SBS Blogs

Hate Crime Murder on a busy New York Street.

Wed, 22 May 2013 11:14:49 +1000

Visitors to New York usually know Greenwich Village as a cute part of the city with crooked streets, tiny restaurants, quirky bars, expensive boutiques, and celebrity sightings. Yet, for those who live and frequent there, all of that is true but Greenwich Village has always cultivated a dark underbelly.

Last Friday night that underbelly rolled over to see a man shot in the head on a busy street by a passer-by for what should be no reason whatsoever.

According to police, Elliott Morales traveled to Greenwich Village from the Far Rockaways – a part of the city in the news recently for damage sustained dining Hurricane Sandy – on Friday night, his agenda so far unknown.

Yet it first came clear something was bugging the 33-year-old when he urinated in front of a bar, then walked inside and made anti-gay slurs at the bartender.

Morales pulled up his shirt to expose a gun and warned the restaurant staff not to call police about him.

“Don’t you know I’m wanted?” he allegedly said. “Do you know about the shooting in Sandy Hook? I’m a wanted man.”

He left the bar and walked with two friends a block east toward Sixth Avenue. There, he confronted 32-year-old Mark Carson and his friend. By all accounts, they were minding their own business.

What happened next was swift and horrifyingly brutal.

“Look at these faggots,” Morales, or one of his friends, said. “What are you, gay wrestlers?”

Morales and his group trailed Carson and his friend.

“Is he your boy?” Morales asked Carson, pointing at his best friend of 15 years.

When Carson responded with a “Yes”, Morales shot him dead in the head.

Bang.

Just like that.

Cops caught Morales just a few blocks away. He apparently confessed everything.

It took time to officially identify him because he was carrying another person’s ID and police had to use facial recognition technology.

Records show Morales had previously served 11 years in jail for robbery and police later found an assault weapon at the home he was staying in at Far Rockaway.

“It is clear that the victim here was killed only because and just because he was thought to be gay,” Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said on Saturday.

The murder is the 22nd reported anti-gay attack in the city so far this year, according to police figures. Anti-gay attacks are up an alarming 77 percent from 13 such assaults during the same period last year.

The attack occurred just blocks away from the Stonewall Tavern, an iconic bar that serves as a landmark for civil rights in New York.

This year may also see Christine Quinn elected as the city’s first openly gay mayor.

But in-between all that Mark Carson, gay and proud, is now pointlessly dead.

Murdered by a dark force enabled by brutal and bizarre hate.

Dirty deeds done dirt cheap

Mon, 20 May 2013 14:00:00 +1000

Thirteen years is a long time between drinks for fans of Australian cross country (XCO) mountain biking but on Monday the community awoke to a pair of victories and blossoming hope for the future, writes Phil Gomes.

On Saturday night (AEST) Rebecca Henderson was the first to break the long running Australian drought by winning the opening race of the under 23 category at the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup in Albstadt, Germany.

Her victory was the first recorded at that level by any Australian rider since Cadel Evans and Mary Grigson at the turn of the millennium in 2000.

Grigson, a multiple national champion and Olympian won her event in Napa, California while Evans, who needs absolutely no introduction, won in Canmore, Alberta and Mont Sainte-Anne, Quebec.

On Sunday night (AEST) Daniel McConnell, Henderson’s partner and team-mate at the American based Trek Factory Racing Team, made it two-from-two for the Australian couple.

Both riders went into the opening round in Albstadt with mixed ambitions, for Henderson it was to build on her second place overall in last year’s under 23 World Cup, with hopes of standing on the top step in 2013.

“Everything just went perfectly. It's unbelievable," said Henderson. “My goal this year was to win a World Cup. I never thought it would be the opening round. It's a privilege to wear the leader's jersey.”

For McConnell the goals were more modest, try to stay in touch with the top riders and improve on his consistency at the highest level.

"I did not expect this," said McConnell. "I came into this looking for a solid top-15, so it's unbelievable. I got into the last corner with a little bit of a gap and nothing was going to get past me at that point, I was running on adrenalin."

In trying to put these victories in context I immediately came up with Matt Goss’s incredible win in Milan-San Remo in 2011, unexpected but also one that was coming due given the available talent.

Henderson and McConnell have pretty much accomplished everything they could have hoped for this season in just the one weekend in Germany. Not that they will coast, there has been too much blood, sweat and tears spilt to not adjust the goals upward once again.

Make no mistake, these victories do not belong to the blue blazer crowd who control the purse strings, and who no doubt would like to claim them as their own, they belong solely to McConnell and Henderson who have struggled for two years on the smell of an oily rag without any serious official support. The pair have either paid their own way or received support from personal sponsors, family and friends.

These victories are truly hard earned and well deserved.

They also come at an interesting time for the XCO discipline in this country and are doubly important given the recent news that Australia will host World Cup rounds in 2014 and 2016. It also comes at exactly the right time because of Cycling Australia’s review into MTB, one which seeks to rebuild and reorganise the sport. How much more motivation is now needed to throw a few bucks at XCO and hard working athletes like these?

Australian mountain bike athletes have always done extremely well in the gravity disciplines, Downhill and Four Cross, which is in rude health, but our obsession with road endurance has starved XCO not only of funds but also talent, with the best and brightest choosing the tarmac because of a lack of opportunity to build a career on the dirt, something that needs to change as soon as possible.

Both Henderson and McConnell head into next weekend’s round in Nove Mesto na Morave in the Czech Republic wearing the leader’s jerseys. There will be high expectations but I think we can forgive them just a little bit of a let down after the biggest weekend of their lives.

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Vélo Files: Masters and Apprentices

Mon, 20 May 2013 11:30:00 +1000

It’s never easy when apprentice usurps master, particularly when it happens earlier than expected. But as Anthony Tan writes, for those on the sidelines, it makes for fascinating viewing.

When the winner of the 14th stage of this year’s Giro d’Italia, Mauro Santambrogio of Vini Fantini-Selle Italia, was asked what it felt like to drop his former leader Cadel Evans on the climb to Bardonecchia-Jafferau, he responded thus:

“It gives me great confidence, although I have to thank Cadel because I learned a lot when I rode alongside him. With Cadel I learned how to prepare for a three-week tour. Now, as a captain on a team, I can really make the most of what I have learned.”

It’s never a nice feeling, when the apprentice becomes the master, at least for the latter, that is. Even more so when the unspoken changing of the guard happens prematurely.

Some, like Bernard Hinault at the 1986 Tour de France, say one thing (that he would ride in service of his team-mate and designated frontrunner Greg LeMond) but do another. Same went for Lance Armstrong and Alberto Contador at the 2009 Tour, the Texan riding his own race like he was The Boss, despite indicating otherwise for months prior. And, on occasion, Chris Froome and Bradley Wiggins at the 2012 Grande Boucle, Sky’s own documentary Bradley Wiggins – A Year In Yellow proving it to be so (I can still hear Sean Yates’s agitated voice over race radio on the eleventh stage to La Toussuire: “Froomey, I hope you know what you’re f***ing doing...”)

No doubt it makes for enthralling viewing and reading. The Tour Director’s delight, really, because the free publicity begins almost as soon as the current race ends, or at least the first contradictory remark aired, the first contradictory result posted.

Interestingly, on the aforementioned three occasions, the rivalry was not internecine but instead propelled both to new heights. LeMond and Hinault, as well as Wiggins and Froome, finished one-two in Paris, while Contador and Armstrong went one-three (although LA’s podium finish has since been extricated from the history books, as have the rest of his results from August 1998 onwards).

At least in the case of Santambrogio, into whose arms Evans famously cried the stage after he took the maillot jaune in Morzine-Avoriaz at the 2010 Tour after a GC skyfall, the Italian chose to leave rather than mount a leadership tilt from within. But that was only because he wasn’t afforded the opportunity.

“You don’t get many opportunities to show yourself when you ride beside great champions like Evans, Gilbert, Hushovd and Ballan,” said the 28 year old from Lombardy, currently fourth overall, 2min 47sec behind maglia rosa Vincenzo Nibali. “To ride well, I need people close to me who encourage me and make me the centre of their focus.”

Me. Me. Me. For all the talk about cycling being a team sport, Santambrogio used the word ‘me’ three times in one sentence. That’s not to disparage him; if you want to be a team leader, then it must be about you, all about you.

Good thing there’s a ‘me’ in Froome, too, because as far as he’s concerned, come July, it’s all about the Kenyan-born grimpeur at the Tour de France.

As recently as this month, Team Sky reiterated as such. “We will go to the Tour with one leader (…) given Chris’s (Froome) step up in performances this year, our plan, as it has been since January, is to have him lead the Tour de France team.”

But just when the tit-for-tat looked sorted and their respective WAGs banished from Twitter, Wiggins’s illness and early exit from the Giro has thrown a spanner in the works. “Brad is the defending champion and if he can get himself in a position (to win) form wise, who is anyone to deny him? Given his performance, or lack of, at the Giro, I’m sure he will have more motivation for the Tour,” former British pro Rob Hayles told BBC Radio last Friday.

And now, after his first professional stage-race victory at the Tour of California, Tejay van Garderen has sent a none-too-subtle hint over the Altantic, destination Italy. “I think I’ve finally shown I have the full package. To win you need strength, patience and maturity,” said the 24 year old after his BMC team gave him an armchair ride up Mount Diablo, effectively sealing the deal in a week where he didn’t put a foot wrong.

Ever since turning professional for HTC-Columbia in 2010, van Garderen’s progression has been both noteworthy and rousing. America desperately needs to forget about Lance and embrace its Next Big Thing.

Still, I’m uncertain as to whether he’s ready for outright leadership in a Grand Tour, especially The Big Daddy, because racing against Froome, Contador and Joaquim Rodríguez is a completely different ball game. He’ll be in the ballpark, but home runs won’t come as easy as they did in Cali. For another year, perhaps two, they may not come at all.

Nevertheless BMC Racing team manager John Lelangue chose to follow van Garderen, not Evans; an implicit show of support for last year’s best young rider at Le Tour, and again raises doubts about the team’s belief the 2011 Tour champ can repeat his feat of two years ago. By virtue of what he’s just achieved, Tejay will no longer be subservient to Cadel at the Tour. The only question is whether he is No.1 or No.2.

“We (will) come to the Tour with the one-two punch, and we’re going to need all the horsepower we have to beat Sky and Contador,” van Garderen said after his victory in California.

In any case, by the time the Giro reaches its conclusion in Brescia at week’s end, Evans must finish on the podium, as much for himself as his team. Given he received a month’s notice before undertaking what has been a Grand Tour in extremis (then again, isn’t the Giro always like that?), any place on the podium should be regarded as a victory for the 36 year old.

http://media.sbs.com.au/cyclingcentral/upload_media/4773_nibali-500-sirotti.jpg

Now, a week ago in my blog Rough Edges, and before it was announced Wiggins was crook (though after the first mountain stage to Altopiano del Montasio), I wrote: “Sky must switch gears now and place their faith in Rigoberto Urán,” adding, “If properly supported, the Colombian, not Cadel, is the greatest threat to Nibali’s quest to the throne.”

Judging by some of the comments on Cycling Central and around the Twitterverse, some of you didn’t like that very much.

Well, here’s what Nibali said when asked who he perceives to be the greater danger, Evans or Urán: “Both have shown they are very strong on the climbs. Urán has a team behind him that, taking all things into consideration, could represent the greatest threat.”

Don’t believe me for a second when I say I take not a skerrick of satisfaction in saying, "I told you so".

Then again, Nibali and I could both be wrong. Though unlike Vincenzo, I’d have no problems being proven so. Sunday in France, on the climb of the Col du Galibier, there were definitely shades of the Evans of 2011 – he looked good, a little dangerous, even.

The final week of the 96th Giro d’Italia is set to be a spettacolo fantastico.

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Chaos and cancellations: when will the UCI step in?

Sat, 18 May 2013 20:00:00 +1000

Women’s race organisers in France have turned their tainted reputation a little muddier, after the debacle of the second consecutive cancellation of the Tour Languedoc Rousillion, originally scheduled as UCI 2.2 stage race from 17-22 May.

In 2012, the race was cancelled because of possible ‘financial problems’ leaving many riders in a tight spot. It had been the final opportunity for women to fight for UCI points to qualify places for the London 2012 Olympic Games before the May 31 deadline.

Last year, teams had three weeks notice. This year, many teams were already in Carcassonne, or en-route to the region in the south of France known for its good wine and great cycling terrain.

Some had flown straight in from China, having raced at the Tour of Chongming Island and the World Cup only two days earlier. Unfortunately, it had been the scene of another farcical race event, leaving the world’s best sprinters incredulous and team directors getting nothing but an apology.

A corner marshall had failed in his job of directing the peloton who were furiously chasing a solo rider in the final kilometres of Sunday’s World Cup. The Ukranian Riabchenko (Chirio Forno d’Asolo), was directed the right way, snared the win by 12sec, and her UCI points went from zero to 100 in one day.

Dual World Champion Giorgia Bronzini (Wiggle Honda) led the bunch home for second, winning the only flat, bunch kick finish the women get in the World Cup series of eight races.

Sure, a familiar case of human error. We’ve all been in races that are mis-directed (and had misdirected reasons for racing!) One gets the feeling that Chinese race official will not be experiencing the same opportunity in 2014.

But hapless logistics, financial instability and unreliable race organisers are mistakes that should not get the opportunity to repeat themselves.

By 2pm on the Thursday afternoon in Carcassone, less than 24-hours before scheduled race start, a source within the organisation divulged that there were insufficient funds to run the race.

A few hours later, the race director was confident he had secured an alternative sponsor, with the goal of a shortened race commencing today, European time.
Understandably, teams were angry and incredulous.

World Cup leader, World and Olympic champion Marianne Vos’s team Rabo Women decided to leave. So did Boels Dolmans. Both Dutch teams have world class riders but were not prepared to tolerate the conditions.

Rabo Women’s Iris Slappendel tweeted “for the sake of women’s cycling, it’s sad but after a day of uncertainty we decided to leave and not start tomorrow. If we are going to participate in this kind of messy organizations; women’s cycling will never become a serious, professional sport!”

It was an even bigger slap in the face after the infamous and challenging Tour de l’Aude had seen its ultimate demise in 2011, leaving only one 10-day stage race on the women’s UCI calendar, the Giro Donne in Italy in July.

Of course, many teams without the budget to just write-off an expedition to Southern France opted to stay and race. Gold Coast rider Loren Rowney (Specialized lululemon) tweeted “what do we do? We either all leave, or we all race. We needed to unite as one.”

Disappointingly, the UCI have remained silent. No statement, no comment. No advocacy for riders, nor a proposal for reimbursement of expenses, and so far, no proper governance over organisations that put their hand up to run events without sufficient funds or support.

By 8pm last night (European time), a shorter race was confirmed, running from Saturday until Wednesday, one stage shorter.

Today’s stage 1 will start in Lezignan Corbieres and travel 122km near the coast to Le Barcares.

Australians still racing are Loren Rowney (Specialized lululemon), Melbourne rider Jo Hogan (Bizkaia), South Australian Carlee Taylor (Lotto Belilsol) and triple AUS champion, Carla Ryan (guest riding for Lotto).

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Vélo Files: Catch Him If You Can

Sat, 18 May 2013 10:00:00 +1000

For the second year running, he’s the oldest licensed rider in the WorldTour peloton. But as Anthony Tan writes, nothing’s going to slow Jens Voigt down. Not yet, anyway.

I’m mother f**king Jens Voigt so they’re not going to catch me.

If only one could clone ‘The Jensie’. Or bottle it up and make Andy Schleck skol copious quantities of it till he’s inebriated beyond belief, drunk on The Jensie.

In January last year, at the Santos Tour Down Under, I interviewed Jens Voigt at length for US cycling publication VeloNews. Then aged 40, he told me that, “Nobody likes to get old, but I can still keep up, so it’s all good”.

“Cycling is too hard a sport to do it for the money. You’ve got to have the passion. The willingness to do it… the desire to go. And I still have that. It’s not a tiny little spark in the dark, but a full-on burning flame, the passion that I have (for cycling).”

Still, the father of six admitted that sometimes, it’s hard to get out and go training every day, especially when one of his older kids goads him by saying, ‘Daddy, we won’t tell anybody. Nobody’s going to find out if you just stay home…’

“And it’s true: nobody would find out if I just skipped a day of training,” he says.

“But that’s how (the decline) starts. Next time you skip two days. Next time you skip a week. Then, yes, people find out… You come to the next race; people see you haven’t been training.”

I tell him that the last two years in particular, I notice he attacks less. I wonder if it’s an age thing, but not willing to get my head smashed in by The Irrepressible One, I let him explain why.

“(I’m) definitely not less aggressive,” he says, grinning.

“You know, when you get older, you (can either) turn out into a wiser, mired old man, or just an angry old man. And I think I’d rather turn into the second. I’m not getting much wiser, I’m afraid.

“I do attack less, because my role has changed. I’m not so much the guy that needs or wants to perform, or people don’t ask me to perform – (such as) going in breakaways, stage wins… whatever.

“The way I see it, your career is like a big circle. You come in, you learn from the older ones. Then you get your top shape, where you take – ‘Hey, ride for me, help me to win’. And then, towards the end of your career, you’ve got to give something back; you were taking a lot in the years when you at the top, (so it becomes) time to give something back to the next leader.

“And I am happy to do that, to balance it out in life. You shouldn’t always be taking in life – you should also be giving. So now, it’s just my turn to give back. So, yes, I do attack less, because it’s not my job anymore. My role has changed.”

It took the US Anti-Doping Agency’s Reasoned Decision dossier last October for the old Jensie to return. Team manager Johan Bruyneel was shackled, you could say.

Someone on RadioShack-Leopard had to show the way out.

In fact, Voigt was enraged even before the demise of Lance Armstrong and his associates, since one of his two unfulfilled ambitions is to get one of Schleck brothers to Paris in yellow; with Andy out even before the 2012 Tour began and Fränk testing positive for a diuretic during the race and thrown out, The Jensie started to simmer. To their credit, the team bandied together and came away with the teams classification at La Grande Boucle, along with Fabian Cancellara’s prologue victory in Liège.

Exactly one month later, on the fourth stage of the USA Pro Cycling Challenge in Colorado, Voigt channeled his anger and ended up in a one-man breakaway that would last 140 kilometres. Try as they did, the remnants of the peloton would finish three minutes or more behind. “Whatever makes the race sticky and nasty is good for me because it hurts the others more than me,” he said afterwards, adding that he was happy that he could “not only talk the talk, but also walk the walk”.

“Jens is the only guy in the world who could pull that off,” Tejay van Garderen later said. “He’s just that crazy.”

When the USADA bombshell dropped two months later, the Twitterverse began to question the entire peloton, including Voigt. Product of the East German sports system; was winning during cycling’s dark days; recruited by Bjarne Riis, then Johan Bruyneel… he had to be doping.

On October 30, two weeks after USADA’s Reasoned Decision was made public, Voigt wrote an impassioned column in Bicycling, titled ‘Turbulent Times’.

“Some of you might even be asking yourself, ‘Oh my god, is Jens next?’ I can answer that question easy and quickly: No! There is nothing to confess or admit in my career, so relax, people. There is no bad news coming from my side,” he wrote.

“With what we know today about the East German sports system, it’s clear that there was a fair amount of doping and it was actually put in place by the government. But I was lucky because before I was old enough, or good enough, to be confronted with the question, the Berlin Wall had collapsed and Germany was reunited.”

Voigt, too, thought the Festina Affair of 1998 would be a turning point for cycling, but “history has shown us that Festina was not enough”.

“I can tell you that on my French team (GAN, later called Crédit Agricole), doping was a no-go. The French teams were the first to install the longitudinal testing that would eventually become the biological passport. Now, I had some good wins in those years, but hey,” he protested, “I’m a good rider, so I should have some good wins!”

When Operación Puerto saw his then team leader Ivan Basso thrown out on the eve of the 2006 Tour de France, he responded thus when asked what should be done with the 200 names: “Take them all out of their hiding places and burn them.”

After reading Bradley McGee’s column, ‘How dopers stole the best years of my career’, published a few days before his, Voigt remarked: “I can only agree. I mean, fortunately I still managed to get three stage wins, but who knows what else I would have achieved if everybody would have been clean! A 10-time Tour de France stage winner sounds a lot better to me than three-time winner. But to be honest, I don’t want to contemplate such things for too long because it only makes me bitter. It poisons my soul.

“And to avoid the impression that I don’t want talk about the past, or want hide my past, here I am saying very loudly: keep my samples, test them, and re-test them, in 10 years or in 100 years from now. Go back in time and open my sample from five years ago or 10 years ago. Feel free to do so! There will never be any surprises because I have nothing to hide.”

