Cycling Center Voted The Best

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A competition was held in Portland to find the best bicycle shop in the country. Barb Grover, the owner of Splendid Cycles had tweeted in the morning asking about the tally of votes, as he was eager to pay the donation check.

As already predicted before, the conclusion of this race has been proved right. The Bike shop Bliss tournament was won by Community Cycle Center.

The community Cycle Center is a nonprofit organization. After surviving the five rounds of race, thy community was declared victorious by 307 to 61. In total, there were 64 bike shops who had participated in this Bike shop Bliss tournament.

In order to win the competition, Splendid Cycles planned to donate $1 for each vote in their favor, but this scheme did not make the eager competitors win. Grover, the shop’s owner still desired the competition to continue.

The competition had ended on Wednesday, when the voting tally came to an end at 6 p.m.

According to the results, Splendid Cycle will donate $3017 to charity for the community cycling center’s shop, projects, holiday bike drive and education projects.

It is notable that after the announcement of Grover planning to donate $1 for each vote, they still garnered additional 17 votes for themselves. Needless to say, the bike shops exporting their cycles to the entire world do have fans in the cities of U.S.A and everywhere else.

The healthy competition amongst the bike shops has yielded good results. The competition has a unique rule that the winner is paid the amount by the rival team. After surviving a month of face-off with the other bike shops of the city, fashioned like the NCAA March Madness Bracket of basketball, owners of Splendid Cycles Joel Grover and Barb Grover said that they believe that Community Cycling Center deserved to win, and therefore they have.

Australians Defeat Great Britain

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If you want to know how to avenge a defeat, then learn from the Australian cycling team. On 20th February 2013, at the Track World Championships being held in Minsk, Australia avenged the two consecutive men’s pursuit team losses it had faced from Great Britain and thus regained their past glory.

The Australian team had come close to winning the World Championships in Melbourne and also the Olympics held in London last year. But Great Britain had swept away both the titles from right under their nose.

However, the young Australian pursuit squad consisting of four exceptional cyclists: Alexander Edmondson, Glenn O’Shea, Alexander Morgan and Michael Hepburn defeated their rival team in Minsk and won the four kilometre race. The time they took to cover the 4km race course was 3 minutes 56.751 seconds. This time fell short of becoming the world record set by Great Britain at the Olympics in London last august.

The Britain Team had Steven Burke, Samuel Harrison, Ed Clancy and Andrew Tennant who finished off their race in 4 minutes 00.967 seconds losing the race to the Australians. Denmark won the Bronze medal by defeating Spain in their face-off.

Annette Edmondson and Amy Cure bagged the Bronze and the Silver medal respectively for Australia through their outstanding performance in their individual pursuit race. The American Cyclist, Sarah Hammer won the Gold Medal and defeated the two Australians Edmondson and Cure.

The men’s team gave an appropriate farewell to the endurance trainer Ian McKenzie by winning the title. This was the last time McKenzie was there to support the pursuit team as an endurance coach. He will hand over his position to Tim Decker who will take over as the new coach next month. Ian McKenzie has been the endurance coach for more than thirteen years and the pursuit team was happy to give him such a victorious Farewell.

Armstrong’s ban may restore cycling’s image

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Anne Gripper, an ex-anti doping chief of International Cycling Union (UCI), says that she is happy with the investigations made by USADA regarding Lance Armstrong’s case and supports the ban on him. Gripper played a crucial role in introducing the blood passport system. She also took some major steps to protect the sport of cycling from going into wrong direction, as you would remember.

Gripper didn’t want to speak about Armstrong’s guilt as she has no detailed information. But what she told is that the USADA is one of the best investigation agencies in anti-doping segment and they would certainly come up with the right verdict. Gripper also asserted that for the sake of cycling this Armstrong case is needed to be resolved as soon as possible. She is still of the opinion that the cycling world hasn’t yet out of danger. But she said that time would definitely heal the injuries. There might be issues from the past which would try to embarrass the sport but UCI needs to be strong. According to her, this Armstrong case is biggest outbreak in the recent years and it needs to be resolved soon. And she also said that UCI must support USADA’s actions regarding the case.

Gripper kept mum regarding Lance Armstrong’s case, USADA’s procedure and UCI’s role about it. But recently she said that she fully supported the lifetime ban on Armstrong. Moreover, she also judged the decision of stripping Armstrong of his seven Tour de France titles as a right one. She has complete faith on USADA, especially on Travis Tygart, the chief of United States Anti Doping Agency. She said that she has been familiar with Travis and she could assume that he is capable of dealing with such cases.