SBS Blogs

Greece to leave the Euro?

Wed, 16 May 2012 16:36:21 +1000

Earlier this week, European central bankers for the first time, spoke publicaly about the possibility of Greece leaving the Eurozone.

It was a much taboo topic, often denied, but as Greece's political uncertainty grows as a government fails to form, more and more financial leaders are contemplating a Union without the Hellenic state.

Overnight, the head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde told France 24, that if the country's budgetary commitments are not honoured, its bailout plan needs to be revised, otherwise an orderly exit from the Eurozone may need to be considered.

Even Australian based businessmen are commenting, like ANZ CEO Mike Smith, who told Bloomberg Television overnight, that a break-up of the eurozone was quite likely.

He said countries in the south of the continent may have to become detached from the Euro, if they're ever to become globally competitive.

But a split is highly complex.

Ms Lagarde said any move that would see Greece out of Europe's single currency would be considered extremely expensive and would pose great risks.

If Greece was to return to the drachma an uncontrolled default on euro-denominated debt would be triggered, because many economists believe its old currency has devalued by around 40 per cent against the Euro.

Athens only has around $2 billion cash on hand.

The EU and IMF which lent money to Greece would lose out, and so too would the European Central Bank along with foreign creditors of Greek companies, banks and ultimately the people of Greece.

On the flip side, Eurogroup President, Jean-Claude Juncker stressed that Greece had the continent's full backing adding that talk of its possible exit from the euro was nothing more than nonsense and propaganda.

Right now, French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are meeting to discuss ways the keep Greece in its club.

Ms Merkel has said, that while she's prepared to help Greece with its growth measures, a Greece aid package cannot be renegotiated.

If it is, it wouldn't set a good precedent for other troubled nations that have also tapped Europe's safety chest for financial aid.

Ultimately Ms Merkel said today, that she wants Greece to stay in the Euro.

Still, investors don't like uncertainty and many are starting to price in the possibility of a Euro without Greece.

It's one of the reasons why we've seen the Australian sharemarket slump 2.4 per cent today, its biggest one day decline in five months.

Asian markets didn't fare any better, with Hong Kong's Hang Seng down 2.7 per cent.

Another casualty is the Australian dollar as investors exit risky assets like our currency.

It fell to below US$0.99 for the first time in more than five months.

Is your chicken bland and tender?

Wed, 16 May 2012 10:18:38 +1000

I’ve been reading about chickens. A bit. The birds in the photo are a commercial breed; the kind of chicken you get when you go to the supermarket or butcher and buy one. They’re very closely related to every other single bird available commercially in the country – regardless of brand. They’re the same species (but a different variety, or breed) as the chickens I have laying (well, moulting thanks to the season) in the hen house. Difference is, these ones are bred as the thoroughbred of meat birds. They fatten quickly (they can quadruple in weight in the first week). They have fat breasts, short legs, and they really don’t have a great deal of instinct left in them.

Even more interestingly, they have to be fed a superfood diet in their first few days and weeks or they simply cark it; curl up their tiny yellow toes and keel over. These birds are fed, as one breeder calls it, rocket fuel, and they have hardly any of the resistance you’d expect of a normal chicken. They also go from the egg to the pot in about 35 days.

According to the Australian Chicken Meat Federation, a shed 150 metres long and 15 metres wide can house 40,000 of the birds. That’s right, an area less than a quarter hectare in size can house 40,000 birds. When they talk about intensive farming, this is what they mean. The stocking rates seem astronomical and it takes some breaking down to really get the gist of what that many birds in a certain space would look like. My old pig paddocks and barnyard could house about 30,000 birds, where I, until a little cull of numbers earlier today, had 18. Admittedly, my chooks didn’t bother with much of the space, so commercially it would be considered wasted, but the numbers are staggering. Imagine a bird in every .06 of a metre squared. Or, the other way around, 16 birds per square metre. That’s 28-40kg of bird per metre squared, the actual rate determined by ventilation. I’m trying, but I simply can’t get my head around these numbers. I think I’ve made a mistake with my calculations – measure out a square metre at home and imagine 16 chickens on it – but the ACMF’s website quotes the 28-40kg of bird per metre, and 16 birds that dress out to be no.18s in the freezer section of Woolies would easily weigh less than 40kg.

Five-hundred-and-twelve million chickens, or thereabouts, are bred, mostly in systems like this, to die each year and be eaten by Australians. According to one report I read, the aim is to breed meat that is bland and tender. Animal tofu, really. What I’m interested in, however, is flavour, and I’m fascinated to find out if the commercial breed of birds we’re raising, which have been given space to scratch, grass ("green pick") to peck at, and whose growth rate we’ve slowed substantially by having them in the dark when the sun goes down, and feeding them mixed grain rather than rocket fuel. What I’m interested in is if these birds, genetically bred to grow at super speed and be bland and tender, whether they will taste like much if given a more varied diet and allowed to grow out slower.

We have the luxury of raising our own birds, and our meat is built up to a standard, not down to a price. Modern chicken is certainly a cheap commodity, which puts it within the everyday budget of most of the population. But I do wonder about the way these birds are raised intensively. One day, I’ll write a bit more about that side of things. But, for now, I’m pleased that we’ve managed to raise our few successfully, and more than a little interested in the way the slow raised, truly free-ranging birds will taste.

Never-ending stories

Tue, 15 May 2012 11:00:00 +1000

If you've been around the traps for a while observing the to-ing and fro-ing of cycling discourse you'll find two kinds of stories that never seem to die.

One is the hard to take seriously big media blowhard banging on about Lycra louts on either the AM airwaves or in the pages of one of the big city tabloids.

Stepping into the breach yesterday for one of those yarns was failed shock jock Steve Price, who threw the entire bag of hammers in his head at, wait for it, “Cycle Nazis”.

Now Internet lore has it that "given enough time, in any online discussion, regardless of topic or scope, someone inevitably criticises some point made in the discussion by comparing it to beliefs held by Hitler and the Nazis”.

But usually you have to wait until the 20th comment or so below any article before someone decides to compare some perceived outrage or other to Adolf and his jackbooted acolytes, or mention Nazis.

Unfortunately for Price he Godwinned himself before the caterpillar tracks of his brain gained any traction, but that didn't stop our failed megaphone megalomaniac from dropping all sorts of newly (to him) imagined bon mots.

"Melbourne isn't Amsterdam and doesn't want to be," he thundered. "They (cyclists) don't pay registration fees, are probably not city ratepayers, and add nothing to the local city economy aside from buying coffee and those ludicrous Lycra shorts," he asserted without proof.

The much-maligned Middle Aged Men in Lycra (MAMiL's) also copped a spray of Price's brainless buckshot. "Bike riding might be the new jogging and it has become trendy as a way of exercise, especially for older, overweight men who can't run and love Cadel Evans."

As if a desire to be a healthy middle aged man who admires a truly gifted athlete and all round nice guy, is a bad thing. This from a man who spends his weekends singing the praises of those sporting role models plying their trade on the fields of the National Rugby League (NRL).

Price closed his thankfully paywalled diatribe, designed to stir the masses (white van men and the over 60 crowd who listen to right-wing talkback) into open revolt over the horrible fate that awaits Melbourne, with the only true thing in his piece.

"It (cycling) will never be a mass transport solution for Melbourne and should be funded accordingly." Which of course it isn't, because it isn’t.

The second never-ending story is really more of a distraction to the main game of making cycling safe and plentiful in Australia than it is a Pricean sledge at Melbourne's cycling hordes.

Usually dissent on the issue of helmet legislation comes from libertarian types and some cycling activists, probably more disturbed by the sight of helmet head than reality, but this time the source is a bit different, the Mayor of Fremantle Brad Pettitt and Independent Fremantle MP Adele Carles.

The good mayor and his sidekick want to give a two-year no-helmet trial in the West Australian city a run in an attempt to boost cycling numbers. The proposal will make helmets optional for adults riding on separated cycleways, dual-use paths and roads with a speed limit of 50km/h or less.

This idea I like because it should clarify thinking about a wrongly perceived objection to riding a bicycle.

"I think a trial is a very good idea and anything that collects data on cycling is good for future policies but the alliance will not be formally campaigning to have the law lifted," said the somewhat ironically named Bicycle Transport Alliance spokesperson Heinrich Benz.

"Removing helmet legislation may lead to increased cycle numbers but it is not something we will be pushing. There are more important things we are worried about. This topic is a bit of a red herring, it is a distraction from the lack of spending on cycling infrastructure that Perth cyclists desperately want and need."

A "red herring" it is because bicycle sales in Australia remain strong at more than one million sold each year, almost all of them with helmets. The buying public now know a 'skid lid' is part and parcel of riding a bike and are voting with their wallets in vast numbers.

The real issue here is not fashion but infrastructure, as Benz noted, "We need to invest money and time into making roads safer for cyclists and look into things like more cycle paths, safe passing distances and lower speed limits, above things like helmet laws."

All things that ought to make Steve Price's head really explode.

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School hijinks back to haunt Romney

Tue, 15 May 2012 08:33:53 +1000

Just hours after President Obama announced his support for same sex marriage last week, the Washington Post presented a story about Republican challenger Mitt Romney that could not have painted a more different picture of a man who wants to lead America.