Voigt insisted cycling is cleaner than it has ever been. “I don’t see any traces of team-organized doping or doping networks anymore. You can probably never stop people from making wrong choices, but, honestly, our sport is better and cleaner than it was ever before. This is something I am totally convinced of. Hey, just look at me! I am 41 years old and still here, still competitive.”

On Thursday at the Tour of California, comprising a 186km stage from Santa Barbara to Avila Beach, Jens Voigt, 41 years young and still here, showed he was not just competitive, but he was still a winner. And mad as hell.

“I think maybe the last time I was feeling good was when I was 21,” he quipped with typically desert-dry humour.

On his decision to leave his breakaway companions five kilometres from the line, who he had been with for the past 60 kilometres, Voigt rationalised the situation like so: “There were some quality riders in the (breakaway) group. To win from that group, I knew I would have to go alone. I had hopes they would look at one another to chase me and give me 20 seconds. Once you do that, I’m gone. Once I went and then looked back to see the gap, I couldn’t believe they had given me 20-seconds.”

Once he was away, he told Bicycling.com’s Joe Lindsey post-stage: “I’m mother f**king Jens Voigt so they’re not going to catch me.”

Then, to the assembled media, another deadpan joke: “I have been doing the same moves for a long time in my career, almost since the last ice age.”

“They know what my plan is and that I cannot win a sprint. You have to catch them by surprise. That’s why it works. Sometimes they underestimate me. Today it worked in my favour. I will also say that I do still have some ‘go-power’ left in my legs. Not every day like five or ten years ago. But once I’m out there and can smell the victory, I want it again.

“I have a big engine; I can handle a big work load. I’m willing to work hard. I think this instinct is just part of who I am. It’s hard to teach because the decision-making is done in just a split second. It’s like a voice talking in your head, saying, ‘Go now! Go now! Go now!’ And then listening to the voice. I try to teach the boys to be brave, be courageous. On Sunday night if you have some energy left, it’s too late. There is no stage on Monday. Get it all out now. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be intimidated.

“I like to call this the ‘Indian Summer’ of my career, not the twilight. Think how beautiful it is in Indian Summer. That’s where I am, in the Indian Summer of my career. Yes, I hate to admit it, I am getting older, and my career will come to an end one day. For the second year in a row I am the oldest licensed holder in the world. The oldest bike rider! But age is just a number, apparently. I think that you can’t only talk the talk, you have to walk the walk. If you can do that, there is no reason to stop or slow down or give it up.”

Asked about earning himself another year’s contract with the win, he answered emphatically: “I hope so! If someone asks me if I am ready to sign again for another year, I say, ‘Hell yeah!’”

As for the other unfulfilled ambition Voigt told me?

“Finish alone on Alpe d’Huez. But it ain’t gonna happen.”

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End of parity: Experts say A$ heading south

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:13:38 +1000

The bears tore through the Australian dollar over the past two weeks, falling from US$1.03 to nearly US$0.97.

That's good news for exporters, but bad news for Australian travellers.

The sudden decline follows speculation the US Federal Reserve may be winding down its bond buying program.

That essentially means, America's central bank will be pumping less cash into the economy.

Economics 101 would say less cash, means less supply, bumping up demand. The greenback rises.

Technical reasons can also be applied, particularly as the US currency pushed through the 100 yen barrier, which also had an impact on the Australian dollar.

Commodity prices have also been weakening of late, and some traders would argue some shorting of the Australian dollar has also seen it fall.

But most of you, especially those planning a holiday in the Northern Hemisphere in the coming months really just want to know, where the currency is going.

So, I asked some of my contacts at the close of trade on Friday, for their take.

Generally speaking, most say there is scope for the Australian dollar to flirt with US parity in the short term, but they’re pretty unanimous that the future direction of the Australian dollar versus the greenback, and that’s down.

Chris Gore - GO Markets

“We have fair value sitting just above parity, around US$1.01. We've seen a material fall from the Aussie and a large part of this weakness we can attribute to a recalibration of stimulus expectations in the US. In short we think this change in QE expectations may be a tad premature and expect the A$ to regain some composure in the short term. We do however believe the local unit has a home below parity and expect to see a larger leg lower by year end, around US$0.95 in Q4.”

Shane Oliver - AMP Capital

“In the short term it looks like it’s heading down to $US0.95/0.96, which is the the bottom of range it has been in since 2011. Over the medium term it’s likely headed even lower. Commodity prices are now in a downtrend as mining supply pick up and Chinese growth has slowed a bit and the RBA is likely to cut interest rates further. As a result the overvaluation that has been apparent in terms of purchasing power parity measures is likely to be unwound. So it wouldn't surprise me to see it fall below $US0.90 in the year ahead.”

Warren Hogan - ANZ

“It may go back to parity in the next few months but it is now past its peak. It will certainly be lower by the end of the year and we expect the down move to extend through 2014. It could go as low as the mid-80s.”

Stephen Koukoulas - Market Economics

“I see it at US$0.94 cents, reverting to fair value, meaning the level of commodity prices or terms of trade.”

Peter Maguire – PBM Commodities

“A$ looks like it has more room to move to the downside and our RBA may continue to drop rates over the coming months. If you're heading to the USA over the coming months it may be prudent to exchange for US$ at around 98.5. It could very well be sub 96 by July”

Chris Weston – IG Markets

“Short term it could rally back to US$0.99 as it’s oversold and Bernanke will reiterate a dovish stance on Wednesday night. I'd sell into it though as medium term it will trade down to US$0.95 and lower longer term. The Federal Reserve won’t cut asset purchases until late 2013, early 2014, and the RBA will keep cutting. Foreigners are not buying the same level of Aussie bonds and there is news today that the Japanese are turning to Mexico rather than Australia.”

Craig James - CommSec

“We see the Aussie back to US$1.03 by September. The Federal Reserve won't be lifting interest rates for some time, the US still has major budget issues to address and the Aussie is well supported by solid Australian economic fundamentals including a AAA rating.”

Rob Henderson - NAB

"The Aussie is now oversold on the downside and is below fair value at around parity. Medium-term we see it lower. Our forecasts for the end of this year is US$0.98, mid-2014 US$0.96 and end of 2014 US$0.94. But the story for 2014 will be that of a stronger US dollar against all currencies."

Linzer torte

Thu, 16 May 2013 17:35:39 +1000

Who would've thought that the Linzer torte is the oldest recorded recipe in the world? It doesn’t have the appearance, or ingredients, of a particularly aged dish, yet the first written recipe for it was found to have been written in 1653. However, history aside, I didn’t have great hopes for this dish – it just seemed too simple to be really delicious. The short pastry is enhanced with spices and lemon zest and also contains toasted ground almonds (which I did in a frying pan on the stovetop in a few minutes). A food processor made it easy to rub the butter through, although I probably took it a little too far beyond the “breadcrumb” stage, and then worked the egg yolk in with my hands.

I used a round, loose-bottomed tart tin and had more than enough pastry to line it with. I found the pastry a little difficult to work with – whether I roll it between two sheets of cling film or baking paper, it always seems to slide all over the bench. Any suggestions for how I can improve this would be happily accepted. Refrigeration is key for this recipe, so there was a bit of other kitchen action happening as it was in and out of the fridge. My lattice work definitely left something to be desired, but I managed to get a decent approximation – however, I won’t be setting up a patisserie anytime soon.

The big surprise with this torte was how good it tasted. Like I said, I wasn’t expecting much from jam with pastry, but the combination of nuts, spices and lemon zest worked brilliantly with the strawberry jam to create a dessert that is simple and very more-ish. And, yes, of course it works with ice-cream.

What simple dish has surprised you?

Editor, SBS Feast

Diary of a media lock-up

Wed, 15 May 2013 14:36:22 +1000

Unless you count a few high school detentions, I have never been locked up, so I wasn't sure what to expect from the marathon six hour media lock-in for the federal budget in Canberra.

Luckily for me, the team of SBS staffers based at our Parliament House bureau are nothing less than consummate professionals who were able to walk me through the process. Here's how it went down:

10am: The flight from Sydney to Canberra is barely more than a short bounce across the highlands. As the plane descends, I scan the skies for a glimpse of Skywhale. Haven't heard of Skywhale? It's Canberra's teat-baring gift to herself on her 100th birthday. It's a clear day, but sadly I don't see a thing.

Skywhale: the surreal hot-air balloon is part of Canberra's centenary celebrations.

11am: The taxi queues are monstrous.

11.20am: Finally bound for Parliament House, I quiz my taxi driver on all the important issues. "Sorry, uh, what?" he says, utterly confused. "No, there's no sky-fish here."

12pm: The Senate entrance of Parliament House is all but deserted. Am I in the right place? A few security checks later and I'm whizzing through the corridors, which are painted pale pink to match the Upper House. On the House of Reps side, they're green. This is helpful, because the place is a maze.

12.30pm: Time's ticking, and everyone is madly checking themselves before the lock-in. Camera? Tripod? Laptop charger? Piles of junk food? Energy drinks? All check. No mobiles, "or you'll be arrested," I'm told.

1.30pm: What's the collective noun for a group of journalists, a gaggle? I don't know if I've ever seen so many in the same place.

2pm: We're in. The doors close. There's nothing but a few hundred journalists and a whole lot of reading. Silence creeps in as everyone tries to pick their way through the budget papers, which start with a pile of press releases and build up to thick tomes for each portfolio. Right now, six hours doesn't seem like enough.

2.45pm: Here's Treasurer Wayne Swan to answer questions. There are many.

3pm: Policy changes are teased out. The baby bonus has been bumped! There's an incentive for retirees to downsize their homes. And good to see additional funding for SBS.

3.10pm: Jenny Macklin stops by. We ask for clarifications on Indigenous funding. One of the tricky parts is parsing out what's already been announced, how much funding is allocated for this year and how much is estimated for years to come, all of which are subject to change.

4pm: Here comes the food. All media networks appear to be operating on pretty tight sandwich budgets of their own. Nothing fancy here, but it is all gratefully inhaled.

4.30pm: Upstairs for a press conference with Wayne Swan. No question that this is a lean, tough budget with few election incentives for voters.

5.30pm: The upstairs viewing gallery serves as an impromptu TV studio, with broadcast journos filing for tonight's TV news. Here's the view from inside:

7pm: Spotted: Someone's playing Solitaire! A few others look suspiciously like they're sleeping with their eyes open. Most of the reading and analysing is done, now everyone is scratching to get outside.

7.30pm: We're out. Many literally running back to bureaus within Parliament House to file stories… but most of the big-ticket items have leaked already.

8.30pm: One of the cameramen has split his pants at the crotch while straining to get a shot! Much hilarity.

9pm: The day's far from over. The corridor outside SBS's Canberra bureau becomes clogged with cameras, journalists, PR types and wandering politicians. Joe Hockey and Wayne Swan stop by, and are put in the hot seat by bureau chief Karen Middleton.

9.30pm: Brief pause for pizza. Back to filing. Still more to come for the TV team, with the late news up ahead.

10.30pm: In Sydney, Ricardo Goncalves is hosting the late news. Karen's back in the studio to provide analysis of the day. And then it's done -- for today. I'm headed back to Sydney, but the budget reactions will continue all week as the opposition, smaller parties and other organisations have their say.

Tough calls loom for Evans and Wiggins

Wed, 15 May 2013 13:10:00 +1000

Choices, choices. Team Sky's always had them, BMC's suddenly been gifted them, and some teams are bereft of them. They do, however, make for interesting dynamics in every team as the Giro d'Italia heats up, and the Tour de France looms, writes Al Hinds.

I've been surprised, to say the least, at what the Giro has thrown up so far. Not the displays of animated racing, nor the wet and wild descents, the crash-marred sprints, or the tifosi packing the roadsides. No, the Giro was always going to be an excellent race, an excellent spectacle. It always is.

But what appeared an almost predestined podium, when the Giro arrived at Brescia, has become far from it with still more than a week to race. I'll put my hand up and say I had Wiggins pencilled in for a place near the top of the dais, and, if things went well, his name engraved on that eye-catching trophy.

This just hasn't been Brad's year, though. Far from his imperious best, he's lacked the authority-stamping time trial displays, the unflinching ability on the climbs or, for that matter his 2012 honour guard.

Sure, he's talked the talk, but he's been rattled at the Giro, and was clearly not a cool head at Trentino. Two fifth-place overalls, at Trentino and Catalunya are far from his undefeated run last year. His performance on the descents has left much to be desired, and you get the feeling that his head isn't totally at the Giro.

With Rigoberto Uran, Team Sky has a viable back-up plan, one that's looking far more the form rider than Sir Brad. But where does that leave our beleaguered Brit?

For me, it means pulling the pin early, or at the very least not going as deep in the final week of the race as some of his rivals with a view to the Tour. And if Wiggins's curious and ambiguous comments since early last year are anything to go by, perhaps that was the plan all along. Admittedly that's a long bow, but it's something I'm sure is weighing on Wiggins's mind.

“Yeah, it depends how it plays out really,” said Wiggins after Stage 10, hinting as much. “I’ll have to speak to Rigoberto (Uran) tonight. He went all out, for the stage; it’s just whether he feels now he can go for the GC.”

That will again bring the Wiggins-Froome relationship to a head, which, let's face it, we'd all love to see as it would make for another fascinating Tour. Act Two, with all the history of the last 12 months. Mouth-watering.

The choice, which, falls to Sky to switch its leader, and to Wiggins to redouble his efforts for an unlikely Tour defence, remains open.

Meanwhile, for Australian fans, Cadel Evans's performance has buoyed hopes of a first maglia rosa falling to the budding cycling nation. As the unpredictable goes, that's not totally left field, Evans is a classy rider, but it has caught much of the mainstream media, many of Evans's rivals and myself by surprise.

The Australian, off a truncated preparation for the Giro, sits second overall with the high mountains ahead. Completely under the radar, he's chipped away from a disappointing team time trial to wearer of the maglia rossa (red) and still has a real shot for pink.

For a guy that came to the Giro lacking racing miles and results, it's pretty remarkable. But then the 2011 Tour de France champion is a remarkable rider.

The deeper Evans rides into the Giro, though, the more fatigue is likely to get the better of him come the Tour de France. A runner has one good marathon in him a year, an ironman targets Hawaii, and a cyclist one Grand Tour.

Evans will get stronger as the Giro continues, which bodes well for his chances of adding a second Grand Tour title to his name, but what of the Tour? Does the pull for pink outweigh the glint of yellow down the road? The Gavia, Tre Cime de Lavaredo, Galibier, Sestriere, the Stelvio; it's a leg-sapping final week, and any bickies spent now will come to haunt Evans (or Wiggins) in June and July.

At the Tour, Evans will have a fresh Tejay van Garderen nursing his own ambitions. In Italy he's got only himself to be concerned about and you get the sense that that's the way he prefers it.

And then there's the guy that could make a lot of this prognosticating completely superfluous: Vincenzo Nibali. The Astana rider has no Tour bid to worry about, has a totally committed team, and has the physical condition to match. With all of Italy behind him, the boost of wearing pink, descending nous that's among the best in the world, and approaching his best years, it's hard to see him being overcome.

Sometimes, singular missions reap the most rewards. Tour-bound Chris Froome, Alberto Contador and Joaquim Rodriguez all seem to think so. Base your year around a race, go to the race to win, and win said race. Who needs distractions to get in your way? Wiggins and Evans have always practised that mantra previously, and I’m sure they’re experienced enough to know that sacrifice is necessary for major success. But what will that sacrifice be?

Whatever lies ahead, it makes for fascinating viewing.

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Vélo Files: Rough Edges

Wed, 15 May 2013 12:00:00 +1000

From Toowoomba to Tuscany via California, Anthony Tan gives his lowdown in the only way he knows how. Straight up.

No need for TTTs in the NRS

As some Cycling Central readers have already noted, the inclusion of team time trials in the National Road Series only skews results further in favour of the better, bigger budget, teams.

Doing so precludes a rider not on Huon-Genesys, Drapac or Budget Forklifts from winning the overall classification. I’d rather see another mountain stage thrown in and/or a mountain time trial so the GC does not hinge on one stage; this has the potential to place those aforementioned teams on the back foot, and may make the racing less controlled.

Walking a straight line

When posited with the issue of Matt White returning to professional cycling as a sport director, I thought Drapac’s Will Walker said it best in my interview with him at the Tour of Toowoomba:

“I think six months is a very short time – and even two years for anyone that has done doping is too short,” he said.

“We’re getting cleaner but not by enough. We need to get rid of all ex-dopers in the sport. They say, ‘We can help because we’ve been through the bad things’ – but the best people that can help (make cycling clean) are the ones that made the hard decision to walk away from the sport, when there could have been a potential career for them.

“They’re the ones who set the best example for 18-, 19-year-olds, who have parents out there who are still worried about their decisions. These young guns, they’re so young and immature, they don’t know what’s going on. And there’s so many good people out there that could be ready for jobs like that… I mean, six months, what is it? It’s just a holiday.”

That’s exactly how I feel, too.

I don’t have an issue with Matt White per se. I have an issue with a multitude of ex-dopers returning or working in the sport and justifying their existence on grounds of, ‘We won’t let happen to you what happened to me’. Because as Walker later said, the reason they’re doing what they’re doing is largely based on what they’ve previously accomplished with the aid of something other than bread and water.

Besides, if there is indeed a cultural shift happening, as I’m led to believe there is, why do we need ex-dopers telling Gen Clean not to dope?

“We never even had to make that choice,” reigning US national road champ Tim Duggan said of taking drugs. “For all of my colleagues, that’s a pretty telling statement about the current state of the sport.”

Lance’s legacy lives on – perhaps a little too strong

The feeling I’m getting from those on the ground at the Amgen Tour of California is that American cycling fans are still in shock over the US Anti-Doping Agency’s Reasoned Decision dossier and the fallout that went with it.

How can you blame them? It’s only been a little over half a year since USADA dropped the biggest bombshell to hit the cycling world since Operation Puerto in 2006 or ‘L’Affaire Festina’ in 1998. Armstrong carried cycling like no other individual, and many of those who followed him were following not so much the race itself, but the story of a guy who came back from the dead and won seven Tours on the trot. Or so we thought.

But like all from Gen EPO who chose to cross the line, he was just one example of what should not be done. “It didn’t take Lance to build what we had built today,” Kristin Bachochin, senior vice president of Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG) and Tour of California executive director, told the San Jose Mercury News. “We never viewed this race as focusing on one person.”

I’d argue against that. The race began in 2006, and even though Armstrong first retired after his since-rescinded Tour #7 in 2005, the ToC was surfing the Texan’s wave, as so many others were.

If only Lance had given his ol’ buddy Floyd Landis a ride on his team, none of this would’ve happened.

Despite the enduring pain, I, for one, am glad it did.

TdF leadership weighing on Wiggo’s mind?

Has Bradley Wiggins only now been exposed as a poor bike handler, or is it something more than that?

Three days into the Giro, Team Sky put out (though for some reason, you had to go to the website to find it; normally they’re emailed to the media) a press release entitled ‘Brailsford sets out aims’.

Curiously, it wasn’t till the fourth-last paragraph before those aims were clarified: “As always the team selection is a management decision and it will be evidence-based. However it is crucial there is clarity of purpose and for that reason we will go to the Tour with one leader.

“Taking that into consideration and given Chris’ step up in performances this year, our plan, as it has been since January, is to have him lead the Tour de France team.

“With over seven weeks until the Tour and the Giro to focus on, our final selection of nine won’t be confirmed until after the Dauphiné.”

I think the press release would have been better headlined, ‘How do you like dem apples, Wiggo? Booyah from the Froome-dog!’

For someone who thought he was in with a shot of doing a Grand Tour double; for someone who thought Tour de France leadership would be decided by Sir Dave Brailford three days out from the Corsica Grand Départ on June 29, or that there would be a “natural hierarchy”; for someone who thought his position on Team Sky’s Tour Nine was assured, it must’ve been a tough pill to swallow.

And now, exposed as a scaredy-cat on the descents, or “like a bit of girl”, to use Wiggo’s words, particularly in the wet.

For mine, he already lost the Giro last Saturday.

The 55-kilometre-long Stage 8 time trial was where Sir Wiggo hoped to be at least one-and-a-half, if not two, minutes ahead of his main rivals. Instead, he was just 11, 29, and 43 seconds ahead of Vincenzo Nibali, Cadel Evans and Michele Scarponi, respectively, and 1’12 in front of Robert Gesink. The only guy he (and the aforementioned others) made good time on was defending champ Ryder Hesjedal, but not even midway through and after the first mountain stage, the Canadian is a massive 23’45 down, and can no longer be considered a contender.

There is just one 20.6km time trial left. Cold comfort for Bradley, unfortunately, for it is a mountain TT – thus offering him no insurance against more mountain losses – and by Stage 18, his energy levels are likely to be seriously depleted; he is a tempo-guy on the hills and all and sundry will do their utmost to break that metronomic Sky rhythm used to devastating effect last July.

