Cycling

One-nation Toryism Sir: When my late father, John McKee, stood as Conservative candidate for South Shields in the 1970 general election he gained 19,960 votes, more even than David Miliband in the same constituency 40 years later. In last week’s by-election in the South Shields constituency, the Conservative candidate attracted only 2,857 votes. Many things have changed since 1970 but one important thing that is different is that in those days the local Conservative party had a large number of working-class members helping in the campaign; there was even a flourishing Conservative Trade Union organisation in the constituency. Nor was South Shields unique in this respect. Conservative Members of Parliament

Cycling fans will recall the Festina Affair that crippled the 1998 version of the Tour de France. The discovery that the peloton could be considered a travelling pharmacy did not surprise veteran cycling aficionados, even if the extent and sophistication of the doping was enough to shock some. Entire teams withdrew from a race that, with grim inevitability, quickly became known as the Tour de Farce. Well, this phone-hacking scandal is, for the press and parliament, a comparable scandal. Just as it was no secret that doping was a staple part of the professional cyclist’s diet, so it was hardly hidden that the newspapers, especially but not exclusively, the tabloids

It seems that, in cycling as everything else, when the facts become intolerable it’s no longer credible to insist upon them. That being the case it’s not, perhaps, a great surprise that the Facts for Lance website appears to have disappeared. In one sense the question of whether or not Lance Armstrong ever took illegal performance-enhancing drugs is immaterial. He cannot prove a negative but nor do all those negative tests establish his innocence either. The difficulty for Armstrong and his legion of admirers is that the circumstantial evidence against him has become so substantial that you need to be unusually credulous to suppose that none of it can be

There was no racing in the Giro d’Italia yesterday. Instead the peloton rode at a funereal pace to honour Wouter Weylandt, the Belgian sprinter killed in a crash on Monday. Then Weylandt’s Leopard-Trek team-mates came to the front to lead the field into Leghorn. With them was Garmin-Cervelo’s Tyler Farrar, Weylandt’s best friend in the peloton. Watch from the 25 minute mark if you like: Dignified. Emotional. Perfect. And something you never want to see again. As I said on Monday, however, it’s amazing how rare these deaths are (and Weylandt, the pathologist reported, almost certainly died instantly). By my back-of-an-envelope calculations* the peloton completes about a million miles of

Lance Armstrong, shattered, is surrounded by the press after hauling himself to the finish line at Morzine on Sunday. Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images When a great champion cracks in the mountains it’s like the moment when a once-mighty battleship is superceded by a new competitor and rendered hideously obsolete. All sports have their moments like this and it’s always poignant even when you never cared for, or even disliked, the champion in question. As is often the case, cycling has an especially brutal way of showing this. It’s final and, like a broken-backed battleship sinking, just a matter of minutes. One minute you’re there, the next you’re not. True, Lance

I’m not going to write about the Tour de France every day – just as I won’t about the cricket season as soon as anything interesting or significant happens – but this was a great day in the Tour. Commenting on this post, Ronnie was right to suggest that a stage that involved a few kilometers over the cobblestones posed a risk that someone’s Tour might end today. He was right: Frank Schleck is done. But that, brutally, is a small price for a superb race and, anyway, could have happened absent the pave too. There was a time and not so long ago that the racing in the first

Fabian Cancellara is one hell of a bike rider, but Sartacus blundered today. That’s him on the left and in the Yellow Jersey reminding the peloton that they wouldn’t race one another on the approach to the finish of Stage Two yesterday. This is what had happened: it was cold and wet and on the descent of the Stockeu some 30km from Spa there were multiple crashes. Armstrong and Contador both fell. So, most dramatically, did both Schleck Brothers. Conditions were, apparently, made still worse by petrol spilled from a motorbike that had itself fallen. The race was blown apart. Up ahead Sylvain Chavanel cycled on, oblivious to the carnage

  As you know, it’s Ivan Basso in the picture here and on Saturday, for the first time and on the penultimate stage, in this year’s Giro d’Italia he will wear the race leader’s Maglia Rosa. He deserves it too. On the Zoncolan and then yesterday on the Mortirolo pass Basso has been the pride of the field in this year’s superb Giro. Increasingly I rather suspect that the Giro is a better and, in some ways, tougher race than the Tour de France. The frequently terrible weather conditions play a part in this but so too do the unforgiving Italian mountains. In any case this has been a Giro

Cadel Evans wins Stage 7 of the 2010 Giro d’Italia in Montalcino. Photo: Luk Beines/AFP/Getty Images. What with being deprived of, for various reasons*, Contador, Menchov, Valverde, Pellizotti, di Luca, the Schleck brothers, Armstrong and Cancellara you could have been forgiven for thinking that this year’s Giro d’Italia might be a disappointment. Not a bit of it. In fact, I wonder if these days the Giro doesn’t often provide better racing than the Tour de France. It certainly did today. On paper the stage from Carrara to Montalcino was interesting but not obviously threatening even though it included some 20km over the Tuscan strade bianche – that is, gravel and