The Post journeyed back to 1965 and Romney’s year as a high school senior at the prestigious and elite Cranbook School. Romney, remember, was not just any kid. He attended the school, where students wore ties and carried briefcases, as the son of Michigan Governor George Romney.

The Post tracked down five fellow students who told, independent of each other, of an incident where Romney led a cheering and baying gang in pursuit of one John Lauber, a new student a year below Romney who was an apparent non-conformist and presumed to be gay.

The future want-to-be President believed, according to the accounts, that Lauber’s bleach-blond hair, draped over his eye like a future synth pop star, did not belong at Cranbrook. “He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” Romney said, according to Matthew Friedemann, his close friend at the time.

Romney later led a mob who pinned Lauber down and forcibly cut Lauber’s hair as the younger student sobbed, humiliated. Meh, you might say. High school high jinx should not reflect a character over 40 years later. Many would agree.

“Anyone who knows Mitt Romney knows that he doesn’t have a mean-spirited bone in his body,” said campaign spokeswoman, Andrea Saul in a statement defending the candidate. “The stories of 50 years ago seem exaggerated and off base and Governor Romney has no memory of participating in these incidents.”

Romney apologised for the incidents (if true, he qualified) as more high school tales emerged of the former Massachusetts governor bullying less Alpha students.

“I don’t remember that incident,” Romney said. “I certainly don’t believe that I thought the fellow was homosexual. That was the furthest thing from our minds back in the 1960s, so that was not the case… As to the teasing or the taunts that go on in high school, that’s a long time ago. For me, that’s about 48 years ago.”

Romney defenders have pointed out President Obama was no saint in his youth, either. As Obama wrote in his biography, he drank and smoked pot in his youth. Before him, George W. Bush, too, was a drinker and used cocaine before making his play for political power. But such comparisons miss the point. This narrative is that Romney comes with history as a privileged bully, something he continued in his role at investment firm Bain Capital (being cast as a “job cremator” rather than creator) and a characteristic he will continue if he is elected in November.

So, in a week when President Obama displayed understanding for a minority civil rights cause, the parallel story is that Romney doesn’t care for anyone different and revels in his privilege.

“There’s a wild and crazy man inside of there just waiting to come out,” said Romney’s wife, Ann in a TV interview recently.

She knows her husband better than most but whether she was intending this story to be the one told is another matter. Whether this high school story will matter to voters more interested in the economy is also another matter but, regardless, “High school bully gay basher” is one achievement Romney would prefer be left off his CV.

And it’s worth noting, the election campaign has not yet officially begun.

A$ falls to below parity with the US$, so where to now?

Mon, 14 May 2012 18:04:15 +1000

One of the hardest comments to get out of market watchers is their opinion of where the Australian dollar is going.

And that's because there are just too many factors, often unpreidcatble factors, influencing currency moves.

Interest rates, global politics, economic growth and carry-trades are just some of the variables.

The recent slide in the Australian dollar has been attributed to the escalating political uncertainty in Greece.

But last week's better than expected local unemployment numbers prevented the Australian dollar's slide to below parity.

Today though, for the first time since December 20th, the Australian dollar fell to below parity with the US dollar, as Greece fails to form a government, and speculation increases of a Greece split from the Euro.

So is anyone game enough to predict where the Australian dollar is going now?

NAB this afternoon, revised its forecasts, and is now expecting the Aussie to hit US$0.97 by the end of the year because of the turmoil in Europe.

But, at the same time, Reserve Bank deputy governor, Philip Lowe said at a lunchen, that he thinks it is highly likely for the exchange rate to remain high for some years to come.

Much of that will depend on a recovery in economy growth, and a soft landing in China, which demands the bulk of Australia's commodities, thus keeping the local currency strong.

To a smaller degree, interest rates also have an impact on the Australian dollar, because higher rates attract more foreign investors to our currency because they'll get a higher return on their investment.

The market however, is now pricing in a 70 per cent chance of another interest rate cut in June.

Economists at NAB today, have added another interest rate cut to their predictions. They're now penciling in two rate cuts, one in August, with a follow up in September.

On the upside, lower interest rates should help the housing sector.

Today, the number of new owner occupied housing loans rose for the first time in three months, up 0.3 per cent in March.

First home buyer activity fell though, from a 23- month high of 20.9 per cent to 16.4 per cent.

According to Commsec, there's also been a fall in how much money Australians are prepared to borrow for a home loan at $284,500, down 4.7 per cent on a year ago.

And with the major banks failing to pass on any Reserve Bank interest rate cut in full, it should be no surprise that there's been a shift in consumer attitudes towards fixed rate loans, which now account for 14.5 per cent of all loans in March, a four year high.

Cali Files: Two-wheeled wunderkind

Mon, 14 May 2012 13:00:00 +1000

For Anthony Tan, Peter Sagan’s incredible, come-back-from-nowhere victory on the opening stage the Amgen Tour of California brought back memories of a vintage Robbie McEwen, circa July 2007.

Did Peter Sagan’s come-back-from-nowhere win at the Tour of California remind you a little of the opening road stage of the Tour de France five years ago?

It was July 8, 2007. As part of a three-day British sojourn, the second day entailed a 203-kilometre stage from London Greenwich to Canterbury in the east. As per usual in the opening week of the Tour it was a jittery peloton, who, with 20 kilometres remaining and just having crested the third and final climb of the day, the 1.1km long Cote de Farthing Common, were nervous as a clutter of cats on a hot tin roof.

A high-speed crash found pre-stage favourite Robbie McEwen in the thick of the melee, landing heavily on his knee and wrist. And with the bunch inexorably approaching top speed he was not expected to return to the fold.

Wrong. Armed with the aid of his loyal Predictor-Lotto teammates McEwen, adrenalin pumping through his veins, scrounged back onto the wagging tail as if their lives depended on it before Fred Rodriguez and Leif Hoste, at their scrambling best, foraged their way through to the front for him.

Still, McEwen had to start his sprint early, coming from around tenth wheel. He went past Francisco Ventoso. Then Burghardt – Freire – Forster – Feillu – Chavanel – Boonen – Hushovd… before a last launch to the line, a shake of the head almost making the believable, unbelievable for the winner himself.

It brought up Robbie’s tally of Tour wins to an even dozen, adding to his twelve Giro d’Italia stages and thereby immortalising the pocket rocket into the pantheon of sprinting greats.

Sadly, though, try as he did, it would also turn out to be his last Grand Tour victory.

I wonder how he felt today, riding the first stage in his swansong race, before trailing off on a seemingly innocuous Cat. 3 climb towards the finish that turned out to be more difficult than anticipated and trimmed the lead group to 65 riders.

Sagan was in there but a puncture some 7km from the finish further whetted the appetites of men like Tom Boonen, Heinrich Haussler, Michael Matthews and Leigh Howard, whose chances suddenly increased several-fold. Or so they thought…

Matthews would encounter his own problems 3.5km later on when he took a tumble, but as ‘Bling’ was cursing what might’ve been, he may have seen Sagan move back through the bunch and promptly in prime position.

Daniel Oss, no sprinting slouch himself, would be the Slovakian champ’s final lead-out guy, and it was all Sagan needed to deliver yet another notch to his ever-growing palmares.

“It is going to be very hard to hold onto the yellow jersey. I’m okay on the smaller climbs but it’s only going to get harder and harder as the week goes on,” Sagan said.

I won’t call him a liar yet but right now, it seems, there is little this two-wheeled wunkerkind cannot do.

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Indigenous filmmakers in the spotlight

Mon, 14 May 2012 10:41:14 +1000

Get set for a wave of Aboriginal-themed movies, docos and TV dramas.

It may be too early to proclaim a resurgence in indigenous filmmaking but this year we’re witnessing an unusually high level of films and documentaries from directors such as Ivan Sen, Wayne Blair, Rachel Perkins and Catriona McKenzie.

Toomelah director Sen (pictured) is getting ready to shoot Mystery Road, a murder mystery. McKenzie is putting the finishing touches to family drama Satellite Boy.

The out-of-competition screening of Blair’s soul singer drama/comedy/musical The Sapphires at this month’s Cannes International Film Festival will shine a global spotlight on Australia’s indigenous cinema while Perkins’ doco Mabo will premiere at next month’s Sydney festival ahead of its ABC-TV airing. Mabo features Jimi Bani as Eddie Mabo, the Torres Strait Islander who led the High Court challenge that led to the recognition of native title in Australia.

Rounding out the current wave of indigenous fare, Blair, Perkins, McKenzie and Leah Purcell are shooting episodes of the ABC prime-time drama series Redfern Now, which focuses on six households on one street in the inner-city suburb.

McKenzie has a simple explanation for the heightened interest in indigenous subjects, telling SBS Film, “The scripts are so compelling, it’s impossible to not take note and fund these projects. And the skill set of filmmakers is ready to take on telling these stories.”

Writer-director Sen starts shooting Mystery Road in the outback towns of Moree and Winton at the end of June. Aaron Pedersen (TV’s City Homicide; The Circuit) will play an Aboriginal cop, Detective Jay Swan, who’s called on to investigate a murder and soon realises a serial killer is at work. The $2 million pic was financed by Screen Australia, Screen Queensland and the ABC. Gary Hamilton’s Arclight has the world sales rights outside Australia where it will be released by a new distributor, Michael Wrenn’s Management of Doubt.

