| Archive for justcycling.myfastforum.org Just Cycling |
| ventoux |
Ulrich returns!But only sort of....http://www.velonation.com/News/ID...team-time-trial-this-weekend.aspx "Although he last competed as a professional in 2006, his career coming to an end due to Operacion Puerto, Ullrich has continued training. Last year he accompanied compatriot and former team-mate Andreas Klöden as well as some others to their training camps, using the occasion to keep himself in shape" errr, what shape would that be...? Round???? 
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| Bartali |
Good man. Round or not I'm sure he'll dish out some punishment to many of the entrants!
Having 'raced' a handful of TdF greats a couple of weeks ago I know what it feels like to have my arse kicked by these guys!! |
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| Mrs John Murphy |
So no change there then. Que voulez-vous, nous sommes ici aux portes de l'Orient, où tout est pris à la légère... |
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| berck |
Re: Ulrich returns!
Last time I checked, its still a shape...
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| ullrichfan |
I'm thinking there must be a free lunch involved... | ||||||
| ullrichfan |
Who were you racing with? Sounds fab! |
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| berck |
Re: Ulrich returns!
Should we correct the title? Ulrichfan returns!
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| Bartali |
Just some old has beens ... Merckx, Hinault Thevenet, Walowaik, Delgardo and Indurain! 
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| gerry12ie |
Mig still looks in pretty serious shape! | ||||||
| Fontfroide |
I heard Hinault is riding up to 100k with some pals, average speed about 30kph. Not too bad.
What event was this? Quite a serious lineup of supporters. Can't recognise Delgado. |
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| kathy |
Nobody we've heard of then! 
Sorry, seriously impressive! 
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| maffy |
big is a shape? |
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| Fontfroide |
I heard Hinault is riding up to 100k with some pals, average speed about 30kph. Not too bad.
What event was this? Quite a serious lineup of supporters. Can't recognise Delgado. |
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| Bartali |
Delgado is in the white top and black(?) helmet. Bad picture, but he's in fantastic shape!! Hinault on his right, Thevenet on his left. Merckx is the fat bloke in black. Walkowaik is off picture, but rode well for an 84 year old
It was La Roue d'Or des Pyrenees http://www.larouedor.fr/ Walowaik & Thevenet ... 
Merckx & Hinault ... 
Delgado on the front with Indurain behind ... 
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| Bartali |
If the going gets tough ... get a big Spaniard to ride up front and get behind his wheel!
And I love this one. Walkowaik at 84 ... amazing!! 
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| ullrichfan |
Great pictures Bartali! I wonder how many riders of the EPO generation will make it to 84... | ||||||
| Me, a fan? |
Awesome pictures Bart. There once was a time when those oversized bellies struck fear into the hearts of the world's elite! | ||||||
| Me, a fan? |
He's probably running about 60% in that photo...
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| gerry12ie |
Great pics Bartali, thanks.
Maffy, big is a shape - it's the shape of a Big Mig
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| Slapshot 3 |
I'm seriously impressed that Bart had the energy and bounce to jump off the front to get that far ahead for those brilliant pics.. SR could be struggling to beat him at La Marmotte...... | ||||||
| Bartali |
Ha ha .. that's what 'official phographers' are for!! And for the record I couldn't live with the pace set by Delgardo and Indurain ... they dished out a lot of pain to some fairly handy riders!! I did 'drop' Walkowaik on the first climb though
SR's DS is offering all sorts of enciements for SR to do a gold medal ride ... I don't think I have any chance of getting round quicker than him!! |
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| Mrs John Murphy |
Where was SK to talk about 'teh pain an sufferin'?
