Photography by Jered Gruber, Kristof Ramon & Cor Vos

Rocacorba Daily

Thursday July 31, 2014

by Matt de Neef - July 31, 2014

In this morning's edition of the Rocacorba Daily news digest: Gianni Meersman wins final stage and the overall at the Tour de Wallonie; Jesse Kerrison wins stage 2 of Tour of the Murray River, Brenton Jones wins stage 3 and maintains overall lead; Team Belkin’s future guaranteed after letter of intent signed with Lotto and BrandLoyalty; Roman Kreuziger to ride Tour of Poland despite ongoing biological passport case; UCI annual report and financial accounts; The New York Times article that stirred up trouble and the Bicycling rebuttal; Best moments of the 2014 Tour de France; The Road to Mont Blanc; patchnride - "the world’s first permanent tyre repair system"?

Gianni Meersman wins final stage and the overall at the Tour de Wallonie

Gianni Meersman has capped off a memorable Tour de Wallonie for his Omega Pharma-QuickStep team with victory in the general classification and a win on the final stage as well.

#TourdeWallonie Stage 5: @GianniMeersman wins stage/GC, extends #OPQS contract through 2016! http://t.co/wsnP8wXb0a pic.twitter.com/VsOLaUBkaR

— OPQS Cycling Team (@opqscyclingteam) July 30, 2014

Meersman finished second on all of the first four stages of the race, before going one better in the yellow jersey on the final lumpy stage.

There were constant attacks in the final 30km with a number of climbs making it a challenge for Meersman to stay in contact. Tim Wellens (Lotto-Belisol) put in a dangerous attack with 21km to go and gained nearly 30 seconds, but he was soon caught.

The race came down to a bunch sprint and Meersman was able to prevail over Yves Lampaert (Topsport Vlaanderen - Baloise) and Jasper Stuyven (Trek Factory Racing) on his way to winning the GC and points classification.

“I am super happy about this victory,” Meersman said. “Not only for the GC, but also the stage win because after being four times in second place. For me, it’s important to be able to win this stage to finish off the great work of my teammates, and I did it, so I am thrilled.”

Omega Pharma-QuickStep has also announced a contract extension for Meersman who will now ride with the Belgian team through 2016.

Stage 5: Malmedy > Ans - Stage Result

Wednesday 30th July 2014

1.	MEERSMAN Gianni Omega Pharma - Quick-Step	00:00:00
2.	LAMPAERT Yves Topsport Vlaanderen - Baloise	-
3.	STUYVEN Jasper Trek Factory Racing	-

Jesse Kerrison wins stage 2 of Tour of the Murray River; Brenton Jones wins stage 3 and maintains overall lead

Tour of the Murray River leader Brenton Jones (Avanti Racing) has notched up his second stage victory from three starts in the Subaru National Road Series event, this time sprinting to line honours in Quambatook.

Jones took out stage three ahead of Queensland duo Alex Wohler and Jesse Kerrison (Budget Forklifts) to extend his overall Tour lead to nine seconds ahead of Kerrison and 18 seconds in front of Raphael Freinstein (CharterMason).

“Today was a special win, it was a hard win,” said Jones. “There were a lot of challenging conditions out there with the weather and we were outnumbered in the breakaway with five Budget Forklifts and three Avanti riders, so to win the stage for the team shows that teamwork does win races. It’s good to keep yellow too.”

Jones was part of a 17=strong lead group which established inside the first 20 kilometres and quickly gained an unbeatable lead. In the final three kilometres, Wohler and Dylan Pierre-Humbert (Wormall Civil CSS) made an early dash for the finish, with Jones only catching the escapees meters from the line.

Earlier in the day, Jesse Kerrison took out the 33-kilometre criterium in Swan Hill ahead of Freinstein with Jones rounding out the podium.

“There was a three-man break and they were holding a pretty solid gap for a while, but with the pace of the peloton and the wind, it’s just not sustainable”, Kerrison said. “I was confident it would come back.”

The Tour continues today with a 140km road race from Kerang to Cohuna.

Click here for results from stage 2 and here for results from stage 3. Text adapted from a Cycling Australia press release.

Team Belkin’s future guaranteed after letter of intent signed with Lotto and BrandLoyalty

by Shane Stokes

The future of the current Belkin Procycling squad looks secure after an announcement that the Dutch national lottery De Lotto and the BrandLoyalty company have signed a formal declaration of intent with both the cycling team and also the current BrandLoyalty speed skating team.

“With this collaboration we will expand our vision of the team,” said the team’s general manager Richard Plugge in a statement announcing the arrangement. “During the Tour de France we have worked together as a team to bring cycling back to where it belongs: in the hearts of the fans!

