Very funny photoshopped pictures and some random links about Saxo Bank (post including also other random randomness):

To everyone's delight, on this wonderful page lost in the Blogosphere you can see miss Fede's latest post, in which you'll be able to find the usual random links and, surprise surprise, two very funny photos that have been photoshopped by our dear blogmate Mar.
Our blogmate in fact has recently sent me an e-mail that contained two pictures that she had modified in a very funny way. The leitmotiv of the pictures was, attention attention, men and parfumes.
In fact Mar once read on a blog that Jakob Fuglsang would have looked good acting as a model in an 'eau de cologne' commercial (whoever had this idea is a genius!)

Mar thought a bit about this fact, pictured the commercial in her mind and then she made this really good picture, thanks to which Jakob magically entered the world of parfume's models ;)

Still talking about parfumes, who doesn't like the aroma of coffee? As far as I'm concerned, I really love it (and I'm sure I'm not the only one).
If Starbucks created a coffee parfume, not only would I buy it immediately (although I'd never use it to go to parties or to school), but I think I'd also have a good suggestion for the people who'll have to find a model for the new fragrance's commercial. In fact, who could advertise a coffee parfume better than Jens Voigt, one of the most famous coffee-aholic of Cycledom? ;)

RANDOM NEWS:
After having fun with the pictures above (thank you once very much for your nice work Mar!), let's now go on with some random links.
Let's begin with the first interesting link that I've found over the last days: http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/contador-attends-first-saxo-bank-sungard-camp . As you probably already know, Saxo Bank is having a training camp in Fuerteventura right now and Tim De Waele went there to take some pictures of the riders.
The shocking thing is that in some of those pictures you can see naked men coming out of nowhere and watching/being watched by the riders and the team's stuff in a very curious way. For example, there is a picture of a fat, naked man looking at the riders in a very strange way. Run away as long as you can boys!!!
The second shocking thing is that the naked man who appears in said picture looks at the riders in a strange way, as if he was aking himself: 'Hey, why are these guys windsurfing? And why the hell aren't they taking it easy as me?' Such question, made by someone who's walking on a beach in a very 'natural' way, seems a bit weird to me. Actually,that picture also reminded me of a boy that I saw while waiting to leave my town for the 2010 summer holidays. I was in the center of my village, with a bright orange suitcase, waiting for my friend to come and give me a lift, when there came this boy, dressed like a cowboy and riding a horse. Still, he was brave enough to look at me in a very strange way, as if he was asking himself: 'What is this girl doing?'. A question which, asked by a teenager dressed like a cowboy, in Bergamo, riding a horse in the center of the town, actually sounded a bit strange.
Anyway, back to the link. Another thing that pretty shocked me was the shirt that Chris Anker was wearing while Tim De Waele took some of his pictures. If you check mr. De Waele's website, and notice a Saxo Bank rider wearing a bright pink/blue shirt, you'll immediately understand what I mean. However, as they say, just true men can wear pink, therefore I should probably be happy to know that Chris is brave enough to wear it.
The last shocking thing that I noticed about the pictures is that Riis' idea of 'building team spirit' terribly looks like my P.E. teacher's idea of 'let's teach my girls how to work together!'
The main difference is that, at least, when I work together with my classmates (a kind way to say that I sit down and they stand up on my spine, as if that was a very normal thing to do), we don't have anyone taking pictures of us (after all, I don't think I could actually stand people taking pictures of me during my PE lessons- not if I'm sober, at least).

Talking about other shocking things, I'd like to know whether some of you can recognise the rider who appears in the picture below.
I know that that you won't believe me, but I must tell you that the rider in the picture above is Pellizotti.
'Pellizotti? That Pellizotti? Are you serious? It can't be him! Where did his golden curls go?!?', I hear you wondering in despair. Unfortunately I'm as shocked as you and I don't have the answer to your last question.