Surely Jan can't be any fatter than Merckx. And also kudos to Ullrich for the charity he is supporting. |
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| Bartali |
Worth a mention that Indurain and Delgado were really classy when it came to mixing with the everyday bums at the 'pasta party' adter the ride. Nothing was too much trouble ... they went well beyond the call of duty! By contrast, Merckx appeared very surly. Having a bad day maybe but he gave the impression he didn't want to be there .... |
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| gerry12ie |
That's just because someone gave him a dodgy pair of glasses to try out
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| Bartali |
Either that or the fact that an 84 year old Walkowaik showed him a clean pair of heels on the first climb!
Walkowaik - short course (55km) 3 hours 39 seconds Merckx - DNF
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| Boogerd_Fan |
To be fair... any sort of climb would be very hard with a belly that Merckx is now sporting! Talk about letting yourself go!! | ||||||
| kathy |
I thought Merckx had lost a lot of weight last year - looks as if he's put it all back on again! | ||||||
| Guiness |
Just spotted this as been caught up on half-term duties with the kid! Well done, Bart. This looks awesome. Never heard of it before... and don't know French so can't read the web info. Photos looks good. Was this the 5 hour something sportive you were going on about? Nice. Very nice. Good stuff, mate. |
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| Bartali |
Its a new one Guiness ... thats why all the stars were there. I'd definitely ride it again because its very well organized and a nice little course. First sportive I've done without killing myself!! All good training for the Big one in 4 weeks!! | ||||||
| SlowRower |
Would that mere words from the DS could make me go faster. Even my formidable DS can't shorten the Galibier and not even Lance claimed that "spousal inducements" played a part in his transformation, so I suspect I will go just as slowly as I otherwise would have done. 
Doesn't hurt to dream, though! The inducement has a nasty catch as well: if I go fast enough to qualify for a new bike, I have to ride the damned thing again next year. The DS can be awfully cruel at times! |
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| Bartali |
Ah but next year you'll be familiar with the route
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| SlowRower |
Funny you should say that. I negotiated the acceptable margin over the gold standard up from 15 mins to 30 mins on the grounds that next year I will know the route whereas this year I don't.
After a fine bottle of local hooch with tea tonight, anything seems possible. Game on! |
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| MS |
I have seen pictures of Ullrich over the past few years and he has never appeared "fat." Compared to the general population, he looks like a fit young man. Without becoming preachy, there is clearly a problem with eating disorders in the peloton and these snide remarks probably aren't helpful. Saul Raisin wrote about this and I found it powerful. When you have The Chicken avoiding peas because they "have too high of a fat content," we have a problem. I cringe when I see some of the weights for these guys, not to mention the odd picture of a Schleck without his jersey. |
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| Biosphere |
I think that reputation of Ullrich stems from those winter photos from early in his career where he was certainly well overweight for a cyclist, and probably well overweight even for a normal lifestyle. I'd agree in recent years he's never looked overweight. I've always understood the weight problems amongst ex cyclists are in part due to their metabolism being used to burning through far more calories than the average person in their competitive years and then not being able to adjust when they stop competing. The underweight ones while they compete is just another part of the extremes the put themselves through IMO. Not sure I'd class as eating disorder, unless it persists when they retire. |
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| mr shifter |
Either as a Domestique or wearing Number 1. 
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| ullrichfan |
Interesting points about Ullrich's diet and the peloton's in general. I wonder if Ullrich has managed to maintain a reasonable weight because he lived a more normal lifestyle off-season, rather than starving himself. You can't help thinking that these guys who eat lettuce for 10 years go nuts once they get the chance and really bloat up. Indeed, Armstrong was starting to look quite heavy until his comeback. |
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| Mrs John Murphy |
I don't disagree with you about eating disorders within the peloton. I know of one rider at AG2R who suffered from anorexia during his time there, and you can almost certainly point to the link between eating disorders and mental health problems.