“It’s an Agatha Christie-style whodunit, a classic genre film,” said producer David Jowsey, who is partnered with Sen in Bunya Productions, which made Sen’s Toomelah and Brendan Fletcher’s Mad Bastards. “We’re trying to move into more genre-based, mainstream storytelling.”

In Cannes, sales company Celluloid Dreams will show footage of Bunya’s Satellite Boy, the saga of a 12-year-old Aboriginal who lives with his elderly grandfather in a remote town. After grandad’s house is threatened with demolition, the boy and his best mate set out for the big city. The film stars David Gulpilil and two tyros from the Kimberley region of Western Australia, Cameron Wallaby and Joseph Pedley who were discovered after a national casting search. It was funded by Screen Australia, Screen NSW, Screen West and an investment from WA’s Mount Gibson Iron (the same source which tipped in cash for Mad Bastards).

Hopscotch will release the family-friendly, art house film in late 2012/early 2013, hoping to cash in on The Sapphires, which it will launch in August. “Obviously we’re hoping that will be a success and we will come in on its coat-tails,” said Jowsey. “If that goes well and there’s every sign that it will, it will hopefully lay a pathway for us. I’m glad Hopscotch has both films so they’re not in competition with each other.”

Bunya has just finished shooting Yagan, an ABC docudrama which chronicles the life of a leader of the Nyungar people in Western Australia who rebelled when his people were declared British subjects; he was killed by two white men in 1833 after a bounty was placed on his head.

Clarence Ryan, who co-starred in Peter Carstairs’ 2007 drama September, plays Yagan, and the docudrama was directed and written by Kelrick Martin.

Longer-term, Sen and Jowsey plan to make the leap to a more ambitious and costlier level with Loveland, a genre movie to be shot in Hong Kong, budgeted at between $6 million-$12 million. Sen’s screenplay revolves around Triads, turf wars, concubines and assassins, and Jowsey is talking to prospective co-production partners in Hong Kong.

“We’re trying to evolve from doing films with a social agenda into doing things with a more commercial orientation,” he said.

Jowsey also signalled a desire to remake Sen’s Dreamland, an experimental, zero-budgeted, black-and-white, HD-lensed, 2010 sci-fi film about an obsessive UFO hunter who encounters a secret American military base in Nevada, which played in festivals in Pusan, Korea, Melbourne and Brisbane. As he says, the remake would have a proper budget and a professional cast.

Giro Files: Band of brothers

Sat, 12 May 2012 08:00:00 +1000

You do not have to be a team of winners to be a winning team, writes Anthony Tan.

It’s our thing. It’s part a question of motivation. We take it so seriously; we train really hard for it. And we really think through every little detail… and I think that makes the difference in the end.

Let me ask you a simple question. When you look at the Garmin-Barracuda band of nine riding this year’s Giro d’Italia (Jack Bauer, Robert Hunter, Tyler Farrar, Ryder Hesjedal, Ramūnas Navardauskas, Alex Rasmussen, Sébastien Rosseler, Peter Stetina, Christian Vande Velde), which name/s stands out from the crowd?

That’s right: they don’t. No one exhibits a preternatural level of ability or talent above anyone else. No one man is what you would call a prolific winner or superstar in their own right, nor would they describe or perceive themselves that way.

Save for the very odd occasion, none of these guys would finish in the top three in the individual time trial at world championship level. But combine their strength and it’s a different story.

Even before the Giro’s fourth stage team time trial in Verona, the signs were already there. Placing third, sixth and thirteenth in the opening time trial in Herning last Sunday was enough for Garmin-Barracuda to top the team classification (calculated by aggregating the best three riders’ times), on level footing with BMC Racing but winning on a count-back of fractions of a second.

So why is it, then, that year after year, this cacophonic-looking crew keep winning team time trials? How can they beat teams that on paper appear stronger, appear superior, but in reality are not? Has one of the team doctors concocted a winning formula that flies under the anti-doping radar, and which only works for TTTs?

Fortunately, it’s nothing like that.

Team owner/manager Jonathan Vaughters, irrespective of what you think of him, has managed to foster an environment where strength lies in unity. No one is put on a pedestal and worshipped and mollycoddled as if they were some deity and the rest a bunch of plebs. And Vaughters doesn’t just tolerate idiosyncrasies but encourages individualism, which often gets misconstrued; ‘Oh, they’re just of bunch of whack-jobs run by a bespectacled nutter with pork-chop sideburns,’ is an oft-held sentiment among their detractors.

Those who tend not to agree with the team’s ethos leave before too long. A classic example is Thor Hushovd’s falling out with the team after last year’s Paris-Roubaix, where the Norwegian bemoaned his lack of outright leadership despite then teammate Johan Vansummeren scoring a remarkable solo victory. His transfer to BMC Racing for a reported $2.85 million, far more than Vaughters could ever afford to pay any of his 30 riders, has been less than successful. In fact, he’s still searching for the podium, let alone the top step. (The God of Thunder has transmogrified to the God of Coming Asunder, it seems.)

Those who embrace the ‘all for one, one for all’ mantra thrive in its egalitarian milieu. David Millar, a part owner of Slipstream Sports (along with Vaughters and primary benefactor, Doug Ellis) came to the team in 2008 with a chequered past, having succumbed to intolerable pressure while at Cofidis (1997-2004) and admitted taking EPO. Since joining, however, the eloquently spoken Scot left his ego behind in Biarritz (the French party town where a Friday night bender was the norm rather than the exception), found a new lease on his racing life, and has become a respected and elder statesmen in the peloton, where journalists now seek him for his candour.

Thursday, when Navardauskas took the race lead after the fourth stage TTT, there was real emotion in Farrar’s words. It wasn’t some ‘couldn’t have done this without the team’ BS that cynical journalists like myself automatically disregard because they’ve become trite as Tony Abbott’s rebukes during parliamentary question time. “There’s no one on our team that deserves it more than him,” Farrar said of his Lithuanian teammate, the first from his country to wear the maglia rosa.

“The amount of work he puts in for everyone else every day… it almost makes me want to cry, I’m so happy for him. I hope we can keep him in (the maglia rosa) for a while. After that, hopefully we can pass it onto Ryder (Hesjedal) or Christian (Vande Velde).”

A Garmin-Barracuda rider probably won’t win the Giro. They may not even win another stage. But as the team time trial proved, you do not have to be a team of winners to be a winning team.

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Casting Aspersions: Elba, Pegg & Hamm

Fri, 11 May 2012 14:28:49 +1000

This week, Idris Elba from The Wire becomes Nelson Mandela, Simon Pegg goes on a pub crawl to end all others, and Jon Hamm heads to India in the name of baseball.

The English actor Idris Elba has had not one but two great television roles to his name. In the epochal American series The Wire he was canny drug dealer Russell “Stringer” Bell, while in his homeland he’s portrayed the obsessive police detective, Chief Inspector John Luther, in the series Luther. As is the way, film roles that didn’t really stretch the imposing actor followed, including Thor and The Losers. Now, however, Elba is in two major science-fiction films, Ridley Scott’s imminent Prometheus, where he joins Charlize Theron, Michael Fassbender and Noomi Rapace on the wrong planet, and Guillermo Del Toro’s Pacific Rim, a futuristic tribute to Japanese giant monster movies where soldiers pilot battle robots that fight Godzilla’s contemporaries.

After that Elba gets a real challenge: playing Nelson Mandela in the biopic Long Walk to Freedom. The film, which has secured the former South African President’s life rights, is to be directed by Justin Chadwick (The Other Boleyn Girl), and will follow Mandela’s life from childhood poverty to a young radical who opposed his country’s repressive apartheid system, to a figurehead who was imprisoned for decades before being released and becoming leader of the nation that had locked him up. Morgan Freeman, in Clint Eastwood’s Invictus, Sidney Poitier and Danny Glover, have already played Mandela in his later years, but Elba will have to provide the definitive portrayal of a complex man.

The success of 2004’s Shaun of the Dead and 2007’s Hot Fuzz, a pair of cluey, distinctly British, genre mash-ups written by actor Simon Pegg and director Edgar Wright resulted in to the pair being in such demand that they couldn’t reunite for a third film. Pegg was an unlikely co-star in blockbusters such as Star Trek and Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, while Wright went off to make Scott Pilgrim vs .the World. Finally they’re back in sync, along with rotund co-star Nick Frost, and will collaborate on The World’s End, the story of a group of middle-aged men who reunite to attempt a legendary pub crawl. Their pint-laden effort somehow becomes connected to averting the end of the world, which actually sounds plausible where Pegg and Wright are concerned.

From the very bad ideas department: Precious director Lee Daniels to remake Federico Fellini’s 1957 Italian classic Nights of Cabiria with Juliette Lewis in the leading role of a wronged but optimistic prostitute.

More big screen adjustment: ever since the role of the inscrutable Don Draper on television’s Mad Men elevated him from struggling actor to leading man, the square-jawed Jon Hamm (pictured) has been working his way through supporting movie roles large and small. He showed his comic ability in Bridesmaids and played a hardnosed FBI agent in The Town, but until now there hasn’t been a leading role. That will change with Million Dollar Arm, a drama based on the story of American sports agent J.B. Bernstein, who ran a reality show competition in cricket-mad India in 2008 to find potential baseball pitchers. Bernstein’s discoveries earnt professional contracts in America, but that was just the start of their struggle. Tom McCarthy (The Station Agent) has penned the screenplay, and Hamm and Disney now need a director.