“This unique concept brings Holland’s biggest high endurance sports together. Our team is looking forward to the start of this unique collaboration.”

The team had a successful Tour de France, with Lars Boom winning stage five of the race and Laurens Ten Dam and Bauke Mollema finishing ninth and tenth overall.

Concerns were raised prior to the Tour de France when the Belkin electronics company stated that it would not continue as backer beyond the end of this season.

The final details about the new team are being worked out and once that is done, a further announcement will be made. Until that time, the name of the team, the colours, the budget and the line-up will not be declared. It is being reported, however, that Bauke Mollema is in talks with rival teams for 2015.

Click here to read the full story at CyclingTips.

Roman Kreuziger to ride Tour of Poland despite ongoing biological passport case

Roman Kreuziger (Tinkoff-Saxo) is set to line up at the Tour of Poland and possibly the Vuelta a Espana next month, despite an ongoing biological passport case against him.

Since Kreuziger was contacted by the UCI in the lead-up to the Tour de France (and subsequently pulled from the team’s line-up), he hasn’t heard anything further. Tinkoff-Saxo general manager Stefano Feltrin believes Kreuziger is therefore free to race.

“It’s true that Roman is on the roster. He was on it before, and we spoke to him and he said that he’s not had any new information from the UCI in terms of the sanctions so we feel, like we said before, that it’s not up to us to stop him from racing without there being solid concrete evidence,” Feltrin told Cyclingnews.

“There’s going to be a trial I suppose, or may be not, but as a team we have to apply the contract and that’s based on the model created by the UCI and I couldn’t see a clause in there that says that we have to suspend him. We have to allow him to race as long as the UCI don’t suspend him.”

“We felt that it wasn’t appropriate to race him at the Tour due to the timing. There’s been a month and he’s had a chance to get organised. If you look at from the legal standpoint he’s innocent until proven guilty.”

Click here to read more at Cyclingnews.

UCI annual report and financial accounts

The UCI has published its annual report and financial statements for 2013-14 and The Inner Ring has taken a look at the numbers and put together a nice little analysis. As he points out, the accounts seem to have been published a couple months earlier than normal (a campaign pledge from UCI president Brian Cookson).

Here’s an excerpt from the Inner Ring piece:

“

2013 will be remembered as a year of change for the UCI’s management but in the background the finances were stable, a boost from the Olympics allowed more money to be socked away in the reserve fund. We might think of cycling as the Tour de France and spring classics but for the UCI the Olympics and the road cycling world championships are the big events, at least in terms of income.

If 2013 was a steady year for the money it’ll be interesting to see where things go in the coming years. We know millions are being spent on the CIRC. With bold reforms to the calendar and more on the 2020 agenda the sport is set to see big changes and these will alter the costs and revenues.

It’s worth noting that since that article was published, it appears the UCI has taken down the financial statements from its website.

Click here to read the full article at The Inner Ring.

The New York Times article that stirred up trouble and the Bicycling rebuttal

You might have seen a little bit of backlash on social media to an article in the normally excellent New York Times about the use of carbon fibre in bikes and how, apparently, the use of this material is responsible for more crashes than other materials.

Here’s a quote from the piece:

“

“Anyone in a team who’s being honest with you will tell you how frequently their bikes are breaking; everybody knows,” said Mark Greve, a physician and assistant professor of sports medicine at Brown University who studied injuries to 3,500 competitive cyclists. “Few people in the public appreciate how many bikes a pro team will go through in a season, because they break for one reason or another. The bikes, they completely explode.”

Matt Phillips from Bicycling Magazine was particularly upset about the piece and penned a rebuttal, which featured the following section:

“

If the story was well researched, had good data, attributed information from experts on record, and, well, evidence, I’d be encourage everyone to read it. Instead, I’m encouraging you to read it for the same reason it’s fun to read about Lindsey Lohan. Everyone loves a trainwreck.

You can read the original New York Times article here and the Bicycling rebuttal here.

Best moments of the 2014 Tour de France

The ASO has pulled together a great little highlights package showing some of the most memorable moments from this year’s Tour de France. We’d embed it here but the ASO hasn’t allowed us to do so. Instead, click here to get through to the video.

The Road to Mont Blanc

Remember Mike Cotty, the British cyclist who did that 700km ride with 17 mountain passes last year? Well, he’s back with another challenge: to ride 1,000 kilometres over 21 mountain passes with more than 23,000m elevation gain. Here’s a video showing how Cotty has prepared for this insane ride:

Click here to read more at Mike Cotty’s website.

patchnride: “the world’s first permanent tyre repair system”?

