Author Archives: Marv

About Marv

A avid but amateur cyclist who regularly commutes to work, rides for exercise and completes the occasional long distance event. I also write a very poor blog marvmadethis.com about the joys of work/life/cycling balance with his long suffering wife and 2 little angels under the age of 5.

And suddenly the world seems like a safer and saner place….

Dear Rouleurs,

MMT’s Blog has rarely strayed into political commentary, but after being glued to ABC and SBS’s coverage of the American election in early November, its time the gloves came off. Donald ‘Dump’ Trump was finally visited by the karma fairy. All the lying, cheating and no doubt soon to be revealed stealing has caught up with him and his cronies.

Finally, sanity prevails….thank you America’s voters.

Trump’s reaction of hiding in the White and sulking is a fitting footnote to his presidency. The American people living in the states of Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, who voted for the Biden-Harris ticket, take a bow. You’ve restored America’s international standing and made the world just that little bit better. Thank you.

MMT is going to have this put on a t-shirt….

Aside from die-hard Trump supporters, the most aggrieved group in American society, who will dearly miss Trump, are cartoonists. Once Trump is dragged by the Secret Service out of the Oval Office, what will they have as inspiration? So while this blog is openly disparaging of Trump and his lackeys, it offers its condolences to cartoonists world wide.

The following is smattering of cartoons that have caught MMT’s eye over the last couple of weeks

No doubt history will say that Donald Trump’s presidency was one of the greatest periods of time for political cartoonists.

Anyhoooo, that will MMT’s last foray into political commentary for this year, cycling is much more interesting.

Until next keep safe, ride safe and Make American Great Again

MMT

Reasons to be cheerful in Melbourne…Take 2

Dear Rouleurs,

MMT has been floating around on cloud nine since last Saturday. Two near miraculous events occurred. The first, back to back premierships for MMT’s favourite AFL team, the rampaging Richmond Tigers. The second Jai Hindley took and briefly held the Maglia Rosa in the 2020 Giro d’Italia.

MMT will focus Giro result first. Eventually, Hindley finished second overall. Geoghegan-Hart from Team INEOS took 40 seconds off Hindley on the final stage’s time trial to cliche the title. The result was the best ever result for an Australian, surpassing Cadel Evan‘s third back in 2013. All the more remarkable, as it was the a 24-year-old’s third Grand Tour start and he had been riding as a domestique for team-mate Wilco Kelderman, in the midst of a pandemic. So to honour Jai Hindley, here’s a picture of the man himself, dressed up in Pink.

Here’s the man of the moment…Jai Hindley.

Before MMT moves on he should also point to the astonishing performances of two other Australians at the Giro, Rohan Dennis (INEOS Grenadiers) and Ben O’Connor (NTT Pro Cycling). Rohan Dennis practically towed Tao Geoghegan-Hart through the mountain stages of the last week and set up the Brit’s Giro victory. Ben O’Connor an unheralded West Australian, won the mountain stage 17. A big chapeau!! to both rouleurs.

Now the other reason, Richmond’s win in the 2020 Grand Final, was all the more surprising given the Geelong Cat’s 3 goal advantage in the second quarter. MMT had gave up that point and turned the telly off. MMT has been repremanded a number of times by team management (aka his wife) for loud and ‘blue’ language that might wake the team’s junior members.

Opps this photo may have been ‘acquired’ from somewhere else ๐Ÿ˜‰

So near 3/4 quarter time, MMT looks at the AFL app on this mobile phone and discovers, much to his disbelief, that the Tigers are now 2 points up…WTF…you beauty. Of course, the man of the moment was Dustin Martin, who kicked 4 goals on his way to a 3rd Norm Smith medal. In years to come the pundits will talk about how good this guy is. And to think the Tiges very nearly traded him to the Giants back in 2016. MMT thinks the Tiges dodged a bullet. Martin may be the million dollar man at Richmond, but few would argue that he’s not worth it.

Anyhooo…MMTis getting all misty eyed about the Tiges and its good time to sign off. One more thing….MMT has completed 9,000km in year for the first time…woo hoo ๐Ÿ˜‰

Until next time, keep safe, ride safe and go Tiges,

MMT

Reasons to be cheerful in Melbourne…at last

Dear Rouleurs,

Whilst winter has been utterly dreary with no trips to the MCG and in last 2 months serious restrictions on movement, both due to stage 4 lock down, Team MMT’s mood has significantly improved. October has brought warmer weather and daylight savings has kicked in producing pleasant evenings to boot. But its two major events that have occurred this week that that has put a literal spring in MMT’s step.

