Got myself scooped!!

Well, I figured I'd become no lesser known for the little words I'd scribbled on cycling.
Today, before speeding off for the office, as usual I'd drive by the BHP station near my home in SS14, Subang Jaya, and just rushed through the sports pages of all the papers. And I felt like crap!
It didn't happen during my Raya break, but it had to happen today, the day I get back to work!!!
Berita Harian and Kosmo! carried a story about Rizal Tisin taking leave to find a job, as the Asian 1km time trial champ is feeling insecure about his future.
Damn, my fault... I shouldn't have listened to Rizal when he told me about three weeks ago not to write this. He'd confided in me, asking me if I could maybe help him find a job with the Police or some Government agency, something that would give him a sense of security while he trained to win a medal at the 2012 Olympics. "Kau jangan masuk paper pulak.. Ini aku cite kat kau je." Cilaka lu Rizal, sekarang semua paper keluar cerita, aku sorang pulak yang miss!!!
Well, he'd deliberately missed the flight to Melbourne, which was boarded by Azizul Hasni Awang, Edrus Yunus, Junaidi Nasir and Fatehah Mustapa, as they're to prepare for the World Cup series which starts next month.
That tells you something doesn't it.. When a story falls on your lap, write it. Write it because it is your job to write, not to listen! Lucky this wasn't the early days of my journalism career, or I'd be gobbled up and spat down the drain by Mr. Lazarus Rokk, and God save me from the wrath of our former GE Datuk Ahmad Talib, if he happened to take note. I would be as good as dead!
Nowadays, I don't have to worry too much about the bosses walloping me, but nevertheless it feels like s**t to have missed a story.
Then got to the office, did some work and colleague Devinder Singh told me Bernama carried a report that Lance Armstrong is coming to Le Tour de Langkawi next year!!!! By now, ... phew!! I felt like I'd been shat on by a proboscis monkey. The world was caving in!
This too I'd had earlier notification about. Well, this isn't as serious as Rizal's story. Because I'd found out from LTdL chief operating officer Datuk Naim Mohamad that he's trying to bring Lance to Malaysia. He sent Lance a letter.
Well, I thought to myself those two weeks ago, I could send Barrack Obama an invitation for him to attend my next birthday party too.. Something like that. You get what I mean!!! Well, tell me when he's confirmed he'll be coming...
Lance took a substantial amount of US$ some Million.... He took that to be the ambassador for the Tour of Korea last year, only (according to Korean cyclist Park Sung Baek) to turn up late for functions, press conferences, dinner and everything that came as his itenerary while in Korea. So, LTdL, with a slashed contribution from the Government and the MNCF struggling to raise enough to even maintain the number of stages, that looks unlikely.
I guess the Bernama bro spun it his way... Made it as so: "Kehadiran ikon lumba basikal dunia yang juga juara tujuh kali Tour De France, Lance Armstrong akan merupakan salah satu tarikan pada perlumbaan berbasikal Le Tour de Langkawi (LTdL) tahun depan yang akan diadakan dari 9 hingga 15 Febuari."

Lance is gonna re-start his career in the Tour Down Under... Well, the Tour Down Under is a Pro Tour race... Le Tour de Langkawi a UCI Asia Tour race... Difference..

Anyway, still wasn't the best of days.... Not good to make a return after 2 weeks of relaxed, doing little lifestyle...... Should have stuck a little longer to doing something.

Back on the radar... And here we go again!!!

Well, I'm well and good... Probably 10kg more heavier after feasting without a break during the festive break. Phew! And I complained about my dad's purchase of last minute ayam kampung, which turned out to be tougher than an old cow's meat!!

Anyway, the Raya break was to spend time with those friends from childhood, which I usually neglect during normal days. And of course, as was the case since our days as kids, there was hours of talk about sports. A bunch of us still talk about the fate of the football team we worshipped during our school-going years - Selangor. Yea, yea, I know everybody is into just EPL and nothing else these days. Nobody even gives a wink to our local football anymore, more so because it has been screwed beyond recognition.