How does one make up time on two rivals – namely, Nibali and Evans – in an area where, all things being equal, he is less strong?

Cycling Central reader Ross Cayley was harsh but fair in his assessment:

“Wiggo – a big motor for sure, but can’t ride a bike. Slow in the wet, still pretty crap in the dry. The contrast between Wiggo and Cadel in the first half of the time trial couldn’t be clearer: Bradley braking early, tip-toeing around every corner, relying on that motor to get back up to speed, compared to Cadel (and Nibali) attacking every apex full tilt, carving through the corners using every last cm of available road, maintaining speed. Cadel should attack on every wet descent from now on.”

Sure, and as Brailsford said prior to the race start, “the Giro is a race which lends itself a lot more to opportunist racing” – but Wiggins is not an opportunist. He is a calculist.

Unlike the Vuelta a España in 2011 where they changed leadership too late for fear of offending Wiggins, thus costing Chris Froome the title, Sky must switch gears now and place their faith in Rigoberto Uran.

If properly supported, the Colombian, not Cadel, is the greatest threat to Nibali’s quest to the throne.

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The winning costs of Eurovision 2013

Tue, 14 May 2013 17:40:21 +1000

The 2013 Eurovision Song Contest in Malmo, Sweden, will be held at a time when many parts of the eurozone struggle with recession and austerity measures that have prompted protests in some countries across the continent.

The high costs associated with participating in the event - and potentially hosting it should they win – have seen countries like Portugal, Poland, Slovakia and Bosnia-Herzegovina pull out of this year's contest.

Sweden, which is hosting thanks to Loreen's winning entry “Euphoria” last year, is downsizing the event, spending around $20 million. It's about half the estimated production cost of the 2012 show in Baku, Azerbaijan. And that's not including the $100 million it forked out to fast-track construction of its new arena, dubbed the Crystal Palace, where last year’s Eurovision was held.

But if you were to measure success by the number of eyeballs focussing on the production, then a success it is. More than 125 million people watched Eurovision in 2012, making it one of the world’s biggest televised events.

There has been much criticism of the Eurovision voting system, with political or bloc voting often evident.

This year, though, it will be interesting to see if the sympathy vote is in play. Will countries struggling with harsh austerity measures deliver their 12 points to nations going through the same thing?

As for my 12 points, they'll be going to the song which leaves a lasting impression in my head. In fact, I've already downloaded two Eurovision 2013 singles from iTunes.

My Eurovision experience dates back to my childhood in Wollongong.

My family would get together on a Sunday in May to watch the spectacle, always rooting for Portugal, which typically never did very well.

Given most of my family migrated from Madeira, Portugal, more than 33 years ago, watching the event was a way for my family to connect with its heritage.

When I was younger, there was never really a chance of finding out who the winner was ahead of Australian broadcast time, because of the limited technology.

But these days, it is hard to avoid.

I go on a total media blackout on Eurovision day. No internet, no Twitter, no Facebook, no television. If I'm rostered on to work at SBS, then there's no chance of turning a blind eye to the result on the day it's broadcast, because SBS is Eurovision's home in Australia. Luckily, I've never been rostered on. Yet.

There have been times in the past when a friend has texted me the result early. And once one of my parents inadvertently told me what they thought was the result. Dad, I'm looking at you.

So my passion for Eurovision extends far beyond the often-trashy clothes, laughable dance routines, and sometimes catchy pop tunes.

It represents tradition.

These days, it's an excuse for my friends and I to continue the family memories by getting together and watching the show.

We have our own scoring system, and the person who guesses closest to the top five wins the opportunity to host our Eurovision party the following year. OTT? Maybe. Fun? Yes.

Our system is based on the songs we like and how we think Europe will vote. It's complex and we take it seriously. Sort of.

So my favourites this year?

I've got a very heavy bias towards dance, electro and pop tunes. Combine all three, and you're a winner in my books.

There are two clear standouts.

My 10 points would go to Germany. Its entrant this year is Cascada with "Glorious". Cascada is already well known globally, with hits like "Evacuate the Dancefloor" and "Everytime We Touch". The song is catchy, fun and prime for some great dance remixes. Natalie Horler, the lead singer of the group, also has a powerful pop voice.

My favourite this year is 27-year-old Irish pop/dance singer, Ryan Dolan. His single, "Only Love Survives" hits the mark, following the similar style of DJs like David Guetta. Again, I can already hear the potential remixes of this song should any producer be looking for a project. 12 points! But like any dance or club song, its execution will be important, because sometimes the music overpowers the vocals. Last year, it wasn't a problem for Loreen.

That doesn't mean I think Ireland will win. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if Finland, Malta or Sweden take it out. Their sounds are very 'today' mimicking the likes Ke$ha, Bruno Mars, Coldplay and Birds of Tokyo.

I must give a special mention to Serbia's Moje 3 with "Ljubav je svuda". No, I don't understand what they're singing. But just take a look at their stilted and awkward dance moves, the gold devil/angel outfits, the facial expressions and the questionable singing ability. Pure Eurovision. Oh, and the hair whip #pureeurovision.

The Eurovision 2013 grand final will be shown on SBS One at 7:30pm Sunday May 19.

Benghazi questions just won't go away

Tue, 14 May 2013 08:25:59 +1000

President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron met in Washington DC this week to talk about what - or what not - to do with Syria as that country continues to implode and hastens its trajectory toward being a non-country.

Meanwhile, rather than Syria, some politicians in America want to talk about Benghazi, the city in Libya. More specifically, they want to discuss the former US diplomatic mission at Benghazi that was attacked by local armed groups last September 11. Four Americans were killed in the attack - including the US Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

Initially, the reason for the attack was said to be an angry response to a now infamous video, 'Innocence of Muslims', not an unreasonable assumption considering most reasonable people would agree the film is insulting not just to Islam but to any audience anywhere. It really is awful.

Yet further investigation by US authorities deemed the attack was not the work of irate movie-goers but rather a premeditated and coordinated action by radical Islamist groups. It’s here that things get messy.

Last week State Department officials testified before the equivalent of a parliamentary committee on the incident and its aftermath. There are several issues under scrutiny including security procedures before and during the attack but especially - for Republicans, anyway - who said what to who and when and why after attack.

All this was pushed as an issue during last year’s Presidential campaign when Mitt Romney - and his proxies - claimed President Obama’s administration changed its line on what actually happened. The issue heatedly arose during a spiky debate between the two candidates. Then Secretary of State Hilary Clinton claimed full responsibility for the mess and it turned out most Americans didn’t care much about what appeared to be a she-said he-said quarrel, at least at the ballot box.

But that was 2012. Republicans continue to dig, some claiming a scandal bigger than Watergate is in play. Some Republicans claim a rescue mission should have been launched to save the embassy staff - perhaps having watched too many action movies and not understanding how special forces actually operate.

“To send some small number of special forces or other troops in without knowing what the environment is, without knowing what the threat is, without having any intelligence in terms of what is actually going on the ground, I think would have been very dangerous," said former Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, who you would hope would know about these things.

“It's sort of a cartoonish impression of military capabilities and military forces,” he added.

Republicans are also upset at the idea the White House may have changed or withheld information it released on the incident - especially regarding what motive lay behind the attack. Various government departments - including the State Department, the CIA, and the White House - tussled over the exact wording of talking points to the media.

"I would call it a cover-up in the extent that there was willful removal of information," said Senator John McCain, the often cranky senator defeated by President Obama in 2008.

McCain called for another committee to interview anyone and everyone with a role in the affair, including Hilary Clinton.

Who?

What?
Hillary Clinton?

A likely candidate and a stand-out favourite for the 2016 Presidential campaign?

“I think the Secretary of State has played a role in this,” McCain added. “She had to have been in the loop some way, but we don’t know for sure.”

It’s true that there should be a thorough investigation into what happened at Benghazi and its aftermath - not least because of the death of four Americans in the incident.

But McCain’s statement - right there - reveals a lot more of what this may also be about.

Vélo Files: Tales from Toowoomba

Thu, 09 May 2013 09:00:00 +1000

So far, it’s been an interesting first 24 hours for Anthony Tan in ‘the Garden City’, on location for the third race of the men’s Subaru National Road Series.

I wasn’t expecting an A380, but Skytrans flight Q617 from Sydney to Toowoomba was rather, well, exclusive. There couldn’t have been much more than two dozen of us on board.

Bit disappointed I didn’t have a flat-bed, though. It was a one-hour and forty-five minute haul, after all, and I knew that if I didn’t get a good sleep, I’d have trouble waking up the next morning, which was pretty important, since the race started today.

Turned out the twin-prop number made it too noisy to nod off, anyway. Plus I was sitting next to Terry; a pretty interesting guy who breeds champion Boer goats, which look like a cross between a goat and a horse, they’re that big. He was also a mortgage broker, which I don’t find particularly remarkable, so I asked what seemed like a thousand questions about these goat-horses that originate from South Africa.

Terry was really polite and answered all my questions. But I think he was pretty happy to see his wife waiting for him at the airport, like he’d been away for a good six months or so, because once Q617 touched down in our country’s most populous non-capital inland city, a.k.a. Toowoomba, he pretty much ran to her, as if he was trying to get away from someone who had asked too many questions.

Perched on the crest of the Great Dividing Range (most of the city is west of the divide), around 700 metres above sea level, Toowoomba can get a little breezy during the day and nippy at night.

It’s also known as ‘the Garden City’, probably because there’s a fair bit of green stuff spread across its 550-odd square kilometres. In fact the Park Motor Inn, my abode till week’s end, is opposite Queens Park; a lovely place to stop oneself and ponder the vicissitudes of life, also the scene for the tour’s final stage this Sunday. (In case you’re asking, the lady who served me breakfast this morning was Raylene – make sure you emphasise the ‘Ray’ and elongate the ‘lene’ when you call for her.)

Being the sadist I am, now that I’ve hung up my race wheels, I’m looking forward to seeing the peloton split to pieces over the next four days – particularly on Friday, when the 123-kilometre stage finishes atop Bunya Mountain.

More than likely, it’s where this fourth edition of the Tour of Toowoomba will be decided. The next day comprises two stages: first up, a 27km team time trial, followed by a 113km road race in the afternoon.

Judging by the time trial prowess of Huon Salmon-Genesys Wealth Advisers in the opening two National Road Series events, with overall wins from Joe Cooper and Jack Haig respectively, those from other teams will need a good half-minute buffer after Bunya to stand a chance of making the top step of the podium come Sunday’s Queens Park criterium.

http://media.sbs.com.au/cyclingcentral/upload_media/2622_stonegrill-500-tan.jpg

Last night we (that being me, photographer Mark Gunter and his missus, and Cycling Australia’s Lucy Hinchey) had a really nice meal at this restaurant where, if you’re a carnivore, they bring out your meat on a hot stone slab and you cook it yourself. The manager said the stone comes out at a rather summery 400 degrees centigrade. I’m a curious creature, but didn’t think it necessary to touch the surface with my pinky to see if he was fair dinkum.

Two hours later, when we got up to pay and leave, it was still sizzling away. I could just imagine a villainous member of the Yakuza crime syndicate chopping off a traitor’s finger, cooking it on the slab in front of him, and making his victim eat it.

Or maybe the UCI should do that to anyone caught doping. Fear and Loathing in Aigle. Catchy title for a film, don’t you think?

Investors react to Alex Ferguson's retirement at Manchester Utd

Wed, 08 May 2013 23:47:12 +1000

Shares in Manchester United have opened on the New York Stock Exchange, falling by almost 5 per cent in light volume in the first five minutes of trade following the retirement of manager, Sir Alex Ferguson.

Sir Alex is widely touted as one of the best football managers of all time, with 38 trophies and 13 league titles in his 27 years with the club.

From a business perspective, the question is where to now, for the financial viability of the club, and company?

Manchester United was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in August last year, in a bid to help rid of the debt creeping up on its books.

The company picked the NYSE over other exchanges because of the various start up incentives offered in the US, which would keep IPO, or sharemarket listing costs down, in a bid to grow investment in the sector.

Outside of the Glazer Family stake, the biggest shareholders of the club are Baron Capital Management, Soros Fund Management and Blackrock .

Manchester United's latest accounts show that it posted a record $5.5million in the three months to March, up on the $1.5million profit on the same time last year.

Total revenue for the quarter came in at $145million.

New sponsorship deals helped it to increase commercial revenue by 32 per cent in the period, while broadcasting revenue surged 28 per cent.

Match day revenue, which includes ticket sales rose 28 per cent.

Those numbers helped shares in the company grow by 31 per cent since the beginning of the year, giving it a market capitalisation of around $3billion.

But what will investors think now, that one of its biggest risks to profit, is gone.

In its IPO prospectus, lodged with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, the company stated under the "Risk Factors" category that, "Any successor to our current manager may not be as successful as our current manager. A downturn in the performance of our first team could adversely affect our ability to attract and retain coaches and players."

How Sir Alex's retirement may impact investor sentiment is yet to be clearly seen, while others have no doubt already factored it in.

What is obvious, is that his successor will not only need to appease the club's fans, but shareholders as well.

Manchester United shares closed the session -1.7% at US$18.44.

Westpac’s tips 2% cash rate

Wed, 08 May 2013 14:27:05 +1000

Experts at one of Australia’s most accurate forecasters is predicting the Reserve Bank will continue to cut official interest rates throughout this year.

Economists at Westpac are expecting the RBA to follow up yesterday’s 25 basis point cut with another next month.

It says, the RBA has acknowledged an even lower than expected trajectory for inflation, which may leave it open to further cuts down the track.

Westpac does expect confidence to soften and weaker business investment.

That may prove to be a blessing in disguise for the government, with business capital expenditure numbers out just before the election.

If weak, it may be enough for the RBA to once again cut the cash rate, to stimulate the economy.

Westpac predicts the official cash rate to bottom at 2 per cent by the first quarter of next year as global growth slows.

If the banks do pass these cuts in full, there is every chance variable rates will be lower than the special 4.99 per cent 3- year fix term rates offered a few months ago. Remember, the banks usually offer a discount to the advertised standard variable rate.On the dollar front, its June 2014 target for the Aussie is US96c.

It’s a slightly different view to Clifford Bennett from White Crane Report who spoke to SBS World News Australia last night.

He says there is a chance of one more interest rate cut, but expects the Australian dollar to remain above its current level.

He believes the mining boom will continue thanks to strong demand from China, which in turn will support property prices and that investors in the sharemarket will continue to ride one of the biggest bull run in history.

The leaves are turning

Wed, 08 May 2013 11:23:30 +1000

The long dry summer has given way to emerald green paddocks, but, still, most farms could do with a bit of rain. Our apples are just about finished on the trees. The quince are in, most rescued green from the parrots and the possums. We’ve harvested the first broccoli, the first cabbage; both while the tomato plants are still hanging from hooks in the shed, as we ripen the last few for the table. We’ve spun the honey from the hive, and left the bees enough to get them through winter.

Every year, I go through some kind of shock. Surprise at the pace of the seasons. Disappointment as I realise I’ve missed the moment for planting one crop or another. Elation at the new things coming from the garden. The lessened need for watering, or filling wallows. The incredible, exhilarating feel of cool air in the lungs as I climb the hill to move the cattle.

Our wood stack is finished, thanks to a couple of very hard-working volunteers who stayed most of the last month and helped with everything from waiting at table to picking up pig poo. The work is never done, and a couple of extra pairs of hands enabled us to catch up on chores. They helped ensure we have enough firewood for both the heater and the cooker. It’s an enormous sense of security when the firewood is stacked – at least we won’t go cold this winter.

As the heat leaches from the soil, and the light from the days, things change in flavour. I’ve been eating the last of the autumn strawberries; pale in colour but great in the mouth, thanks to some dark black mat they grow on which absorbs heat. The frost – earlier this year than others I’ve lived on this patch of dirt – has sweetened the red Russian kale and cavolo nero. The radishes aren’t as pungent, I don’t think, as they became in the height of summer, which gives them more versatility.

Our lifestyle changes too. We get up a little later at this time of year. I’m more loath to leave the house quite so early when there’s ice on the troughs. My son takes himself to bed around 7pm, rather than the 9pm that he usually chooses to settle down in summer. When the light vanishes between five and six in the evening, it’s time to lock up the chooks and to come indoors. Time to spend a bit more time cooking. To enjoy inside play. To catch up on a bit of reading, or preserving, or, just possibly, to catch up on some sleep.

Before we know it, the days will already be lengthening. I’ll blink and miss the bud burst of the quince and get hit with leaf rust once again because I wasn’t prepared. I’ll get busy and not find time to plant all the bushes and trees I want to get in over winter. I know this, and yet I’m okay with it.

We live by the seasons, are motivated by the seasons, and try to work our lives around the changes in nature around us. And most of the time that makes every day a wonder in its own right. Because right now, while I’m loving the cooler weather, I know there’ll come a time when it begins to get warm again, and I’ll be just as excited by that moment as I am by this.

It begins!

Tue, 07 May 2013 14:22:50 +1000

About 12 months ago, someone approached me with the idea to film a TV series that would reveal to the world everything I love about the Middle East. The plan was that I would travel to places I'd never been and gain a firsthand experience of the food unique to each region. I love visiting countries I've only ever heard or read about, so I was on board with the idea instantly. I suppose that’s when Shane Delia’s Spice Journey was born.

Along the way, I met some amazing people, made lifelong friends and ate truly beautiful food. It wasn’t all champagne and caviar, though. Life on the road, while filming a show, wasn't easy. Picture remote locations, scorching heat, long days, all types of language, plus cultural and political tensions. Not to mention being away from all my staff and beloved restaurants. That was tough!

Since returning home, I have a million ideas for new dishes, brilliant concepts and exciting directions for my restaurant family. I couldn't wait to get back into my kitchen studio in Melbourne to start cooking all these new things I'd tasted. Petros, one of my passionate and loyal chefs, has been working alongside me during the filming of the kitchen segments of the show to bring the ideas and flavours of my trip to life! Since I returned from Iran, Petros and I have been busy weighing, testing and creating new dishes that will appear in each episode of the show.

Nearly all the dishes are first attempts, which is unheard of. I mean, we tested a few of the main recipes and a couple are oldies that form the base of our repertoire, but the majority have never been done before. So, as you'll see from the videos, the final stage where we plate-up the meals is real and nerve racking. But it's all been very exciting and authentic! It’s always a buzz seeing an idea I hatched overseas finally coming to life. I must say I haven’t been disappointed yet. All the food we produced back in Melbourne has been beautiful and exceeded my expectations. Please write and let me know what you thought of the recipes.

And now, thanks to an amazing production team, everything has come together and Shane Delia’s Spice Journey will air next week, 2 May on SBS ONE. I’m really excited to share my experiences with you and I hope you feel the love I have for this very special part of the world. I was able to go there and see it for all of its beauty and kindness, not just what the media shows us on the news.

In a part of the world where nothing is certain, it’s the people and their culture that is the shining light in the face of all of the adversity, tension and unrest. If nothing else, the food rocks.

Visit Shane's website, or connect with him via Twitter and Facebook

Vélo Files: Open letter to Whitey

Tue, 07 May 2013 12:00:00 +1000

Hearing what Matt White had to say last Sunday on Cycling Central TV, Anthony Tan felt compelled to write an open letter to him.

White’s lawyer also answered questions raised on the show by Tan, concerning the apparent delay in announcing his reduced six-month backdated suspension, awarded by the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA), and what led to his sentence being reduced.

Dear Matt,

If my memory serves correctly, it was November 1996.

Organised by Phil Anderson, I was at a weeklong training camp in Victoria’s High Country. Appealing to the masochists at heart, Phil thought it was a good idea to hold a cycling boot camp atop the 16-kilometre climb of Mount Buller. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and with firm plans to head off to race in Europe the following season, I signed myself up. (The next year, Phil moved the camp to the base of the mountain, probably because half the original participants carked it.)

A two-day stage race was also on that week. As you know the Mount Buller Cup (which you were down to race) consisted of a 250km road race from Melbourne to the top of Buller on the Saturday, then an utterly sadistic criterium 1,400 metres above sea level the following day, which, I’m sure you’ve tried to forget, included a 33 percent climb each lap.

33 percent?! Crikey!

Given the time of year, and as you know, it was raced by some of the top Aussie pros and a bunch of Euro Dogs™, as well as our best amateurs, including a crew from the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS). Patrick Jonker (then riding for Rabobank), Stephen Hodge (Festina), Grischa Niermann (German national team, later Rabobank) and Henk Vogels (AIS), to name just a few.

And you, Matthew White, then 22 years old, a year younger than I.

You may not have known this but for the non-professionals or non-AIS riders there was also a support race. Having set the fastest time up the mountain the day before and matched my mettle with a bunch of Victorian Institute of Sport (VIS) riders, I was feeling rather cocky; confident I could podium and tell any AIS scouts afterwards, ‘Show me the money, bitch!’ Or something like that.