The dark side of millionaire owners

Fri, 11 May 2012 14:08:22 +1000

Blackburn Rovers are rightly considered one of the staples of the EPL – they won the league in 1995 and remain just one of four clubs to have won the revamped Premier League.

But this weekend they were relegated, with hardly a whimper, after a 1-0 home defeat against Wigan Athletic, and only the most deluded of Blackburn fans could have said they didn’t see it coming.

The rot began in November 2010, when the club was purchased by Indian chicken company Venky’s for GBP 23 million.

Their owners, Verkatesh and Balaji Rao greeted fans on the pitch at Ewood Park before a 2-0 win over Aston Villa, and soon after promised to sign a host of big-name players, the most eye-opening of which was former Ballon d’Or winner Ronaldinho.

Soon after they sacked Sam Allardyce with the team sitting 13th, and replaced him with first team coach Steve Kean, a man with no prior managerial experience.

Rovers escaped relegation by the skin of their teeth last season, despite an insipid 3-2 home loss to Wolves at home on the last day of the season.

The big signings never eventuated – in fact their biggest deal last season was to sell promising centre half Phil Jones to Manchester United.

Kean’s position was untenable for the duration of last season – but Venky’s, having no knowledge of football themselves, never acted.

One of their owners admitted never seeing a football match before buying the club.

Several times this season hundreds of Blackburn fans have marched on Ewood Park, asking Kean and the owners to leave the club.

But no action meant going backwards, and Blackburn will be playing second division football next season.

It wasn’t Kean’s fault he wasn’t good enough, but he should never have been appointed in the first place.

All this prompts the question of how it was allowed to happen. How could a company with no knowledge of football be allowed to purchase an English institution like Blackburn?

Their local MP, Jack Straw, has accused the Premier League of a ‘wilful neglect of its responsibilities’ and called for an investigation.

But the League says their “fit and proper persons” test only ensure clubs remain sustainable, and cannot ensure competency.
Why not? Why should Blackburn fans be subjected to the systematic destruction of the club they love? Why shouldn’t the Premier League step in when it can see a disaster is about to unfold?

Venky’s deserve plenty of blame of course. To step into the cut-throat world of football with no prior knowledge smacks of arrogance at best and ignorance at worst.

They simply had to appoint someone to a senior role who understood the game. They have failed the club, and its fans.

Let this be a lesson to all clubs who fancy taking on a millionaire owner. Choose your sugar daddy wisely.

Day of the Honey Badger

Fri, 11 May 2012 09:00:00 +1000

No two ways about it, it has been a big 12 months in Lithuanian cycling. First the mayor of Vilnius proved a point about obstructed bike lanes by driving over parked cars in a tank. Then on Wednesday, Ramunas Navardauskas became the country's first ever leader of the Giro d'Italia.

After Navardauskas clung on to Garmin-Barracuda's last wheel in the team time trial, much of the subsequent press conference was dedicated to a) establishing how to pronounce his name (Listen here, and then practice rolling your Rs), and b) finding out something, anything, about the new maglia rosa.

A farmboy who is 1.9m tall, Navardauskas found his way into cycling after growing up in one of the few areas of the country where basketball was unpopular.

Suitably exotic stuff, although it should also be noted that at 24 Navardauskas is hardly a newcomer and neither are Lithuanians an endangered species in cycling. Lithuania has three riders on the Pro Tou, more than there are, say, Colombians. Orica-GreenEDGE alone has two Lithuanians on its roster, former national champion Tomas Vaitkus, and Aidis Kruopis, who outsprinted the likes of Mark Renshaw and Tyler Farrar in stage three of this year's Tour of Qatar.

"They call me Gnu-Gnu back home," Navardauskas told reporters, perhaps hoping that the questions about pronunciation might stop and the nickname would stick.

It won't, but there is better hope for the gnickname* given to the new pink jersey wearer by teammate David Zabriskie.

In the following interpretation of Wednesday's team time trial, 'the Honey Badger' is played by a honey badger and Navardauskas' pink jersey rivals are, respectively, a cobra, a leopard, a hive of bees and ... maybe some kind of hawk.

*a gnu joke. You're welcome.

How to win friends and endear yourself to others in the peloton: lessons in sprinting and sportsmanship by Roberto Ferrari

1) Sprint as though you have just spotted a beloved aunt in the crowd and wish to say hello.

2) When you cross the line, leaving riders, bikes and UCI regulations mangled behind you, begin your post-race TV interview by discussing your own misfortune. Sample: "I was in good shape in the finale, but unfortunately I pulled my foot out and so I slowed down at the finish."

3) Go on to cheerfully discuss your chances for upcoming stages, as though this is the reason you are being interviewed: "I haven’t been able to take anything yesterday or today, but will hopefully in the next week. In the team time trial we will aim to lose as little as possible, and Thursday should be another beautiful stage". Other riders will enjoy this and find it charming.

4) When journalists finally raise the matter of your honey badger-style sprinting, try the following phrases: "I never look back", "I don't care what happens behind me", and (as quoted in La Gazzetta dello Sport): "I do not have mirrors on my handlebars".

The week in ...

... superheroes
The perhaps inevitable Cavendish-Sad Hulk mash-up.

Also: a mystery Astana rider (guesses, anyone?) chooses the Giro to showcase the latest Spiderman headwear. Reportedly, under the Astana team budget everyone gets one*.

*Please send your complaints regarding the corniness of this week's jokes to the SBS quality control team: inspector.rex@sbs.com.au.

... stunts
The Broom Wagon has no idea whether the claim is true, but according to L'Equipe this is the world's first double backflip in a natural setting. It does at least prove a lesson the Broom Wagon first learned at an SBS team-building retreat: if at first you faceplant and have to haul your bike all the way up a steep hill while your heartless colleagues carry on filming, try, try again.

... proportion
Headed for court: two American criterium racers after a crash which left one rider with a broken collarbone and one reportedly handcuffed. Isaac Howe (Kenda-5-Hour Energy, collarbone) accuses Jonathan Atkins (Beck Janitorial) of intentionally causing the crash, which followed an in-race dispute between the pair. Howe insisted the police be called after the incident and told Atkins: 'You better get a lawyer'."

Kenda owner Chad Thompson said: ""To physically grab a wrist and pull him down in front of the field is absolutely insane. It’s insane behaviour, even not bike racing."

Atkins told Velo News the incident was blown out of proportion.

Dispatches from the Twitterverse

My roommate @olivierkaisen left me in the bunch 2 go in a breakaway. Did i say something wrong?? Looked good, nice work & my mum saw u on TV

— Adam Hansen (@HansenAdam) May 6, 2012

Really proud to have met crown prince Frederik of Denmark.Stressfull day #giro

— fränkschleck (@schleckfrank) May 6, 2012

The monkey is officially off my back 5x2nd, now a Giro stage. @Orica_GreenEDGE boys rode super, big thanks to them for the work they put in!

— Matt Goss (@mattgoss1986) May 7, 2012Classic GiroTube
One of the risks in making the Passo dello Stelvio the decisive stage of the Giro is that, at 2757m, there is a better than decent chance the summit will be snowed in, forcing a rather anticlimactic detour. Fortunately the sun shone in 1975, allowing Italian Fausto Bertoglio to duel with Spanish climber Francisco Galdos. Bertoglio began the climb in the maglia rosa, needing to protect a 41-second buffer over Galdos to win the Giro.

Hulk Hogan: still runnin' wild

Fri, 11 May 2012 02:13:44 +1000

So, yeah, I've interviewed another professional wrestler. But seriously, can you blame me?

Name the first wrestler that pops into your head. Even if you know next to nothing about the squared circle, or if you have some vague recollection of it from your childhood, chances are you would've mentioned this week's guest.

Not only is he the biggest name professional wrestling has ever produced, his incredible popularity over more than three decades has also made him one of the most recognisable pop culture icons of all time.

So this week "Pop, Cultured" chats to the immortal Hulk Hogan, about the past (including his most disturbing fan encounter), the present (his three years with Impact Wrestling), and the future of both Impact, and Hulkamania itself...

...bruther.

Gay marriage: I'm into it, but not ready to commit

Tue, 08 May 2012 08:15:19 +1000

“Who do you love?” asked Vice-President Joe Biden on Sunday. “And will you be loyal to the person you love?”

Biden was not calling for universal adoration of President Obama but, instead, was trying to take politics out of an issue that has become very politicised in many countries – not just the United States.

The issue of same-sex marriage.

On Meet The Press, one of a series of American Sunday morning TV interviews that like to set the tone for the political week ahead, Biden stressed he was only the Vice-President and that Obama set the administration’s agenda.

But he wanted to be very clear.

“I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexual men and women marrying one another are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties,” Biden said.

The VP added he didn’t know if the administration would come out in favour of same-sex marriage if reelected but pointed to the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, among other Obama policies, as an example of civil rights by stealth, for want of a better term.

“It’s evolving,” said Biden.

Which is a gentle way of saying "I’m kind of into it but not ready to commit". One reason for that hesitancy is that a lot of America isn’t so into same-sex marriage as Biden may be. See what happened in hippy liberal California and its to-and-from campaign to recognise the concept.

