The Dope Fest

Cycling is under assault by the dope show. Being a mountain biker, roadie, downhiller whatever, you can’t help being drawn into this and being tarnished with the poisoned needle. I cannot agree more with the harsh penalties being dished out, there must be consequences and standards, and if you want to win the game you must play by the rules.

But it makes me wonder if it is going to make it all go away. Are we treating the cause or are we treating the symptom. The big stick approach seldom works because often you are beating an already broken man. Should we not be trying to fix this broken man. I wonder if we really understand this doping thing, I mean really understand it. Where does it all start, what drives someone like Vino to dope knowing the risks of being caught? What is someone’s state of mind when they make this decision?

Why is taking an illegal substance worse than taking a legal substance, are you not improving your performance artificially in both cases?

David Miller a reformed doper talks about and understands these things. He points out how grey the area is that when these guys start it is not for the glory and the money but more like desperation, obligations etc. Only they will know, and when no one is really talking how will we ever know what it really is all about.

But I guess for now the only route is the UCI stick route, but somehow that just seems to damage and make for the worst PR ever.


Maybe the pain we all feel is the way it is meant to be. Fact is it is happening everywhere, denying that is they got here in the first place. So the fact that everyday someone gets booted out is the right thing for now, but it can’t be the only long term solution.

South Africa on the international MTB Map

In today's Transalp stage 6 Brandon Stewart and SA Marathon champ Kevin Evans crossed the line first! They edged out Cape Epic winners; Karl Platt and Stefan Sahm in a sprint finish.

It is truly a great day for South African Mountain biking! Everyone here at MTBOnline just want you guys to know that you ROCK!!


http://www.bike-transalp.de/englisch/

Join an MTB community

Mountain biking communities are alive and well on the web. Infact they have been a real contributor to the growth of the sport in the last few years. The oldset and most estabilished is probably the warthogs group. Based in the Cape and setup as a ride notification list, this group is still as active as ever. Run as an e-mailing list you subscribe to it and can then receive all the mails and post replies. The other major mailing list out there is the spinman group which has most of its users based in Gauteng. Also an e-mail list this group of mountain bikers discuss anything and everything related to mountain biking. these lists are great to get to meet fellow riders and join on some of the informal rides organised. Find out more of these lists here



But if you are not into e-mail lists and the inevitable volume of mail, chit chat and addiction that it brings then maybe a web based forum is more for you. The recently re-vamped MTBForum is a dedicated online mountain biking forum for South Africa. It is just the place to pop in and find out some relevant info or see what is going on. There is also a facility for buying and selling bikes through a free classifieds forum. Organisers and event managers are encouraged to make use of the events forum to share information about there events.

Specialized Stumpjumper 2008 - Carbon tweaked

The new specialized stumpjumper trail mountain bike has been unveiled in Spain recently. It has not taken specialised long to re look this model. Average guy reviewed the specialized stumpjumper 2006 just the other day, and already there is a new one!

Specialized has really made some drastic improvements to the stumpy. If this isn't a sign that carbon is here to stay then I don't know what is. Just about every improvement on this bike relates to carbon tweaking. They took some design cues from the enduro and shed 200g of weight off the S-works carbon frame with a bunch of improvements. Carbon fiber seat stays shave weight, down tube is larger in diameter and now spans the full width of the bottom bracket shell and the drive side dropout is also carbon fiber.

Other weight saving comes from further integration of the frame and the fork which are now a matching set so you can't swap out. Although it is limiting for customising it makes sense from a weight and control perspective. It is a great looking mountain bike with a serious name behind it.

The verdict from Average Guy:

That bike really looks awesome! I just can’t believe that Spaz has such Cr@p cable routing!! Did you see the bottom of the bike. Dit lyk soos n hoers nes!!!!

Read the full story with pics of the Specialized Stumpjumper 2008

More new Specialized bikes