Here’s a new tyre-repair product we’ve just learned about called patchnride, which works by “inserting a patch and adhesive into the tyre, repairing it from within.” The inventors claim that “patchnride eliminates the need to remove the wheel, and allows cyclists to patch the same tyre as many times as needed”.

Here’s a video showing how it works:

Visit the patchnride website for more information.

The Rocacorba Recap

And finally this morning, here are a few things you might have missed at CyclingTips:

Today’s feature image comes from Jered Gruber and was shot near Incino, Italy.

Tags: 2014 National Road Series, 2014 Tour de France, 2014 Tour de Wallonie, 2014 Tour of the Murray, Belkin, Brenton Jones, Gianni Meersman, Jesse Kerrison, Rocacorba Daily, Roman Kreuziger, UCI

ed - sydney

Whilst I dont think carbon is responsible for more crashes my thoughts are its less likely to survive a bingle.
This doesnt matter for a pro as he just gets another bike of the roof of the team car but for most us we only have one nice bike. Everynow and then in a race i have seen someone standing on the side of the road with a broken frame from minor crashes like a touch of wheels or hitting a pothole / the rough beside the road. I remember cyclists always asking each other after a crash if the bike was ok rather than worrying about the rider. nowdays i dont bother as you know most of the time the frame is going to be cracked or in half.
- Sean
  
  Tend to agree with that. My experience of having frames fail while riding is it’s only happened with lightweight aluminium frames. Usually the chain stay or seat stays cracking on the welds.
  
  I’ve never had a carbon or steel frame just break unexpectedly. Crashing a carbon bike is always a worry, they won’t survive minor hits that would perhaps dent a steel frame and not really effect it’s integrity.
  
  Would be great to hear from a frame builder or that aero engineer dude in ivanhoe who repairs carbon frames. :-)
  - Steel
    
    Carbon is less resistant to impact than metals, undoubtedly. However, with clever design catastrophic failure can be avoided. You can see on carbon MTBs that the manufacturers put small shields on the bottom of the down tube to stop stone chips and roots for that very reason. That’s because carbon is incredibly strong when loaded along it’s fibres, however, it has very little strength when crushed across its axis and the polymer that binds the carbon has to do more of the work.
    
    It’s a small trade off in my opinion. I’ve crashed my carbon frame exactly zero times, yet I’ve done thousands of kays on it with its lovely compliance and low weight.
    - ed - sydney
      
      so many engineers on this site. we should be able to claim CPD points for reading this site.
Bruno Paradis

I want to know where the first picture in the top of the article has been taken. It looks like such a special place to ride…
Thankx
- velocite
  
  ‘near Incino, Italy’ is what we are told at the foot of the blog.
  - http://cyclingtips.com.au Matt de Neef
    
    And sadly that’s all the info we have!
    - Michele
      
      It’s on the road between Incino and Cismon del Grappa.
      
      I’ve got some details somewhere around the office about it. I’ll try and dig it out.
    - Michele
      
      It’s on the road between Incino and Cismon del Grappa.
      
      Here’s a link to it. You might need to translate it into English.
      
      http://www.magicoveneto.it/valsugan/Cismon/Cismon-Pedancino-Strada-del-Genio-Incino-Diga-Corlo.htm
      
      It’s a fantastic part of Italy.
jon jon

Just last week, I had the chance to taking a sledge hammer to a Cannondale Synapse. Let’s just say the slogan, crack and fail, is a far cry from the strength & integrity of a modern carbon bike; I got so tired half way through trying to kill it.
- Nic_3
  
  ironically (if the New York Times article is to be believed), I recall reading somewhere that the cannondale frame failure rate decreased dramatically when they moved manufacturing out of the US.
  
  *source was ‘the internet’ though, so may be rubbish
  - Dave
    
    Wouldn’t surprise me. Many of the Euro brands’ “factories” are nothing more than a sticker application facility these days for the same reason. The Asian factories have managed to work out how to do it right.
    
    The Look bikes that Cofidis were riding at the TdF this year were beautiful bikes, but there’s no way you’d see me riding one on the road.
    - Notso Swift
      
      Why?
      LOOK actually own 3 manufacturing facilities, one in France, one in Tunisia, which has been running for 20 years, and one in China, which would be about 10 years old, all of their products have excellent reputation for quality, abet being heavier than the “cutting edge” brands (and in my personal experience this is valid)
      
      Also note these are all Owned facilities, not subcontractors
      - Dave
        
        When a friend of mine had his Look frame fail, the company refused to stand by their product. It was within three months so he was able to resort to a chargeback on the purchase and leave the dealer to sort it out with the company.
        