Biden’s TV appearance prompted Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod to tweet “What VP said-that all married couples should have exactly the same legal rights-is precisely POTUS's position.”

Axelrod hoisted that flag again with journalists on a later conference call adding Obama’s contrast with Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney on related issues.

According to the Washington Post, Romney has “funded efforts to roll back marriage laws in California and other places,” and “believes we need a constitutional amendment banning the right of gay couples to marry,” Axelrod said, adding that Romney would “take us backward, not forward, so there’s a very clear distinction in this race.”

Support for gay marriage, even with its basis as a basic civil rights issue, is not a huge vote winner and Obama still has to win votes to be reelected. It also remains, in law, largely an issue for states.

But while states can decide who can and cannot marry, the Federal government still denies benefits to married same sex couples from New York, Massachusetts and Iowa (that passed same-sex marriage bills) as well as constructing huge hurdles for citizenship for foreign spouses.

But Biden’s comments, as ambiguous as they were, did serve a purpose. The US media spent Monday debating what they really meant; Obama and Biden signaled to a demographic that they recognised the issue even if they had not been able to perform on the issue; and, by the way, that the Defense of Marriage Act still exists.

That’s a 1996 federal law that states marriage is the legal union of one man and one woman. No one else. President Obama’s administration refuses to defend the law. But guess which President signed it into office?

That would have been Democrat icon Bill Clinton.

Out of the woods but lost in the forest

Mon, 07 May 2012 17:20:32 +1000

Roadshow Films' backflip on releasing indie title Cabin in the Woods is the latest in a line of strange marketing decisions.

Roadshow Films' about-face on its decision to send Drew Goddard’s The Cabin in the Woods directly to DVD has been met with begrudgingly open arms by the blogosphere. But inner-city runs in only Sydney (The Chauvel arthouse venue) and Melbourne (the similarly-programmed Nova) will do the film no favours; for the smart suburban teen audience that would’ve driven word of mouth, those cinemas rep a long train ride to-&-fro.

And a dirty taste still lingers about why Australia and New Zealand’s largest, oldest and most-respected independent exhibition and distribution chain is apparently getting cold feet on titles that have such marketable pedigree. A quick glance at the high-profile titles that Roadshow all but discarded (or was going to discard before vocal backlashes prompted a change-of-heart) paints a worrying picture about its faith in its marketing division:

THE HURT LOCKER (2009):
In 2010, Kathryn Bigelow’s bomb-disposal wartime drama took home six Oscars, including Best Picture. Only six months prior, Roadshow notified media that the title would be a home video premiere in this territory. A concerted effort by Australia’s critic groups coincided with the film’s award season momentum, and The Hurt Locker scored a limited release. At that year's Australian International Movie Convention – the annual gathering of both distribution and exhibition sectors, traditionally held on Queensland’s Gold Coast amidst much fanfare and buzz-generating razzle-dazzle – Roadshow proudly boasted of The Hurt Locker’s domestic box-office takings, which had soared to close to US$6million, making Australia one of the best per-capita return’s for the film anywhere in the world.
SBS Film rating: 4.5 stars
Rotten Tomatoes rating – 97%

I LOVE YOU, PHILLIP MORRIS (2010):
A tough sell because of its graphic homosexual content, but this brazen, brilliant black-comedy/true story gave Jim Carrey arguably the best role of his career, opposite a never-sexier Ewan McGregor, in a film by the team behind the cult-hit Bad Santa. Roadshow followed the lead the film’s American mini-distributor Roadside Attractions, burying it in a single cinema engagement, one session per day for a week’s run. Europeans made it a brilliantly-marketed arthouse crossover hit (UK- US$3.5 milion; France – US$3 million; Italy – US$2.8 million); its screening at the 2010 Melbourne International Film Festival was one of the events highlights. Yet the film dribbled in and out of cinemas over a year later (and dealt similar disrespect on its blink-&-miss-it home video release).
SBS Film rating: 4.5 stars
Rotten Tomatoes rating – 71%

50/50 (2011):
Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s first film after Inception; Seth Rogan back in the lovable comedic buddy-role that made him a star; Anna Kendrick off an Oscar nomination for Up In The Air; a rare big-screen appearance for Angelica Houston; The Help’s Bryce Dallas Howard bitching it up again; ultra-cool indy director Jonathan Levine, the man behind cult-hit The Wackness; winner of The National Board of Review and Independent Spirit awards for Best Screenplay. But it’s box office was low in the US, and it’s about cancer. One of the year’s most acclaimed films gets bumped around Roadshow’s release schedule for six months and then opens only at Melbourne’s Nova cinema.
SBS Film rating: 4 stars
Rotten Tomatoes rating – 93%

HAYWIRE (2012):
Granted, the US box-office for Steven Soderbergh’s action thriller was sub-par (US$20 million), but surely the heads of Roadshow’s marketing team could re-invent the wheel to sell the director of the Ocean’s film and recent hit Contagion in an action-filled spy thriller starring Ewan McGregor, Antonia Banderas, Michael Douglas, Matthieu Kassovitz, Channing Tatum and Michael Fassbender, all facing off against the very marketable pro-fighter Gina Carano. The result – one session, a dozen cinemas nationwide, for one week.
SBS Film rating: 4 stars
Rotten Tomatoes rating – 80%

Claims that it’s a tougher sell if the film dies in the US seem spurious. Roadshow got Conan the Barbarian out there, despite it stinking up its late-summer slot in the US; mega-dud J. Edgar saw a relatively wide release in Australia; the crassly US-centric Act of Valour is taking up screens as we speak – but it did open well States-side! Cabin in the Woods (peaking at 90% on the Rotten Tomatoes site) did solid business in the US (US$40 million; an extra US$17 million to date in other markets), but horror is a tough sell in foreign territories. Most recently, The Devil Inside did close to US$54 million at home (despite dire reviews) but offered meagre returns offshore; the M.Night Shyamalan-produced Devil did US$34million in 2010 but didn’t travel. But countering such a concern must surely be the starring role Aussie Chris Hemsworth, aka Thor, has in The Cabin in the Woods, and the midas touch of The Avenger’s maestro Joss Whedon, on board as producer.

We approached Roadshow senior management for a comment but, politely and respectfully, no one would go on record about the release strategy or the fate of individual titles. The general response was that each film is judged on its own marketable merits for the Australian and New Zealand territory.

The Cabin in the Woods backflip hasn’t impressed many webheads. From Roadshow’s own Tumblr page came these views: “Seriously? What about Perth! A release at Luna would be perfect. Totally lame.”; “We continue to rightly be baffled as to why Cabin is not more widely accessible at the very least.”; “I'm starting to feel bad every time I see your logo in front of a film.”; “Are there only two cities that matter in Australia now? You wonder why people download stuff.”

It is a dangerous time to be sending films with a high want-to-see factor straight into patron’s living rooms. Flushed with the success of Red Dog and The Hunger Games, Roadshow would be ill-advised to sit back and penny-pinch. Hiccupping the film-going cycle of tech-savvy 10-25 year-olds – The Cabin in the Woods core audience – will reinforce their hardening belief that a trip to the movies is only one of several ways to see a new film.

Cadel should carry the flag

Mon, 07 May 2012 14:00:00 +1000

Speculation has started as to which athlete should carry the Australian flag at the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games and Cadel Evans is listed as the hot favourite.

Does it come as a surprise that Australia's only Tour de France winner may be the athlete who continues a tradition dating back to 1908?

According to bookmakers who have opened the betting market we shouldn't be, check out these odds.

$2.90 Cadel Evans $3.75 Leisel Jones $5.00 Jamie Dwyer $8.00 Sally Pearson $9.00 Michael Diamond, Russell Mark $15 Anna Meares $26 Steve Hooker $34 James Magnussen, Stephanie Rice
But after listening to ABC Radio last weekend when the topic was raised between a small group of female sports journalists, Cadel didn't seem to get a look-in among the so-called "experts."

Some names mentioned in the discussion for flag bearer duty included Sydney 2000 beach volleyball gold medalist Natalie Cook who is chasing Olympic selection for a sixth time, 3-time Olympic silver medalist, Opals and WNBA heroine Lauren Jackson, and table tennis champion Miao Miao.

To be named Olympic flag bearer for your nation is an honour that shouldn't come cheaply and there's no doubt all the above mentioned names should be considered, but there's no doubt Cadel's historic and legendary achievement on the Champs Elysees in July last year was unsurpassed.

Some might argue combining the Tour de France and the Olympics is like mixing oil and water - they represent two very different sporting platforms totally unrelated to each other.

That may be the case but Cadel's heroics in France went beyond the parameters of sport success.

For a short time he unified a nation wanting to share in his magnificent triumph as was evident when he and wife Chiara returned to Melbourne.

Both were received by tens of thousands in the street homecoming parade with millions more watching on television.

When failing to win Victoria's official nomination for Australian of the Year, (to celebrated actor Geoffrey Rush in January) some saw the omission as a disappointing oversight.

If you look back on Cadel's Olympic career he certainly ticks all the boxes. He made his debut in Atlanta in 1996 as a 19 year-old when securing 9th place in the Mountain Bike cross country event. Four years later he finished 7th in Sydney in the same race.

After standing on the podium at the 2008 Tour de France as runner-up alongside Spanish winner Carlos Sastre, Cadel made a bee-line to Beijing where he was 15th in the Olympic Road Race.

