Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Greatness is Elusive

So have you seen The Greatest Fixie Video Ever yet?  Sure, of course you have.  But you know you want to watch it again:



I first learned of this video from Stevil Kinevil of All Hail the Black Market, and since then it has gone "viral," infecting even the Today Show--because Americans love nothing more than laughing at cyclists:



The above video is via the rider's own Instagram, and as you can see in the accompanying commentary he's already apologized for his "unsportsmanlike conduct"--an apology I'd argue is completely unnecessary since the entertainment value far exceeds the value of his plastic bicycle.  (Or, more accurately, his "homie Sergio's" plastic bicycle.)  After all, it's been years since the "Joey's OK" video:



And since then we've been subsisting on a thin gruel of triathlete fails and roller mishaps:


As for the backstory behind this latest video, from what I can gather, the rider threw his bike because he had just crashed out of the qualifier for the Red Hook Crit in Milan.  Here's how one of his bros describes it:

Here is the full video for those who asked. @jeremysantucci got touched and broke his bike after he survived to a terrible crash, not his fault, in which he risked seriously his life. For the records the bike was already damaged. #thewonderfulsocks #jeremysantucci #cyclinglife #cycling #fixie #redhook #jeremyishuman

Right, so basically your #garden #variety #temper #tantrum.

But I wasn't satisfied with the trite outburst/apology cycle and concominant #blizzard of #hashtags that has become all too familiar in the Internet age.  I also wanted to know more about the rider himself, and by extension this new breed of globetrotting fixie crit racers.  Well, as his "Blue Steel" Twitter profile pic suggests:

When not riding a bike he's a model:



And sometimes even an underpants model:


What's more, this clearly isn't the first time he's taken his anger out on the tools of his trade, and here he is flagrantly tearing his clothing to pieces:


("They're my homie Sergio's, he's like family, so he was nice enough to lend me these beautiful boxer shorts...")

Presumably he stumbled on the runway and his temper got the better of him.

Yes, Santucci is possessed of both smoldering good looks and smoldering rage--though the bike throw seen 'round the world was a long time in the making, for this isn't the first time he crashed out of a Red Hook Crit qualifier:

Jeremy Santucci, 35, was one such rider who didn’t make it to the finals this year — though he probably should have. With three laps to go in a strong qualifying race, Santucci found himself sitting comfortably in sixth position when the rider in front of him crashed. Santucci went down with him, taking a pedal to the face and then getting hit from behind. His Cinelli Mash frame was destroyed and he was suddenly out — but he’ll be back. “The Red Hook Crit is the wildest, most adrenaline-filled race you could ever be involved in,” the New York City–based cyclist says. “You have the fastest track racers from around the world coming to battle it out on an F-1 course without any brakes. We’re all just a bunch of adrenaline junkies who want to go fast.”

I learned two things from the above.  First, never, ever lend Jeremy Santucci your bike.  Second, and far more profound, it must be incredibly frustrating to command the lens as a model yet eternally be chasing the elusive wheel of fixed-gear greatness.  It just goes to show that cycling is the great equalizer, a realm in which the unemployed couch-surfer can drop the filthy rich hedge fund manager, and the wily old Fred or Frederica on the steel bicycle can outwit the millennial on the plastic superbike.  Indeed, the dues we've paid elsewhere are non-transferrable to cycling, and we all start with an account balance of zero.  I mean sure, Santucci was winning races this past summer...but they were Cat 5 races:


I'm no great fan of USA Cycling, but there's something to be said about learning the fundamentals of bike racing before targeting a race that takes the criterium concept to its limits.

Then again, he's easily now the world's most famous Cat 5, whereas back in the last century I was merely the world's pastiest Cat 5:


(Oy.)

Ah yes, those were the days...quill stems and square tapers, razor nicks on my weak and pallid legs, and my very first taste of sweet, sweet crabon with that fork.

I was far more humble, but perhaps I had reason.  Maybe it was because there was barely an Internet on which to brag...or maybe it's because I didn't exactly have what it took to become an underpants model:


Oh please, don't pretend you didn't notice.

Speaking of bike racing, the UCI may have to shorten the World Championship road race in Qatar due to "extreme heat:"


Heat is going to be a big issue at this year’s UCI Road World Championships, with temperatures expected to near 40 Celsius despite the later date. With this in mind, the UCI has taken some measures to ensure the safety of the riders and staff, including daily temperature checks and a ‘beat the heat’ booklet.

