Zio Lorenzo went back home and enjoyed riding his bike...until he didn't.

Why? Turns out he was having some sort of A-FIB issues. By the time Heather came back he could barely make it up the stairs! WTF? We turned on Zio's fitness tracker's warning feature and sure enough, it showed A-FIB. Yikes! Kind of explains a few things, like back when he first bought the MV bike he couldn't get out of his own way a time or two, but a few days of rest seemed to fix it. Same problem?

Not this time! An appointment was made with a private cardio doc and some tests run. Doc wanted more tests so we had those done too. All this privately at amazingly low cost compared to the USA's so-called healthcare system. A short-term monitoring gizmo was installed as well. Results made doc want more tests so we did those too.

Some meds were prescribed along with follow-up visit, but Zio again was so tired he could barely make it up the stairs OR even do a short bike ride down to fill the drinking water bottles. WTF? A call to the doc who says come to ER now, so we called a taxi rather than a noisy ambulance.

ER docs take a look and say "CODE RED!" Yikes! Needles and tubes follow along with EKG, etc. before he's admitted to the hospital's cardio ward. Next day they decide to shock him, sort of a "CTRL-ALT-DEL" thing where they sort-of turn you off, then back on again, hoping the restart will put things back in order. Not fun and afterwards they weren't satisfied it had worked.

So it's ablation time! If you've read The Haywire Heart you know the drill: They shove a sort-of medical soldering iron up into your heart through a vein in your leg and burn the short-circuits there that cause the A-FIB, all while you lay there semi-awake on the table. Not fun.

After two hours of torture they said they'd found and fixed things. Zio's outta the hospital the next day, noting the cost of having this done in the USA system is $25-$100K. Yikes!

Now that it's April finally he's been back on the shopping bike and yesterday on the sporty bike (the one in the photo) for a hour of low-effort fun. Woo and hoo!

This weekend's Paris-Roubaix so a bit of his own riding and watching others in the Hell of the North do their own. Updates as time goes by, so watch this space.

Why not?

 BEFORE and AFTER

We bought these cheap footstools a decade ago while shopping for stuff to set up an apartment we leased here in Sicily. The poor things have been moved/stored and beat-up ever since, including being recovered with cheap colored packing tape when the inexpensive vinyl covering faded or flaked off as you can see above.

We looked for replacements all over, but there were none to be found, so we asked around about getting 'em recovered locally. Our friends HERE who have made some custom leather bits for us over the years suggested we try a local place, Caschetti Tendaggi, so Zio rode his shopping bike over there with the top photo to see if they would recover 'em?

"Of course!" was their reply so over the course of a couple of days the two were delivered. Two weeks later we hopped on the shopping bikes so we could bring both back in one trip. We're pretty happy with the way they turned out and how simple it was to get done.

RIP Gianni Savio

 RIP Gianni Savio

Savio (R) with Heather and Paolo Alberati (L)

You almost couldn't watch a race in Italy on TV and not see Gianni Savio if his team was in the race! Somehow the TV camera always caught him around the finish area, often holding up the arm of one of his riders who had won the race.

A dear friend of ours from Bergamo worked for various Savio teams over the years and Giacomo found us at Letour where he was working for a combo team with 3 of Gianni's ZG riders combined with some from Telekom. We marveled at the less-than-top-tier equipment they had, laughing that our tour guests had better equipment but certainly not high-quality legs!

Here's a great obituary for Savio.And our blog post from the last time we saw him is here.

RIP Savio. A guy who certainly put sport before commerce!

Thanksgiving 2024

 Happy Thanksgiving!

We're thankful for a lot of stuff, too much to list here, so maybe just the fact we can ride bikes around in shorts and short sleeves to work-up an appetite?

Heather whipped-up a traditional meal, turkey with all the trimmings despite nobody in Italy knowing or caring much about this holiday.

Hope yours was great too!!!

NAPOLI!

 Quick visit to Napoli

Nick, one of the "sons we never had" along with his lovely wife Sara visited Italy last week. Zio flew up to Roma and hopped a high-speed train down to Napoli to meet them. We stayed at the Excelsior, the hotel used by Tony Soprano's crew when they visited...one of Zio's favorite episodes.

And unlike Tony and crew PIZZA was on our menu. Gino Sorbillo has a place just down the street!!!

The next day we walked around, stopping for cappuccino at Gambrinus. Sadly, the inside was closed for a private function but we did get to look around a bit before being seated outside.

And the cappuccino was still good.

But for the REAL espresso, it's MEXICO!

Followed by more walking around, including the historic center where "Harry & Leather" lived during her Fulbright program, including the bakery where Zio got his daily bread, a slice of what he called "Pac-Man" as you can see above.

There was also a stop at the MANN for culture of a non-edible variety, dinner at Umberto, even more pizza and a few sfogliatelle before we climbed on a high-speed train back to Rome where Zio got off to catch his flight back to Sicily while the "Ducatisti" continued on to Milano for their return flight the following morning.