However, as karma would have it, my smugness transmogrified into litres of lactic acid coarsing through my veins and, not even halfway up, I blew like the Hindenburg, grovelling over the line in anything other than showroom condition.

I didn’t even know who won. I didn’t care. I was a right mess. ‘Do I really want to do this? What was it going to take to turn pro?’

After Sunday’s criterium won by New Zealander Glen Mitchell (second-placed Jonker, also the previous day’s winner, took the overall), Phil had organised a chat session with VIS head coach Dave Sanders, who continues to hold the position to this day. The AIS guys (you included) would also be coming; despite my spirits taking a hammering, I was hardly going to miss it.

In typically laconic manner Sanders spoke about what it took to go pro, adding, “Imagine how Phil felt when he first went to Europe in 1979… It still brings tears to my eyes, what he did to put Australian cycling on the map.”

My attention would normally be unwavering but I was deep-fried, encased in a light batter of salt. I couldn’t be arsed having a shower; I didn’t have the will or the energy. I rode up and down Buller like a lunatic that week, at least a dozen times, and paid for it dearly the day it mattered: the race. Amateur mistake.

As my eyes wandered I noticed one of the early escapees from the crit, happily perched on a railing inside the timber-panelled room.

It was you, Whitey.

Joking and laughing with your fellow AIS recruits you looked so carefree. But when you pinned a number on your back you would terrorise the peloton with unrelenting aggression. So damn strong, you never seemed to tire. You had the world at your feet. You were going to make it.

‘I want what he’s got – I want to be like him,’ I said to myself.

I went to Europe the following year, but it was a tale of “two speeds”, as FDJ team manager Marc Madiot said in August 2005.

The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Italy… It didn’t matter where or what type of race, I just couldn’t keep up.

As it turned out, neither could you, Matt.

“You would go to races and they weren’t hiding anything,” you told Cycling Central last week. “I was really shocked. I grew up racing for the AIS, racing for Australian national teams where we’re not exposed to any of that sort of stuff.

“I thought that I needed to use performance-enhancing drugs to keep my job. And at the end of the day I probably did, because it was so widespread, it was ridiculous.”

So ridiculous, you knew you were doing something wrong “but everyone around me was doing something wrong and I just felt that they were the decisions I had to make”.

“At the end of the day, they (the decisions) were wrong.”

Not quite everyone, Matt – Christophe Bassons was one of the few exceptions, treated like collateral damage – but just about all and sundry.

Still, you had a choice; no one was holding a gun to your head.

“I stopped in the last year of my career. I stopped because I had enough. I made a conscious decision to retire and join the team of Slipstream Sports at the time.”

So, let me get this right: it took close to 10 years of pill popping, injecting and transfusing before you told yourself, ‘Enough’s enough’?

Save for one indiscretion that cost you your job at Garmin, where you referred Trent Lowe to a nefarious doping doctor for a health check (by the way, when you were at US Postal, did Dr del Moral assist you to dope?), I don’t doubt you did the right thing there and later at Cycling Australia (as men’s professional road co-ordinator) and Orica-GreenEDGE (as sport director).

In fact, I know you’re sorely missed at OGE. Right now, I reckon they need you as much as you need them.

But on November 1 last year when you were dismissed by the team two weeks after USADA’s Reasoned Decision, where you were inadvertently exposed as ‘Rider No. 9’, thus forcing you to come clean, OGE’s primary benefactor Gerry Ryan said this: “Professional cycling is at a cross roads. The future of the sport is being determined by what we do today (…) It’s time to put our values to work (…) OGE believes a hard-line approach is an essential prerequisite to continue in the sport with credibility.”

It was also announced an internal audit of OGE would be conducted; your erstwhile team said: “Orica-GreenEDGE is proactively reviewing all riders and team members.”

The public is still in the dark about such a review, other than that it is due sometime soon.

Without an amnesty or truth and reconciliation commission (TRC), both of which are looking increasingly unlikely due to the incompetence and/or bone-idleness of our administrators, your input becomes vital, in terms of constructing a knowledge base of how to prevent athletes from doping, and influencing those who may or may not be thinking about it.

Without an amnesty or TRC, no line in the sand can be drawn, thus making zero-tolerance ineffective.

Signing a piece of paper saying you did or didn’t dope, as Team Sky has done? Your former boss Jonathan Vaughters answered it best to the London Telegraph: “It’s just so difficult to ever figure out if a person signing the paper is telling the truth or not and it runs the risk of forcing people into a situation where they have to lie. You are given a piece of paper and told to sign and if we find out you were lying, then you are sacked. But if you don’t sign it you are sacked as well. You are pushing people towards dishonesty.”

As I wrote in a recent column in Bicycling Australia magazine, “Zero tolerance is simply a knee-jerk response that sweeps what we don’t want to see under the carpet, allowing omertà to remain and fester, untreated – leaving no option but for the past to repeat itself.”

So, yes, we can learn from people like you; educate current and future generations the right way forward. Instil values that were left wanting during Generation EPO. That you left behind. As you said yourself, “Things can easily go back to where they were but we’re certainly going in the right direction.”

But I think it’s also fair for people to ask: ‘How many people like you do we need to teach said generations as such? 10? 20? 100?”

If, like Vaughters and David Millar, you are willing to speak openly about what you did, and, more importantly, what you can do to effect a shift in culture that I feel we are currently on, then I say welcome back, Whitey. I really mean that.

In case you’re wondering, do I feel you displaced people like me in turning pro?

Nah, mate – I wasn’t that good, anyway.

White’s lawyer responds

In Sunday’s edition of Cycling Central TV (May 5), when Kate Bates’s interview with White first aired, host Mike Tomalaris asked me what I thought of his confession of sorts.

I responded by saying that despite a tainted past, I thought he was a valuable member of Orica-GreenEDGE, and I would welcome him back, but with certain caveats. One was that I would like to be able to raise the subject of his past with him or his management without fear of reprisal by way of being blacklisted from access to the team’s riders.

Another question I raised was why it took one week for White to publicly announce the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA) had awarded him a six-month backdated suspension, and what sort of cooperation with ASADA led to his sentence being reduced.

Christopher Johnstone, the lawyer acting for White throughout his dealings with ASADA, emailed me a swift reply later that evening.

It directly answers my questions, so I asked Mr Johnstone authorisation to reproduce his response on the Cycling Central website, to which he kindly agreed. It appears in full below, unedited.
___________________

May 5, 2013

From: Christopher Johnstone
To: Anthony Tan

Dear Mr Tan

I am the barrister who has acted for Mr White throughout the process involving ASADA.

I saw your comments on Cycling Central today and in particular refer to the question you say you wished to have answered as to why it took Mr White a week to admit that he had received notification that the ADRVP and ASADA had recommended that he receive a sanction of six months backdated to commence on 13 October 2012.

The answer is quite simple. The WADA/ASADA sanctioning process requires the governing body of the relevant sport, in this case Cycling Australia, to implement any sanction recommended by ASADA/ADRVP. Both the athlete and the governing body have a period of time set under the WADA Code to appeal any sanction recommendation to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. The time for lodging an appeal has not passed.

WADA separately has an entitlement to appeal and the time for lodging that appeal has not passed.

Further, because Mr White continues to work with ASADA, there remains a matter which ASADA and we wished to finalise this coming week before saying anything to the media.

Naturally, it is not our expectation that appeals will be lodged, but out of professional courtesy to those institutions, and to the process generally, it had been Mr White's intention to wait until he had received confirmation from Cycling Australia that it did not intend to appeal the sanction, or the time for appealing had lapsed, and the matter with ASADA was finalised.

This then would have meant that the process as it applies to Mr White was absolutely final.

Unfortunately because of a media leak the source of which remains a mystery to Mr White, Mr White was forced to respond on Friday by releasing the statement which he did.

This has apparently given rise to your concern and I hope this e-mail has addressed that.

Your other question was about which people Mr White had discussed with ASADA. This topic remains confidential and Mr White will not discuss this with any person.

Sincerely

Christopher Johnstone
Barrister

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New York's controversial Stop and Frisk laws under the spotlight

Tue, 07 May 2013 10:00:04 +1000

Mike Bloomberg may go down in history as one of New York City’s great mayors when he finally leaves office in November. After 12 years on the job, most people would want to have some kind of favourable place in history. The trouble is that one policy Bloomberg feverishly supports is likely to blight his record.

Meet what’s known as “Stop and Frisk”, a highly controversial police strategy that, depending on where you sit (and maybe depending on what you look like), is described as a crucial tool in combating crime or a terrible contravention of civil liberties.

Stop and Frisk gives police the power to stop individuals on no basis whatsoever except “suspicion” they have, are, or may be about to commit a crime. It also provides police with the power to search an individual on pretty much the same basis.

For law enforcement, this is a very powerful tool that provides police with a lot of authority to potentially cut crime on the street. It is from the hey-that-guy-looks-sketchy-stop-him school of policing. Awesome. If only Superman had those powers. If your job is stopping crime, who wouldn’t want to be legally able to do that?

The trouble is there are fears that Stop and Frisk means a lot of people have been stopped on suspicion of being, well, um, black. Or Hispanic. Or a teenager. And from a minority ethnic group. None of which plays out well. The result is that Stop and Frisk and its effect horrify a significant number of people.

The New York Times, in an editorial, was scathing against Bloomberg.

This video gives also some insight into what it is like to be on the receiving end of Stop and Frisk and includes (anonymous) testimony from police officers about their own experiences having to enforce that law.

(Memo to Mayor Bloomberg: It’s not favourable to the policy).

Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, meanwhile, appear to love Stop and Frisk. Bloomberg hit out at critics of the policy after a 17-year-old boy was shot and killed in April.

“When police stop and ask a 17-year-old a question based on reasonable suspicion of a crime, there is outrage,” he said. “Yet when a 17-year-old is standing on the corner near his home at 8:15 in the evening and gets shot and killed, there is silence.”

Here’s an NYPD training video that provides tips on how to perform a stop and frisk.

There has been discussion over whether Stop and Frisk includes racial profiling, promotes “quotas” (police officers having to perform a specific number of stops per month), and provides police with a public relations problem, especially on the street.

The issue is currently in the courts, with the NYPD being sued and the constitutionality of the law being questioned. It’s also an issue that may play a big factor in the upcoming mayoral election to find Bloomberg’s successor. Some people in New York want to know of their mayor and police: “Are you with us or against us?”

Christine Manfield's curry leaf chicken

Mon, 06 May 2013 12:33:49 +1000

When Christine Manfield’s glorious book Tasting India arrived in our office, the Feast team was literally queuing to browse its pages. Filled with vivid images and mouth-watering recipes, the flavours and aromas of this many-faceted country almost seemed to rise from the paper. Not surprisingly, we were all thrilled when Christine allowed us to use her curry leaf chicken recipe in this month’s curry feature. Mr Ed is a huge fan of Indian food, but not of chilli. As this curry isn't too hot, it seemed perfect.

Bags of dried chillies are something I tend to buy, use once, and then have them in the pantry for the next three years. So I split this packet with the team and am determined to get through my allotment. Fresh curry leaves are widely available – I picked mine up at the Fiji Mart in Sydney’s Newtown and emerged 30 minutes later laden with crunchy, spicy snacks, dried mango, Mexican chocolate and three kinds of pappadums. Everything else was already in the pantry.

The marinade was simple and, considering it only needs 10 minutes standing time, this quick meal is perfect for busy weeknights. However, my chicken ended up marinating for 24 hours as we made a last-minute decision to eat out – all well and good except that it turned out a little wetter than the original recipe. Our food editor Phoebe tells me that’s because the yoghurt would have leached some liquid over that period of time. It still tasted great and I’m never averse to mopping up a bit of extra sauce with a well-buttered piece of naan.

I made my own cashew paste in the blender, which was super simple, and have enough left over to make this curry another night. The fresh curry leaves add a wonderful flavour but bizarrely, I don’t like the smell of them. Anyway, another success from the Feast home kitchen – this was the perfect amount of heat for Mr Ed and a great curry to cook for the family as it’s not too fiery, yet is still packed with flavour.

Do you prefer mild curries – or the fire-alarm versions?

Editor, SBS Feast

Casting Aspersions: Voices speaks to Persepolis director

Mon, 06 May 2013 11:00:30 +1000

Marjane Satrapi will next make comedic thriller The Voices, starring Ryan Reynolds and Jacki Weaver.

The Iranian-born and Parisian-based graphic artist turned filmmaker Marjane Satrapi has already made a pair of ingenious films with Persepolis and Chicken with Plums, and for her next movie she’s going to make another unlikely mix of genres. The Voices is a psychological thriller with comedic overtones, telling the story of a bathroom fixtures factor worker named Jerry who accidentally kills a female colleague and then takes advice on what to do next from the voices of his cat and dog (who says they can’t get along). The setting isn’t clear, but the cast would suggest America: Jerry will be played by Hollywood actor Ryan Reynolds (Safe House), who used to have an acerbic comic persona until he went to the gym, while his co-star will include Anna Kendrick (Up in the Air), Gemma Arterton (Clash of the Titans) and Jacki Weaver (Animal Kingdom).

Chastain buys into zoo
The demand for Jessica Chastain, who has been a revelation over the last three years – who else shone in material that spans Zero Dark Thirty and The Tree of Life to Mama and The Help – hasn’t abated. The actress with the flame-coloured hair is already committed to the adaptation of August Strindberg’s classic 19th century play Miss Julie for Ingmar Bergman’s onetime muse Liv Ullmann, as well as Guillermo Del Toro’s horror film Crimson Peak, where she will co-star with Emma Stone (The Help), Charlie Hunnam (Del Toro’s forthcoming giant robots versus monsters epic Pacific Rim), and the impeccable diction of Benedict Cumberbatch (Star Trek Into Darkness). Now Chastain will play the lead for New Zealand filmmaker Niki Caro (Whale Rider) in The Zookeeper’s Wife, an adaptation of Diane Ackerman’s novel about a couple who used their workplace, Warsaw’s zoo, to hide Jewish targets of the Nazi German occupiers during World War II.

Bernal to the rescue
Gael Garcia Bernal, who currently gives a wonderfully nuanced performance in Pablo Larrain’s No, is at work on his latest movie in Argentina. In El Ardor he plays a version of Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name who mysteriously emerges from the country’s interior to rescue a woman kidnapped by the mercenaries who killed her father and seized her family’s farm. Bernal co-stars with Alice Braga (I Am Legend) for director Pablo Fendrik (The Mugger), although it remains to be seen if the versatile actor will go ahead with the mooted Zorro Reborn, an attempt to update the swashbuckling legend.

From Snowtown to Scotland
Michael Fassbender (Shame) was one of the actors who departed from the troubled western Jane Got a Gun recently (albeit early and quietly), but it obviously hasn’t soured his working relationship with that movie’s star and producer, Natalie Portman. The two already feature in an untitled forthcoming Terrence Malick film (as opposed to Knight of Cups, another forthcoming Terrence Malick film), and now they appear ready to commit to playing two of Shakespeare’s most demanding and iconic roles: Lord and Lady Macbeth. The new version, set in 11th century Scotland and reportedly featuring the original dialogue, will be directed by Australian filmmaker Justin Kurzel (Snowtown), who is about to go into production on Our Kind of Traitor, a John Le Carre adaptation starring Ewan McGregor (Trainspotting), Ralph Fiennes (Skyfall) and Mads Mikkelsen (The Hunt). No word on the witches yet.

Lisbeth Salander's strength all too rare in cinema

Thu, 02 May 2013 12:24:12 +1000

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo's Lisbeth Salander comes in a short line of fearless female characters.

Seeing Noomi Rapace again as Lisbeth Salander in the original version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – it’s on SBS ONE this Saturday at 9.30pm – made me ponder who I’d name, before this Scandinavian scorcher came along, as my top three gutsy female lead characters.

I’m talking here about women who show no or next-to-no fear; who dominate the screen; whose actions are pure inspiration. Not all that many quickly came to mind.

Uma Thurman did, as The Bride driven by vengeance in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill films, but, frankly, I was more enamoured with that director’s Death Proof heroines and good on him for creating so many.

Anne Parillaud as Nikita in Luc Besson’s Le Femme Nikita was considered, as were Geena Davis as Samantha Caine in Renny Harlin’s The Long Kiss Goodnight and Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor in James Cameron’s The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Perhaps it goes against Hamilton that she hasn’t stayed in the public eye.

Or there’s Angelina Jolie, and take your pick whether to nominate her for the Lara Croft: Tomb Raider films, Evelyn Salt in Salt or for Jane Smith in Mr & Mrs Smith.

In my view, though, no-one stands up to Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley standing up to the extra-terrestrial onslaught in Ridley’s Scott’s science-fiction horror film Alien, and in the subsequent three sequels directed by Cameron, David Fincher and Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Quite simply she gave each performance everything she had – and that was a lot.

And, in my book, Jodie Foster comes a close second as the trainee FBI agent Clarice Starling, who is looking for a man that’s killing and skinning women in The Silence of the Lambs. What makes her so impressive is that she knows the only way she’s going to find him is to go head to head with the probing and provocative psychopath and one-time psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter – and she does.

And then, third on the list is Deborra Lee-Furness as Asta Cadell in the home-grown Shame, fighting for all the women in the outback town she becomes stranded in after her motorbike breaks down. It is easier to imagine being in the shoes of this character than the other two, which adds to the impact.

Shame is an oldie – it was released about 25 years ago – but a goodie. The Silence of the Lambs came out more than 20 years ago and the first Alien nearly 34 years ago. Even the second Kill Bill is coming up to 10 years of age. Is my radar not picking up more contemporary titles or are there none that deserve to be named?

Get ready for the Giro

Wed, 01 May 2013 12:00:00 +1000

There’s never been as much anticipation for the Giro d'Italia as the edition that's about to start on the streets of Naples.

For decades Italy's Grand Tour has been describes as the "poor cousin" of Le Tour de France or worse still "the world's second best three-week bike race."

A touch unfair I feel but there's no doubt the Giro has certainly been challenged for media coverage outside of Italy compared to its more prestigious French equivalent which hogs the headlines of every major news organisation year in, year out.

The media landscape is shifting however, and that was evident last year with the arrival of Michele Acquarone who took over the reigns as the Giro's new race director.

What a breath of fresh air this modern visionary has turned out to be.

In a race that dates back to 1908, can you believe Signor Acquarone is the first of a long line of Giro race directors who actually has a good command of the English language?

That's certainly a great start!

He doesn't appear to be your typical trademark Italian businessman we've come to know from watching the politically incorrect antics of Italy's infamous former Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi.

Acquarone is way above that.

He's not from the "old school" and fully understands the requirements needed to ensure the Giro continues to grow outside of home base.

From my observations, Acquarone's past suggests he's somewhat of an "international man of mystery", yet is not afraid to be active on social media and interacts accordingly.

He has a keen interest in traditional US sports such as baseball, basketball and American Football, but most importantly knows the value of the bike race of which he has total control.

And in a world of live television when the eyes of a vast majority of the globe's population will be glued to the season's first Grand Tour, Acquarone appears to be steering the Giro in the right direction.

But it wasn't always that way - in fact it was never that way at all.

Who can remember the days when you had to look high and low for any form of TV coverage of the Giro?

Remember the mediocre production of the 15 minute daily highlights packages SBS introduced no more than six years ago?

And what about the commentary from Paddy Agnew in 2009?

Here was a football journalist (of all things) from Ireland living in Italy who had never been to a bike race in his life.

His only qualification is that he spoke English - it was enough to satisfy ignorant Giro producers at the time - only problem was his lack of expertise generated a bag of hate mail, enough to even make Santa Claus turn pink with embarrassment.

It's taken a while but it seems Italian TV producers are finally getting it right.

But why has it taken so long to realise the marketing, promotional and tourism opportunities has to offer?

Statistics prove France is the world's most visited nation for tourists and I suggest part of the reason is based the fact that viewers plan future holidays to that part of the world from watching Le Tour.

The 2013 Giro has the makings of being a classic - the calibre of talent suggests this, as does the imaginative course that's been laid out by Acquarone.

Wiggins, Evans, Nibali, Hesjedal, Garzelli, Basso, Scarponi are the big hitters expected to challenge for the maglia rosa.

Aussie interest will again revolve around the fortunes of Matt Goss and Orica-GreenEDGE.

Talk to most of the riders in the pro-peloton with past Giro experience and they will categorically tell you the Giro is the hardest of all Grand Tours.

It may also be the most beautiful and the best, but you'd never would have known.

Until Italian TV is able and willing to market its race with the same finesse, technique and TLC as the Tour de France it will struggle to be in the same league.

Come on Signor Acquarone make it happen, if anyone can do it's you!

The day is coming (sooner rather than later) when viewer numbers for Italy's premier cycle tour will rival that of the one across border in France.

