Pro cycling:
For years, it has languished in obscurity behind far more popular sports such as racewalking and curling:
Curling: where the excitement’s on ice.
Well, here comes the umpteenth attempt to make pro cycling more popular, and it’s something called “One Cycling:”
The answer to the rhetorical question in the headline is, of course, “No.”
Here’s why:
If you even bothered reading that at all then you probably gave up reading halfway through, so there’s your answer. I did my best to read the whole thing, and it sounds like One Cycling is a Saudi investment firm slotting themselves in just under the UCI and above everyone else:
If I understand that correctly, then the UCI is the Burger King drive-thru, the race organizers are your hungry friends, and One Cycling is you offering to go pick food for everybody so that you can eat all their fries on the way home.
Of course, here in the United States, we don’t need the Tour de France or any of that stuff since we’ve got the National Cycling League:
Oh wait, no we don’t:
This is not surprising. The NCL seemed like they were attempting to create sort of an NBA on Wheels, which was a mistake, since Americans really don’t relate to cycling as a team sport. However, they do get the concept of a bunch of self-managed endurance freaks torturing themselves on remote roads whey’re they’re not inconveniencing anybody, which is why gravel is really the future of domestic competitive cycling. So maybe that Hall of Fame isn’t so premature after all:
By the way, the Gravel Hall of Fame should not be confused with the Gavel Hall of Fame, and here are your 2025 inductees, who have been awarded the coveted “Golden Gavel” for excellence in legal marketing and advertising:
[From here.]
I wonder how many other people have landed on that site while searching for the Gravel Hall of Fame, because I can’t be the only one, and it’s probably driving them crazy.
Finally, in more pro cycling-adjacent news, Ritchey will no longer use the UCI World Championship rainbow bands on its WCS components:
Apparently their agreement with the UCI is up, and it’s “not eligible for renewal”
Lazily, Ritchey will simply remove the color from the stripes, though they missed a huge opportunity by not replacing them with Tom Ritchey’s mustache:
These are supposedly Ritchey’s top-tier components after all, and they should make it clear to the consumer that a mustache ride is the very best you can get.
I’m also surprised they’re keeping the “WCS,” since the acronym stands for “World Championship Series,” and I’d think with the termination of the agreement they’d no longer be able to do that as well. Then again, maybe it’s just as simple as changing the acronym, so perhaps it stands for “Winning Cycling Stuff.”
Let me know when it comes in a threaded version.