Changing topic, Kim Andersen has recently said that Brian Nygaard and he actually started to hire Saxo Bank riders for their team in mid-June 2010 (link: http://www.velonation. com/ News/ID/6612/Team-Luxembourg-and-Saxo-Bank-battle-began-in-June.aspx ) and Jakob Fuglsang said that he had already decided to join the new team of the Schleck brothers before of the Tour's beginning.
Still talking about Jakob, in the next days there will be 'best cyclist of the year' awards in different countries and, as far as Denmark is concerned, the riders who'll battle against each other for this prize are: Chris Anker Sorensen, Matti Breschel, Jakob Fuglsang and Alex Rasmussen. Sorry for you, Jakob's lovers, but this time this Fangirl will support Chris Anker in the fight ;) Go go Chris!
On the other hand, the best Luxembourgian sport personality of 2010 will be named on Thursday, but I think we can already say who the winner will be. Anyway don't expect any post about that prize from me, since unfortunately on Thursday I'll be drowning in a sea of sh..., ehm, homeworks.

On to another news, you must know that Silvére Ackermann was a young rider that I really liked. He used to race for Voralberg Corratec, but then he retired this June during the Swiss Championships. The news made me very sad, since I've always liked Silvére's riding style and I thought he could have been a very good rider also in the ProTour category. On http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/ackermann-explains-reasons-of-retirement, Ackermann explains why he got retired. At least, no one can deny that he did so in a very spectacular way, by getting retired as he was in the leading breakaway at the Swiss national championship.
I'm still very sorry about his retirement, but I wish Silvére all of the best for his new career anyway. Good luck for your future boy!

On to a last (and happier) news, on http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/saxo-bank-names-two-danes-in-giro-ditalia-squad it is said that 2 riders are already sure of riding 2011 Giro for Saxo Bank. They are Mads Christensen and Jonas Aaen Jorgenen.
I must admit that I don't know much about Mads, while last year I wrote a post about Jorgensen and so I followed his first season at Saxo Bank pretty carefully. He's a very good and young rider, so I'm really glad to hear this news. If the Schlecks really don't come to Italy next May, I surely won't have many doubts about who to support during the Giro!

PS: I know that I keep on writing about Saxo Bank and that this may annoy some of you, but:
1) finding interesting news about team Luxembourg is almost impossible, since even Wikileaks would have problems discovering something about it
2) I still love the guys on this team.
(Pic 1 and 2 by Mar, pic 3 by Bettini)

Valjavec,Prado and Pellizotti in troubles and some useless reflections of mine

Originally, Miss Fede hadn't plan to write any post this afternoon, but then the news of Pellizotti, Prado and Valjavec's problems has given her the occasion to reflect on a few things.

As you probably know, these 3 riders have been suspended by their teams because their biological passport showed some irregular values. Now, I'm not an expert in the doping field, but I'd like to say some things about this news anyway.

On yesterday's La Gazzetta dello Sport it was written that 5 riders were going to be stopped in these days because of problems in their biological passport.According to La Gazzetta, the 5 riders were 1 Italian (someone who had raced TdF 2009 and was going to race Giro 2010 with good expectations of victory), 1 Russian, 1 Slovenian and 2 Spaniards.Then, in the evening, the news came: "Pellizotti, Prado and Valjavec have been suspended by their teams". I had no doubts about Pellizotti's suspension (he was the only Italian who corresponded to La Gazzetta's description), but I was very surprised by Valjavec (I'll talk about this later in this post). Anyway, as you might have imagined, a question still remains in my mind: according to La Gazzetta (which is showing to be a serious newspaper even when it talks about rumours) the riders with problems are 5. Just 3 names have been said. 5-3=2.So, who are the other 2 riders, the Russian and the Spaniard, whose passport shows some irregular values? We'll know later, probably on the day of the Zoncolan stage at the Giro; or perhaps on the day of a boring stage, so that we (supporters, chronists and journalists) can all get depressed together.

Anyway, back to Pelli, Valjavec and Prado. Of course these 3 riders have already claimed they're innocent and, also this time, this has been pretty funny to see. Even if imo accusing those riders of being dopers without further information is unfair,I think that we supporters have the right of being amused by the riders' defenses anyway. So,here they are:

-First of all, Prado said that the changes in his blood profil were due to a problem he had with his haemhorroids (more info on http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/rosendos-blood-readings-due-to-haemorrhoids ).

