Andy Schleck drives his RadioShack-Nissan team during the 2012 Mallorca Challenge (Getty)
Now that the dust has settled regarding the immediate cycling future of Alberto Contador, perhaps it's time to reflect on where Andy Schleck stands in all of this.
The International Cycling Union (UCI) has, by default, promoted the Luxembourger from runner-up to 2010 Tour de France champion status as a result of El Pistolero's fall from grace.
Schleck has conceded it's not the way he wants to remember a race in which he was beaten by his Spanish rival, who was subsequently rewarded by accepting the yellow jersey high above the cobbled sectors of the Champs Elysees in Paris.
Having your name etched in the history books as a Tour de France winner is one thing but standing on the podium in front of the glare of millions of worldwide viewers is another.
10 Feb 2012 13:27 AEST
From: Rosanna
Excellent suggestion. Furthermore I feel badly for Andy that he does not see it as a victory because it is; he covered the territory in the quickest time. Perhaps it is time that they put a fourth man up on the podium just in case someone there fails a test in the future.

Chickens. Hanging from the wall. Well, from the fence. Ten chooks, mostly sussex, destined for the pot. I was lucky this time, as Ross was over and took charge of the killing, Sadie the plucking, though I had the job of cleaning up. I’m not sure which job is worse. Though now the freezer is brimming with chicken meat, for only the second time in Puggle Farm’s existence. The chicken meat season has begun; all those eggs that hatched in spring and summer are now close to harvest. By all those eggs, I mean those who hatched eggs more successfully than us. We got our cooking chooks from another grower this time.
Life marches on scarily in summer. We still have long days, though, as I type, it’s still before dawn and just before six. It’s a race to get things done. Water the vegies. Tick. Fill the wallows. Tick. Pick as many blackberries as possible, use the good weather to get lots of outside chores done. Go for a swim. Tick, tick, tick.
Plant the new, large, possibly improved vegie garden with winter crops? No tick yet. Part of it’s a former pig paddock, and one pig is acting a little too free-range for any garden’s good, and won’t leave the area. The ground has to be disked, mulched, sown. Water installed. Beds laid. But this girl refused to follow her 13 companions to their new home, and now watches warily from the hillside. Food, that great motivator, has yet to get her to pass through a gate. Patience runs thin with one difficult porker, but patience is paramount. In an hour I will try again.
The new pig paddocks are dotted with a range of homes, but the latest version of a shelter is one we saw for the first time on the internet, at the wonderful blog of www.milkwoodpermaculture.com.au. It’s made of bent concrete reinforcing wire fashioned to hold hay bales as walls. We have a LOT of hay, so this looked like the design for us. Our method is slightly different, but the idea is to use hay to create an insulated home, one that is too heavy for the pigs to push over, and be able to reuse the wire and discard the hay every few months. A mobile shelter with some indestructible parts.
Court sketch rendition of the Twitter logo courtesy of Shawn Campbell, Flickr, on a Creative Commons licence. (Shawn Campbell, Flickr.com)
In a fitting follow-on from last month's Margaret Court blog, a new court has entered the Twitter fray and it's the most serious court of them all.
@UKSupremeCourt has just been launched - and it's so far nailed the tone of the microblogging Mecca.
Tweeting FROM court is no longer new - it's been around since December last year in the UK.
In the US, a Massachusetts court encourages it, and a tweet about bad coffee has already got an inmate off death row.
Alberto Contador (Getty)
Like many in the cycling world Philip Gomes remains puzzled by the entire Alberto Contador debacle.
Anyone who is found by a tribunal in a matter in which he was found to be a cheat, is a cheat. So goes the statement by World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) supremo John Fahey in response to the finding by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) that Alberto Contador did indeed have a banned substance in his system in late July 2010.
But of course the word "cheat", used by Fahey, flies in the face of the actual judgement issued by the CAS, which determined that Contador did not cheat but was the victim of an accidental ingestion of a banned substance.
In the Panel’s opinion, on the basis of the evidence adduced, the presence of Clenbuterol was more likely caused by the ingestion of a contaminated food supplement.
10 Feb 2012 12:19 AEST
From: Adelaide
10 Feb 2012 11:26 AEST
From: Darlinghurst
Does it matter if it was intentional or not? 1. He acknowledged it was in his system. 2. He most likely got some advantage from it, albeit unmeasurable. Should there be an approach in this unique situation where he has all the relevant titles and prize money stripped yet is not banned from racing - a good compromise? And I agree with LDC's comments about not trusting riders becasue we have been schooled on a generation of ridrs who have lied, only to admit doping when retired.
The Reserve Bank’s decision to keep interest rates on hold might give the impression that the big banks have been let off the hook.
Just a few months ago ANZ went one step better, explaining the composition of its funding base, detailing how funding costs are rising. It almost seemed like it was preparing us for future out of cycle interest rate moves.
And despite NAB yesterday morning promising to keep its standard variable rate lower than its three major competitors for the rest of this year, experts were warning the banks wouldn’t pass on all of the RBA’s rate cut, if it went that way. Continue Reading "Why the banks may still lift rates"

I’m mad for Northern African and Middle Eastern flavours at the moment. Well, not really at the moment, for quite a while now. Ever since I was lucky enough to attend a five-day cooking school in Morocco. Well, even before that – I would hardly have travelled all the way to Morocco if I wasn’t pretty sure I liked the food. But that certainly sealed the deal. I loved the communal way of cooking (everybody’s dinner cooked in the basement fire of the local hammam (bath house)) and the delicate spices that became robust dishes and flavours.