Now Zio will start lobbying for their next tour of Italy, further south to Cilento, Basilicata, Puglia and maybe a pop over to Siracusa to visit Zio?

Arrivederci amici!

Wall hanging

 Wall Hanging

Newest addition to the decorations of our tiny house in Sicily.

Just back from the frame shop, a La Mitica souvenir jersey autographed by our late friend Piero Coppi, first cousin of Il Campionissimo.

We missed the event this year, instead seeing LeTour in Bologna but we did meet up with promoter Pietro Cordelli and his lovely wife while we in Piedmont. It was great to see them and we hope to be back at La Mitica 2025.

The jersey was a gift from our friends the Beurmans

who had it autographed when they rode the event with us a few years ago.

Grazie Mille!

Hot, hot, hot!

 How Hot is Too Hot?

It was hot (almost too hot) in Piedmont back in July

How hot is too hot? Zio Lorenzo's using the "Over 65 years of age + over 32 C temperature = stay inside where it's cool." equation to keep him off his sporty bikes these days. He'll go out on the shopping bike in the morning but that's it for exercise, other than going up and down the stairs inside the house.

But what about racing? The UCI recently adopted some weather protocols calling anything above 28 C:

Red Zone – Above 28°C – High risk – Modification of start and finish times, possible neutralisation of a section or cancellation of the stage/race.

Yet the Vuelta's been running for a week in Portugal and southern Spain in temperatures around 40 C. WTF? Some changes HAVE been made, but they seem more like what's called-for here:

Orange Zone – Between 23°C and 27.9°C – Moderate high risk – Keep start area in the shade, protect officials, increase number of neutral motorbikes providing riders with drinks and ice packs, adapt the rules that limit hydration and cooling in during competition. 

Zio's no weather expert but a chart he consulted shows 40 C to be "extreme danger" for prolonged exposure or strenuous activity unless the humidity is under 50%. That "dry heat" they like to talk about I guess?

IS the humidity in southern Spain under 50%? Riders have commented on the extreme heat pretty much every day, yet the protocols observed seem to be just those for "Orange Zone" with temps maxing out at 28 C rather than something for the 40's reported. Is "wet bulb" temperature as noted in the UCI protocols all that different?

Where's the infamous riders union guy - the one who made so much noise about cold and rain earlier this year? Zio notes that one can always put on MORE clothes when it's cold vs the heat in Spain where the racers garb is almost transparent. What does he have to say about these extreme temps that seem to exceed what is allowed? He made a big stink about hookless wheel rims not too long ago but wrote this about racing in 40 C temps...

"It's borderline, but it's OK"

Zio can only scratch his bald head and wonder WTF? This fellow showed no fear of castigating the Giro d'Italia and it's organizer RCS over cold and wet conditions, saying this as recently as May:

“We need to make the Extreme Weather Protocol a bit more specific, It's too general,” he suggested. “There were two points this time: freezing rain and extreme temperatures, which was today. So we could have invoked the protocol, without all the debate and discussions.”

But "It's borderline, but it's OK" when it comes to 104 F in the sun? That's not an extreme temperature?

Could this have anything to do with this race being owned by the mighty ASO, who also owns LeTour, Paris-Roubaix, etc. vs RCS, owner of Il Giro? If the Giro encounters temps like these in the future (and it won't be the first time, I remember Stephen Roche complaining about heat in Sicily during La Corsa Rosa decades ago) will he say:

"It's borderline, but it's OK*"?

Zio wouldn't bet on it!

Update: Discussions are popping-up online about 

WTF the Vuelta is in August in the first place if it's too hot? You have to go back to the mid-1990's when that corrupt candy executive was the UCI boss. Back then the screwball idea was put to the Giro d'Italia organizer to move La Corsa Rosa to August and let La Vuelta have the May/June spot on the calendar.

RCS wisely said NFW so the Vuelta was forced (and later taken over entirely by ASO, owners of LeTour since it turned out to be such a dumb move) into this spot on the calendar from it's previous spring (before Il Giro) dates. Just another bad idea from the same guy who helped BigTex conceal his doping -  but are we stuck with it forever?

*Hansen claimed to have surveyed the riders at La Vuelta with few expressing any reservations (we'll ignore Antonio Tiberi dropping out because of the heat I guess?) but back in 2018 at the Tour Down Under, with racing going on despite 40+C temps he said this: "I had mixed reactions from riders about the heat. Yes, there were many riders who wanted to stop the race. But there were also other riders who wanted to race." He also went on to tell his detractors: "Get your facts right, not everyone shares your opinion!"

Zio would suggest perhaps he take his own advice?

Radio-controlled Racing?

 Radio-controlled Racing?

Nah, we're not talking about radio-controlled toy racing cars or airplanes, we're talking about radio-controlled pro cyclists. Equipped with radios similar to the photo.

