Time: 19:45 – 22:00
Location: Opposite the Band Stand/ Public loos on Serpentine Rod
Hyde Park!

Route

Now the Tour De France has finished and those who had taken drugs through blood doping have been caught I’ve felt my own love for cycling returning. Today was a case in point riding through the country lanes south of London it just made me appreciate all the more what we have on our door step to the south.

Whatever you may feel about cyclists stupid enough to take something extra don’t let it put you off cycling as its you that’ll benefit and noone else.

Get out there and now the Sun is back, go out and enjoy your bike.

This Friday 189 riders will be presented to the public ahead of the opening part of the Tour, the Prologue.

So close you can almost touch it. The world’s biggest free to view Sports event thats only beaten by the World Cup and the Olympics is in town this weekend. You can not afford to miss the Sports event of the year.

Forget about the doping stories and just revel in the sheer scale of the event and the circus that is Le Tour.

Enjoy.
(more…)

I thought it best to let you know, just in case you didn’t… that the Tour De France will be kicking off from London on Saturday the 7th with the Prologue followed by Stage 1 leading out from Greenwich to Canterbury on the 8th

Opening Ceremony – Friday 6 July 2007
Trafalgar Square will host a celebration of the 2007 Tour de France arriving in London. It’ll be free to partake, and Nelson’s Column should make an impressive backdrop for the planned events. More information about the Ceremony as we get it. Starts at 6pm

Prologue – Saturday 7 July 2007

To get a good spot as the Prologue twists through central London, be sure to get there very early. The actual race will be preceded by the publicity caravan, where you’ll be drowned with free products distributed by the many sponsors of the race.
# Caravan – 1pm
# Race Starts 3pm
# Race Ends – 6.20pm
Stage 1 – Sunday 8 July 2007

The caravan parade leaves the Mall at 8.40am. Riders will be signing on from 9.25am to 10.20am. The riders will then leave the Mall at 10.25am and there’s a ceremony at Tower Bridge at 10.45am. The race will then get properly underway when the riders reach Greenwich, opposite the Maritime Museum at 11am, in what is commonly referred to as the départ réel. The Tour director will announce the start of the race by waving a white flag from the official car.
Road Closures

There is no other sporting event like it, the worlds largest free to view spectator sport and only just behind the FIFA World Cup and the Olympics in terms of its global visibility. Come along and have the best weekend of cycling you may ever ever have.

Chapeau.

Text from LondonCycleSport

Want to support some History?

Bradley Wiggins & Victoria Pendleton (Three times World Champion)heads the bumper entry for the 2007 Good Friday Track Meeting to be held on April 6.

International, National and local riders feature in a wide programe of events. Rob Hayles and Wiggins will have their hands full competing against Belgian Edwin Smuelders and making a return after a popular appearance in 2006 is German Stefan Steinweg.

Other riders likely to get plenty of crowd support are Sean Yates (In Gear) and Alex Dowsett (100% Me)., nor a few local and national competitors who will be keen to put a cat amongst the pigeons.

A strong Plowman Craven team will also be ready to join the battle with Tony Gibb and Gordon Macauley both likely to feature at the front.

– The traditional Good Friday Meeting will be held at South London’s Herne Hill Velodrome on April 6.

– First promoted in 1903, this Southern Counties Cycling Union event is set to continue in the manner which has become its hallmark – exciting, entertaining racing featuring top class riders from home and abroad.

For more details go here.

Thew track is on Burbage road in Herne Hill, here it is.

Text thanks to LondonCycleSport.

Enjoy.

Sean

ps. Don’t forget the fantastic burgers.

You may not normally be into watching rowing, but seeing eight people row a sinking boat, at top speed, for 20 minutes is pretty cool.

This was the AK (my club) men’s team last weekend at the big Head of the River Race. Better luck to Oxford and Cambridge this Saturday.

Come on down to the club if you are free, I’ll be pulling pints at the club bar from 3:30.

I really want to big up the Save Our Darts campaign, but it’s so weirdly man-centric.

The campaign is about restoring darts to its rightful place in the boozers of Britain, and the website serves up various man-based scare stats about the decline of darts, such as “39% of young men have no idea what a bullseye is worth”. Well, 39% of young men have no idea of almost anything.

Trina Gulliver, 7-time world champion for god’s sake, is relegated to the trivia page.

I love darts (and surprise, I’m a woman) so I’m all for the campaign but it needs to get wise to what lots of other sports (and ‘sports’) are realising: get the ladies on board.

Photo from the BBC

I am the kind of cheesy Olympics lover that hates to see the idealistic pony show dissed, but here’s a dire story from over the pond:

[The Canadian province of Quebec] has finally paid off its Can$1.5-billion debt from the 1976 Summer Games.

Officials from the Olympic Installations Board, which oversees Montreal’s Olympic Stadium, have confirmed that the last payment was made in mid-November, three decades after the world descended on Montreal for the Games.

The astronomical cost included the stadium, the Olympic village, a post-modern apartment building complex, a sports recreation complex, outdoor facilities, parking and the Vélodrome, which has since been refurbished as the Biodome.

Much of the debt was serviced through a special tax on tobacco.

Officials had estimated the debt would be cleared by September 2006, but the smoking ban introduced in May slowed down tobacco sales in the province, according to the Canadian Press.

The London Fields Lido is finally open! Today was the first day the public was allowed in to hit the balmy 25-degree water. Showers and changing rooms are also heated, so no excuses not to hit “Hackney’s Urban Beach”!

Opening Times (26th-29th October 2006)

Thursday 26th October and Friday 27th October 2006
8.00-9.30am – Adult Lanes
10-12.00pm – Family Swim
12.30-4.00pm – General Swim

Saturday 28th October 2006 and Sunday 29th October 2006
10.00-12.00pm – Family Swim
12.30-4.00pm – General Swim

Opening Season Introductory Prices

Non Member
Adult £3.00
Junior £1.80

Leisure Card
Adult £2.10
Junior £1.25

Leisure Card Concessionary
Adult £1.55