But hey, when we were little kids, saving up our pocket money (or begging our parents for extras) to take the bus all the way to the Klang Bus Stand in KL and the adventurous trek through the dark alleys and the discovery of shortcuts to and from Stadium Merdeka, were the highlights of our weeks. Plus the joy of watching guys like the late Mokhtar Dahari, R. Arumugam, Khan Hung Meng, Santokh Singh, and later the likes of Zainal Abidin Hassan, Dollah Salleh, Zainal Nordin (captain marvel to us), K. Gunalan, that high-scoring leftback with a thunderous drive A. Jayakanthan (we knew him for the threatening overlapping runs even before the likes of Roberto Carlos came into the picture), ... I can go on and on and on...

Not anymore... But not because we've lost our love for it. It is because we dream of bigger things, which our 31-time Malaysia Cup winners, we don't think, are capable of anymore. Like winning the AFC Champions League?

Well, I made my own findings on Malaysian football during my time as a so called football writer, which kind of angered a few people. I won't go on because I don't want to rattle any egos by writing about football since it isn't my beat anymore. I'll just do a posting on my view as a football fan shortly, maybe.... For the moment, we'll get back to matters closer to my heart at this present time.... Like cycling...

Then, after quite a clean Olympics then shit began to hit the fan again in cycling as Stefan Schumacher banged home the final nail in the Gerolsteiner team's coffin when he tested positive for blood doping before and during the Tour de France... Yup, here we go again...again and again... As was reported here.

That comes after the Tour organisers ASO, called for a second string of dope tests for Cera, the third generation EPO that got Ricardo Ricco and Leo Piepoli busted while on a dominant show during the Tour, that had me so pissed, I stopped following the race...

Just as a show of support for the fight against doping, I did get my simple project as the South East Asian delegate of the International Association of Cycling Journalists (AIJC) started this year.

I got the organisers of the Jelajah Malaysia to carry a public service message at the start and finish lines of all stages of the race this year. It read "Say no to doping. Keep Asian Cycling Clean." It wasn't much but I don't think any race in Europe or anywhere else in the world have carried any message like that. At least it was an effort to inform cyclists that we know of the threat of cheating and we don't want it to creep into Asia. We'll carry on doing it, although we do know that the cheats have a head start and everybody else in trailing well behind.

Anyway, to those who are still enjoying yhe break, Selamat Hari Raya again... Preparing myself to get back to the mad world.

SELAMAT HARI RAYA

To everybody on Earth,

Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri. Maaf zahir dan batin.

Now, didn't I say Fabio Duarte!!

Ha! Ha! Ha! There you go. And you read it here first, not in cyclingnews.com, Reuters or AFP.. I told you so here. I told you Fabio Duarte would be the one to win the UCI Under-23 World Championships road race and it happened, just as the script had it, although he might have got a little scare from the little Italian and German.
Duarte is the first ever Colombian winner of the title. Our Anuar Manan held on for one and half laps, Fauzan Ahmad Lutfi for six. Out of three years of participations, Malaysia has only had one finisher in the Under-23 World Championships - a self-funded Ng Yong Li, riding alone in 2006, finishing 122nd out of 156 finishers.
But you've gotta start thinking, and thinking how far behind we are. Duarte is 22 and has been a pro since he was 19. The closest we went was Yong Li breaking into the European scene as a 19-year old in 2005 and turning pro at 21 last year.
Sure it is far too difficult for the faint hearted, but Malaysian losers have given up long before they even got started. So, it is up to the individuals, the private ventures, the real fighters to carry on and look at how we're going to make a breakthrough.
The breakthroughs that are happening on the local front, at least as far a the administrators and 'caretakers' of the sport are concerned, was a meeting to discuss and decide which coach is to handle the national road team, held this afternoon. That, after almost nine months of the national squad having noone in charge. Phew!!
I believe these meetings and more meetings, which follow and come after other meetings, are all they are up to. Well yes, they think they've got enough political ammo in the track sprints squad's thus far successful programme.
Come on. Wake up MNCF and NSC. The world is leaving us behind!!!

UPDATE!! Full results and brief report is up on cyclingnews.com

59/60... So, do we dream on, or do something about it?

Fauzan Ahmad Lutfi arrived in Varese on Saturday, only to find his aero-bar had gone missing. Well, it was a clip-on aero-bar, which was to a fixed onto his road bike for the individual time trial.

Not that he didn't have a time trial bike. He couldn't bring it as the duo for the Under-23 World Championships were travelling on a tight budget, as their trip had been funded out of Datuk Astaman Abdul Aziz's own pocket, not the NSC's taxpayers funds. So, they had to save money on excess baggage, leaving Fauzan with the only option of bringing just enough to make do.