The first occurred on Friday night, with MMT’s beloved Tigers went toe to toe with a hostile Port Adelaide on their home ground in front of a full house of Port supporters and …won…unf#%kbelievable. Even if the Cats roll the Tiges next Saturday, that game and the mental strength it took to win will be long remembered by Tiges fans everwhere. So here is it the MMT appropriated AFL graphic of the path to the Finals.

Its been a very weird year…period but this result is bewildering. Both Grand Finalists have:

=>been playing away from home for over 100 days in their respective hubs.

=>lost their initial Qualifying Final.

=>beaten the hometown team on their own ground in front of their supporters.

That is very odd, even in a year when lots of bad and odd things have been occurring. Which brings MMT to the other wonderful event of this week, today’s easing of Stage 4 Restrictions, in particular the one that was starting to drive MMT a bit nuts, the 5km radius restriction. MMT wrote about this a while back and has done some where upwards of 500km in his 5km radius.

So when this changed from this….

MMT’s Tour de 5km Radius. When daily exercise was set at 1 hour this meant tooling around Albert Park Lake. When this was lifted to 2 hours it meant he could ride to Williamstown. Alas MMT is yet to fugure out how to ride his beloved Trek Domane on water.

To this…

Hallelujah!!! MMT can ride to Mordialloc, Altona and Meadow Heights again with no daytime exercise time restrictions…woo hoo. I’m so looking forward to a cruise to Blackrock tomorrow.

Damn, normal road cycling has resumed in Melbourne for MMT. Unfortunately the same can not be said for cycling in European where COVID-19 is rampaging in devastating second wave. In seems unlikley that the Giro d’Italia 2020 will finish in Milan, and the classics have taken hit with both the Paris-Roubaix and Amstel Gold being cancelled. Let’s hope a vaccine is close to being released to the world’s population. This year has just been awful.

Until next time, ride safe and Go Tiges

MMT

And we are back………TDF 2020 – a.k.a the Tasmanian Edition

Dear Rouleurs,

MMT’s life is not his own at the moment. The combination of Stage 4 lockdown, ridiculous bollcks in his remote working life and 2 small kids, has just started wear thin. Whilst MMT can ride a bit further in his 5 km radius, care of stage 4 exercise time being increased to 2 hours, he’s thoroughly sick of his usual routes in the Tour de 5km Radius. About the only respite to this enervating scenario has been this year’s wonderful edition of the Tour De France, his beloved Tigers coming good at the end of the most peculiar season in AFL history and regular Zwifting on the pseudo France and Paris parcours.

So to the Tour De France 2020, all MMT can say is Tadej Pogaฤar is Poga-star. A bad pun, but seriously his performance this year has been nothing short of astonishing. The Tadej Pogacar/Primoz Roglic time trial shoot out on stage 20 was incredible. It was most riveting time trial since the Benard Hinault/Greg Le Monde in TDF 1986. It just goes to show that someone can win the TDF, without a ‘skytrain’, 60 million Euro worth of funding and superstar domestique backup in the mountains. Take a bow, Tadej.

Speakin of bows, Richie Porte and Caleb Ewan, as the only Australian’s competing this year, what superb performances. Porte’s 3rd at the age of 35 is a testement to perservence. I’m sure his newly born daughter Eloise will forgive him, in the years to come, for not being there. Richie we love you because your a Tasmanian….

Ewan’s performance to win 2 stages in middle of the Bennett/Sagan malliot verte shootout was a excellent result. However, for MMT to see the guy haul his ass over ridiculously sprinter unfriendly mountain ranges and avoid the broom wagon, was the personificaiton of mental toughness.

So just to show how close the top 3 finishers were, MMT has liberated this wonderful infographic from Cycling News. No doubt the threating letter from their lawyers will be on its way soon.

Whats’ interesting about this graph is shows clearly, Poga-star recovered time lost in the cross winds on Stage 7 and in the time trial. Arguably if Porte’s Trek-Segafredo team hadn’t been asleep that day, he may have finished second. The graph also shows how little advantage Roglic gained in the mountain stages despite having all-star support from team mates Tony Martin on the flats and Tom Dumoulin in the mountains.

Oh yeah, one more thing…Team Ineos more like Team Invisible ๐Ÿ™‚ except for stage 18. S

Well that’s all for now, until next time, ride safe, stay safe.

Marv