If it was OK for Roger Federer to carry the flag in Beijing as Switzerland's most outstanding sportsperson, then why should Cadel be overlooked for Australia in 2012?

Whether Cadel is named or not, I genuinely believe an Aussie cyclist should be highly considered to carry the national flag into London's Olympic arena.

Anna Meares and Stuart O'Grady are two names which automatically come to mind.

Cycling hasn't had an Olympic flag bearer since Dunc Gray did the honours in 1936 so it may be time for the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) to take a look at the talent on hand in the two wheeled disciplines.

So who do you think should carry Australia's flag at the Olympics?

Giro Files: The more things change...

Mon, 07 May 2012 10:30:00 +1000

It appears that with the brothers Schleck, the more things change, the more they stay the same, writes Anthony Tan.

I was seven days off the bike, so I don’t know… I never experienced this ‘preparation’. I might be good, though. So I need seven days; seven to eight days to get in the rhythm. You can extract a lot of from this quote from the elder of ‘the Schleckies’, as Stuart O’Grady affectionately calls them. Saturday in Herning, Denmark, Fränk languished in 108th place (out of 198 finishers) after the opening time trial of the 2012 Giro d’Italia, 59 seconds behind Taylor Phinney of BMC in a technical, wind-exposed time test.

The result from 21-year-old Phinney was of little surprise. Specialist he may be, but the American phenom rode the 8.7-kilometre corner-laden circuit “about 10 times” with a final recon the day of his ride that, before sunset, earned him the maglia rosa. “It was important to get on the course today because of the way they set up the barriers,” Phinney said afterwards, who became only the third US rider to be pimped in pink. “It was a little bit different than the way they were [positioned] the other days.”

Stay with me here, but the American’s post-race comments made me think about a stage of the 2008 Herald Sun Tour, four years ago.

It was the penultimate day, a 16.2km individual time trial in Victoria’s beguilingly pretty Yarra Valley. The stage previous, O’Grady had lost the race lead to then CSC teammate Lars Bak on the 15km climb of Mount Buller, but only by four seconds. Still, Bak, a three-time national TT champion of Denmark, was considered the more credentialed time trialist, and thus was expected to hold on and win the race. Until that point, the only professional road time trials O’Grady had won were team time trials at the 2001 Tour de France and 2006 Vuelta a España.

However O’Grady, as we all have learned over the years, is never a man to lay down his arms, not even to a teammate. Remarkably, he would end up winning the Yarra Valley time trial, beating specialists including Ben Day, Richie Porte and Bak, the latter by 21 seconds. “It was just pure mind over matter and a lot of experience,” O’Grady, after reassuming the race lead, said, which he held on to the next day in Lygon Street before being crowned champion.

“I knew the [time trial] course was super hard. I rode it a few times [before the stage] and I know a lot of other guys only did it once. I did it three times. I really tried to just hold a steady pace up the first climbs and not [go] lactic over the top. On the way back it was just absolutely full gas.”

Juxtapose O’Grady’s meticulous approach against Fränk Schleck’s lack of preparedness before the Giro. It doesn’t take Einstein to figure out what’s likely to happen.

Before the race start, Schleck also told Eurosport: “I have my team to support me, not losing too much time, and I [will] see what I can get out of it. I don’t want to go too far. I don’t want to say I’m gonna win. I’m not going to say I’m going to be top five [on GC].”

So… Fränk has told us he received an eleventh hour call-up to the second most important Grand Tour of the year, which, based on what happened in 2010 and 2011, will likely compromise his performance at the Tour de France. He also said he has never gone into a Grand Tour so underprepared. Still, he is hoping to be good, but probably won’t be for at least seven or eight days, which is dangerous because the team time trial is on Stage 4 and the first key mountain stage on Stage 8, finishing atop the nine-kilometre climb of Lake Laceno.

He is also hoping his team will mitigate against time losses (yes, he expects to lose more time) until he finds that elusive ingredient known as form. Though with respect, their team at the Giro is very much a ‘B team’; the ‘A-team’ coterie is riding the Tour of California or preparing for the Tour. So the way things stand, Fränk says winning overall is unlikely. In fact, a top-five would be considered a minor miracle.

I accept that Jakob Fuglsang, RadioShack-Nissan-Trek’s original leader for the Giro, is still out due to injury, but compromising a potential podium at the Tour for an unlikely podium at the Giro?

It just doesn’t make sense. Couldn’t Fränk simply have told team manager Johan Bruyneel no?

Brother Andy went into last year’s Tour de France underdone and had to deploy Operation Kitchen Sink on the stages to the Galibier and Alpe d’Huez just to make the podium, as he was never going to win. Why take the family (and team) through existential purgatory again, only to watch Fränk fall by the wayside?

As 20th century French novelist Alphonse Karr poetically wrote, “plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose” (the more things change, the more they stay the same).

Easy to like, hard to barrack for. That’s how I’d sum up the Schleck brothers.

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The tale of two Elizabeths

Mon, 07 May 2012 09:15:30 +1000

Two drama school graduates are poised to shine on the world stage.

Elizabeth Debicki and Elizabeth Blackmore: remember the names, because my hunch is we’ll be seeing plenty of both actresses in the coming years.

Both are drama school graduates who had a solid grounding in the theatre. Both have landed high profile roles; Debicki as Jordan Baker in Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby, Blackmore as one of five friends who are possessed by demons in the remake of Sam Raimi’s 1981 classic The Evil Dead.

Both are represented by Shanahan Management in Australia and they seem poised to embark on Hollywood careers, steered by a high-powered US agent and talent manager.

The similarities don’t end there: neither really became hooked on acting until she started at drama school. “I don't have a story about an epiphany in which I suddenly realised I wanted to be an actor,” the 22-year-old Debicki, who graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2010, told SBS Film.

“It was a much more a case of the idea dawning on me gradually. I was a dancer from a young age. My parents were dancers; we were taken to a lot of ballet as children. It occurred to me that what I liked more than dancing the steps was acting the story of whatever particular performance I was taking part in.

“I went through high school and studied everything other than acting, but when I finished I found myself auditioning for drama schools anyway. My first real taste of how powerful text and character and story could be was through my training at VCA. My early training was like a light bulb going off. I came to understand the effect that theatre and film can potentially make.”
Blackmore, who’s 26, graduated from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA) in 2008. “As a kid I was always a bit uncomfortable in my own skin,” she said from Auckland where she’s shooting Sony’s Evil Dead remake, co-starring Jessica Lucas, Jane Levy, Shiloh Fernandez and Lou Taylor Pucci.

“I spent a lot of time reading, anything and everything, and a lot of time imagining I was someone else. I guess it began there, though I don’t think I ever knew for sure acting was what I wanted to do until I went to drama school. I went to WAAPA and I have never made a better decision in my life. Thank God they let me in. I learnt everything there, and not just about acting. I really grew up in that place and meet some of the most important people in my life today.”

After a supporting role in Stephan Elliott’s comedy A Few Best Men, Debicki relished the opportunity of working with Tobey Maguire (who plays her character’s love interest Nick Carraway), Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan in Gatsby. “I would describe working on this film as the best acting lesson possible,” she said. “I was very new to working in front of the camera when I started shooting Gatsby, so I set myself the mission of gleaning as much information as possible out of the much more experienced actors. The cast was astoundingly talented. Baz is a creative force to be reckoned with. He's very inspiring.”

As for the intricacies of shooting in 3D, she observed that it “made very little difference to me as an actor, in terms of what I would do in a scene. There was perhaps more physical awareness needed to understand and be in control of how movements and action might be viewed in 3D, but I think it’s much more complicated behind the camera than it is in front of it.”

Debicki is in Los Angeles, presumably for meetings and perhaps screen tests arranged by her US agent, CAA’s Hylda Queally, whose clients include Kate Winslet, Cate Blanchett, Rose Byrne and Abbie Cornish.

Blackmore is represented by her US manager Yoni Ovadia at Trademark Talent. Asked how she feels being part of the latest wave of Aussies who are carving out international careers, she said, “It’s incredibly exciting to be working on such a great project at the moment. As far as being part of a ‘wave,’ I’m not so sure. I’m just happy to be working and hope to keep on working, whether it be home in Australia or overseas.”

Blackmore credits the drama schools plus the opportunities of working in the theatre and in local films, TV series and miniseries with nurturing an abundance of talent. “Young actors are lucky to have a rich environment to work in away from the harsh eyes of international critics,” she said. “The Australian industry, however, is small so you have to fight to work. This tends to produce actors, directors etc who are incredibly hard-working, dedicated and humble. You simply won’t get the work if you’re not. There’s no room for ego. No actor I know is chasing celebrity or fame; they’re just chasing the work.”

Giro Files: Eyes wide open

Sat, 05 May 2012 00:00:00 +1000

So much rhetoric has centred on the sprinters at the 2012 Giro d’Italia, one startling stat has been largely overlooked as a result, writes Anthony Tan.

While most of the talk surrounding the 95th Giro has revolved around the abundance of sprinters, there are three notable exceptions: Alessandro Petacchi (Lampre-ISD), André Greipel (Lotto-Belisol) and Tom Boonen (Omega Pharma-Quick Step).