So when we featured Egyptian cuisine for our At the Table feature this month, I knew I’d be cooking it for the blog. Call me daggy, but I’m a big fan of mince and always have a kilo or two in the freezer. Just in case. So I was pretty much set for the kobeba – beef and cracked wheat slice. I was intrigued by the fact that this dish is beef, with a beef stuffing – a case of “too much is never enough”?
It’s a simple dish and as I was cooking, I got into the mood by listening to Natacha Atlas – my favourite Arabian-fusion songstress (she was born in Belgium to parents of Moroccan, Egyptian, Palestinian and British background, speaks at least four languages, and has used all of them in the course of her career. Basically, awesome). Her version of Screamin' Jay Hawkins’ I Put a Spell on You is fabulous and as the kobeba went into the oven, I was shimmying with the best of them.
China and Russia vetoed a resolution on action against the Syrian regeime at the UN Security Council. (AAP)
Ambassador Susan Rice was unhappy when she walked out of the United
Nations Security Council meeting on Saturday.
The veto imposed by Russia and China to condemn the Syrian government’s crackdown on protests had irked her.
Ambassador Susan Rice was unhappy when she walked out of the United Nations Security Council meeting on Saturday. The veto imposed by Russia and China to condemn the Syrian government’s crackdown on protests had irked her.
“Let me begin by speaking directly to the Syrian people,” she told media after the vote. “The United States stands with you, the Syrian people, and we will not rest until you and your bravery achieve your basic, universal human rights, to which all human beings are entitled.
09 Feb 2012 22:17 AEST
From: coolangatta
inconsistent reporting
On Libya, the media was crawling over the country like ants when the rebels were taking over, but since then barely any coverage (even from Al-Jazeera), just stifled chatter from NGO's about sectarian conflict and extrajudicial killings which we are never told about. Are the post-conflict murders too unimportant to be reported, or are the media (and politicians) too embarrassed to admit they took sides in a conflict they didn't understand?
There is a way to avoid the incessant news and gossip surrounding federal investigations and high-profile doping cases. Simply go bush, writes Anthony Tan.
While the cycling world waited with bated breath over the decision to acquit or convict Alberto Contador, I realised, rather belatedly, there was a subset of us who simply didn’t care.
The weekend before last, I was immersed in the Apple Isle for the Pure Tasmania Wildside, a four-day mountain bike race held on the island’s rugged though beguilingly beautiful west coast.
Thanks to my now infamous profile (courtesy Mike Tomalaris) and my equally notorious Prussian Blue jacket (courtesy Paul Smith), I get asked a lot of questions. At Wildside it was no different – but with one exception: not a single competitor (and there were 469 of ‘em) asked me about Contador.
08 Feb 2012 14:55 AEST
From: 2E893
08 Feb 2012 11:22 AEST
From: Melbourne
Good on you Anthony. Good to know I'm not the only one who doesn't give a rats about the Contador story. Never has such a huge amount of ill informed drivel been written in the mainstream press by people who haven't slung their leg over a bike, or have any medical qualifications. Instant experts who last week were commentating on cricket are now filling the papers with "I told you so" stories.
Mel Gibson’s new movie is getting an innovative release in the US, a model
that will probably be replicated in Australia.
A few years ago the notion of a Mel Gibson movie bypassing cinemas in the US, instead premiering on a satellite broadcaster, would have seemed far-fetched, another sign that the superstar’s career had hit rock bottom.
Yet his latest film, Get the Gringo (formerly How I Spent My Summer Vacation) is launching in the US on DirecTV on May 1, potentially reaching nearly 20 million homes.
Rather than being regarded as another setback in the actor’s chequered career, the initiative is being hailed by some commentators as a bold move which could help create a new paradigm for releasing films in the US and, eventually, in markets including Australia.
Director Steve McQueen and actor Chiwetel Ejiofor take on the true story of Solomon Northup, and Russell Crowe has his pick of new projects.
There’s something irresistible about a cinematic partnership between a director and their favoured actor. The connection between the person behind the camera and the one in front of it can be electric, and the body of work that eventuates can be evocative and lasting. Think of Robert De Niro as the explicit side of Martin Scorsese’s psyche in the 1970s and 1980s (Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, The King of Comedy), or Anna Karina bringing new life to the screen as the muse for Jean-Luc Godard in the 1960s (The Little Soldier, A Woman is a Woman, Alphaville); these are exchanges between artists where every close-up is freighted with significance.
[ Watch interview with Anna Karina ]
It’s too soon to attribute the same worth to a current collaboration, that of English filmmaker Steve McQueen and the Irish actor Michael Fassbender, but their two films together – 2008’s Hunger (screening Wed, Feb 8 at 9:35pmon SBSTWO) and this month’s Shame – have both been major works with outstanding performances by the latter, firstly as the I.R.A. hunger striker Bobby Sands and then as a tormented New York sex addict. Now McQueen is preparing to shoot his third feature, and Fassbender will appear as one of the leads.
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