Why? Because of the recent almost melt-downs by two of the biggest team bosses in the sport. Here's the first:

This year's Tour de Pologne is marked by UCI's test of racing without radios. For every supporter of the less controlled racing, there is a hater pointing out disadvantages. Today, there has been another incident fueling Richard Plugge's narrative against radio ban."It was chaos today, without radios. UCI cannot continue with this radio ban. It turns the race into a complete farce like we saw in the olympics where riders cannot call the car for basic assistance (in case of a mechanical)," Plugge complains on X."Today we saw Cofidis' Nicolas Debeaumarché crash hard on a descent in latter parts of the stage. The French rider clearly wasn't in a very good shape, however it has taken a substantial amount of time before he was treated. Hopefully no one was too badly hurt today," Plugge added.

Here's the second:

"I would like to conclude my column with my opinion on the discussion about earphones (race radios) in Poland. As is well known: the cycling association (UCI) is conducting an experiment there: only two riders per team are allowed to be in radio contact with the support car. If I am well informed, there were not even any earphones left in the past few stages.”

“I find this measure completely ridiculous and symptomatic of the lack of unity that still exists within the peloton. I have seen twenty emails in which the teams wrote emphatically: ‘never in our lives’. Now it is happening anyway. Not coincidentally in the Tour of Poland, with race director John Lelangue, the most flexible person in the world when it comes to the wishes of the UCI.”

Lefevere doesn’t hold back: “It is also a disgrace for the AIGCP – the umbrella organisation of the teams. I have come to know Brent Copeland as someone who always knows best at meetings, but as chairman he now shows little backbone. I wonder: what if there is a big oil slick on the road and the peloton is not aware of it? I hope that a number of people will then feel deeply ashamed.”

Zio Lorenzo has two words in response - the first is BULL. You can guess the other.

I'll point out to "Mr. Never in Our Lives" race radios were introduced by Motorola for their team in the early 1990's. I think the man was around back then, in fact a quick internet search shows he ran the GB-MG team back then and probably didn't much like Motorola having those radios until his team had them as well?

Zio was around then and remembers how the Motorola team touted these gizmos as a great advantage when racing. No longer did the DS have to drive the car up to the road captain and yell out whatever he wanted them to know for all to hear. Now instructions could be shared in-secret directly from the DS to the riders AND the riders could communicate with each other out of earshot. Seemed like a real advantage even when all the other teams had them eventually. They could all share secret instructions without the other teams knowing. 

I'd also like to know how/why you call the Olympic Games roadrace a farce, Mr. Plugge? I was there for both by the way.

When TV screens were introduced into the team cars the real era of "radio-controlled racing" began. I'd say the worst example was during the BigTex era on the infamous climb of Mont Ventoux. Tex' DS, watching TV images from the team car dialed up an infamous doping doctor who was watching the race on TV (one who worked with Tex) to sort of "compare notes" on the performance of Tex' big rival, Il Pirata.

Doping Doc told DS how long he thought The Pirate could go at that pace, which was then relayed to Tex via the radio earpiece so he could adjust his own effort accordingly. If that's NOT radio-controlled racing I don't know what is!  

Back in the pre-radio "fog of war" days Tex would have had to look the Pirate in the eyes and determine how much strength he had left with maybe at best getting some advice yelled at him by the DS from the car...which the Pirate might well be able to hear too.

The real hypocrisy here is the blathering about safety by these team bosses combined with the total avoidance of mentioning any tactical benefits of radio-controlling your riders. Is it just a coincidence that these two team bosses have two riders well-known for incredible watts/kg ratios but not so much for tactical racing smarts?

I watched a video clip asking riders their thoughts about radio earpieces and I don't think a single one of them mentioned anything about safety - it was all about tactics and the day's route, something that can be (and was) figured out well in advance before the introduction of radio communications. More than a few even admitted to yanking the earpiece out when the DS wouldn't shut up. How does that work for safety?

At least now the UCI has fired back:

“Hey Richard. You have been caught spreading fake news! The crashes in the Tour of Poland have nothing to do with the absence of radios and you know that. All riders have been helped according to our standards. The UCI’s priority is safety. You want to keep radios for instructions to your riders, not for safety”

Zio Lorenzo thinks these blowhard's bluffs should be called. If it's all about safely as they like to claim, simply connect all the race radio reception to the race organizer ONLY. Give the rider a "I've fallen and I can't get up" button to push in-case of an emergency but all the warnings about "oil slicks" and other dangers on the course would then be warned about by the organizers, no DS' required. 

Riders would have to communicate the way they did before the early 1990's and an experienced road captain might have to drop back to the DS' car for his instructions. No TV screens in the cars either...the occupants of those should be taking care of their riders and watching where they're going, advised by the race organizer via radio...the same instructions/warnings, etc. the riders and everyone else involved all hear.

What excuse could Lefevere/Plugge, etc. come up with to oppose this idea if SAFETY is the reason they so much want radio earpieces? 

Will we find out? Call their bluff UCI! Propose this solution rather than a ban/restriction on radio-earpieces.