And with pundits waxing lyrical about the fast finishers, it has actually detracted from what I regard as a far more startling observation. One that over the course of the next three weeks will become more intriguing still, and is bound to have you, the cycling fans, grinning like a pig in poo.

The fact is this: the 2012 Giro is wide open and there are up to 10 riders that can win ‘la corsa rosa’.

Overall champion in 2006 and 2010, Ivan Basso (Liquigas-Cannondale), said so himself: “It’ll be a very open Giro because of the tough, intriguing parcours and also because of the men I’m up against. There isn’t one rider who stands out from the others; just lots of outstanding athletes who all have their own strengths.”

With a change of management, as former race director Angelo Zomegnan received a swift kick up the backside for his sadistic route of yesteryear and was later escorted to the exit (replaced by MD of RCS Sport and race director, Michele Acquarone and Mauro Vegni, respectively), this year’s percorso bodes well for all.

“Last year, we climbed Everest; if we’d piled all of the mountains on top of each other we’d have ended up on the moon. It was too extreme, too complicated, and it asked too much of the riders and everyone else, too,” Acquarone said in an interview with cycling journalist Daniel Friebe, in the official Giro guide. (On an aside, Friebe and another British scribe, Richard Moore, comprised my travelling trio at the 2010 Tour de France. It was a hoot and there were enough tales from our travels to have created a deeply disturbing black comedy, even if Friebe’s lack of driving prowess in the Pyrenées almost thrice killed us.)

“The fans were the first to say, ‘Oh, this is too much’. So even if Angelo [Zomegnan] had stayed, we’d have designed a Giro like this one in 2012,” continued Acquarone. “Because we’ve taken the best of 2010 and tried to eliminate the worst of 2009 and 2011 to design the best possible Giro. There’s something for the sprinters, some mixed stages, lots of mountain stages and a queen stage which has really been designed for the fans, with the climbs they wanted to see.”

The last bit is indeed true. In 2011 the RCS Sport head honcho did a Twitter and Facebook poll to ask fans what would be their dream stage, and the ‘tifosi’ overwhelmingly asked for the inclusion of two classic climbs: the Passo di Mortirolo and Passo di Stelvio.

Acquarone responded in kind, choosing to incorporate the agonising ascents on the queen stage, or ‘il tappone’, and on the penultimate day, no less. Over 219 literally breath-taking kilometres in the heart of the Dolomites, the peloton (or what’s left of the sure-to-be-ragged lot) will traverse five categorised climbs that conclude with an ascent of the ‘easier’ side of the vertiginous Mortirolo (11.4km at 10.5%) and just to leave them completely legless, a mountaintop finish atop the 22.4km Stelvio.

And, by the way, there’s no procession the next day: a 31.5km mostly flat individual time trial around Milan concludes proceedings for Stage 21.

However, put that aside and, for a few moments, consider the 10 contenders: Ivan Basso (Liquigas), Damiano Cunego (Lampre-ISD), Ryder Hesjedal (Garmin-Barracuda), John Gadret (AG2R La Mondiale), Roman Kreuziger (Astana), Domenico Pozzovivo (Colnago-CSF Inox), Joaquím Rodríguez (Katusha), José Rujano (Androni Giocattoli), Michele Scarponi (Lampre-ISD), Fränk Schleck (RadioShack-Nissan-Trek).

What’s the one thing they have in common?

Answer: unlike last year’s whitewash at the hands of Alberto Contador who won the race by a chasm-sized six-minute margin (and who would later lose his crown for something he may or may not have done), not one of these riders is miles above the rest in terms of talent, or current form.

My dark-horse? Pozzovivo, a man you may not have heard much (or at all) of before and the recent winner of the four-day Giro del Trentino that finished just a fortnight ago, where he beat the likes of Cunego, Sylvester Szmyd (Liquigas-Cannondale), Rujano, Kreuziger and Marco Pinotti (BMC). He’s 29 years old, a prodigious scalatore (climber) and in 2005, finished ninth overall in his first Giro d’Italia. He’s also in the best shape of his eight-year career.

At 5’5” (1.65 metres) short and a flyweight 53 kilos, if he wasn’t a pro bike rider, Diminutive Domenico could well be mistaken for being Mike Tomalaris’s 10-year-old son if you saw him in school uniform. He and Rujano, in fact, who is an inch shorter and five kilos lighter still.

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Irish soda bread

Fri, 04 May 2012 10:33:23 +1000

I seem to be surrounded by soda bread all of a sudden. First, we received a care package of soda bread and raspberry jam from Paddy the Baker (he’s one of the Irish expats in this month’s Celebrate story) that had the Feast team in paroxysms of delight. Who knew that toast and jam could be this good (and collectively we’ve eaten a fair bit in our time)?

Then, I stumbled across a recipe for Irish cheddar and bacon soda bread on the Homesick Texan that instantly went into my “must try this at home” list. I’m a sucker for cheese, bacon and bread separately – put them together and it’s all over! Another morning of tummy-rumble-inducing food blog browsing turned up a gorgeous post by Farmette on Irish brown bread that made me instantly want to marry an Irish farmer, move to Ireland and start baking – until I remembered that I have my own wonderful Mr Ed, who patiently endures all my food talk and willingly tries new things even though he’d really much prefer going to the pub for a steak.

Irish soda bread recipe

Anyway, all this soda bread happening in my universe meant I had to cook the soda bread that featured in the Irish Brekkie Club story this month. I couldn’t find any stoneground wholemeal flour at my local health food shop – although they had every other possible permutation of flour – so I substituted the regular stuff. I was keen to add some seeds to the mix (Paddy’s loaf had seeds in it and, even though I was picking them out of my teeth for hours, they were delicious!), but I couldn’t get the lid off the jar of sunflower seeds so had to shelve that idea. The dough came together while I was grilling some marinated chicken for dinner – a recipe from one of my favourite blogs right now: Dinner: A Love Story – and was ready by the time the washing up was done.

Miraculously, I managed to resist having a slice while it was still warm. Instead, I brought it into the office for the Feast team. All that’s remaining is crumbs! This bread has a lovely dense texture (I’m not a fan of fluffy breads), and the only adjustment I’d make is to add a little more salt. It tasted great with both raspberry jam and my current avocado and Vegemite combo (don’t judge!) – so versatile.

If you’ve steered clear of baking bread because it seemed too time-consuming, you should definitely give Irish soda bread a shot. What type of bread do you like to bake?

Editor, Feast

Casting Aspersions: Mara, Schepisi & Aronofsky

Fri, 04 May 2012 10:14:56 +1000

This week, Rooney Mara lands three plumb roles, Fred Schepisi wants to go back to school with Juliette Binoche and Clive Owen, and Darren Aronofsky finds his Noah in Russell Crowe.

Rooney Mara has enjoyed a storybook ascendancy, leaping from TV gigs and small film parts to the iconic role of Lisbeth Salander in David Fincher’s English-language remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo via little more than a single, telling scene in the same filmmaker’s The Social Network. Mara offered a different take than the original Salander, Noomi Rapace, but her commitment to the role was a highlight of the grimly agreeable thriller. Now Mara is stepping out from Fincher’s tutelage, adding a handful of prominent filmmakers to her CV.

She has already shot one of Terrence Malick’s upcoming movies, Lawless, which reportedly depicts a pair of romantic triangles that take place against the backdrop of the fertile music scene in Austin, Texas. (The reclusive Malick was even photographed at the city annual music festival, South by Southwest.) Mara’s daunting co-stars are Ryan Gosling, Christian Bale, Natalie Portman and Cate Blanchett, while in Steven Soderbergh’s forthcoming The Bitter Pill she’ll play a wife who becomes addicted to prescription medication alongside Jude Law and Channing Tatum.

Mara’s now also snagged a part in the untitled satire about a conspiracy among world leaders to plan major events in advance that marks the latest collaboration between Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman, the team behind Being John Malkovich and Adaptation; Amy Adams and Joaquin Phoenix will also feature. Beyond that there’s still the question of whether the two sequels to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo will be remade. Fincher’s take earnt approximately $240 million, which is considered good but not great – Mara and Daniel Craig, who’s currently making the next James Bond adventure, are signed up, but Fincher hasn’t decided whether to return to Sweden yet.

Fresh from The Eye of the Storm, veteran Australian director Fred Schepisi is looking to cast Juliette Binoche and Clive Owen in Words and Pictures, the story of two teachers who’ve both suffered setbacks who initiate a competition among their students as to what part of the film’s title is better at communicating something. A screen romance between the two leads would have to be a strong possibility as well.

They’re going to need a bigger boat: Darren Aronofsky is adding cast members to Noah, his retelling of the Biblical tale about the legendary patriarch who saved his family and two of each animal when he built an ark to save them from a great flood God sent to punish mankind. Russell Crowe, who has the title role, will be joined by his A Beautiful Mind co-star Jennifer Connelly, while teenage Irish actress Saoirse Ronan (Atonement, Hanna) will also join the cast. It’s been more than 50 years since the Biblical epic was on Hollywood’s agenda – think Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments from 1956 with Charlton Heston hoisting a stone tablet aloft – and it will be fascinating, to say the least, to see how the director of Requiem For a Dream and Black Swan approaches the genre.

Boom goes the dynamite

Fri, 04 May 2012 10:00:00 +1000

First things first, if you have managed to reach the weekend without watching the finish to stage seven of the Tour of Turkey, do yourself a huge favour and set aside 12 minutes and 33 seconds. It is racing and roadside chain repairs at their very best.