-Pellizotti instead told La Gazzetta that his strange values are probably due to the training he had in Livigno,a famous Italian village that is located in the mountains. According to Franco, the altitude of that village has changed his blood values so that in the tests taken during the Tour (Pellizotti went to Livigno before of the Tour) things didn't look ok for the UCI scientists. A fascinating theory, if it wasn't that also Pozzato, Basso and Rogers often train in Livigno, but none of them has ever had strange blood values in their tests because of this (not so far,at least).

- Valjavec then said that his irregular values are due to an illness which his team doctor failed to report to the UCI last year (http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/valjavec-claims-innocence-in-biological-passport-case ;the source of Pellizotti's words instead is today's paper edition of Gazzetta).

So, these are the riders' defenses. As mentioned, the name that surprised me most in this story is Valjavec's one.First of all, I probably have to say that every time I see a rider doing something very good, I always have doubts about him (yes, it's horrible to say, but that's it). Valjavec is a good rider who always gets good results, but he isn't a super champion who always has amazing performances. Therefore, I didn't think he would have had this kind of troubles in his career. Well, silly of me to think that.

The main aim of this post, however, is talking about UCI's perfect timing of giving bad news. In fact, without saying whether the riders are or aren't dopers, me has a little question about how this story was treated by UCI.In fact, if Pellizotti knew about his 'problem' on the 3rd of March, why did it take UCI more than two months to make the news become public?

On yesterday's Gazzetta there was a sentence that made me reflect for a while. McQuaid in fact, talking about these 5 new possible dopers, said: "There are 5 riders whose biological passport presents some irregular values. I think we'll tell you something between Monday and Tuesday". Oh, thank you very much for considering us, mr.McQuaid. Really,we poor supporters didn't mean to bother you, you could have given the news also on June 1st, after the Giro, we wouldn't have cared... ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Gosh, the riders get this news on March the 3rd, even before of the beginning of the season, and we know about it just 2 months later,right before the beginning of the Giro?!? And what if Pellizotti had won a Classic during the Spring campaign? I mean,it's understandable to give a rider the time to react to a doping news that directly involves him, but aren't two months a bit too much? Or am I just saying bullshits? Gosh, the Giro begins in 4 days time and you come up with this news just now?!? Are you stupid?

I'm obviously talking about this story from the supporter's point of view, but just imagine you're a rider and they tell you they've discovered you've doped. They tell you,but they don't tell anyone else. You keep on racing, perhaps winning, and in the meanwhile you wait for the news to become public. Nice situation,isn't it? You keep on pretending that everything's ok, but in the meanwhile you're waiting your world to fall apart. If I was a rider and if I was in that condition, I woud probably suspend myself, pretend to be ill, or something similar. But obviously,someone could say, there's a reason if miss Fede is a supporter and not a cyclist...

Anyway, talking about that matter, Gazzetta's journalist Luca Gialanella revealed a little but interesting anedocte about Pellizotti. On 28th April the journalists already knew that an important rider was going to have problems with the biological passport soon.Simply, they didn't know who this rider was, although lots of rumours named Pellizotti. Therefore, that day Gialanella phoned Pellizotti. They talked about the upcoming Giro, about Pellizotti's suitcase, and then Gialanella asked Pellizotti if the rumours about him were true. "I've never been to the UCI, nobody has never asked me anything and I've never had problems to solve with UCI. It's the first time I hear a rumour like that. You can never be calm when doping is concerned, but I've never had any problem of that kind",Pellizotti answered.

Gialanella ends his article with this words: "Pellizotti had been informed by the UCI on March the 3rd,almost two months before of that phone call". Well, Pellizotti couldn't actually have answered in any different way, but I believe that this anedocte is rather interesting because it gives you a not very flattering portrait of Cycledom (UCI knows, the riders know, the poor supporters and the poor journalists don't).

Well, after expressing my anger here me closes this post (which hasn't been written in a great way because I'm always chaotic when I have to express my opinions in foreign languages) and goes reflecting in front of a school book.Good day to everyone, by the way.