The anticipation is fever pitch - let the Giro begin.

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SBS will broadcast daily Giro d'Italia highlights at 6:00pm on SBS TWO, and will show eight key stages live on SBS TWO and online right here at Cycling Central.

Vélo Files: On My Mind

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 13:00:00 +1000

Never one to join the bandwagon or tread on eggshells, Anthony Tan tells it like he sees it in the week just past.

Sure, Boonen could do a great job, but is he willing? So far, there’s been no evidence to suggest he is.

1. Sayar Isn’t So…
It’s funny how every man and his dog decided to maul Mustafa Sayar after his mountain stage win that, two days later, earned him titleholder in this year’s Tour of Turkey.

In fact, Eurosport commentator and ex-pro Magnus Bäckstedt got stuck into the hitherto unknown third division pro as early as the third leg, considered to be the queen stage of the race and also finishing atop a nasty climb. There, Sayar finished third behind 22-year-old Eritrean Natnael Berhane and Belgian Kevin Seeldraeyers, riding for Astana.

Apparently, churning away in the big chainring, as Sayar is wont to do, is a tell-tale sign of doping.

“The only other time I’ve seen a rider do that was… Frank Vandenbroucke,” commented Bäckstedt.

“Enough said,” replied his cohort David Harmon.

So Berhane is hailed as African cycling’s next big thing while Sayar, two years his senior and with similar credentials, is the pariah of the peloton?

Seeldraeyers hasn’t done much since his breakthrough year in 2009, apart from ninth overall at the 2011 Volta a Catalunya. Do we question his performances, also?

After what happened last year, when Sayar’s erstwhile Bulgarian teammate, Ivailo Gabrovski, was pinged for using EPO, his overall victory rescinded and later awarded to Alexsandr Dyachenko, I’m sure doping officials would have kept a close eye on the Torku Sekerspor lot.

Should we ask Sayar questions along the lines of, “cycling needs a clean and credible winner”, as journalist Matt Rendell duly did Sunday in Istanbul? Yes, absolutely.

Without a skerrick of evidence, should we wait till analysis of urine (and hopefully blood) samples are returned before slagging Sayar off, left, right and centre?

Hell, yes. For now, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt.

2. Spaghetti Froomey…
I wonder if Chris Froome has undergone wind tunnel testing.

Actually, I’m sure he has – he does ride for Team Sky, after all. But when you see his ungainly style on the bike, and contrast it with Froomey’s roomie Richie Porte or Belarusian Kanstantsin Siutsou’s rock-solid pedalling, their upper bodies unwavering, you have to wonder how many watts he may be losing with his spaghetti arms and legs, and whether something can be done about it.

It makes him look fallible, even if his string of successes this season say absolutely not, with stage-race victories in Oman, Critérium International and just last weekend, the Tour de Romandie. There’s something Bradley Wiggins-esque about it, isn’t there?

Last season, many pundits thought Wiggo was going too deep too early, as he nailed wins in Paris-Nice, Romandie and the Critérium du Dauphiné, but the Kid from Kilburn proved otherwise, as Sky controlled all 3,497 kilometres of Le Tour like it was a one-man show.

So far, and like Wiggins’ superlative 2012, there’s nothing to suggest Froome nor his team will falter come July. His likely rivals for the maillot jaune, Alberto Contador, Joaquim Rodríguez and Cadel Evans, need to lift their game to avoid the TV viewing audience falling asleep by the remote. Or bank on another internal rivalry – albeit with consequences other than finishing 1-2 on the Paris podium.

3. Mark 2…
Mark needs Mark.

Cavendish needs Renshaw, and vice versa, that is.

You probably didn’t even notice, and I don’t blame you, but Cavendish was actually racing last week at Romandie.

After Froome won the uphill prologue there was a hat trick of sprint stages on offer and Cav’ finished 162nd, 140th and 136th. Right up there… Not! Instead, it was his Omega Pharma-Quick Step teammate, Gianni Meersman, who shone en Suisse, taking two stages and placing third in the other.

Gert Steegmans, the guy many thought would lead out the Manxman to umpteen wins this season, seems to have switched duties somewhat, despite highly successful lead-out roles for Robbie McEwen and later Tom Boonen. Niki Terpstra was last man for Cavendish at Qatar and did a great job on two occasions but in the bigger races, up against André Greipel, Marcel Kittel and Peter Sagan, a specialist is mandatory.

“The train on Omega Pharma-Quick Step isn’t working properly,” Jürgen Roelandts, third at the Tour of Flanders, told Matt Keenan in an interview on The Bike Lane, published last week on the Cycling Tips website.

“It’s working like us two years ago (when Greipel first joined the team, having left HTC-High Road) and we got it on track last year, really good. Boonen will be the key for Cavendish in the Tour, I think.”

Sure, Boonen could do a great job, but is he willing?

So far, there’s been no evidence to suggest he is, other than some words exchanged during the off-season. Snapping his collarbone at Flanders and writing off his spring in one fell swoop, I’d say that once healed, ‘Tommeke’ will be seeking redemption by way of victory himself, rather than laying it on the line for someone else.

Even if he places himself at the service of Cavendish, the pair is unlikely to team up till July – making for an untried, untested and unproven sprint train at QPQS.

Coincidentally, Renshaw’s bold move to have a go himself in the sprinting stakes has not gone without a hitch.

He’s said a number of times it is in part to do with the support, or lack of, provided. In moving to a Dutch-based team with a Dutch sprinter in Theo Bos however, and with few runs on the board, what did he expect?

Graeme Brown told me in an interview at this year’s Tour de Langkawi that Bos’ speed is “better than Cavendish”. “In terms of speed, he’s the quickest guy in the world. He’s just got to get himself (to the finish) fresh – that’s my role as well,” Brownie said in February, adding that for the remainder of the season, he’ll almost exclusively be at the service of Bos.

So, at 30 years old, keep plugging away, first to be selected in a sprinter-friendly race, then drum up the necessary support, and then try his best to take on the likes of Cavendish, Greipel, Sagan, Kittel, Goss et al – or return to a place where an opening clearly exists, where his talents will be lauded, applauded and rewarded, in a role that he could conceivably do for at least five more years?

Identity a theme of Boston aftermath

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 08:42:04 +1000

On April 22, Judge Marianne Bowler convened a hearing of the United States District Court at Beth Israel Deconess Medical Center in Boston.

A doctor turned to defendant Dzhokar Tsarnaev, lying in a bed, and asked: “How are you feeling? Are you able to answer some questions?”

Tsarnaev nodded affirmatively and we were another step closer to discovering just what had motivated the Boston marathon bombing.

What we know for sure: there will be many questions and, unfortunately, not as many answers as we may want to what exactly pushed the Tsarnaev brothers to the point where detonating bombs and shooting police seemed like a good idea.

Yet one strong theme has developed throughout the whole sorry and frightening and often horrific episode -- identity. What it is that makes someone something and what it is that makes someone something else.

We can see identity in Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his failed and flawed boxing career. The elder of the two brothers held not unreasonable ambition to box for the United States at the Olympics -- preferring that path to representing Russia. He was partly thwarted in that quest by the Golden Gloves competition, a pathway to Olympic selection, being open only to citizens.

We can see identity in “Misha”, the supposed Armenian Islamist (itself an almost impossible identity) accused of radicalizing Tamerlan. “Misha” turned out to be Mikhail Allakhverdov, of Ukrainian-Armenian descent, cleared by the FBI in inspiring or directing the bombings.

Identity also features strongly in the connection some public figures (OK, right-wing media ‘celebrity’, Ann Coulter) have tried to make between U.S. immigration and murder.

Then on the other side of that argument, you have the immigrant from China, a student-turned-start-up-hopeful, carjacked by the Tsarnaevs, and who maybe saved countless other lives in steering the brothers in another direction that last night on the run.

Yet among all that is the strange transition one media outlet concocted in turning Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev from white men -- their race is ascertained from all known photographs and the FBI’s own racial codification -- into dark-skinned Arab-looking terrorists for a cover sketch.

There’s no irony in the accompanying cover line being “A Radical Change”. The dangerous implication -- on many levels -- is that white men don’t bomb things. Only dark Arabs do.

Fairytale ride

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 12:00:00 +1000

Mustafa Sayar's overall win at the Presidential Tour of Turkey is either a sporting fairytale or something far more insidious, writes Al Hinds.

There was a rarefied atmosphere ahead of this year’s Presidential Tour of Turkey. The confession of Lance Armstrong, the fallout from the USADA investigation, the ongoing inquiries in Italy have all made cycling observers hyper sensitive to even a sniff of the unbelievable or the incredible.

Turkey however had even more reason to feel the heat of critical eyes. Last year, lest we forget, a 34-year-old Bulgarian, Ivailo Gabrovski, raised eyebrows at the Tour when he rode clear of the field on Stage 3 to Elmali, seven kilometres from the finish, arriving home a minute and a half ahead of the next best on the stage, Astana's Alexandr Dyachenko.

In July of last year it was revealed that Gabrovski had tested positive for the banned blood booster EPO with the second sample confirming the first.

Needless to say, those following this year's edition of the Tour wanted to be sure that the race could boast a clean winner. Can we be sure that that's what we've got in Mustafa Sayar? Well, let's just say his performance doesn't fill me with confidence.

Sayar's story is one that sportswriters love. A young, local rider overcoming an international field, in his home race. Under resourced, against the odds, a sporting fairytale.

And it's possible that Sayar is the real deal. The 24 year old was second overall earlier this season at the Tours de Algerie and Blida. And there's something to be said for a local targeting his local race, as he describes, making it "the world championships" of his season, while other more well-known pros hone their form for so-called bigger races. That's all fairly logical.

But the Tours de Algerie and Blida aren't exactly shining lights on a rider's palmares, and this is a guy that finished third last in the 2012 edition of the Tour. This isn't NBC questioning Nairo Quintana's performance in the Basque country ignoring a well-trodden, slow and steady development. There are obvious doubts.

It's an unfortunate coincidence that Sayar rides for the same team as Gabrovski, Torku Sekerspor. It's more unfortunate still that his riding style, of grinding a big gear interminably on a climb has shades of Riis, Indurain and Ullrich in their primes.

On Stage 6 of this year's race, where Sayar had, like Gabrovski, decimated the field on the race's queen stage - a remarkable performance considering he was riding into a headwind and only gained time after he'd made his attack - Marcel Kittel took to twitter to vent his frustrations at the Turk.

I was not often in my life so angry about a result of someone else. And I see many people around me feeling the same. #TourofTurkey

— Marcel Kittel (@marcelkittel) April 26, 2013
Saxo-Tinkoff, in a hastily deleted tweet added that it was:

"A VERY surprising stage win by Mustafa Sayar #tur2013. #Teamsaxotinkoff's Rory Sutherland finished side by side with Berhane."

Sayar was understandably grilled in the press conference after the stage. He was asked directly by a journalist whether he could defend his ride to the criticism of other rider's in the peloton. He said he had nothing to say to them.

Perhaps the best quote from Sayar was the following when asked whether he would have the same problem as Gabrovsky at a later date.

"Gabrovsky was a very good sportsman, but he was too ambitious in doing such a thing. I don’t think I will have the same situation."

I can't hold the quote entirely against him considering Sayar's English isn't perfect, but as soon as I heard it I thought it reminiscent of Floyd Landis's famous "I'm going to say no" when asked whether he'd cheated at the 2006 Tour de France.

#TUR2013, Stage 6, Final Climb (5.27 km). Mustafa Sayar "66 kg": 13:51, 22.83 Kph, VAM 1677 m/h, 6.33 W/kg. [cyclingpowerlab.com/PowerComponent…]

— vetooo (@ammattipyoraily) April 28, 2013
To be fair, Sayar's performance isn't entirely unbelievable. From the above data, it is very very good but it's not above the threshold of accepted human performance. It's close, but it's not above it.

Even so, there's a lot of skepticism out there.

Mustafa Sayar wins the GC at Tour of Turkey,you must be blind to see something isn't wright here! @tdwsport #badforcycling #TourofTurkey2013

— Tim De Waele (@TDWsport) April 28, 2013

I wholeheartedly hope that such skepticism is unfounded, and in a few month's time we get clean tests back from Sayar, and going forward, an unblemished record from him. He could be the rider of his generation, an unheralded talent at the start of a brilliant career.

The alternative is tear-your-hair-out-and-bash-fists-into-walls frustrating. Not just because of the context of last year. But because of Sayar’s age. It would be a slap in the face for those that want to believe the sport is turning a page and that a new generation understands the mistakes of the past. How can anyone say we’re moving in the right direction forward if it’s simply business as usual? All I can say is, watch this space.

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Singing the praises of Omid Djalili – and Twitter

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 10:52:59 +1000

The star of this Saturday night's film, The Reluctant Infidel, is is worth following on and off the screen.

I stalk the British actor and comedian Omid Djalili on Twitter. There, the truth is out. And if I lived in London there is no question that I’d be rushing to see him during his stand-up comedy season at the Leicester Square Theatre. I know about the show starting this Tuesday because he told me and his 179,079 (as of April 24) other followers on Twitter, and I know it will be hugely entertaining because I’ve seen many of his comedy routines and sketches online as a result of falling for him in the British comedy The Reluctant Infidel.

He has a buoyant career but Omid Djalili simply wasn’t on my radar until I saw him in this film, which screens on SBS One this Saturday at 9.30pm. He plays the lead role of Mahmud, a Muslim who has an identity crisis when he discovers that he was adopted and that his birth parents are Jewish. (In real life, Omid Djalili was born to Iranian parents of the Baha’i faith.)

[ SBS ONE Film season: full schedule ]

There is a lot of intellectual mortar in the script, written by David Baddiel, an atheist of Jewish heritage. It prompts questions about the nature of faith, about being born to beliefs versus adopting them, about tolerance and intolerance. But the way Omid Djalili dominates this film with his delightfully slapstick performance guarantees that there’s nothing ponderous going on. The film taps into the religious tensions that envelope the world but with a skilled lightness of touch.

Now a certified fan of Omid Djalili, I know from Twitter that in the last six weeks he: went to a memorial for Stephen Lawrence, who was murdered in a racist attack while waiting for a bus in south east London 20 years ago; loves writer/director Asghar Fardhadi’s film A Separation and recently saw it for the third time; and admired a speech by British politician and former actor Glenda Jackson about Thatcherism and writer Stewart Lee’s exploration of right wing stand-up comedians, which appeared in the New Statesman.

Earlier this month he wrote the following: “Is it a). how empty would my life be without twitter? or b). how much more productive [could] I be in my life without this bullshit?”

Following Omid Djalili is one of the reasons I don’t struggle with the value of Twitter exactly because I can follow him. It’s a great example of how Twitter is film fandom’s biggest modern development – if the subject of your affections is as active on Twitter as @omid9

Karma bites

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 10:00:00 +1000

One thing they didn't tell me about life as a professional cyclist was the important role of karma.

Sure, I knew there were going to be days when the sprint wouldn't go my way. It happens to every rider at some stage of their career, unless your name is Alexandre Vinokourov. But I figured karma and its potentially career-altering impact would be restricted to actual racing and not the little stuff, like what I yelled at the TV.

Anyway, it all started when our team reconvened in Belgium after Liege-Bastogne-Liege for a team meeting, where the team directors delivered good news and bad news. The good news: I'd been named in the provisional squad for the Giro! The bad news: So was my main rival, and we were told that whoever produced the best training results over the next week would get the nod.

Given the considerable reputation that precedes me - a future star sprinter and potential Grand Tour stage winner - I thought it was about time I was allowed to practise with the team's leadout train. All my prior requests had been rebuffed by the team bosses with increasingly flimsy reasons, but this time they agreed.

The first two days went well. I stayed out of trouble, did my part in the lead-out workouts and generally made myself useful - loaning my bidons to the senior guys when they ran out of fluids and letting the slightly washed-up veteran domestique wheel-suck for as long as he liked.

I even went as far as telling the team's marketing director that the team's new aero helmets looked great in the promo shots, and that they looked nothing like the Stackhats we saw in retro commercials in Adelaide during the Tour Down Under in January. I don't even think he believed me, though.

Looking back, my real trouble began when we caught up on the highlights from the Tour of Turkey and we saw the huge pile-up in stage two. Most of the other guys were in awe of how hard Mark Renshaw hit the deck in the crash, but I was too busy cheering when I saw Theo Bos go head over heels behind the Aussie.

Sure, it might not have been the most charitable moment of my life but how do you expect me to react when the chief protagonist in my recurring nightmare comes down hard? I'm sure the other guys didn't hold it against me. Not for too long, anyway.

Whatever they thought, they didn't get to think it for long because the karma bus turned up the very next day. (Thankfully it wasn't an actual bus. If it was, I probably wouldn't be here telling you about it.)

I was just about to launch into my turn at the front of the paceline during Wednesday's sprint train exercises when the words of my coach from a few years ago came echoing back to me.

"If you end up like Mark Renshaw, you'll have had a great career," he said - except I don't think he meant I should have gone early on my sprint, clipped the wheel of the guy in front of me and gone face first into the bitumen like Renshaw did.

The wash-up? Four chipped teeth, a broken collarboke and a fractured scapula. At least I can content myself with the knowledge that whatever I did (because I can't really remember the crash), I did it better than the Aussie star.

That almost makes up for the knowledge that I'm out of the Giro, that my arch-rival will take my spot and my season has pretty much been ruined. If I'm lucky, I might get back for a crack at the Vuelta but even that's unlikely given my neo-pro status. I suppose there's always next year…

Spain’s population falls as unemployment hits a record

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 18:25:08 +1000

Spain is now on par with Greece with having one of the worst jobless rates in Europe.

Official figures show more than 6.2 million Spaniards don't have work, pushing the country's unemployment rate to a record 27.2 per cent.

In October 2006, it was 7.6 per cent. It's even worse for those under 24 years of age, with the youth unemployment rate at a staggering 57.2 per cent.

There is evidence young people are fleeing the country to find work in other parts of Europe and the world.

In fact, earlier this week, Spain's population fell for the first time since annual records began.

More than 200,000 people left the country, pushing its population to 47.1 million. Most of those who left, were immigrants, mostly from former colonies in Latin America.

Spain was hit hard by the European financial crisis in 2008, with its property market crashing, and banks in desperate need of a bailout package from the EU.

It's financial sector hasn't recovered, and only today the eurozone's biggest bank, Spain's Santander posted a 25.9 per cent fall in quarterly profit.

Spain's economy is continuing to shrink. Earlier this week, the Bank of Spain said GDP contracted by 0.5 per cent in the first quarter of 2013, slowing from a 0.8 per cent fall in the previous quarter.

Its government expects a full year contraction of between 1 and 1.5 per cent this year, compared with a 1.37 per cent fall in 2012.

As the European summer approaches, Spain will be hoping the seasonal influx of tourists provide a welcome boost to its economy.

Spain is the world's second most popular tourism destination, behind the United States and a head of France according to the World Tourism Organisation, but tourist revenue is falling. International tourism receipts rose by around 1 per cent last year, compared with an 8 per cent increase in 2010/11.

So how does Spain compare with the rest of the European Union?

Greece recorded an unemployment rate of 27.2 per cent last week for the month of January, but we'll have to wait until June to get a comparative measure with this current Spanish result, because that's when Greece will release its first quarter labour force survey.

Casting Aspersions: Cronenberg looks to the stars

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 16:01:41 +1000

The next film from David Cronenberg will examine the influence of celebrity culture on society.

David Cronenberg is ready to make his next movie, having last made the second best film of 2012 about white stretch limousines, Cosmopolis. Maps to the Stars, written by the longtime chronicler of oddball Los Angeles behaviour, author Bruce Wagner, is a critique of the celebrity-obsessed Hollywood culture that forms the background chatter of everyday life now. Cronenberg’s cast includes John Cusack (The Paperboy), Julianne Moore (Safe, the forthcoming Carrie remake), Cosmopolis star and one-time teen vampire Robert Pattinson, and Sarah Gadon, who has recently worked with both Cronenberg (A Dangerous Method) and his son Brandon (Antiviral).

Laurent gets new look
Forget music, the hot new biopic is fashion. French filmmaker Bertrand Bonello (On War) will direct Yves Saint Laurent, a biopic of the French fashion designer considered by many to be the finest creator of women’s clothes in the 20th century. Saint Laurent, who died in 2008 at the age of 71, will be played by Gaspard Ulliel (Hannibal Rising, The Princess of Montpensier), with Jeremie Renier (Summer Hours, The Kid with a Bike) as his long-time lover and business partner, Pierre Berge. The in-demand Lea Seydoux (Farewell, My Queen) will play Saint Laurent’s friend, accessories designer Loulou de la Falaise, but who can possibly play the fashion icon’s muse and companion Catherine Deneuve?

