A friend* of mine tipped me of on a quite interesting study conducted by a Belgian economist. Daam Van Reeth studied how a number of different variables - like the parcourse, doping news, uncertainty about the outcome, and patriotism - influence the TV audience during Tour de France. He only use data from Flemish television, but since Podium Cafe is the site where people dream of Belgium, we might learn something from the study anyway.

Now, there are not a lot of surprises here. Belgians love high mountain stages, and even more so if it's mountain top finish. The 10 most viewed stages between 1997 and 2010 are all high mountain stages, and 8 of them finish on a mountain. Number 1 is the Tourmalet stage in 2010, and number 2 is the Morzine stage the same year. But that is only true for average audience, when it comes to peak audience, two Paris stages is 1st and 2nd. Tourmalet 2010 is 3rd, and Mont Ventoux 2009 is 4th.

On the other hand, the stages that interest the Belgians the least are time trials and flat stages during the first week (bunch of wackos...). The prologue in Strasbourg in 2005 is the number 296, both for average audience and peak audience. Compared to the baseline, the audience is more than 34,000 fewer during a individual time trial, and more than twice as many stay away during a team time trial.

Even more obvious is that a close race is positive, same goes for Belgian success (with Van Den Broeck adding even more viewers in 2010). Van Reeth also introduces a "Boonen-dummy" (funny on so many levels) to see how if Boonen's absence in 2008 lowered audience that year. It did, at least the average audience was almost 35,000 fewer because of his ban. The result for peak audience is not statistically significant, but indicates a rather curious positive effect.

Apparently, Belgians love when the race goes through Belgium. Well, at least when the race visits Flandern, the audience goes up a lot during those stages. The Walloon stages is far behind in popularity, and barely significant.

To finish this post, two interesting tidbits. First of all, Armstrong's comeback raised the number of viewers. Not by a lot on average, but the number for peak audience is not far behind the same number for Belgian success. Secondly, doping news doesn't make much of a difference, the Belgians watch cycling anyway.

*He said it was important research. At the same time, his interest in sports is rather limited. It's possible that he was sarcastic.

As part of my annual delusion that I will eventually manage to spend more time on my bike and less time getting fat, drunk and stupid, I am thinking of getting myself a decent bike computer. By "decent" I mean one that will stop me getting lost. I have a Garmin 200 Edge, but it doesn't have live mapping to show you where you are, how far you are from home, and whether there are any emergency bail out points anywhere beyond this ****ing hill. As I have the sense of direction of a blind marble, this needs fixing.

Clearly, upgrading to the Edge 800 would do the trick, but at £500+ it is a bit pricy (a bit???). Also, I know that my iPhone can do the trick, but being my iPhone, if I ask it to do something complicated it will comply smartly, quickly and efficiently - for about 2 hours, whereupon it will huddle up into a small, power-free ball, and whimper "no more".

So I was wondering if there is a relatively cheap option which would give me the mapping and other basics, but not require me to sell a kidney and / or a G-pack (sorry - been watching too much Wire).

Any suggestions gratefully received.

(They don't like it--and have let us know.)

Picture of Euskaltel-Euskadi in action at the Tour de France 2011: By VirtKitty [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Yes, the Tour of Oman is on from Feb 14 -19 and here we will get a first glimpse of the competitive nature of the current crop of tier 1 fastmen. Everybody knows Cav is pretty quick, but how far behind are Greipel and Kittel this year? Ok, this is an early season race, and we may hear lame excuses, but the action here could be vital information, if you plan to select a top end sprinter in the FSA DS game.

There are several flattish stages in the race. Stage 6 below:

via www.letour.fr

More info below the cut:

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Is it too early for a post like this?

Nahh, it's never too early to dream of the Giro. Especially not with the teams already announced. While we won't know exact squads for a couple of months, of course, we can surmise who will attend. And that's got me thinking...

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Podium Cafe is a magical place where people of all nations gather in peace and harmony to talk cycling, and happy little internet gnomes translate tweets and articles for us. So it's no surprise that we have our very own unicorns, too! And they're ready and willing to help you pick your 2012 FSA DS team.

