On Tue, 10 Feb 2004 06:15:17 GMT, "Mike Jacoubowsky"
<
[email protected]> wrote:
>> Are pro racers required to warn each other about avoiding large potholes
>or
>> obstacles during an actual race? I've never seen anyone doing this in the ongoing Le Tour de
>> Langkawi, either by yelling or hand signaling dangerous spots.
>
>For the TDF, they literally repave questionable roads and fill in whatever they need to. I suspect
>that's generally the case for most major road races, including the Tour de Langkawi.
As a Filipino, the Tour de Langkawi is just a bitter reminder of how far the rest of the core ASEAN
members has overtaken the Philippines. Back in the 1950's, you wouldn't have dreamed of a bicycle
road-race in Malaysia.
In the Philippines, there was the Tour of Luzon, which, judging from how knowledgeable the men in my
family of a certain age are about bike racing, attracted at least some attention. Luzon itself would
be a great place for a cycle race: long flatlands for time trials (think ricefields instead of Le
Tour's sunflowers) and mountain roads as scary as any that Henri Desgranges himself might have
dreamt to put in his Tour.
But underdevelopment and a host of other problems held the Philippines back, while Malaysia surged
ahead, and now the Malaysians are rich enough to repave whole highways just for a major road race.
Meanwhile, back in the Philippines, the Tour of Luzon, which generated so much interest in my
father's generation, fell away and was not held for many years. Now it has been revived as a means
of developing young racing talent in the country. The racers ride on the same roads that everybody
else does--full of potholes and woefully inadequate to the needs of the people who need them. I wish
I had saved the photograph the _Philippine Daily Inquirer_, which showed all the racers kneeling in
genuinely-devout prayer at one of the start towns. Maybe they were praying that the road hazards
wouldn't get them.
But there are some nutters out there, determined to make it work. I've seen guys doing training runs
on EDSA (E. de los Santos Ave in Manila, a *major* urban highway). I've seen what looked like teams
riding between Naga and Pili in Camarines Sur. And, even though the website's down, there'll be a
Tour of Luzon again this year.
-Luigi www.livejournal.com/users/ouij