Ullrich I think is a little different - part of the reason why people like Jan is because he likes his cakes and his beer - and seems a lot happier for it. He was never 'just about the bike'. My comment was more about Merckx who does look very over-weight, especially compared to the other ex-riders. |
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| kathy |
It's pretty well known that starving yourself slows down the metabolism, and it's difficult to kick-start it again. That's why starvation diets don't work! | ||||||
| Me, a fan? |
Ulrich was a beast. I wasn't watching cycling in his early years but have never seen him look like anything other than a powerhouse. I saw photos of him undergoing tests in a hospital bed that made him look just as skinny and gross in the upper body as the rest of them (Hamilton's ribs made me wanna hurl, even Lemond could turn some stOmaches with his shirt off, please, please nobody post that sickening picture of the chicken! Andy: disgustingly skinny as well) No doubt that eating disorders exist, but that all-important power-to-weight ratio concerns them much more than what they look like. Just think, Andy most likely would have been dropped last year on the Tourmalet if he weighed 1/2 kilo more.
They may look gross as hell, but it's all about performance for them boys. |
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| mr shifter |
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| ullrichfan |
True, but it should be remembered that Ullrich may not have known what he was taking. Many East German athletes had no knowledge that they were taking steroids - they were told it was medicine. A tragic story told in this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fausts-Go...TF8&qid=1307394548&sr=8-1 |
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| mr shifter |
Just saying how he became the beast. Olaf Ludwig, Eric Zabel were not quite the beast but also strong riders. |
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| Mrs John Murphy |
Not necessarily so.
From what I've been told by people who were athletes in the system, you were selected for the sport based upon your physical, technical ability first and foremost. It certainly wasn't 'drag random person off the street, dope them to the gills and let them go.' You had to be a beast in the first place. They picked you from school because you had the physical attributes first and foremost. So, Ullrichfan's point about Ullrich being a beast stands. He would have been a beast with or without any drugs. Has anyone actually asked Ullrich about his time in the youth system? |
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| mr shifter |
Who gives a frig. You all seem to agree those riders came from the East German Youth System. That's that Small Country that produced all those World & Olympic Champions in an unnatural way. The Small Country that got even more champions than the big USA Country of that time. |
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| Mrs John Murphy |
Good job in missing the point. Don't you have a BNP meeting to go to or something.
I'll explain it to you in simple terms. Ullrich was selected to be part of the system because he was a physical beast long before he ever doped. He would not have been selected for the system if he hadn't been. |
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| ullrichfan |
It is certainly true that he was winning races from the age of 9 which brought him to the attention of the SC Dynamo sports school in Berlin. They THEN brought him to be trained there from the age of 13. It is practically certain that he was given steroids while there - at the very least. We should remember that Zabel and "holier than thou" Jens Voigt were also at the same school.
He raced very lightly in his first year and a half at Telekom from '94 to '96 - presumably because he was on a massive doping regime. There is some basis for this view as, although it is not widely known, Jan and Bjarne Riis failed doping tests for their national federations and were not allowed to compete in the '96 Olympics. He actually finished 80th in his first race for Telekom and commented that he couldn't believe the pace of the race. A fact that suggests he was not yet on EPO in '94 and may have won the World Amateurs without it. Further evidence of this is that Jan was originally considered a big sprinter (witness his sprint for the win in the World Amateurs) who used his elbows more than Abdujapourov! Now, what turns big sprinters into climbers and Tour winners? What I find more interesting is that the Communist education Jan received meant all his decisions were taken for him. This is why I think Jan has not functioned very well outside of the GDR in terms of lifestyle - he is not used to doing things for himself. |
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| thunderthighs |
great pictures...ciao | ||||||
| 70kmph |
More stuff on Jan ,
"...today I can even stop and drink a coffee. If I’m at a lake and it pleases me, I just sit down and enjoy nature. To me it's more fun than before, in those situations where you had to tear down the miles to get in shape" http://www.velonation.com/News/ID...o-cycling-in-management-role.aspx |
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| CapeRoadie |
Every one of the top 198 Tour cyclists is/was a beast. Ullrich showed that you could win and still be a really nice guy. Complete opposite of Pharmstrong. Yet they remain friends. |