Daily temperature checks?  Booklets???  What about FAN HATS?!?



On the UCI website, the governing body explained that a group of four experts - Dr. Anton Zasada, Dr. Olaf Schumacher, Dr. Sébastien Racinais and Dr. Juan Manuel Alonso – will give daily assessments of the weather forecast and convene before each road race. Further checks, using ‘thermal stress indicators’, will be done by two UCI representatives. Decisions will then be made on the basis of these tests and consultation with Athlete’s commission president Bobbie Traksel and President of the Commissaires’ Panel Ingo Rees.

Presumably those "thermal stress indicators" will be applied directly to the scranus as crotchal conditions are by far the most important dataset in terms of performance:




And here's the booklet [warning: PDF]:



Which contains diagrams telling you stuff you already know, like the sun makes you hot:
And no, I wasn't kidding about those thermal stress indicators on the scranus, because check out where the thermometer's pointing:
Still, I would have taken a different editorial direction with the pamphlet, such as this:


Or this:


Or even this:


It's fun for the whole team!
Just fill it out, send it in, and you'll be transcending those pesky physical limitations in no time.

If only this triathlete had had a TUE for ChapStick:



"Superbowl of Ironman," really?

That's the Superbowl of dumb analogies.

60 comments:

Chazu said...

I doped to get here.

Unknown said...

STRATEGY
180. The technophiles are taking us all on an utterly reckless ride into the unknown. Many people understand something of what technological progress is doing to us yet take a passive attitude toward it because they think it is inevitable. But we (FC) don’t think it is inevitable. We think it can be stopped, and we will give here some indications of how to go about stopping it.

Mike O. said...

It ain't the heat it's the humidity.

Anonymous said...

Bronze. Get the chapstick over here.

Unknown said...

Top ten with lots o' underwear pics.

Doctor Feel Good said...

Almost podium but I needed Chapstick..

Sax Huret said...

RE: That Men's Journal article - Nothing turns me off about race coverage like press trying to titillate people with the specter of crashes in a race. It's a cost of doing business (and one that could probably be considerably lessened in swathes of road bike racing), not a reason to come out to an event, and it's definitely not something to dedicate material amounts of airtime to (looking at you, NBCSN / NBC).

dnk said...

Homie homing it up homestyle!

wishiwasmerckx said...

Can you say roid rage?

Jeremy Santucci can!

Anonymous said...

Interesting to conceive bike racing as a great equalizer. I've always seen it as a proxy measure of income and free time.

Serial Retrogrouch said...

...onz

dop said...

It's actually the Monster Truck Pull of triathlons.

101 in the Scrantus said...

"Hot as Balls" Our babe Babble can relate.

leroy said...

Well this explains my dog's performance last night.

He gave out lyrics for a sing along, but I didn't recognize the tune until he fired up the karaoke machine.

Now I have this stuck in my head.

Chorus: "Sur-gee-oh .... Sorry 'bout my sick bike thro-oh."

Lead: "What the fock Bro-oh."

Chorus "Golly shucks."

***

Chorus: "Sur-gee-oh ... Can we still be homies tho-oh?"

Lead: "I don't know Bro-oh"

Chorus: "Gosh that sucks."

Bryan said...

I'm sure Santucci just stuck a roll of socks down there. What else do you expect from such a bro?

His Eyes have Seen the Glory said...

"he risked seriously his life" Such is the breed of male homo sapiens that goes forth into Brooklyn bars, coffee shops, Whole Foods, Co-op, etc. Top O' the food chain.

Legs Whiter than Snow said...

Those legs, whiter than the legs on a Col. Sander's chicken.

Freddy Murcks said...

Try athlete, Matt Smith, it trying to be a good sport. It's try-athlon that is stupid.

Serial Retrogrouch said...

...can't believe Santucci beat Uber Uribe for the silver in that race.

Anonymous said...

I live in Boston and have never posted here before, but something happened today that really upset me. I bike everywhere, every day here; drivers are hyper aggressive here, and I say this having lived in New York for a decade, which isn't much better (if better at all). This morning, along my daily commuting route, I biked by a terrible scene of a body lying on the street under a white, bloodied sheet between two large trucks. I assumed it was a cyclist, but didn't know for sure until a coworker sent me the following article:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/10/05/bicyclist-killed-porter-square-collision/3ZMAxyN0Uo62WVkE8mt74M/story.html

Besides the horrible tragedy of the cyclist's death, this excerpt about a cyclist interviewed at the scene sticks out:

“I realized it wasn’t construction” that was causing heavy traffic in Porter Square, he said, still wearing his helmet. [emphasis mine]

There is no prior or subsequent discussion of helmets or any other such gear in this article, so it seems like it's out of nowhere. It stoked the anger I'm feeling today, so I just wanted to post here among people that might understand my frustration. The author found a way to stick bizarre helmet obsession anywhere they could in this sad, sad news report.