Because, face it--it's a hard task. Is Eddy worth the premium, especially now that he's given up the yellow shoes? Does a victory in Qatar prove Boonen is back to his winning ways, or are early-season SSR results meaningless? How's Renshaw going to do now that he's not towing Cav to the front? How many freaking points can Bert rack up after August 6th, anyway?

Take the anxiety out of it and ask the unicorns instead! Go to the links below, enter a name in the box, and see what they have to say. There. Now you have time to obsess over your women's team properly.

Are you pure of heart and full of sparkling goodness? Ask the White Unicorn!

Um, not so much? Ask the Black Unicorn!

Somewhere in between? Try 'em both, and average the two! It's still better than spending hours hunched over a spreadsheet. And, sadly, in my experience has at least as much predictive value.

BROWSER NOTE: The unicorns work for me in Safari, IE, and Firefox. For some reason, they utterly refuse to answer in Chrome (perhaps you consider selling your Google stock?). Your mileage may vary--the internet is weird. But I thought I should warn you. Thanks to the incredible help of SuperTed, the unicorns should now work in ALL browsers! I so owe Ted a beer. Or three.

Picture credits: Virgin Majope and Unicorn, Domenichino [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons; Abduction of Prosperine on a Unicorn, Albrecht Dürer [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

So I figured that there might be one or two people out there that are looking at this FSA DS (formerly VDS) thing and thinking that it seems too complicated or requires too much effort or something. So as I have successfully completed two FSA DS Seasons, and I must say this is the easiest game around (much thanks to SuperTed for his Brilliant site). The rules and everything are on the FSA DS Site I thought I would go for some pointers on team construction.

Am I qualified to help? Define Qualified, If you need a past winner, not me. if you need someone who has finished in the top 50, again not me. Going on the basis that those who can't do teach (not a slag on teachers, wonderful souls those), I must be eminently qualified. I have finished in the top 150 and top 100 so I don't totally suck.

Tips on the Flips.

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I'm sure many of you might be struggling with your FSA DS rosters at the moment, especially with some of those pesky 1-2 point riders. As painful and frustrating as it was for people who had Peter Velits (74 points at a cost of 10) or Glorious Heinrich Haussler (290 points at 12 points) last year, you can mitigate some of that pain by making a sweet 1 or 2 points pick. The focus here is on newbies...guys that are wet behind the ears still in the sink or swim world that is cycling. There will be a breakdown of newbies from the past and then 5 (or so) guys that I'll

Now, let's do this...

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An article appeared in Q magazine a couple of months ago about the band Coldplay. The article in question showed a human, vulnerable side to lead singer Chris Martin which doesn't usually come across in interviews (or in their music).

Martin described how he constantly doubts the quality of his work and whether the band deserve the success that they've achieved. He went on to divulge that as soon as he steps on stage he forgets all those fears and in his head, for the duration of the gig, he thinks that Coldplay are 'the best fucking band in the world'. But as soon as he steps off the stage, the questioning and self-doubt return.

The accompanying headline that the magazine decided to run for this article was:

We're the best fucking band in the world

Needless to say, the decision to extract this sentence out of the context in which it was spoken completely misrepresents what Martin was saying and misrepresents the entire article. It wrongly and grossly fueled the stereotype that Martin and Coldplay are up their own arses.

The point is, the author of the article didn't come up with the headline, a sub-editor did.

The same could be said for William Fotheringham's recent piece on the Guardian website which was given the headline:

Alberto Contador ban clears Olympic and Tour path for Bradley Wiggins

This headline suggests that the only thing standing in Wiggins's way of winning the Tour de France and an Olympic gold medal was Alberto Contador, conveniently ignoring all other likely challengers like Cadel Evans, Andy Schleck, Tony Martin and Fabian Cancellara.

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Have we done this yet? If so, can we do this again? There are new kits out there people!

Are you swayed by the fluorescent shades of edgy green, or do you like your kits to have more crotch-eagle? Does argyle entice you, or would you rather see confusing fake Luxembourgish champ jerseys? Please, call upon your inner Armani and tell us -

mirror, mirror on the wall
who is the fairest of them all?

And for added word-count power: "As punishment for her wicked ways, a pair of heated iron shoes are brought forth with tongs and placed before the Queen. She is then forced to step into the iron shoes and dance until she drops dead." What? Snow White is a cruel, cruel story folks.

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