        I get that all companies are going to have at least some failures, no matter where they manufacture the frames. How they response in those cases is important.
  - Sean
    
    I have some history running a company that distributed an Italian brand frame, the the cheaper two thirds of the range was made in Asia, the top couple of frames in Italy. In the 3 years I was involved we didn’t have a single Asian made frame fail. Same can’t be said for the Italian made ones, would never have brought one with my own money.
    - Dave
      
      Sounds a bit like an incident from the automotive world.
      
      When they first started having some of the range built in Thailand in parallel to their production in Italy, Alfa Romeo offered customers the option of paying extra to guarantee their car was an Italian made example. Nobody bought it.
Nic_3

I thought about this prior to my recent purchase of a full carbon cx bike (to be used as a gravel grinder - not actually racing). While I don’t dispute the idea that when different materials reach their stress limits they will behave in different ways is this really that big as issue? With so many people riding carbon frames now I would have thought I’d be able to recount more stories of broken frames, etc but (at least in my limited experience) that’s not the case.
That said, I don’t race (and very rarely crash) and I guess it’s when you’re at that higher level and travelling at those speeds that f=ma is going to come into effect and increase the risk of stressing materials beyond what they can stand.

I should say I wasn’t worried about spontaneous failure of a carbon frame like the article appears to imply can happen, more the idea that if I crashed it wouldn’t be as resilient as an alloy frame.
- Dave
  
  It’s more the fact that energy, i.e. Ek=½m.v^2, is proportional to the square of the velocity that you need to be worried about in a crash than the F=ma force involved.
- Arfy
  
  I’ve had three carbon frame incidents - one was crashing into a car at 40kmh. Carbon forks broke (front wheel embedded into the car’s front quarter panel), but the frame held up albeit for some minor surface cracks (never to be ridden again). The car was a write-off. Another was when I came to a complete stop but couldn’t get my cleat to disengage (the cleat was loose!), and the carbon bars broke as they hit the ground. The final one was when my bike fell over while on a bike stand, and this resulted in three cracks in various parts of the frame, one of which was internal and only picked up by ultrasound. My take on it is that carbon performs well in the areas it’s designed to take load, but is susceptible to cracking when the impact occurs in a direction it wasn’t designed for. I also suspect there are many carbon frames out there that have unnoticeable cracks from previous incidents.
Jason Alexander

Someone please tell me where is Jules?
- jules
  
  i’m here!
- Sean
  
  Do you miss him? i know I do.
velocite

Perhaps we could get the Secret Pro to blow the whistle on those dangerous carbon frames..
- Fashion Police
  
  Ask Contador.
Arfy

Patchnride is interesting, I had a discussion with a woman recently who wanted to get into road cycling but was afraid of changing a tyre. This could be the solution.
- jules
  
  doesn’t faze my wife. she just rings me.
  - Arfy
    
    Have you tried expanding foam? That will stop her ringing you.
    - jules
      
      won’t work. she texts me.
      - Arfy
        
        Try the expanding foam in the wheels, not in the wife. One way or the other she’ll never ask you to fix another flat.
    - SuperDom
      
      Expanding foam can’t cook…
      - jules
        
        i know i started it, but probably time to stop now.
- Interest in marketing
  
  Or is that she is afraid she has to buy into the crumpler bag and fixie polo shirt look?
  
  Looks like a promising product.
  
  I laughed at the wardrobe they had for the front man though. The bag had no purpose in the ad other than to appeal to the metros out there. Amusing.
Notso Swift

So, looks like Tinkoff-Saxo are not looking to join the MPCC any time soon…
- Dave
  
  I’m confused. Even if they were in the MPCC, I thought the MPCC rules only required a team make a unilateral suspension after the return of a positive A-sample.
  
  Tinkoff-Saxo did the right thing from a PR standpoint of refusing to allow a rider under investigation to taint Contador’s performance in the Tour, but the Tour is over now and we’re back to the lesser races.
  
  The UCI should take a s**t or get off the pot. Continuing to sit on it only makes things appear like they are trying to bluff Kreuziger into making a confession instead of proving their case.
  - Notso Swift
    
    You are right UCI can’t be “a little bit pregnant” with these things. If the case was strong they should be on it. It makes me wonder if they think if come out on a rider who is on the border the rider may change behaviour - which proves the case (although the fact they are not racing is already a change!)
    
    MPCC will suspend based on abnormal blood values, pretty much the same as an A sample