Velo Club Don Logan

Gary & Graham bid a tearful farewell to Sausage Roll Studios with extra helpings of rambling nonsense.  Thanks, listeners - it's been great fun.

We are half way through the Vuelta, so what better time to express ill-founded opinions on Frome's performance & Dan Martin's riding style.  We look at the final round of the MTB World Cup and indulge in idle speculation surrounding rider transfers.   

In this episode we break the mould by bringing you our Vuelta preview before the race has even started.  Gary brings you the MTB news since Graham was too lazy to even bother watching it.  We discuss JTL's epic bender and conclude that he's a very silly boy!

In this episode we wrap up the last few stages of the Tour.  We chat about the latest round of the MTB World Cup and round up the biking action from the Commonwealth Games.  Danny's PR faux pas (what's French for faux pas) and Graham's Malaysian adventure feature in our general-stuff-catching-our-eye segment.

We're well into the 3rd week of the Tour - what better time to bring you our preview of Week 3 and to tie up the standings on the second rest day, which was 3 days ago.  Yup, business as usual for the VCDL Cycling Podcast.

Yup, it's Tour time and in a break with tradition we bring you our Tour preview show - before the race has even started!  Beer is drunk, nonsense is spouted, rash predictions are made.  We also tackle yet another "gate".  This time it's Millargate - was JV correct to leave St Dave out of his Tour squad?

Ahead of the Tour, what did we learn from the Dauphine & the Tour de Suisse?  What does the departure of Belkin as a sponsor tell us about the marketing benefits of sponsoring a cycling team?  What could the UCI (or SKY) have done better in their handling of TUE-gate?  Is Manon Carpenter the revalation of this year's downhill scene? These are just some of the questions that probably remain unanswered despite an hour or so of rambling on the matter.

It's film night & book night here at VCDL Towers as we review Marco Pantani: The Accidental Death of a Cyclist and Steve Peat: Won't Back Down.  We go old skool with a couple of good, old-fashioned, paper-based books, the first of which is Volume 4 of the consistantly excellent Cycling Anthology and Etape, the latest offering from Richard Moore.

We decide to add our voices to all the static surrounding the great Wiggins/Froome debate.  We look at what we learned from the last week of the Giro and as is now the norm, we preview the Dauphine after it has already started.  There is some talk of XTR Di2, the Scottish Commie Games team & the Tour Series and we finish off with a roundup of the latest rounds of cross-country & Downhill from Albstadt & Fort Wiliam respectively.

A Giro-centric episode looking at the first 2 weeks of the race and looking forward to a mental final week.  We discuss the Stage 16 controversy & ask whether this was a race or a freak-show (or whether the riders are just jessies!) Mountain bike action comes from Nove Mesto in the Czech Republic and there is more rambling nonsense in our (even more) unstructured segment of general stuff catching our eye in the last fortnight!

In this episode, given that the race has already started, it seems like a perfect time for our Giro preview.  Rash predictions about riders & stages abound.  We also reflect on Ireland's relationship with the race in its opening stages. There is some random waffle in our snappily-titled general-stuff-catching-our-eye-in-the-last-fortnight segment, and we look back on a highly successful Women's Tour.

Really?  So soon?  Yes - barely 2 weeks after unleashing our last ramblings, we bring you more nonsense in the shape of an Ardennes round-up, the latest from the MTB World Cup in Cairns, and a review of Faster by Michael Hutchinson in our VCDL Book Club segment.As this that wasn't enough/too much, we have a new quick-fire segment which sees our nonsense dished-out in double-quick time.

Having forgotten to record any new episodes due to watching the cobbled classics, we finally get around to catching up with all the action so far.  We apologise to the entire population of Norway & we bring you a round-up of the start of the 2014 MTB season.

In this edition of VCDL Extra, Graham chats with renowned cyclocross photographer Balint Hamvas and reviews the recently completed season.  Meanwhile, Gary hooks up with Rowan Mackie of the Scottish Bike Show to hear about his exciting plans for this year's event.

So much racing to catch up on that Graham mixes up his Stijn Vandenberghs with his Sep Vanmarckes whilst recalling previous Classics.  A quick roundup of Oman, Andalucia & Algarge before we dive headlong into Openings Weekend & some Boonen-love.  Gary delves into the issues surrounding the promotion of women's cycling as we discuss the gathering momentum around this aspect of the sport.

In this episode we look back at the Tour Down Under & the recently completed Dubai Tour.  Is it still too early to predict how the season will pan out?  We look back at the life & legacy of Marco Pantani on the 10th anniversary of his tragic death and we round up the results from the cyclocross World Championships.

We start 2014 with a look at the Tour Down Under & the first full-on sightings of this year's team kit. Despite being utterly unqualified to do so, we comment on their style (or lack of it.)  We look ahead to the TDU and we look back at the British National Cyclocross championships.  Finally, pull up a chair as we delve into the VCDL book club.

Our latest 5-Star iTunes review suggested of the pod that since it's the off-season, "It'll probably go rubbish for a bit."  Just to prove the reviewer right, we bring you a pod full of off-season rubbish.  A cloak of mediocrity woven from threads of purest shite.  Oleg Tinkov and Bjarne Riis get our attention.  Frank & Andy Schleck get Gary's unwanted & slightly creepy attention, and we are worried about cross-country MTB.

Fight! Fight! Fight!  Gary & Graham have a square go over the Hesjedal / Garmin debacle.  We calm down enough to discuss Rod Ellingworth's Project Rainbow in the VCDL Book Club & we give our thoughts on the 2014 Tour De France route.

In this episode we are all over the place like a Grand Tour winner avoiding the dope testers.  We start out by looking at the World Championships - what do they really mean, and were we right to liken Team GB's performance  to a Spinal Tap album?  Rodriguez washes away the disappointment of his World Championships with a repeat win at Il Lombardia & we round up the unedifying spectacle of the UCI election process.