I want to scream. I am tired of the deadly consequences of lazy bike infrastructure of our cities and the nasty attitudes the public at large seems to hold towards cyclists. I know that for people reading this site, what I just said is old news, but I feel like I need to vent it anyway.

ubercurmudgeon said...

Come on, that wasn't Blue Steel he was doing in that profile pic, it was clearly Le Tigre. It is impossible to do Blue Steel when you're smuggling budgies like he was doing.

Fred Fredriksen said...

It's hard to follow Anon. 12:36, very sad indeed.
Anyway, my wife watches a show called "The Bachelor" where bro's & skanky attention whore chicks hook up with each other in front of cameras. Something tells me that duder who smashed his homie's bike will soon be on that show. Next, you see these freaks on magazines at the grocery store checkout line and wonder who the hell they are. If that bro is willing to post video of himself and hope it goes "viral," you can be sure the producers will take note. They like beautiful people with volatile tempers.
On a side not, I would hate to have to carry that much genitalia around.

leroy said...

Anon 12:36 -- It's okay to vent. That it's the same wound, inflicted over and over, doesn't make it any less horrible. It makes it worse.

Anonymous said...

Anon 12:36, Cycling appeals to me because it satisfies an instinctive, primitive desire to travel over and through the landscape under my own power. That is the way humans travelled (via their own two legs, sans bicycle) for millennia. I believe it is part of our evolution and is hard-coded in our DNA.

Automobiles satisfy this instinct for most North Americans now. Crank the tunes, step on the gas, and you're a bad-ass, enjoying the sensation of traveling through and over the landscape, but not under your own power. This is a short-circuit of our evolutionary instincts, of our DNA.

We all need to move and travel, but now we are segregated into tribes. Motorists, Cyclists, Runners.

I started road cycling before the advent of 'smart phones.' With the ubiquity of smart phones and distracted driving (not to mention the subsequent births of my children) I ride much less now. In fact, I run more than I ride.

Running isn't as practical as cycling. But it does satisfy my instinctive need to travel under my own power, and it has significantly reduced the risk of death by automobile.

McFly said...

I had a severe scranus situation at the 80 mile marker of a century once. Came across a little mom-n-pop store....all they had in the medical dept was cherry chapstick.

Do the math.

bad boy of the north said...

anon@@1236p..that is sad news.

William Carlos Williams said...

Thighs? White legs? They can't hold a candle to my wife Flossie.

Your Thighs are Appletrees Whose Blossoms Touch The Sky.

Mike in Dallas said...

anon@@1236pm. Vent away. I do ask myself (not you) in these situations, "What makes me so special that I get a 100% sure safe travel on any road?" That isn't reality and it isn't historically valid either. Bicycle commuting as Snobby pointed out in his 3rd book, is a SPIRITUALLY stimulating endeavor BECAUSE of the danger. That all said, we fight for more equality for cyclists and pedestrians. And we grow spiritually through our chosen mode: Look at yourself and the examination of death, of the dehumanizing aspect of infrastructure, machines, and car centrist culture. Motorists rarely get beyond the anger of commuting to get to the spiritual questions of life...

CommieCanuck said...

Stupid analogy, Kona is the Cadillac Escalade of endurance events, and Cadillac Escalades are the Tour de France of SUVs, and SUVs are the Superbowl of killing cyclists.
Funny how the cycling industry has been selling us massively overpriced frames for the last ten years that shatter like Waterford Crystal*.
The Chapstick story is only half the story, he took it from his wife after she rolled it in cocaine than he shoved it up his ass. He didn't need to do that, he could have just developed, "asthma" like everyone else in the UCI Protour.
Cipollini's TUE goes on for 22 pages, but that's all STD meds.

JULI ASNG


*Waterford Crystal Triathlon frames, patent pending, so fuck off.

recumbent conspiracy theorist said...

I'd much rather look at recumbabe than some male model.

djconnel said...

My thought exactly

Very Slim Pickens said...

That sack, I mean if you can publish that you sure as hell can publish Re-Cum-Babe.

