Sitting through an entire election story that features Tony Abbott in budgie smugglers or lycra is a task beyond the Broom Wagon. In fact, remove the bit after Abbott and the above sentence would still be true.

Another thing which is elusive is winning all three grand tours in the same year. Nobody has done it: not Eddy Merckx; not Jacques Anquetil; not even Gino Bartali, who rode on a cocktail of 28 espressos a day and eggs which he ate after smashing them on his handlebars.

The grand slam is one of cycling's holy grails – up there with convincing a podium girl to meet you after the race for an evening of red wine and awkward fumbling.

Last year Julian Dean was the only rider to even enter all three races, becoming one of a handful of men to do so since the early 1990s.

But Bjarne Riis is not a man to accept limits.

“Alberto’s ambition is to win all three major stage races in the same year, and I want to be part of it,” parped Riis on his brand new Saxo Bank-Sunguard trumpet, confirming that Contador would join the team for the next two years.

“It is not certain that it will be next year, but the ambition is to succeed in one of the next few years. I believe that it is feasible.”

Contador's brother Fran, who manages the three-time Tour winner, agreed with everything except the part about the ambition and it being feasible.

"I think this must have been a translation mistake," Fran told Spanish Eurosport on Wednesday. "To win the Giro, the Tour and the Vuelta in one year is quite simply impossible. We have always been clear: the Tour de France is the main objective."

Clear enough, then. If only another Contador was along to muddy things further.

"Of course it's a dream, but I don’t know if impossible," Alberto said via the miracle of auto-translate on his official website.

"I think you can ride the big three at a good level, but from there to win them there is much difference. You have to go little by little. I realise that it is practically impossible, though perhaps in the future ... it's a dream. Everyone has dreams and this is mine."

The Broom Wagon's dream is to follow one story involving Alberto Contador and his management and have the faintest idea who is speaking for who.

Deanied

Was grand tour hard man Julian Dean spear-tackled by a gendarme during this year's Tour de France? Oz Cycling's Dan Jones says yes.

Melbourne welcomes its UN overlords

Melbourne's new bike hire network has been accused of being several things. Useful only if you want to get from one end of Swanston Street to the other is one. Garishly blue is another.

However, until now the scheme to get more people cycling has not being exposed for what it really is.

This is because Melbourne does not have Dan Maes, the leading Republican candidate to become governor of Colorado.

Colorado's state capital, Denver, has launched its own cycle scheme. To the untrained eye it consists of 400 bikes at docking stations around the city centre. But to the eye that, like Maes, is endorsed by the Tea Party, it is a plot.

"This is all very well disguised, but it will be exposed," Maes told supporters at a campaign rally.

"This is bigger than it looks like on the surface, and it could threaten our personal freedoms."

Maes' theory is that Denver's B-cycle, and bike-friendly policies like it, are the work of the International Council for Local Environment Initiatives – a UN-linked organisation whose nefarious aim is to "support local government in the implementation of sustainable development at the local level".

"At first I thought: 'Gosh, public transportation, what's wrong with that, and what's wrong with people parking their cars and riding their bikes?'" Maes said.

"But if you do your homework and research, you realize ICLEI is part of a greater strategy to rein in American cities under a United Nations treaty."

A look at the ICLEI's website reveals that Adelaide, Sydney, Perth and Hobart are also among the organisation's global members, along with – yes – the City of Melbourne.

And if anything, Maes' Orwellian vision is even more chilling for Melburnians. At least in Denver, bike-loving citizens can surrender their personal freedom to the crushing jackboots of the state whenever they please.

In Melbourne, you have to bring your own helmet.

Dispatches from the Twitterverse

One day after keeping the lead at the Tour of Poland, @allandavis27 gets caught behind the dreaded Crash Witch.

At something called the Transplant Games, @ChristianVDV has a patriotic moment.

Poland and @Greghenderson1 are not getting on as well as their parents had hoped.

@albertocontador believes in 2011 – a great relief to those who think calendar years are like fairies and only exist if elite Spanish cyclists continue to believe in them.

Cervelo's Dominique Rollin wins a King of the Mountains prize only slightly smaller than Dominique Rollin.

Classic YouTube

Perhaps aiming for the demographic which hates music and bikes equally, the great Frank Zappa presents his symphony for bicycle* on the Steve Allen Show in 1963.



*or, as Zappa calls it, the BI-cycle