Hughes snipes Expendables gig
The first stop for dramatic actor turned inscrutable action star Wesley Snipes after his release from jail following a three year sentence for failing to file U.S. tax returns? The set of The Expendables 3, Sylvester Stallone’s franchise for ageing action heroes. Snipes would be joining Stallone, Jason Statham and other regulars, although it’s unclear if Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger, who featured in the second instalment, will return.

Stallone, who directed the first film before handing over to Simon West, had previously suggested that his dream director for the third Expendables would be Mel Gibson, but it was actually a far less well known Australian filmmaker who surprisingly got the gig after Stallone used Twitter to string out the announcement. “The director is an Aussie,” tweeted Stallone, adding soon after they had “directed a damn good film 2 years ago”. Stallone’s next clue was that, “the last film he did was more RED than BLUE,” at which point Red Dog director Kriv Stenders might have put a call in to his agent. The filmmaker in question was Patrick Hughes (pictured), a former Tropfest winner whose debut feature was 2010’s contemporary Australian western, Red Hill. Patrick, meet Jet Li. Jet Li, meet Patrick.

David Ayers' Fury
Brad Pitt will be returning to World War II, scene of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, to star in the decidedly more realistic Fury, as an American commander whose Sherman tank has to survive the final days of fighting inside Nazi Germany. The film is written and directed by David Ayers, the former U.S. Navy sailor who wrote Training Day and The Fast and the Furious before getting behind the camera for Street Kings and last year’s End of Watch. One possibility to join Pitt, who next stars in the zombie blockbuster World War Z, is Shia LaBeouf, who may need to go to war since he’s just finished shooting Lars von Trier’s next movie, Nymphomaniac.

Cauliflower and cavalo nero rice pie

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 15:57:42 +1000

A few years ago, okay, almost 20 years ago, when I first discovered risotto, I went mad for it. I cooked a batch at least once a week and added all manner of elements to create Franken-risottos that were philosophically aligned with the originals, but truly had a life of their own. They were almost all delicious and made wonderful work lunches, but, slowly, risotto and I drifted apart.

That is, until I decided to renew the friendship by making the cauliflower and cavalo nero rice pie in our To Market story of the May issue. This filo pie, filled with a simple risotto, is very similar to burek, which is found up and down the shores of the eastern Mediterranean. I ate wheelbarrow-loads of it in Turkey and have even been known to make my own filo pastry as a starting point (it’s a nice party trick when there are kids around). I have tried burek (or pitta, as it’s known in Serbia) with a number of different fillings, but never with rice, so I was keen to try this version.

I enjoyed re-engaging with my old friend risotto and I find the constant stirring quite contemplative – it also prevents me from doing anything else at the same time – something of which I’m often guilty and which occasionally results in kitchen mishaps. Our recipe calls for vialone nano rice, which is imported from Verona, however I substituted Arborio, because that’s what my local shop had. I also used silverbeet instead of cavalo nero because I’m all about making life easy.

Once the risotto had cooled, I assembled the pie. Call me crazy, but I didn’t cover the filo with a damp tea towel and it was fine – yeah, that’s me, living on the culinary edge! I seemed to have more than two cups of risotto, and there was plenty of filo left over, so I made a third roll and wedged that into my tin as well. If you’re not up for that, any leftover risotto would make a great aldesko office lunch – I think risotto reheats really well. I did use more butter than the recipes states – maybe I was a bit heavy handed, but, really, can you ever have too much butter?

I baked the pie for about five minutes longer than suggested – my oven has its moments – to get it lovely and golden. After letting it rest for about 10 minutes, I popped the springform pan and released pie perfection – Mr Ed was thrilled that this one was staying at home, rather than heading for Feast HQ.

What food did you used to have a crush on?

Editor, SBS Feast

Casting Aspersions: Hiddleston gets his shot

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 14:28:30 +1000

English actor Tom Hiddleston will play the pioneering photojournalist Robert Capa.

The Spanish Civil War raged between 1936 and 1939, a bloody proxy for the looming World War II that would transfix writers such as Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell as well as inspiring subsequent generations of filmmakers as diverse as Ken Loach (Land and Freedom) and Guillermo Del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth). The latest work to be set during the conflict focuses on the photographer whose work covering the conflict made him internationally renowned. Robert Capa’s photo 'The Falling Soldier', showing a Republican soldier flying backwards at the moment a bullet strikes him dead, is one of the most famous (and controversial) images of the 20th century, but it’s only one of many he took.

The untitled film being prepared by director Paul Andrew Williams (Song for Marion) and screenwriter Menno Meyjes (Empire of the Sun) will focus on the charismatic exiled Hungarian Jew’s two years in Spain (Robert Capa was Endre Friedmann’s professional name) and his relationship with fellow photographer Gerda Taro. Capa will be played by British actor Tom Hiddleston, who has portrayed villains both otherworldly (Thor, The Avengers) and all too human (The Deep Blue Sea) in recent years, while Taro is the responsibility of another Brit, Gemma Arterton (Clash of the Titans, Tamara Drewe).

Vaughn suits up
How many times can John Hughes’ 1987 comedy Planes, Trains & Automobiles be remade? Plenty. In Business Trip, Vince Vaughn (Wedding Crashers) will play an American suit whose European work trip is marked by a succession of disasters that lead to some unconventional travel arrangements on the Continent. I have visions of lederhosen.

Beauty repeats
There have been beauties and there have definitely been beasts in the previous films by French director Christoph Gans (Brotherhood of the Wolf, Silent Hill), but this time he’s gone to the source with a remake of the fairytale that has already inspired everything from a Jean Cocteau film to an animated Disney hit. Gans’ Beauty and the Beast will be about the nightly meetings between a young woman who has sacrificed herself to a creature that had the right to take her father’s life. The cast will include Vincent Cassel (Black Swan, Trance) and Lea Seydoux (Farewell, My Queen; pictured) in the titular roles, and Andre Dussolier (Tell No One) as the errant patriarch.

Neeson on road to infamy
Surprisingly, no-one has ever remade Arthur Penn’s seminal 1967 crime drama Bonnie and Clyde, a film that basted defining roles for Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway; surely some idiot would have put money into a new version with Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart? But director John Lee Hancock (The Alamo, The Blind Side) is now at work on a film that puts a new spin on the tale of the Depression-era bank robbers. Highwaymen will be about the Texas Rangers who pursued the Barrow Gang and eventually killed them in an ambush, and Hancock is looking to cast Liam Neeson (Taken, Taken 2, and probably Taken 3 within a month or two) and Woody Harrelson (Zombieland, No Country for Old Men) as the lead lawmen. Of course, a new Bonnie and Clyde could still have supporting roles…

Vélo Files: Early Season Observations

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 10:00:00 +1000

With the first four months just about done and dusted, Anthony Tan provides some insight into what he’s seen so far.

1. Spring Classics: It’s (Always) Something Unpredictable
Okay, when Tom Boonen crashed out of Flanders less than 20km into proceedings we expected cobbled classics maestro Fabian Cancellara to walk away with the win, which he duly did with both eyes closed. But don’t tell me you thought he would come within a wheel of losing the Hell of the North the following weekend – to Blanco’s Sep Vanmarcke, no less!

And what about Gerald Ciolek’s ‘come-from-nowhere’ (I only used that line to annoy web editor Phil Gomes) triumph in Milan-San Remo? Or Roman Kreuziger’s come-from-nowhere (not saying he doped, Phil, but former team-mate Leonardo Bertagnolli said he worked with the nefarious Michele Ferrari) pot of Amstel Gold? Or Daniel Moreno’s come from… (okay, okay, enough come-from-nowhere jokes for now) .. somewhat surprise victory atop the Mur de Huy in La Flèche Wallonne? Or namesake Daniel Martin’s breakthrough bonanza to claim ‘La Doyenne’ last Sunday?

No three weeks of predictable, metronomic riding here. Just pure, unadulterated panache from the world’s best one-day riders. And when the day is done, not a skerrick of glycogen left.

I’m already looking forward to Spring 2014.

2. Project Tenerife = Fail for Sky’s Classics squad
What works for Bradley Wiggins, Chris Froome and Richie Porte does not work for Edvald Boasson Hagen, Geraint Thomas and Bernhard Eisel.

The Spring Classics are over and Team Sky, one of the five most moneyed squads in the WorldTour peloton, walked away winless. Sergio Henao’s second place in La Flèche Wallonne and Mat Hayman’s third in Dwars door Vlaanderen were the sole apple and orange after two weeks’ hard labour in the Canary Islands. Eurosport commentator and ex professional Brian Smith said that even before a pedal had been turned at the Amstel Gold Race the Team Sky posse looked tired, and that the training regime for their Classics coterie was simply too tough.

For the one-day specialists, training at altitude and riding up and down a giant volcano may not be such a good idea, after all.

3. BMC: Better Make Changes
BMC Racing’s Classics squad fared marginally better than Team Sky’s, which isn’t the most praiseworthy assessment of an outfit housing (supposedly) the world’s best one-day rider.

Okay, there were 19 WorldTour and up to six Pro Continental teams riding the Classics, so not everyone can win. But in Philippe Gilbert, Thor Hushovd and Greg Van Avermaet you have three of the strongest Classics specialists around and perhaps the latter aside, who was solid throughout and probably deserved a win, the former two, proven winners in the past, never really got going.

Then lands a press release a week after the Critérium International, saying 2011 Tour de France champ Cadel Evans, who finished tenth last, almost sixteen minutes behind winner Christopher Froome, had the idea of riding both the Giro d’Italia and Tour ‘proposed’ to him. Roughly translated, BMC management is getting a little edgy, a little jittery, concerning Evans’ ability to rediscover his former self by July.

Yes, he has shown he can ride well doing two Grand Tours in a season, but the seasons he did his best work in Le Tour – 2008 (he told me he came closer to winning that year than 2007, even though he lost by a greater margin) and 2011 – he only rode one GT. “I am not coming to the Giro just for training,” he declared.

Should he find himself in a winning position at the Giro, then, I would say go for it and put your eggs in one basket, because as Alberto Contador’s failed Giro-Tour experiment showed in 2011, going deep at the Giro will eventually cost you in the third week of July (and in Bertie’s case, all the way till February the following year).

Cadel’s form looked on the up last week at the Giro del Trentino. I would say he’s in with a chance at La Corsa Rosa. An outside chance, but a chance nonetheless.

4. Nibbles and Wiggles: Giro’s best bets
Intersecting intermittently at the tours of Oman and Trentino, they’ve nevertheless followed different trajectories to the May 4 start in Naples; one more race-focused, the other with a greater emphasis on training. Regardless, both yearn for the same thing: to win the 96th edition of the world’s most beautiful bike race.

If one looked at results alone you may say Vincenzo Nibali has the 2013 Giro d’Italia in the bag. It would be fatuous to do so, however, because Team Sky, while they struggled for success in spring, know how to race – and win – a Grand Tour, and will arrive in Italy with such a squad.

That said, the final stage of Trentino was telling. Yes, Wiggins experienced mechanical misadventure, however the repeated accelerations when he first encountered bike bugs with his electronic gearing prevented him from returning to the lead group, rather than the bike change per se.

He needs to be able to come back better from incidents such as these. No doubt, Nibali will have taken note that the way to rid himself of the Brit is to isolate him from his team, then force Wiggins to accelerate on the climbs.

5. Sprinters on show, but no one better than the rest
Cavendish, Greipel, Sagan, Goss, Bos, Kittel… and that’s just the cream of the sprinting class in season 2013, which has seen each of the aforementioned take at least one win of significance.

While Sagan has been outstanding so far, I wouldn’t say he’s been indomitable: close but no cigar in San Remo and Flanders, then off his A-game in the Ardennes. His two closest sprinting rivals, Cavendish and Greipel, enjoyed early season success but were then underwhelming when it really mattered. Maybe the pair never properly recovered after freezing their proverbials off in San Remo, just like Bernard Hinault never regained full feeling in his fingers after blasting his way through a blizzard en route to victory in the 1980 Liège-Bastogne-Liège.

I’m sure Cav’ will come good in the Giro and, like the past two years, take another hat trick in Italy. But to see the aforementioned all going head-to-head like pugilistic warriors on wheels?

You’ll have to wait till July, I’m afraid.

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Virgin’s rebirth in the discount market with Tiger

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 18:26:23 +1000

Virgin Australia is now one step closer in its bid to take on arch rival Qantas at all levels of the aviation market, but just how strong is the newest brand to its stable?

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has approved Virgin Australia's 60 per cent takeover or Singapore Airlines' low-cost carrier Tiger Airways Australia.

The $35million acquisition will allow it to compete with Qantas' budget airline Jetstar, after Virgin abandoned the segment by moving upmarket to capture more high yielding business travellers.

Only recently, Virgin Australia completed its purchase of regional airline SkyWest.

Now only a small handful of final approvals are needed, including the Foreign Investment Review Board, to see its tie up with Tiger proceed.

Once through, Virgin will compete with Qantas at all levels; regionally its SkyWest acquisition will take on Qantas Link; domestically in the budget space its Tiger brand will compete with Jetstar; domestically in the premium market Virgin Australia is trying to muster in on Qantas' territory (Qantas currently holds a 65 per cent domestic market share); and in the international space, Virgin Australia already flies to the United States and the Middle East, the latter of which Qantas is now paying closer attention to thanks to its strategic alliance with Emirates.

In its decision , the ACCC said that in its view, the acquisition is unlikely to lead to a substantial lessening of competition in the Australian aviation market.

In fact, it may have benefitted given claims, Tiger was set to exit the Australian market, after it lost around $67million over the past two years.

But Tiger Airways Australia has had a chequered past, despite recent moves to assure customers of a change in business practises.

Air safety regulators grounded the airline for five weeks in 2011 due to safety concerns and one would argue its portrayal in the Channel 7 reality program "Air Ways" may have hurt its reputation.

The program took a warts and all look at the day to day operations of the company, disgruntled passengers included. Even though the program was recorded in 2010, before a shake-up of the company after its grounding, the final episode was only broadcast late last year.

That saw Tiger address the problem last September by tweeting "The footage was filmed over 2 years ago so isn't reflective of re-launched Tiger" and "In order to be popular the show airs a disproportionate amount of 'drama' for viewers".

At the moment, Tiger has 11 domestic planes, but that's likely to expand with both Tiger and Virgin committing around $62.5million into the business.

Virgin previously said it will retain the Tiger brand.

But it will be interesting to see whether consumers will embrace the company, how Virgin will position it, and whether management will ultimately rebrand its discount carrier if the Tiger brand doesn’t resonate with travellers.

A blast from the past

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 11:00:00 +1000

The last time I saw Miguel Martinez in person he looked like the above image. On his way to winning the men's cross-country (XCO) at the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.

For those who don't remember Martinez, he was the best mountain bike rider at the turn of the century, and in 2000, he won not only gold in Sydney at the Olympic Games but also the MTB world cup and world championships.

There was another guy you may know chasing Martinez in Sydney that day; Cadel Evans, who went on to finish seventh, and later, of course, Tour de France glory.

Martinez eventually moved to the road with Mapei-QuickStep (2002) then Phonak (2003) but was essentially pack fodder in an era fuelled on anything but bread and water.

That plus a road accident involving a car saw Martinez retire at the end of the 2003 season, when he suggested that it was doping which made his time in the professional road peloton an unsuccessful one. But he was soon back on the bike, riding the road and dirt for Amore e Vita.

"I still love the bike too much to give up my career altogether," Martinez told L'Equipe at the time. "I was being told that I had nothing to do in that scene.

"I always did the best I could in my profession, without doping, and they quickly made me understand that I didn't perform as they wanted.

"But today, I really think that things have changed. I'm convinced that cycling evolves in the right direction and I want a second chance at top level."

However, results remained thin on the ground and by 2008 Martinez was gone for good. Or so we thought.

Fast forward to 2013, and Martinez, now 37, has been back on the bike.

He made an informal return to the dirt at the urging of Italian bicycle components manufacturer FRM. Martinez is French but now lives in Italy.

This past weekend he appeared at the Sea Otter Classic ready to race some of the best in the world in the Pro Men Cross-Country race, including Christoph Sauser, Lukas Fluckiger, Geoff Kabush and London 2012 Olympic Games champion Jaroslav Kulhavy.

There, Martinez turned back the clock to claim an amazing win on a hard track with very little single track, and which started and finished on a paved racetrack. Martinez was off the front early with a six-pack of riders chasing hard, reportedly at 40km/h in some sections. It was simply an incredible return.

The Sea Otter is a big USA Cycling sanctioned event but prize-money for the men's and women's winners was less that $1000. There were no doping controls, despite the technical guide saying there was.

While it is a relaxed return to high-level racing, with the majority of the professionals there to shake hands and sign autographs on behalf of sponsors, the competitive spirit still burns brightly.

Like many, Canadian Kabush, who was one of the riders fighting to catch Martinez, was surprised by the result.

"Definitely not my favourite guy I'd like to see on top of the box," said Kabush. "Makes it that much more bittersweet to see a guy with his history from back in the day coming out of nowhere. Obviously he had fantastic legs the whole day to hold off our group, so credit to him."

Out of nowhere? Geez, I really hate hearing that phrase. Hopefully just out of the past.

By the way, Australia's Sid Taberlay finished ninth in the race and ill countryman Daniel McConnell rolled through in 86th position.

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Weird week in American news ends with geography fail

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 10:12:45 +1000

You know it’s an odd news week in the United States when the story about an Elvis Presley impersonator from Mississippi plotting to kill the President by mailing letters stuffed with ricin is pretty much ignored.

Paul Kevin Curtis is also an aspiring novelist and was arrested by the FBI last week after envelopes containing ricin were sent to President Obama, a U.S. senator, and a judge. According to his ex-wife, Curtis is “delusional, anti-government”.

She may have had a point. Curtis apparently believed the Feds were using drones to spy on his wife. He wrote on online forums about a government “conspiracy to ruin my reputation in the community as well as an ongoing effort to break down the foundation I worked more than 20 years to build in the country music scene.”

The Curtis case has a humorous/tragic side but what happened in the town of West, Texas, does not. At least 14 people were confirmed dead and 200 injured when a fertilizer plant exploded and wiped out a large part of the town.

One of the most harrowing videos from the scene was taken by Derrick Hurtt who had parked his car to watch the fire while his 12-year-old daughter Khloey begged her father to leave.

“I can’t hear! I can’t hear! Please get out of here!” she screamed after the fertilizer plant exploded, their vehicle rocked by the blast.

The dead were all first responders - volunteers training to be EMTs - caught in the blast. The explosion is understood to have been caused by anhydrous ammonia. The plant had apparently not been inspected by health and safety officials in at least five years, opening up questions about lax government regulations.

Of course, all these stories were smothered by the Boston marathon bombing and its aftermath seemingly straight from a Ben Affleck or Matt Damon movie. Much of the U.S. was gripped by the 24 hours that followed the release of videos and photographs of the suspects on Thursday.

The Chechen origins of the Boston bombers cast a different shadow on where terrorist threats to the U.S. are supposed to have come from. The bombers had no clear link to Al-Qaeda nor were they apparently part of any extreme domestic right wing group “angry” at the government for whatever reason.

If their actions were connected to their Chechen origins - the bombers were American citizens - then their rage would have been better served directed at Russia or Russian interests.

Adding to the bizarre chain of events - that ended with one of the suspects discovered lying in a boat (of all places) after avoiding one of the largest man-hunts in American history for almost 24 hours - was that the Czech Republic government was compelled to issue a statement on the affair.

“I am concerned to note in the social media a most unfortunate misunderstanding in this respect,” the Czech ambassador to the U.S. wrote.

“The Czech Republic and Chechnya are two very different entities - the Czech Republic is a Central European country; Chechnya is a part of the Russian Federation.”

Like most of last week’s stories, you couldn’t make it up.

Milestone: 23 million Australians

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 17:09:34 +1000

SBS may be helping to tell seven Billion Stories every day, but from tomorrow, it will be telling those stories, for the first time, to 23 million Australians.

Australia's population officially hits a milestone on Tuesday at 9:57pm, according to projections by the Bureau of Statistics.

There is one baby born every 1 minute and 44 seconds.

There is one death every 3 minutes and 32 seconds.

International migration adds one person to the population every 2 minutes and 19 seconds.

When you combine those variables, it means there is a total population increase of one person every 1 minute and 23 seconds.

Based on those numbers, tomorrow night at 9:57pm, Australia's population will hit 23 million.

While New South Wales has the biggest population at 7.3 million, Western Australia saw the biggest increase year on year, up by 3.4 per cent to 2.5 million, according to the latest ABS September figures.

Tasmania recorded the slowest increase, up only 0.1 per cent to 512,000.

The number of new Australians is growing at a faster pace.

There were 6,000 more births in the year to September, an increase of 4 per cent on the prior corresponding period.

Net overseas migration, surged 32 per cent, to 228,000.