Questions had been asked by silly people with silly minds about the validity of sending a squad to the World Championships when we have little chance of producing results. Now, those people should feel somewhat appeased by the fact that their predictions have come true. Fauzan finished 59th out of 60 finishers in the 33.5km individual time trial on Tuesday.

I think many people had been interested in the World Championships and were watching it live on Eurosport, judging from about 45 sms messages I got, mostly telling me: "Mana Fauzan? Batang hidung pun tak nampak." (Where is Fauzan? Didn't even have a glimpse of him.)

Some others said, "Of course lah, this is the World Championships, not Selangor Menteri Besar Cup." Well, of course, it is the World Championships.

Now, the question is, do we celebrate the fact that as expected our rider failed, or do we look at this more seriously? We've had enough of riders claiming pride from winning local races, races contested only by us. Some breakthroughs have been made. Our road boys are beginning to make waves on the international scene in the UCI Asia Tour races. Look at Anuar Manan and the Le Tua team. They fear nothing and always aim higher.

Look at Ng Yong Li, Loh Sea Keong and Firdaus Daud. They were brave enough to grab destiny by its horns and make their own moves to establish careers abroad. They've succeeded with what little support they had, when some people back home were eager to state that these riders had little hope of succeeding and weren't good enough to cut it.

We Malaysians always put down each other. And many of us often get sucked down that same road. Of course it is difficult. Ask Yong Li what pains he had to go through in his formative years in Spain and Portugal, then France. Ask Sea Keong how much his parents had to suffer to get him through and on the road to chasing down his dream, same goes for Firdaus.

It is a mammoth task, so fearsome that many are even afraid to get started. If that is the case, then why even bother having road cycling programmes in the country. Just focus on the five or six track riders at the Melbourne base.

But this is not the end. People are starting to realise that programmes under and run solely by the NSC and MNCF are usually doomed for failure, unless you have an angle like John Beasley falling out of the sky and onto your laps to save the track sprints programme. All the NSC have to do then, is fund it.

For me, as I've told MNCF deputy president Datuk Naim Mohamad in a pow-wow between him and the "Terrible Two" of Malaysian cycling, Berita Harian's Zairee Zahir and myself, over supper on Saturday night, we should look at options.

The national team at World Championships for road or track, should be made up of the best riders who qualified through rankings, not a 100% monopoly by the NSC programme, because history has it that this is too risky for the safety of the future of Malaysian cycling.

The doors should be open for private programmes to be recognised. Trade teams can be registered both for road and track events, and points gathered for nations rankings towards qualification for the big two meets. If a privately run programme can field another 12 riders at World Cup events to complement the national team's entries, why not? At the end of the day, points and returns are for the country.

I guess private companies would also be more interested if they see an opportunity to fund riders all the way to World Championships. That's wishful thinking for the moment, but I do think I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

So, for the road squad, I think since there are three establishments capable of racing on the international stage - Le Tua, MCF and the national team - there should be a programme established from now on.

What better target annually than the World Championships? Of course, Le Tour de Langkawi is there, so is Jelajah Malaysia. But those are in the early part of the season, while World Championships are usually in September or October. If the track squad can be set World Championships targets, why not the road squad. We've already qualified for three successive Under-23 World Championships, and we can use the UCI Asia Tour tickets to qualify for the elite category Worlds. That is a start, before we look at winning. But why do we fear even starting? Because we have weak people deciding our fate.

Come on, look at the startlist for the Elite Road World Championships road race. Japan have qualified Yukiya Arashiro, Kazuo Inoue and Hidenori Nodera.. On Yong Li's day, on any given mountain, Arashiro wouldn't even be fit to share his powerbar! Well, okay, this past season Yong Li was busy being Arashiro's Meitan-Hompo team domestique in France. So he didn't have time to look at qualifying for the World Championships. Isn't it MNCF's job to look into how he can qualify and lead him to it?

What about the over 200 other road riders in the country? Do they have a future? Can they have dreams of even rubbing shoulders with those at the top someday? Not at the moment. Because according to most in MNCF and NSC, they are never ready, they are never prepared and they are never good enough. Not even if they've earned the right through qualification!!

It always "takes time", "you can't expect instant results"... etc... Well, I started covering cycling almost nine years ago. I'm still waiting for them to overcome the long wait.