Tags: Syndicated Blog by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Tom Held’s “Off the Couch” blog.
On the lookout for Armstrong’s stolen bike
It took Patrick O'Grady just three paragraphs to claim all the one-liner points available in the Lance Armstrong bike heist reporting criterium.
The VeloNews columnist has long been a master of skewering irreverance, and he lived up to his reputation with this take on the biggest news from the Amgen Tour of California.
For those way behind the twittering, or is it tweeting, thieves boosted the comeback kid's time trial bike and three Astana team road bikes Saturday night, after the opening time trial.
As O'Grady speculates, and the Sacramento police confirm, there's a strong likelihood the thieves were grabbing whatever they could, rather than targeting a specific bike that would be so easily identified.
The true-crime drama has overshadowed a bit other bike news circulating out of California, the battery-powered derailleurs that Shimano has unveiled on the bikes of the Columbia High Road, Garmin/Slipstream and Rabobank teams.
Ian Austen offers the details in this piece in the New York Times.
The eye-popping price tags, including $14,000 for a Giant road bike decked out with the full-electronic components brought me back to one of O'Grady's best lines, which I'll steal in keeping with the theme of the day.
It's a safe bet those battery-operated DuraAce components will soon be "ridden to mid-pack finishes in industrial-park crits worldwide by potbellied masters racers."