In fact, while Australia’s population grew 1.7 per cent in the year to September to 22.8 million, 60 per cent of that increase came from migrants.

Migrants form around 27 per cent of Australia population. 6 million Australians were born overseas.

Most of them came from the UK, accounting for 5.3 per cent of the total population followed by New Zealand at 2.5 per cent, China at 1.8 per cent, India at 1.5 per cent and Vietnam along with Italy, both 0.9 per cent.

When you take a look at Australia's population growth from 2001 to 2011, the biggest percentage increase, while from a very small base, came from Nepal.

In 2011, there were 2800 Nepalese migrants in Australia.

They're followed by those who immigrated from Sudan, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

So, it just goes to show, that migration continues to play an important role, in the growth of the Australian population.

23 million lamingtons for everyone tomorrow!

Film industry crisis deepens

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:44:23 +1000

Post-production services are doing it tough, hurt by the high dollar and a heavy discounting of fees.

Doron Kipen is one of Australia’s pre-eminent sound editors and mixers. So when he says he’s earning 50 percent less to post-produce the sound on an Australian feature film now than he got 10 years ago, it’s symptomatic of an industry that’s facing critical structural problems.

All sections of the service industry have been hit hard by the downturn in Australian film production and the absence of major offshore productions in light of the strong Oz dollar and the uncompetitive 16.5 percent location offset.

“Our sector is at breaking point. All the top post production facilities are on the edge,” Kipen (pictured), who owns the Melbourne-based sound post production studio Music and Effects, tells SBS Film. The malaise affects the entire post production industry, he says, observing, “All the crafts are being absolutely decimated by competition.”

Soundfirm founder Roger Savage concurs, declaring, “The post-production industry is in crisis; everyone is desperate. But, globally, post is a disaster.” Despite the downturn, Soundfirm is moving into a new screen and sound post facility in Melbourne in tandem with Risk Sound.

Kipen, who’s the president of the Australian Screen Sound Guild, blames the heavy discounting of fees on producers who want to cut corners but as a result often sacrifice creative standards, and Screen Australia. Kipen alleges the agency isn’t exercising proper oversight of the technicians employed on some of the films and documentaries in which it invests, citing the case of sound mixers who operate in their bedrooms.

He calls on the agency to update The Satchel, its guide to production management and film management which recommends fees for low and medium budget films but has no guidelines for what he terms “full priced productions”. The last edition was published in 2007, before the introduction of the production offsets for film and TV drama.

“Screen Australia is responsible for maintaining standards but the industry is being run as a discount business,” says Kipen, whose lengthy list of credits dates back to the Mad Max movies and includes Goddess, Circle of Lies, Mrs Carey’s Concert, Balibo, Big Mamma’s Boy, 6 Plots and Shaun Tan’s Academy-Award winning short film The Lost Thing.

“The agency refuses to engage in any meaningful way and is perceived to be the industrial bully of our sector.”

Savage wrote to Screen Australia CEO Ruth Harley in 2009, pointing out that sound post-production budgets on Australian features had been slashed to an ”untenable” degree – a situation which he says is no better today.

His letter noted these budget cuts had forced sound post houses to downsize, retrench staff and forgo expenditure on new technology, and he warned, “If this continues there will be no sound post industry in this country to speak of.”

In her reply Dr Harley observed there had been a tightening of budgets across all areas of production, not just limited to sound post production. She said the agency would continue to encourage producers to obtain full and detailed quotes and that her project managers would always query any amount in the budget that’s less than the agreed quote.

Ross Matthews, Screen Australia’s head of production investment, tells SBS Film, “We work closely with producers urging them to maintain high standards and we review all our budgets in detail to ensure that quotes are properly detailed and reasonable fees are included. While we have oversight on feature film budgets we are not in a position to regulate. We acknowledge that this is an ongoing issue for the sector and difficult to resolve without a regular flow of foreign film production which is unlikely to occur while the dollar is high and while competitors continue to undercut each other.”

Savage, whose credits include Mental, Mao’s Last Dancer, The Eye of the Storm, Moulin Rouge! (for which he was nominated for an Oscar), Shine and Babe, argues completion bond guarantors are at fault when they approve budgets that do not provide adequate fees for services such as sound post.

Kipen says he was earning $120,000 per film 10 years ago. Now he says the fees are about 50 percent lower and some producers are offering as little as $25,000. He’s just scored a contract to handle an Aussie film in 2014 which will be the first time in five years that he hasn’t discounted the price.

Savage says technological changes have meant that sound equipment costs just one tenth of what it used to. Despite that, he says, “We are spending less time on films and the budgets are dramatically smaller”.

Speaking of Screen Australia, the agency announced last week it’s staging a one-day policy conference on June 18 to examine key issues and opportunities facing screen businesses and Australian content. Speakers will include Arts Minister Tony Burke, his Opposition counterpart Senator George Brandis, Greg Basser, CEO of Village Roadshow Entertainment, David Haslingden, who owns NHNZ and is chairman of the Nine Entertainment Co. and Megan Elliott, director X|Media|Lab.

That’s not a bad line-up but the cost – $275 for those who register early, otherwise $450 –
will be prohibitive for many who may wish to attend- and the choice of Canberra as the venue will dissuade others.

“With people desperate for jobs, not to mention funding, who does [Screen Australia] think can afford to go to their talkfest in Canberra of all places at even the early bird rate of $275?” asks producer Tony Buckley. “If they want real people in the industry to go then it should be free!”

We need to talk about Andy

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 16:00:00 +1000

In Stuart Randall's first foray into the Cycling Central blogosphere he questions whether the narrative of Andy Schleck's fragility is warranted.

It was around 11pm on Sunday night that the info trickled in. And the tweets.

“Andy Schleck abandons Amstel”

“Schleckchute deployed”

“Andy….oh dear”

Another race. Another DNF. Another pounding from the 21st century’s version of a spit and sawdust bar brawl, Twitter.

Even in the lawless land of Social Media, where if you didn’t know better you would believe that cycling fans are almost exclusively a caustic, jaded, “told you so” bunch, Schlecky cops it bad. And we’ve all been guilty of it at some stage, even your less than esteemed author.

His crime? The reaction to “Chaingate”. The tendency to have a whinge in the media? The time-trialling. The crashes. All of the above.

There is a perception around that Andy is a crybaby. A sook. A guy mentally fragile, physically weak. A guy who is unlovable, haughty. A guy who needs his hand held by his brother, his Dad or Kim. A guy who has received privilege throughout his life and still he’s not happy.

How fair this all is a matter of huge conjecture. There have undoubtedly been times when Andy has done his public image no favours. ‘The Road Uphill’ a fascinating documentary of his 2011 Tour de France, seemed to confirm what many thought about Andy and his family, as the excuses came thick and fast for his failure to defeat Cadel. The wet, dangerous descent to Gap springs readily to mind.

But in an age of micro media management, an age where any trace of honesty and personality is managed out of sportspeople, Schleck’s honesty, which can be as brutal as the criticism he receives at times, is something that should be admired.

He is clearly a hugely different character to your run of the mill sportsman, which is true about many of the top riders. He is sensitive and thoughtful. He lacks the rather brusque, prickly air that brother Frank often carries with him.

I was fortune enough to be in the room in Adelaide, when Andy spoke for nearly an hour to Cycling Central. It’s was way longer than he needed to, and much longer than the 20 minute window we’d been given by media man Phillippe Martens, who paced the corridor outside. He was affable, raw, and likeable.

Andy spoke honestly about the last twelve months of his life. He opened up about crying watching the 2012 race on television. The self-doubt and the nervousness he felt riding in the bunch again. About the constant pain he was in, six months after his Dauphine crash.

Whinging? Excuses? Or honesty and openness? I believe the latter.

Mentally weak? You watch Galibier 2011. Tourmalet 2010. Liege-Bastogne-Liege 2009. This is a serious bike rider who has some serious pedigree.

This is also a rider that the big races of the calendar needs. A fit and on-form Schleck changes the dynamic of a Grand Tour. Add Schleck to the 2012 TDF and maybe we’d have seen the pressure on Wiggins turned up, as Froome chased the Luxembourger up the hill, with the Modfather struggling to hold his wheel.

In this year’s edition, we could have looked forward to the prospect of old rivals Contador and Schleck working together to disrupt the Team Sky Mountain Goats, along with Van Garderen, Van den broeck, Purito et al.

But it’s not to be. Schleck may be on the startline in Corsica, but it seems impossible that he’ll be at a level to challenge for the 100th Maillot Jaune. Maybe by the third week we’ll see the old Andy, making a daring play for glory on Alpe d’Huez or Ventoux. An attack to shut up the critics and the doubters. But most of all, an attack that reminds Andy himself that he is one hell of a bike rider.

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Sagan a sorry sight

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 14:00:00 +1000

I'm worried about Peter Sagan. Not only is he not returning my text messages, but now he's not even winning races.

From dominating the podium in the middle part of the spring, Sagan has barely fired a shot in the past week. These hillier courses were meant to suit him down to the ground but all we're getting is excuses about cramps and hot weather (Amstel Gold) and other riders just being too good (La Fleche Wallonne).

Cramps and heat I can almost accept, but others being too good? From what I have seen first-hand, it's implausible. And I have a theory on the real reasons behind Sagan's mid-spring slump.

It's all about the celebrations.

Back in our little village in the Italian Alps, my mama used to be a huge tennis fan. She tried to turn me into a budding pro, Andre Agassi-style, by putting a racquet in my hand as a baby but it turned out that I have the all agility of a baby giraffe and the hand-eye co-ordination of a sloth, so cycling it was.

Anyway, she used to watch Wimbledon religiously when it came around each year. I vividly remember her getting angry the year that Monica Seles turned up to the courts and tried to play without grunting - and lost in the final.

What's tennis got to do with cycling, you say? Well, Sagan is exactly like Seles. Take away his spontaneous nature and you take away part of what makes him great. Just like Marco Pantani was nothing without his cocktail of performance enhancing drugs, Sagan is half the rider without thumbing his nose at officialdom at the finish line.

It's either that, or his recent apology to the podium girl was accepted more enthusiastically than he ever expected and he's perennially exhausted as a result. I still think it's the celebrations.

Anyway, our team is headed for Liege-Bastogne-Liege this weekend and I'm in the squad again. The team directors say they're putting me in all these races to teach me what it takes to ride well when it matters but I don't get it. All I've learned is that Belgian cobbles hurt more than Parisian pave, and that I am no match for anyone when the hills start pushing 20 per cent, let alone the single-day specialists.

That said, my remarkable ability to crash out of several races just before the really taxing part has kept me pretty fresh for the Giro, which starts in a fortnight or so.

The team directors have basically settled on their squad for the race but there's one spot up for grabs. It's down to me and the team's other young rider, a second-year pro who fancies himself as a climber.

We don't have a GC contender so the team is going to be based around grabbing stage wins but it depends on whether the bosses go for another climber to help get our top sprinters through the mountains, or another carriage in the lead-out train (i.e. me).

Given I haven't yet been allowed to practise with the sprint guys in full flight, I thought my climbing rival would be a sure thing for the last place but it turns out his form hasn't been too good lately. So, it comes down to Liege-Bastogne-Liege and who performs best there.

This is the first time I've really had something to race for as a professional and what's more, I think I'm some chance of winning. Then, if I get into the Giro squad, they'll have to let me join in the lead-out train. I might start practising my Mario Cipollini hairstyles in the mirror just in case.

La Revolucion Colombiana

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 11:30:00 +1000

Carlos Betancur's blazing attack on the early part of the Mur de Huy at Fleche Wallone was just the latest chapter in a resurgence in Colombian cycling that looks set to define the next decade, writes Al Hinds.

panache (n)

1. A flamboyant confidence of style or manner. (Oxford)

2. (Alt.) The Colombian style of riding. Gutsy. Beautiful to watch. Epitomised by the feats of Lucho Herrera in the 1980s.

I was lucky enough to go to Colombia for the launch of the Coldeportes (now Colombia) team at the end of 2011. Admittedly at the time my knowledge of the South American country was more shaped by the legacy of cocaina, beautiful women, and great coffee. I wasn't ignorant of the country's cycling legacy, but I was no expert.

My time there was enlightening. Not least in seeing what the Coldeportes project was trying to achieve, ushering in a new breed of rider with a motto "inspired by climbing", but in meeting those that had come before.

Just as Cadel Evans, Robbie McEwen and Stuart O'Grady were influenced by Phil 'Skippy' Anderson, Colombia's hero was Luis 'Lucho' Herrera.

Herrera came from the humblest of backgrounds in rural Colombia, and is quietly spoken for a man who's achieved as much as he has. A naturally gifted climber, Herrera was the first non-European to win the Vuelta a Espana in 1987.

But it was his style that earned him the respect of his peers and the adulation of fans. Herrera re-defined aggressive racing, entering a professional peloton ruled by the etiquette of the Europeans which dictated respect to the statesman of the circuit, the Hinaults, the Fignons, the Delgados. Attacking a rider like Hinault would earn you the ire of the bunch, but Herrera was not one to conform.

On Alpe d'Huez in 1984 Herrera made his name, winning solo atop the legendary climb the same day that Fignon assumed the race lead. Such was Herrera's showing, the Colombian overshadowed the decorated Frenchman's achievement on the day.

He went on to the Vuelta win in '87, and was king of the mountain in all three Grand Tours in his career. When he returned to Colombia for good in the 90s, he returned a hero, inspiring the likes of Victor Hugo Pena, Santiago Botero and Felix Cardenas.

Colombians earned a reputation thanks to Herrera of lithe climbers capable of obliterating uphill finishes. Of high cadence accelerations and animating races.

The last 20 years has been dominated by rouleur type riders, where climbing has taken a backseat to one's ability to chrono. That has ultimately delayed what seemed an inevitable invasion of Colombians in the professional peloton rising to the top.

Six years ago we got a taste of what the new generation of Colombia had to offer with Mauricio Soler.

But now the trickle has become a heavy flow.

Nairo Quintana, Esteban Chaves, Fabio Duarte, Sergio Luis Henao, Carlos Betancur, Dawin Atapuma, Rigoberto Uran. There's been an influx of exciting talent from the South American nation, and most of them, under 27, are only likely to get better as their careers progress and they mature physically.

Betancur, Chaves and Quintana are all just 23, and they're all incredibly good. Whether this is the start of some sort of dynastic climbing domination of cycling from Colombia, or just a particularly good few months remains to be seen, but it's certainly a welcome injection of energy into a sport so keen for fresh faces, and generational change.

Non-Continent riders have won the Tour the last two years, breaking a 21 year drought since Greg Lemond last stood on the podium in 1990. Evans won the Tour de France in 2011, Wiggins in 2012. A Colombian in the next five years? Hard to bet against it.

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Fatih Akin shows his fun side in Soul Kitchen

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 16:27:39 +1000

The normally serious director returned to his Hamburg roots for his lightest film so far.

It is such a joy to be researching a film for one reason or another and come across a thorough and unfiltered interview with the director on YouTube or a comprehensive Q&A in written form. I had this experience in reference to Fatih Akin’s film Soul Kitchen, which is being shown this Saturday at 9.30pm.

[ SBS ONE Film season: full schedule ]

Four Lions, the debut film from the UK comedian Chris Morris, was going to go in this spot but the SBS programming department yesterday decided to pull it off air because of the deaths and injuries that have resulted from the bomb blasts at the Boston Marathon.

I had no knowledge of Soul Kitchen before having to see and do some research on the film in order to write a script about it as part of my SBS Film presentation duties. (It was scheduled for two weeks later). I knew of the reliably good work of Fatih Akin (Head-On, The Edge of Heaven), the German-born filmmaker of Turkish parents and thought of him as very motivated by the political, a fine storyteller and someone able to deliver something that’s both cinematic and tough – an irresistible combination.

[Read: SBS Film's interview with Fatih Akin]

In comparison to his other work, Soul Kitchen was so light and silly and entertaining in a different sort of way, but when I chanced upon this Q&A, it suddenly grew in meaning because I had the context. I’m a big advocate of seeing films then reading reviews, articles and other forms of commentary about them – I prefer to decide what I think, not be told what to think in advance – but this Q&A is definitely background not spoiler material.

Things Akin says specifically in relation to Soul Kitchen, for example, are that, compared to his other films, it is most like a diary to him, and that it is an exercise in making a commercial film without selling his soul. It is also an ode to his home town of Hamburg and to his old life as a dirty rotten stop-out – before he became a parent. Things he says in relation to cinema generally are that certain arthouse cinemas to him are “very, very spiritual”, like churches, and that one of the best films about filmmaking is Day for Night by François Truffaut. (I usually avoid films that navel gaze but on his advice, I’m going to go looking for it.)

Anyway, there’s no need for me to keep rattling on, just get to know Fatih Akin in this article and see Soul Kitchen either this Saturday. It is such good fun and it has a great soundtrack to boot.

NYC mayoral race opens up with possible Anthony Weiner's comeback

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 19:14:24 +1000

In May 2011, Congressman Anthony Weiner made a technology blunder that many of us would be prone to do. He pressed “send” on what he thought was a private message from his Twitter account to a college student in Seattle.

Ooops.

He had, in fact, sent the message – a photograph – to the main feed of his Twitter account, publishing to his followers and, if anyone were to be interested enough, the general public.

For those of you not familiar with how Twitter operates this would perhaps be the real world equivalent of intending to whisper in someone’s ear in a private room but instead running down the street yelling and screaming.

This normally may be no big deal for most of us except for Weiner the photo he broadcast to the world was one of his erect penis (thankfully) behind his boxer shorts.

Naturally, much embarrassment and scandal followed.

Weiner’s situation was not helped by being an aggressive and vocal (some may say ‘arrogant’) Democrat on the rise. Many people were happy to see him fall.

Here’s epic Weiner ripping Republicans in Congress over their tardiness in passing a health bill for 9/11 responders.

Another reason for Weiner awkwardness? He’s married to Huma Abedin, a long-time aide to former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. Abedin, it turned out, was pregnant at the time Weiner sent his Tweet. That errant Tweet all of a sudden gained a whole lot more context.

There was not much sympathy for Weiner when it was further revealed he’d been Tweeting, texting, chatting, and exchanging other photos with women across the country. He never actually met any of his correspondents in person.

It wasn’t exactly treason nor the worst moral transgression a politician has ever brought upon himself (or herself). Still, his Congressional position was considered untenable and he resigned.

Which is certainly one way to introduce readers to the news that in November this year New York City will elect a new mayor. The incumbent, billionaire Mike Bloomberg, is finally moving on after three terms (the third a controversial extension that didn’t please everyone) and it is fair to say that the field of candidates includes some interesting characters.

Anthony Weiner is one possible wanna-be and his potential story of public redemption was considered so great that the New York Times dedicated an 8,000 word profile of his comeback in its weekend magazine.

You can see profiles of each of the declared 2013 candidates who want to run one of the most important cities in the world here.

The current frontrunner is Christine Quinn, an out lesbian with Irish roots who is currently the New York City Council speaker – and a vocal one of that. While a win would make social history on several levels, she is no certainty to win.

Other Democrats include Bill Thompson, who came close (but not that close) to ousting Bloomberg in 2009; Bill De Blasio a left-wing liberal who maybe hopes Weiner does not announce a comeback; and John Liu, a workaholic enemy of Bloomberg who is under investigation by the FBI.

New York is not usually friendly to Republicans – although the city’s open-mindedness has seen it elect Republican mayors. Mike Bloomberg was a Republican before he was Independent. Anyone remember a guy called Rudy Giuliani? That means a Republican has effectively run liberal New York since 1994.

This year’s Republican contender is likely to be Joe Lhota, the former boss of the Metropolitan Transport Authority. But whether Lhota can get past being the guy who recently raised subway fares from $2.25 to $2.50 per ride may be a tough ask. Yes, New Yorkers are that fickle.

Will Baz deliver on The Great Gatsby?

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 10:57:55 +1000

Baz Luhrmann’s remake seems to be polarising audiences already.

Whether you hated or adored Baz Luhrmann’s film Australia, are you looking forward to his remake of The Great Gatsby?

My sense is that Baz’s fans are eager to embrace his reinterpretation of the classic F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, which was adapted on screen most memorably by director Jack Clayton in the 1974 movie which starred Robert Redford and Mia Farrow.

But will folks who haven’t been enamoured of Luhrmann’s previous, highly theatrical efforts, or those who loved the novel and earlier screen versions accept his transition to a more conventionally-framed romantic drama set in the 1920s, albeit in 3D?

Luhrmann’s extravaganza (reported budget $127 million) opens in Australia on May 30 after its US debut on May 10 and the international premiere opening the Cannes Film Festival on May 15. There seems to be genuine excitement among executives at Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow, the co-producers, who saw a 2D cut of the movie in Los Angeles last month.

