Welcome to Wednesday on the road.cc live blog with Simon MacMichael and the rest of the team.
06/03/2019, 16:38
Olympic champ rower gives up Tokyo 2020 cycling dream and heads back to the water
A double Olympic champion rower from New Zealand who switched sports with hopes of winning a cycling medal in Tokyo next year has rethought his plans and now intends to return to the water.
Hamish Bond, aged 33, focused on cycling after he and Eric Murray successfully defended the coxless pair Olympic title won at London 2012 in Rio three years ago.
The pair enjoyed a phenomenal unbeaten run in the event of 69 international races from 2009-16, including winning the world championship six times.
After switching to cycling following Rio, last year, Bond won the time trial at both the Oceania Road Championships and the New Zealand National Road Championships as well as bronze in the same event at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.
Last month at the National Track Championships, he set a New Zealand national record for the individual pursuit, but now he has told Stuff.co.nz that he feels at a “crossroads” after he failed to make the team pursuit line-up for the world championships in Pruszkow, Poland.
Admitting that rowing may represent his best chance of competing in what is likely to be his final Olympic Games, he is now aiming for a seat in the men’s eight.
"Your heart has to be in the right place to really commit to something like that and perhaps it wasn't [with cycling],” he said.
"What day to day training and environment was I going to enjoy the most? I thought the eight."
06/03/2019, 15:23
MP who led Jiffy Bag probe raises fears of "concerted effort to make sure that Dr Freeman never has to give evidence"
Conservative MP Damian Collins says questions need to be asked over why the medical tribunal into former British Cycling and Team Sky doctor Richard Freeman has been adjourned.
He told BBC Sport:"We should be concerned that there is a concerted effort to make sure that Dr Freeman never has to give evidence, and we should rightly question why that might be the case."
It's a sentence that lends itself to much reading between the lines.
Collins chairs the House of Commons Select Committee on Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, which as part of its 2017-18 inquiry into doping in sport focused on Team Sky, British Cycling and Freeman following the disclosure of Therapeutic Use Exemptions to 2012 Tour de France winner Sir Bradley Wiggins plus the contents of thee Jiffy Bag delivered to the doctor at the 2011 Criterium du Dauphine.
The committee's report was highly critical of Freeman, who missed a scheduled appearance before it to give evidence citing ill-health, and recommended that he be investigated by the General Medical Council.
06/03/2019, 12:05
Video: Danny MacAskill – be careful of that cattle gri…! Oh
One to make you gasp, but luckily not puke. It’s a video from Danny MacAskill that doesn’t star the great man himself instead it’s his unfortunate friend Duncan Shaw - and the cattle grid at Gavinburn who star. It could have been so much nastier we all hope Duncan’s leg is okay and yet another warning that you always need to be careful on cattle grids – even when your tyres are fat.
06/03/2019, 09:33
Inspirational quotes from the Mayor of Bogota - a politician who really gets cycling
Here's a rarity - a politician who really gets cycling, as well as how increasing public transport provision and limiting private car use makes cities safer, nicer and fairer places to live.
The website shitenriquesays.com contains a series of inspirational quotes from Enrique Peñalosa, the mayor of Colombia's capital, Bogota.
An expert in transport policy, he was re-elected in 2015 and during his first spell as mayor from 1998-2001 began the city's extensive cycle path network.
Here is a selection of some of his quotes - you will find many more here.
06/03/2019, 09:08
Emotional scenes as winner of Belgian race Le Samyn greeted by wife moments after biggest victory of career
Emotional scenes in Belgium yesterday where Deceuninck-Quick Step rider Florian Senechal was greeted by his wife Margaux moments after taking his biggest career win to date in the 50th edition of the one-day race, Le Samyn.
First held in 1968 as the Grand Prix de Fayt-le-Franc, the race was renamed in 1970 in honour of its first winner, French rider Jose Samyn, who had been killed in a crash during a race in Belgium the previous year.
L’émotion de @flosenech et de son épouse Margaux a l’arrivée du #GPSamyn Elle me fait plez celle-là ! pic.twitter.com/sDix7dZlEt
— Fred Retsin (@FRETSIN) March 5, 2019
06/03/2019, 08:43
British Cycling "extremely disappointed" as tribunal into Dr Richard Freeman adjourned
British Cycling says it is “extremely disappointed” that the tribunal into its former doctor Richard Freeman, who also worked at Team Sky, has been adjourned and is now unlikely to take place until next year – if at all.
The doctor, who resigned from the governing body in 2017, citing ill health, is charged by the General Medical Council (GMC) on several counts relating to the delivery of testosterone patches to the National Cycling Centre in 2011 – most seriously, that he ordered them for the use of an unnamed athlete.
Freeman, who denies the allegations, was due to appear at a medical tribunal in Manchester last month, but the hearing was delayed due to preliminary arguments understood to relate to his mental health.
Yesterday, the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service said: “The case will be re-listed and heard by a new tribunal in due course.”
A GMC spokesperson, quoted on BBC Sport, said: “It is frustrating that this case has not yet got under way.
"We remain ready to open our case in public and hope we will be permitted to do so as soon as possible."
British Cycling said: "It is in the public interest and in the best interests of the sport that the allegations against Dr Richard Freeman are heard and examined openly by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service.
"British Cycling is a co-referrer in this case and we will continue to support the General Medical Council's work as there remain historic questions to be answered."