Another week began (last week - this is written in retrospect as opposed to some sort of bizarre time travel experiment) with another cycling doping story. Rob Hayles' suspicious blood test (abnormal high haematocrit level) seemed about to put the mockers on what was lining up to be a good week for the GB track team at the World Championships in Manchester.
To be honest, Brad Wiggins' destruction of the field in the 3k individual pursuit wiped away all thoughts of dopage, and began a week long love-in with our oven-ready-chicken thighed athletes. Great stuff from Wiggins, Vicky Pendleton (see pic in this previous post), Chris Hoy and (most remarkably getting some prime-time TV exposure) Rebecca Romero. But the status of the sport was shown by the feel good piece at the end of Friday's BBC 1 news, a piece that started out as ostensibly a bigging up of Romero (rightly IMO due to her being a former rowing Olympic gold winner, and now being a World Champion cyclist, pretty spesh) however 20 seconds in it became a preview of the University Boat Race, surely the most overrated and irrelevant sporting event to grace our TV screens (and live for 2 hours!!!!!). At the end Romero was chiefly forgotten as BBC bigged up the posh boys' cox.
Ho hum, at least I'm pleased we are now the dominant nation in track cycling, even if we're not ready to celebrate it yet.
And with that I'll be off and leave you with Bilge Pump playing "I am Perfectly Fine" (?title from the Dorothy Parker short story of the same name, that'd be good?) live in a laundry in Portugal. It is my fave song at the moment and is on their excellent second album "Rupert the Sky" - go buy it. Ignore the teenies fighting at the start. Or not. Up to you.
Bit iffy, that boat race. You bringing the Pump CD in tomrrow? I can supply Twinkie.
Posted by: palmer_eldritch | April 07, 2008 at 12:09 PM
Note different Bilge Pump drummer
Posted by: chris | May 21, 2008 at 12:13 PM
Now I did think that, but didn't like to say. Is there a story behind that?
Posted by: Gilbert | May 21, 2008 at 12:26 PM
I don't know the details but I think at one stage someone else was drumming for them.
Posted by: palmer_eldritch | May 21, 2008 at 02:13 PM