That optimism is backed up by one member of the crew who tells SBS Film, “I think it’s the real deal. It might turn a lot of heads. It’s an unusual Baz Luhrmann film, the straightest and most normal film he’s ever done.” But he adds a caveat, “For those who aren’t fans of Baz Luhrmann, I’m not sure this will change their minds.”

That person has seen the 2D version but quotes a colleague who has seen the 3D rendering as saying “it’s a smack in the face,” meaning a positive impact. The technician describes the performance of Joel Edgerton as the wealthy Tom Buchanan, whose wife Daisy (Carey Mulligan) has an affair with Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio), as a “tour de force”.

Insiders say one of the most impressive scenes is a confrontation in New York’s Plaza Hotel where all the principal characters gather to escape the “heat” of the Buchanan house. However, some of the CGI-created shots were described as “painterly” and not realistic, similar to the fake scenes of Darwin in Baz’s Australia.

The on-screen chemistry between DiCaprio’s Gatsby and Mulligan’s Daisy is said to have quite a frisson, far more credible than the romance between Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman’s characters in Luhrmann’s last film. One sequence in which the two actors ad-libbed, with spontaneous laughter, impressed the crew, as did another scene in which Gatsby throws his coloured shirts around his bedroom.

Baz and Leo reportedly disagreed at times over how the actor should play Gatsby, hardly an unusual occurrence on a film set when highly-strung creative types don’t see eye to eye.
Some of the more mature crew members watched Clayton’s movie during the production. A few of their younger colleagues tried to sit through the Redford/Farrow version but gave up after 20 minutes, possibly bored by the filmmaking style of the 1970s.

Elizabeth Debicki is said to be a knockout as golfer Jordan Baker, who is pursued by the book’s narrator Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire), a bond trader and former Yale classmate of Tom’s.

Veteran actor Amitabh Bachchan, who plays Jewish mafia head Meyer Wolfsheim, gave a glowing account of his experiences during filming. “The sets were an eye opener for me,” the Indian actor wrote on his blog.

“Grand and colossal in its presence and opulence… All about was like an imagination fructifying to reality. The sincerity of all that worked, including the main stars, the earnestness of the director, his crew and the unimaginable detail of authenticity, all added up to an experience which when I returned to my room, could not fathom!!… I can say that in my 44 years and 180 films I had never worked in such a set up.”

But the expectations among many filmgoers in the US and here are, to put it mildly, are mixed. When Deadline.com posted the latest trailer, the reactions were sharply divided.

The positive comments ranged from “No other word for it – sensational!,” and “Not sure I want to see it in 3D, but this looks spectacular” to “Leo’s a hard worker and this seems to be a really creative for him and Baz. Pumped!”

The naysayers were vitriolic. ”An overblown, confusing and boring movie made from the most overrated piece of fiction of the last century. Sounds like a winner!” said one.

“This will end up exactly like every other Baz Luhrmann film – an indecipherable hot mess. All style, no substance,” opined another sceptic. “Awful would be too kind… poor Scott … another film travesty of his great American novel! So, so sad,” said another.

Bobby Galinsky, a US-born, Melbourne-based filmmaker, probably speaks for many cinephiles when he says, “It’s the first time Baz would have worked with any decent story and source material. He’s always been a great ‘showman’ and visualist without a story to visualise other than Romeo + Juliet which was just a two-hour, mildly entertaining music vid. But this could be the movie he’s spent his whole life preparing for and I really, really, really hope it is as it’s one of my favourite books of all time.”

So what might the romantic drama earn at Australian cinemas? Well, for all its detractors and carping critics, Australia raked in $37.5 million, a fine result, although Rupert Murdoch admitted 20th Century Fox ended up making a small profit on the film thanks to the Australian taxpayer via the 40 percent producer rebate.

The Gatsby remake is said to skew heavily towards females, which might limit its box office potential slightly. Roadshow is banking that the film, which runs nearly two and a half hours, will appeal to Baz’s admirers who enjoyed Strictly Ballroom, Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge!, if not Australia quite so much, as well as the legion of DiCaprio fans and those who read the novel.

On the upside, no other female-oriented mainstream film is opening in June so Gatsby has a lot of clean air. Maybe $25 million-$30 million is achievable.

Casting Aspersions: Shelton loves Hathaway for Laggies

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 14:51:12 +1000

Sundance favourite Lynn Shelton has signed Anne Hathaway for her new film, Laggies.

Actors want to work with American independent director Lynn Shelton. 2011’s Your Sister’s Sister drew great performances from Emily Blunt, Rosemarie DeWitt and Mark DuPlass, and Shelton quickly followed that up with Touchy Feely, which features Ellen Page (Juno), Scoot McNairy (Killing Them Softly) and DeWitt and is still on the festival circuit. Now Shelton is preparing her fourth feature, Laggies, which is the story of a twentysomething woman who panics when her boyfriend proposes and runs away to hang out with a 16-year-old who becomes her new best friend. Shelton has two prominent actors for the lead roles, with recent Academy Award winner Anne Hathaway (Les Misérables) to appear opposite Chloë Grace Moretz (Kick-Ass, Hugo).

Tanovic picks iron-strong story
When the Bosnian filmmaker Danis Tanovic (No Man’s Land, Hell) read a newspaper report about a Romani (or roma gypsy) family where the wife was denied life-saving medical treatment in Bosnia-Herzegovina despite losing a baby due to a miscarriage and the lengths her husband, a collector of scrap metal, had to go to save her, the director knew he had the basis of his next film. But fearing that securing a budget would delay production getting underway, Tanovic instead cast the couple, husband Nazif Mujic and wife Senada Alimovic, as themselves and recreated their ordeal with a small volunteer crew over a 10-day shoot. The no-budget An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker has already played the Berlin Film Festival and drawn strong reviews for the amateur cast.

Blanchett goes blue for Woody
Woody Allen’s annual movie can be great entertainment or merely mildly amusing – sometimes in consecutive years (see 2010’s Midnight in Paris and 2011’s To Rome with Love), but no other filmmaker assembles such impressive casts every 12 months, especially when it’s invitation only and no-one gets to see a finished script in advance. For this year’s release, currently titled Blue Jasmine, Allen may be returning to New York for the story of a fashionable Manhattan housewife, to be played by Cate Blanchett (Little Fish), going through a crisis in her life. The supporting cast includes Alec Baldwin (The Departed), Peter Sarsgaard (Jarhead), Bobby Cannavale (The Station Agent), Sally Hawkins (Happy-Go-Lucky) and one-time misanthropic comic Andrew Dice Clay (The Adventures of Ford Fairlane).

Jane reloads
And, finally, a Jane’s Got a Gun update. When we last checked in on this troubled western Scottish director Lynne Ramsay had departed, which inspired Jude Law to jump ship, while Michael Fassbender had gone some weeks prior due to scheduling conflicts. That left star and producer Natalie Portman, who plays the frontier wife who turns to a former love to protect her wounded husband from a vengeful gang, awfully alone. But the movie is obviously meant to be, as new director Gavin O’Connor (Warrior) is already shooting scenes with Noah Emmerich (The Truman Show) as the felled husband, Australian Joel Edgerton (Zero Dark Thirty) as the conflicted gunfighter, and Bradley Cooper (Silver Linings Playbook) as the black hat looking to take a life. If the film’s no good, there should at least be a great book in how it got made.

Praying for a miracle

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 13:00:00 +1000

I spent the week before Paris-Roubaix asking my teammates what I should look out for on the day. Apart from 'Get into a breakaway and don't look back', the most common response was 'Pray'.

But what for, I wondered. We Italians are generally a devoted lot and I am no different. I can directly attribute at least half a dozen of my best race wins to divine intervention of some kind.

In my local under-16 regional championship, a rogue Chihuahua caused my opponent in the sprint to swerve into the kerb at the last minute. And there was another time when my tyre blew in the last 30 metres and I was left expecting a last-second loss, only to see my rival's front fork spontaneously lose its structural integrity. Don't let anyone tell you miracles can't happen.

Back to Paris-Roubaix, though. It turns out I should have prayed for no flat tyres, because I lucked out there. My first flat of the day came early in the fourth section of the pave so my day was pretty much ruined from there.

And then I should have prayed for a team car to be right behind me when I flatted, because that didn't work out either. I ended up having to wait a good five minutes before a new wheel arrived and the peloton was long gone by then. I am very quickly learning exactly where neo-pros rank in the team hierarchy when you have a couple of decent teammates aiming to win a spring classic.

Luke Durbridge, who was so impressive at the Tour Down Under in January, was one of the riders who passed me in a bid to get back into the main group. I tried talking to him at one point but he let fly with what I can only assume was an honest assessment of his Paris-Roubaix experience in his very best agricultural Australian.

Finally, I should have prayed for rain, because a torrential downpour was the last chance I had to get back into the race. A decent shower on the course might have caused a pile-up and let us stragglers rejoin the peloton, but no. A little sprinkle might have dampened the dust that clogged up every pore during the race, but no. Four days after the race and I'm still coughing up half the French countryside.

In the end, two more flats in succession forced me out of the race with Roubaix still an hour away. I did get to the velodrome in time to see my fellow neo-pro Chris Juul-Jensen complete his own unique of classic honours, having officially finished last in Paris-Roubaix, E3 Harelbeke and the Scheldeprijs. It was an idea that a bunch of us young guys cooked up the night before Paris-Roubaix and we couldn't believe it came off. Suffice to say the Kronenbourgs were on Chris that night.

In short, Paris-Roubaix was an experience but I'm beginning to think that Peter Sagan had the right idea, skipping the race and its infernal cobbles in order to issue an apology to that unsuspecting podium girl at Brabantse Pijl on Wednesday. Philippe Gilbert was heckling him to get her phone number before they went up to the podium, but Sagan just gave this nervous smile before whispering something I'd only ever heard before out of Luke Durbridge's mouth. I think he might actually like her.

Sagan still isn't returning my text messages - I've only sent him 47 since last week - but I'm sure he's really busy with sponsors and stuff. I'll try to catch up with him to get the latest gossip at Amstel Gold this weekend.

I'm almost dreading the hills of Amstel Gold more than the pave of Paris-Roubaix but the team directors have told me that they're starting to select their squad for the Giro d'Italia. It's time to pull out all stops and make sure I fulfil my lifelong dream of riding the Giro.

Casting Aspersions: Redford rides late wave

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 11:52:10 +1000

The industry giant has a string of new roles on the horizon.

Robert Redford is notoriously choosy about the films he appears in, let alone those he directs, but suddenly the 76-year-old screen icon is at work on multiple projects. Redford, who stars in and directs the very strong The Company You Keep alongside Shia LaBeouf, Julie Christie and Nick Nolte, which releases later this month, has already finished shooting his next role. In All is Lost he’ll be the lone actor on screen for much of the movie, playing a yachtsman struggling to stay alive in a film written and directed by J.C. Chandor, who made such an impressive debut with the Wall Street moral thriller Margin Call.

Redford has also committed to joining the Marvel Comics universe, playing the head of the S.H.I.E.L.D. organisation that had Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury visiting various superhero films such as Iron Man and Thor before all the pieces were pulled together by Joss Whedon for The Avengers. In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Redford will join Chris Evans’ titular superhero in a present-day sequel that will also star Jackson and Scarlett Johansson. After that Redford may reunite with Nolte for an adaptation of Bill Bryson’s memoir about two old friends on a trekking holiday together, A Walk in the Woods. It’s another one Redford will star in, with the director appearing likely to be Richard Linklater (Before Sunset, Bernie).

Canet jumps into new role
Is it time for another great show jumping movie? Whether there has previously been one or not, Guillaume Canet (left) hopes so. The French actor will star in Jappeloup, the true story of the bond between leading French rider Pierre Durand and his horse, which culminated in a gold medal at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Daniel Auteuil (Jean de Florette) co-stars in a film written by Canet but directed by Christian Duguay, the French-Canadian director more often associated with action flicks. Canet’s own directing career, which already includes Tell No One and Little White Lies, continues with the 1970s New York-set drama Blood Ties, which has Clive Owen (Closer) and Billy Crudup (Almost Famous) as brothers on either side of the law. Co-stars include Mila Kunis (Ted) and Canet’s partner, Marion Cotillard (Rust and Bone).

McConaughey continues hot streak
Matthew McConaughey’s redemption is close to complete: the one time romantic comedy wastrel who rebounded with the likes of Bernie, Killer Joe, and Magic Mike, is already part of a Martin Scorsese cast alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in this November’s The Wolf of Wall Street and now he has the lead in Christopher Nolan’s next film. Interstellar, which will reportedly be concerned with time travel, is due in November 2014, and will hopefully continue Nolan’s recent track record of his non-Batman films (The Prestige, Inception) being brain-bending blockbusters. Anne Hathaway, fresh off her Oscar win for Les Misérables, will reportedly co-star.

McConaughey also stars in Dallas Buyers Club, the story of a homophobic Texan man who developed HIV/AIDS in the 1980s and stayed alive by smuggling various drugs not yet legally sanctioned into America, creating a network that other sufferers facing death also made use of. Jennifer Garner (Juno) plays his physician, with another French-Canadian filmmaker, Café de Flore and Young Victoria’s Jean-Marc Vallee, directing. That’s quite the turnaround from Ghosts of Girlfriends Past and Sahara.

It’s three the easy way in Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:36:01 +1000

A love triangle finds the right balance in Woody Allen’s Oscar-winner.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona features a three-way love affair and the actors involved are among the sexiest human beings on the planet:, Javier Bardem, Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz (who won an Oscar for her performance). Perhaps that’s quite enough information to entice people to tune in at 9.30pm this Saturday on SBS ONE.

[ SBS ONE Film season: full schedule ]

But just the fact that this film is written and directed by the enduring Woody Allen indicates it has rather more intellectual content than that crude description suggests. More often than not, the films he’s made over the last nearly 50 years are crammed with talkative characters, echo with sardonic humour, and dig around in the psychology of love and relationships.

So what exactly is the thrice-married Woody Allen, who has also had much publicised relationships with former leading ladies Diane Keaton and Mia Farrow, saying about sex and love in Vicky Cristina Barcelona? It’s difficult not to ask this question while watching the film given the controversy that erupted in the lead up to him marrying his current wife, Soon-Yi Previn, who is 35 years his junior and Farrow and pianist/composer Andre Previn’s adopted daughter.

One of the things Allen has said in relation to the film is that people are very complicated and relationships are very hard to sustain because people have “incredibly detailed needs” and if those needs are not met it can be annoying. “In the case of Juan Antonio (Bardem) and Maria Elena (Cruz), the two of them fight like cats and dogs all the time even though they are passionately crazy about each other,” he says. “But the presence of Cristina (Johansson) in the chemical equation somehow makes it possible for their relationship to work. They channel enough of their affection to Cristina and Cristina to them, and Cristina drains off some of the anger and irritation or makes it less heated.”

Allen has also said about the film that he doesn’t have profound things to say about love: “But by creating live characters, and having them interact, inferences can be made by people. There are probably things in the final film that are in spite of what I hoped to say – they may even contradict what I had on my mind, which is not that deep. On the other hand, I did have some points to make. Some things work for some people in some situations. One can’t preconceive these things and one has to be more flexible when it comes to love.”

So many births

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:24:33 +1000

Birth. More birth. More and more and more births.

We had 14 piglets over the space of a couple of days. Our youngest and oldest sows decided to farrow (give birth) at pretty much the same time. The youngest moved from her warm, insulated shelter with plenty of straw, to the far corner of her paddock, where she built a nest out of dry grass she found herself. Out into the elements, with her back just millimetres from an electric fence. Thankfully, she had an untroubled labour, though it did take her a week to move her brood back to her house.

On the opposite hill, bigger animals were birthing. Due on or after one Friday, all six of our calves were born early or on the date. Mallee, the bull who came on loan from a mate, has left his reputation untarnished. The first calf surprised me, a tiny slip of a black Lowline Angus, trotting next to his mum when I wasn’t expecting it. Then each day another appeared, including Priscilla’s new bub, a Jersey/Angus cross. An incredible deep, almost fawn coloured heifer (young girl), with the finer bone structure of her mum.

It means we can milk again. Luckily the bails were built: A wooden structure that holds Priscilla’s head so she can’t walk backwards while she’s scoffing her chaff. We also put sides on this time, so she can’t lean over, or wiggle sideways and try to crush me as I crouch and milk. So, for the first time in over a year, we’re back to harvesting our own miracle white liquid; high-quality protein made by a Jersey cow in a space of a few hours out of nothing more than grass and water. A process is something no man-made machine can compare to. This milk has a golden hue, because Jerseys are great converters of beta carotene. It has a lug of cream on top that is at least 1/4 of the bottle, sometimes up to 1/3. It has a different taste to bought milk, to milk from other cows, from other farms. It is an immediate, true expression of the animal, the season, and the land on which it grazes. And the milk I get to drink is raw milk, a highly contentious product that seems to get more hysterical and frightening responses from government, and more miracle cures attributed to it from those who seek it out, than it probably deserves.

Raw milk has its dangers. It’s extraordinarily nutritious, and has some bugs in it, so it’s not sterile. But it’s the same with oysters. Or fish. Or meat. All are highly nutritious, high-quality proteins, with the potential to do harm. But milk is singled out as something a restaurant can’t buy in its raw state to cook or preserve as they would meat or fish. Some of this hysteria is historic, some based on, apparently, Australians’ zero approach to risk (which, by the way, doesn’t exist; there is always risk), and some based on science.

I’m not advocating for commercially available raw milk. I’m not an expert on these things. All I can tell you is the feverish response from authorities seems on par with their attitude to illegal and harmful drugs. I want my food as nutritious as possible. I’m not afraid of bacteria (about 1.5kg of the average human body weight is bacteria, according to the New York Times, and we’d die without many of them). I want my fresh food fresh, my cured and preserved food properly preserved, and I have no desire to get sick.

And now, thanks to a remarkable animal that can convert inedible grass into a rich, flavoursome, highly nutritious liquid, I have the extraordinary luxury of drinking milk straight from my own cow. All I have to do is crouch down, avoid her very kicky hind legs, and try and milk her.

Out of nowhere?

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 09:00:00 +1000

There is questioning, then there is questioning, but if you are going to ask, make sure you have a form guide sitting next to you.

Universal Sports (USA) commentators Steve Schlanger and Todd Gogulski clearly didn't when discussing Nairo Quintana’s recent Vuelta al Pais Vasco (Tour of the Basque Country) victory, casting doubt on its validity.

Nairo Alexander Quintana Rojas is one of the brightest stars in professional cycling, and one leading a Colombian renaissance in the sport, riding for Spanish squad Movistar.

He’s young, small, light and comes with the Colombian climbing heritage built into his DNA. He’s also handy in a time trial particularly one that favours the climbers, not unlike Australia’s Richie Porte.

Yes, given the competition it was a bit of a surprise that Quintana won Pais Vasco, probably the biggest race in Spain outside of the Vuelta a Espana, but on closer inspection it was also predictable.

Quintana’s young career is filled with highlights which demonstrate he is a rider on the rise.

In 2010 he won the Tour de l'Avenir, a race that heralds promise for young riders. The following year saw him wearing the mountains classification jersey at the end of the Volta a Catalunya.

2012 was a breakthrough season for Quintana, winning the Vuelta a Murcia, Route du Sud and Giro dell'Emilia. There were also stage victories at the Critérium du Dauphiné and Vuelta a España - the latter as a member of Movistar’s winning teams time trial squad.

This year he finished fourth overall at the Volta a Catalunya which included a stage win. The difficult Pais Vasco is now his biggest career victory and one consistent with his progression as a rider.

The set up for the final stage of Pais Vasco was this. Quintana was the meat in a Sky sandwich, with Alberto Contador (Saxo-Tinkoff) and Simon Spilak (Katusha) added ingredients.

Sky’s Sergio Luis Henao, another Colombian, held a six second lead on Quintana and team-mate Richie Porte with a 24km individual time trial left to decide the race winner. The form guide suggested Porte, or even Contador at 10 seconds, would win the race but the stage profile still intrigued.

http://media.sbs.com.au/cyclingcentral/upload_media/2541_stage6-profile.jpg

The race was in doubt right to the end and did not disappoint, with just the right degree of difficulty for a rider like Quintana to step up, which he did. World time trial champion Tony Martin (Omega Pharma -QuickStep) took the victory but Quintana had done enough to better Henao, Porte and Contador.

Which brings me back to Schlanger and Gogulski. All of us have to be careful in rushing to judgement. Yes, the climate in the sport is one of mistrust and the past is ever present, we should be vigilant. However before we light the torches and sharpen the pitchforks we should check a riders’ palmares and also take a closer look at the parcours.

Simply put, Quintana won a race his career trajectory suggested he could win.

Note: Quintana won the Tour de l'Avenir with 4-72 Colombia (Colombia es Passion) a team dedicated to clean cycling in that country and developing riders with strong ethical principles. If you're on Twitter, follow the team here.

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