HA HA HA HA HA!

An old woman sitting by the side of a fork gave the driver wrong directions [ to the men’s Olympic road racing course ]. Once he realized it, he yelled, “Liar, liar. She purposedly told us to go the wrong way.”

Why?

“She’s the security for this area.”

The claim: Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee seemingly hired the woman to make sure spectators couldn’t find their way to the route.

Read more: Inside the Rings blog.

In other news, Spanish cyclist Maria Isobel Moreno test positive for EPO

“I’m disgusted and annoyed that it’s a Spanish girl who is the first positive doping test from the Games,” UCI President Pat McQaid said. “The Spanish have been lax in their attitude to doping and this positive test is the result of that. They need to deal with that issue.”

Moreno, who left the Olympic Village after her blood test but before the results were revealed, did not participate in the women’s road race. She has been expelled from the games. Previous news reported Moreno left Beijing because of anxiety attacks.

Beijing 2008 Olympic Cycling.

Nicole Cook of the UK won the Gold Medal this morning in the women’s road race during the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Photo copied from Pez Cycling News, which has lots of photos of the women cycling through the rain during their road race.

Nicole used to ride her bike to school. This stuff pays off, ladies and gentlemen:

Britain’s Olympic cycling champion Nicole Cooke began honing her fitness from the age of 11 when she would race her father twice daily on the seven-mile trip to and from school.

The young Miss Cooke and her father shunned the bus to dash from their home to school, where Tony Cooke taught physics.

The unusual training quickly paid off and Miss Cooke, now 25, publicly announced her life’s ambition, and her talent, after winning the Welsh cyclo-cross championship in 1994.

She beat everyone in her age group – including the boys – then promptly announced in a live television interview: “I want to win a gold medal at the Olympics.”

Read more in the Telegraph: Beijing Olympics: Champion Nicole Cooke’s childhood training secrets.

Three Americans raced this morning in Beijing: Kristin Armstrong, who placed 25th 43 seconds behind Cooke after crashing early in the race; 33rd place Amber Neben (who lost her chain of all things!); and Christine Thorburn. Thorburn was asked to reel in Russian Natalia Boyarskaya, but the effort spent her. “Christine did what we asked her to do,” U.S. coach Jim Miller said of Thorburn’s effort to reel in Boyarskaya. “She did a great job.”

• Cycling News: Britain’s Cooke fulfils her Olympic destiny; Silver and bronze for Johansson and Guderzo
• See much more at Cyclodro.me.

Elsewhere:

• Learn more about Nicole Cook at her website.
• Silver medalist Emma Johannsson’s website. who represents Sweden.
• Tatiana Guderzo of Italy apparently doesn’t have a website, but here’s her Wikipedia entry.
• Kristin Armstrong’s website.
• Amber Neben’s website.
• Christine Thorburn, who is one of the cyclists from the SF Bay Area, is a physician and is apparently too busy to have a website 🙂

Next up: Women’s road cycling — individual time trial. Tuesday night, August 12 at 8:30 PM.

Fixed Gear Pete has a photo of a hot Olympic cyclist at his site!

Since you landed here, you might be interested in the Cyclelicious Girls page, Cyclelicious Celebrities, or Paris Hilton’s energy policy video.

Beijing 2008 Olympics.

The Spanish Armada: That’s how Ken Conley described the Spanish cycling team’s performance this morning with Spaniard Samuel Sanchez’s gold medal in the men’s road racing team. I watched the race live but finally had to throw the towel in at about 1 A.M., just like the field of 53 DNFs in the race that included Americans David Zabriskie and Jason McCartney.

For pure gutsiness, I have to give Chile’s Patricio Almonacid the nod. He and Bolivian Horacio Gallardo led a breakaway five minutes after the race start. An hour and a half later, Gallardo dropped back and Almonacid raced solo for over an hour before the escape group, led by Jason McCartney (USA), Vladimir Efimkin (Russia) and Christian Pfannberger (Austria) muscled their way across the 20 minute gap to catch Almonacid. 20 minutes later, Almonacid dropped off the back of the escape group, his 2½ hours of glory over. Almonacid would eventually DNF. He’s one of the very few Olympic racers who does not race professionally.

You know where to find the usual cycling Olympic coverage and results, but I found some interesting commentary via Cyclodro.me Olympics 2008:

• Jonathan Crowe’s DFL Blog covers the last place finishes at the Olympics. For the men’s cycling road race, that would be Brazil’s Luciano Pagliarini, who finished 44 minutes behind Sanchez. Crowe notes there was only a 2 mph average speed difference between Sanchez and Pagliarini. The 30 year old races professionally for Saunier Duval. In 2007 he won Stage 4 in Tour of Missouri and won Stage 6 of the Tour of California this year.
• Lanterne Rouge celebrates Ahmed Belgasem‘s last place finish. Belgasem, who represents Libya, was happy just to participate and showed obvious enthusiasm. Ahmed trained for a month at the UCI’s World Cycling Center early this summer to prepare himself for his Olympic run.
• The most exciting coverage has to be from Pez Cycling News with their Great Wall of Sammy summary of the race. Check out this writing:
  

  The oldest man in the field, 37 year-old Davide Rebellin of Italy made it close to a fairytale ending to the race, grabbing silver from the force of nature that is Fabian Cancellara of Switzerland, with fast finishing Alexandr Kolobnev of Russia taking fourth after going too early; Luxembourg’s Andy Schleck banged his bars as he crossed the line in fifth, whilst there were no such histrionics from ‘back from the dead’ Australian Michael Rogers who took sixth.

The Women’s cycling road race begins tonight, with online sreaming video of the bike race starting tonight at 11 PM Pacific Time. If I’m still awake you can catch my notes on Twitter this evening.