new season, same winners

if you read the memoirs of cyclists from years gone by, the season seems so much more sedate. sure they might have raced for more days overall, but the season didn't start until march with paris-nice, and it was over for most of the big hitters by the time the tour finished, in late july. if you fancied the world championships or the giro di lombardia in october then you kept training, but there was plenty of recovery time in between the tour and then.

fast forward to 2010, and the season has started already, with the santos tour down under. santos? as in the brazilian football club that produced pele, robinho and neymar? no? no, santos are an energy company, providing, you guessed it, energy, to australia and asia. in the world of cycling sponsorship, populated by floor tiling amongst other things, energy is actually a fairly exciting sponsor. but i digress...

the season ended in late october, and the cycling world has endured a long, well no, not that long, winter of no racing. and after all that, the first race back is thus far being dominated by the newly-named HTC-Columbia. andre griepel, the winningest rider of last season (apart from some guy hailing from the isle of man, can't remember his name), has taken the first 2 stages, apparently without the aid of any sort of leadout train. kudos to 'the gorilla', who knows damn well that he better rack 'em up while he can, cause there's no way they'll let him do it at the tour.

the pre-race criterium was won by greg henderson of the newly-formed team sky, who last season rode for, you guessed it, HTC-Columbia, or Columbia-HTC as they were known. i hate to return to sponsorship, but does it really make that much difference which one comes first in the name? maybe they had some sort of deal going on, you know, one season Columbia gets to be first, etc etc.

seriously though, henderson's win is just another sign of how ridiculously dominant bob stapleton's squad have been in the sprinting stakes. familiarity breeds contempt, and the rest of the peloton was certainly feeling some contempt by the end of 2009 towards a team that racked up 384629346 wins last year. so i find it quite amusing that in the first race of the year, even when they're not winning, they're winning.

as you might be able to tell, i'm finding it quite hard to get excited about the TDU. this isn't helped by the sprinter-friendly course, or the fact that i'm 12 hours behind what's going on.

still, it's the GP Marseillaise in 11 days. thank fuck for the french, that's what i say.