CommieCanuck said...

How about the inverted recumbabe?.

Amost a Carlos Danger Photo said...

Snob ass photo. Groucho Marx used to order Sea Bass at this restaurant he went to all the time. One day, before Groucho could speak, the waiter said "I know, Sea Bass" to which Groucho said "Sea Bass, why you've never seen bass until you've seen moma's bass in the morning".

Turkey with a side of Poutine said...

CC Said "Cadillac Escalades are the Tour de France of SUVs" Ford has an Expedition Model "Platinum" edition SUV, thing is bigger than Moby Dick.

Hey CC, Canadian Thanksgiving is just a couple of days away. Large supply of Cranberry Sauce laid in?

1904 Cadardi said...

Mr. Triathlete Chapstick guy lives in Denver, and despite the appearances that Denver might be a somewhat outdoorsy athletic type of town where people are familiar with the meaning of words like "World Championship", Denver is also first and foremost a city ruled by the Denver Broncos American Style Football Playing Association Club and all other sports, competitions, events and recreational activities must be compared to the Denver Broncos American Style Football Playing Association Club.

On the plus side, the roads, ski slopes, trails and retail establishments are empty from kickoff till close whenever the Denver Broncos American Style Football Playing Association Club is playing which makes for good riding/skiing/hiking/mountain biking/shopping.

Dooth said...

Reading this post and comments made me just tear off my clothes.

Fred Mercury said...

Bike throwing bro was lucky he didn't get busted for smuggling plums back from Milan.

Lieutenant Oblivious said...

So if there is a Red Hook Crit in Milan, can Brooklyn get its own L'Eroica? Brooklyn has no Strada Bianca,, but ass we know from Snob's Citibike travelogues, it does have a lot to offer.

Anonymous said...

Anon 12:36: good point and well put. That person under the sheet could have been anyone of us and chances are someday will be. Scary thought. Regardless of the improvements in infrastructure, people are the problem. Our careless and selfish behavior can have awful consequences. We need to be more careful and definitely more thoughtful of our fellow travelers.

JLRB said...

I think that Bro will star in a remake of Breaking Away

spokey said...

that does it

used to love cherry chapstick

of course mcfly would ruin everything for me as usual

McFly said...

IT DOES NOT GO ON SMOOTH AND CREAMY LIKE

Anonymous said...

Back to your best WRM! Your form bodes well for the Worlds.

Anonymous said...

Best Mad Lib ever.

tacheman said...

IRONMAN-soft lips, oxymoron?

bad boy of the north said...

Leroy,speaking of Groucho...who was that Doo ragged bedecked singer in the link?

Blaue Reiter said...

Nice post and sad comments, here... When Chicago was tapped by Bicycling, RTMS warned that it was a curse, and sure enough we've had one of the most lethal years in a while. Large trucks playing a conspicuous role in many cases, and helment furor omnipresent. Streetsblog sez that with gas prices down, blah blah blah: I'm just glad there are a bunch of like-minded folks to commune with while dealing.

(Thanks for the platform, Snob!)

ken e. said...

kid creole (and the coconuts), also as they say, "super classic!". which could be words that refer to tantrum boy, but context is everything. ride safe people.

Purplius said...

Isn't the "enhanced package style" the prerogative of bullfighters? And with that temper, maybe Santucci has a future in that arena after his modeling and racing days are over.

Old timer said...

Huh? What?

Anonymous said...

oh well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QapmUU2d44U

Mark said...

ewehh #erg

bad boy of the north said...

alright,you people along the atlantic coast.while you ride,don't get blown away or washed away by our uninvited visitor,matthew.

STG said...

Bike throw bro. When you love getting attention more than your (friends) bike, you probably love being in the spot light more than you love racing. You're in the sport for the wrong reasons. I race with plenty of dudes in the local P123 who also race RHC and they are humble.

However maybe the same can be said of the Red Hook Crit in general. It's a spectacle - some guys love racing it, but honestly the actual racing just looks like a normal criterium, until there's a crash. Then the spectators get the payoff. They don't come for the racing.

dop said...

And he yelled to his wife, "Just the chapstick, no kneepads".

Rocky Mountain Oysters said...

The size of that sack, waiting for Babble to weigh it, err, I mean weigh in on it.

Ex-girlfriend said...

Jeremy's downtube was not compatable with my bottom bracket so I had to hand shift it.

badhabits said...

What a stupid post....looks like is more important for you dicks than bikes...ride you bike and shut up your mouth

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