The bingle behind Iljo Keisse at the 7.28 mark might not look like much in the context of the mayhem unfolding elsewhere, but it is an historic bingle because it is one of the last acts you will see in the original (okay, second) GreenEDGE jersey. After a stellar beginning which has reaped wins in Milan-San Remo and two stage races, Gerry Ryan's team will begin their first Grand Tour on Saturday with a new kit and a brand new name.

New major sponsor Orica, as disappointed nature-lovers will already be keenly aware, is not a whale but a multinational mining company and chemicals producer head-quartered in Melbourne.

On hearing this week's news of the three-year, multi-million dollar deal the Broom Wagon immediately went out and bought a large quantity of commercial explosives – and you should, too. If enough of us show our support for the new co-naming sponsor, GreenEDGE-Orica might be able to finish painting all of their buses.

Probably racist tweet of the week

Discussed chinese language with Ji Cheng during dinner. Just imagine how he tries to say 'Cancellara' & 'Rabobank'. We had a good laugh. ;)

— Marcel Kittel (@marcelkittel) April 29, 2012
Stephen Roche and the slippery slope

Where would Stephen Roche stand on the issue of too-long socks, recently outlawed by the International Cycling Union? The Broom Wagon doesn't know but thinks it can guess.

Roche, winner of the 1987 Giro d'Italia and Tour de France, gave an interview to Bike Radar this week, and it turns out he doesn't like a number of things about modern pro cycling, which in general he feels is not modern or pro enough.

Top of the Irish great's hit list are race radios, team cars towing riders back on after a crash, and unzipped jerseys.

Radios have their detractors and many fans would rather see less of the sticky bidon, the drafting behind team cars and the occasional hand on a car door. But what is Roche's specific objection to riders racing with unzipped jerseys?

"You can see their Christmas present from their wives hanging round their neck, but nobody's getting any value out of it," he tub-thumped.

"If you don't stop it now, they'll have no jerseys on shortly. They talk about heat, about not being able to breathe. Bullshit. Footballers, every time they score a goal, pull their jersey off, but it was banned because it didn't look nice. Why do we tolerate it in cycling?"

Why indeed? The logic by which the odd unzipped jersey will lead to an entire peloton of naked riders is both inarguable and horrifying (although if one of those riders was Marcel Kittel the sport could win new fans in at least a couple of key demographics).

In news unrelated to Roche's somewhat naked attempt to make headlines, guess who has an autobiography coming out next month?

The week in ...

... altitude
Two-time winner Ivan Basso has prepared for the Giro d'Italia by training on Mount Teide, a 3718m volcano in Tenerife. Basso, according to an interview with Gazzetto dello Sport, climbed 66,000m in 17 days – the equivalent of almost eight climbs of Everest starting from sea level.

That's probably impressive enough (just) to forgive Basso for his recent habit of twattling inane things about himself in the third person ("Ivan Basso sleeps ...") and for worryingly erotic pre-Giro tweets like this:

22.00 I come to you ... Embracing the ride, breathe the scent, excited like the first time ... IB

— ivanbasso(@ivanbasso) May 2, 2012 ... next big things
The kid riding himself into the ground off the front of this category-three criterium is aged 14.
Dispatches from the Twitterverse

Guess u gotta just laugh! 4 x 2nd places in 6 days!

— Matt Goss (@mattgoss1986) April 27, 2012

Im convinced @AndreGreipel used my head as a punching bag last night while i was sleeping......

— Adam Hansen (@HansenAdam) April 28, 2012

Still excited about my win yesterday! Thanks for all the great reactions and sorry for causing heart, brains or other damage...

— Iljo Keisse (@IljoKeisse) April 29, 2012
Classic YouTube
Previously on Excitable Norwegian Commentators: "Lord Nelson! Lord Beaverbrook! Sir Winston Churchill! Sir Anthony Eden! Clement Attlee! Henry Cooper! Lady Diana! Maggie Thatcher - can you hear me, Maggie Thatcher? Your boys took one hell of a beating! Your boys took one hell of a beating!'"

And now, in the spirit of Bjorge Lillelien's 1981 call of Norway's 2-1 victory over England, here's Christian Paasche – Norway's voice of cycling and professional excited man. Let's all pray for a few more Hushovd/Boasson Hagen stage wins in this year's Tour de France.

Chances of winning OZ Lotto

Wed, 02 May 2012 15:39:38 +1000

More than one in five Australians over the age of 18 opened their wallets for a chance at the $50million Oz Lotto jackpot last night.

A Tatts group spokesperson told me, the amount estimated to have been spent by hopeful players couldn’t be revealed, because it’s an ASX listed company and the information is share price sensitive.

But what we do know, are the odds of winning such a prize.

Because no one picked the winning seven numbers, the division one pool surges to $70million next week, still below the all-time record of $106.5million won by two players in June 2009.

If you play one game, the odds of winning the Oz Lotto jackpot is one in 45,379,620.

That’s double Australia’s population.

Odds based on 18 games is 2,521,090 to one.

It’s still way off the world’s largest lottery jackpot of US$656million.

That’s $634million if you convert it at today’s rate.

The Mega Millions winning numbers were selected by three players across three states in the US back in March, which means the money was split three ways.

And the chances of winning the Mega Millions?

US lottery officials say, one in 176,000,000.

You’re more likely to be struck by lightning.

The US National Lightning Safety Institute puts those chances at one in 280,000.

Tribeca 2012: It’s a wrap

Tue, 01 May 2012 13:51:48 +1000

Films on child soldiers, beauty pageants and political asylum are amongst this year's winners.

In a bookended salute to commercial filmmaking, the 11th annual Tribeca Film Festival opened with The Five-Year Engagement and wrapped with a closing night gala screening of Joss Whedon’s The Avengers.

Commercialism aside, the festival lauded a number of first-time directors, non-actors and festival favourites in its slew of awards. The world competition winners for narrative and documentary films were chosen from 12 narrative and 12 documentary features from 18 countries. Best New Director prizes were awarded to first-time directors for both narrative and documentary films, selected from a pool of 24 feature films.

In the juried awards, War Witch, directed by Kim Nguyen (Montreal, Canada), was deemed Best Narrative Feature with its star, non-professional actress Rachel Mwanza, awarded Best Actress in a Narrative Feature Film. The award follows Mwanza’s win at the Berlin International Film Festival for the same role. Developed over 10 years, and inspired by true events in Myanmar and filmed entirely in the Democratic Republic of Congo, War Witch (pictured) is the story of 14-year-old Komona, who is kidnapped from her African village and forced to become a child soldier.

A big winner was the UK-Cuban-USA co-production, Una Noche. Directed by first-time feature filmmaker, Lucy Malloy, who has previously been nominated for the Student Academy Award, the film made headlines before its premiere when two of its stars, 20-year-old Anailín De La Rúa De La Torre and Javier Núñez Florián, disappeared on their way to the festival. They have since resurfaced in Miami and intend to seek political asylum. Javier Núñez Florián and Dariel Arrechada were jointly awarded Best Actor in a Narrative Feature Film.

The events that surrounded the film’s Tribeca premiere echo the narrative of the film, which centres on Cuban teenagers Elio and Raul (Javier Núñez Florián and Dariel Arrechada) and their dream of leaving Havana for Miami. When Raul is accused of assaulting a tourist, their plan is compromised, making it more difficult for Elio to leave.

Malloy cast non-professionals for the roles and auditioned more than 2,000 people. It has been reported that the actors’ defection to the USA from Cuba was “not as harrowing as the escape depicted in Una Noche”. Una Noche also won Best Cinematography in a Narrative Feature Film for cinematography by Trevor Forrest and Shlomo Godder, and Best New Narrative Director for Lucy Malloy.

The opening night film in the world documentary competition, The World Before Her, directed by Nisha Pahuja (Canada), was awarded Best Documentary Feature. The film, which had its world premiere at the festival, weaves the stories of two contestants in the Miss India beauty pageant and the women's wing of the Hindu fundamentalist movement, Durga Vahini, to draw a stark portrait of contemporary Indian women in both traditional and modern worlds.

Best Editing in a Documentary Feature was awarded to The Flat (Hadira), edited by Tali Halter Shenkar and directed by Arnon Goldfinger (Israel, Germany). In the film, the director documents the excavation of his 98-year old grandmother’s flat after she passes away. Goldfinger’s grandmother had emigrated to Tel Aviv from Berlin prior to the Second World War, and during the process of clearing out her belongings the director confronts unexpected ethical ambiguities.

Best New Documentary Director was awarded to Jeroen van Velzen for Wavumba (Netherlands), his personal exploration of a childhood spent in coastal Kenya. Via the locals’ retelling of a well-known folktale, we are introduced to the lore of the sea and a fisherman named Masoud, a shark fishing legend. To attend the North American premiere, van Velzen travelled for four days to get to New York from Lake Malawi, Africa—eight hours by bus, two days by train, and more than 18 hours by plane via Dubai.

Two Audience Awards were announced: Any Day Now, directed by Travis Fine, won the Narrative award, with the Documentary Award going to Burn, directed by Tom Putnam and Brenna Sanchez,. Set in 1970s Los Angeles, and based on a true story, Any Day Now stars Alan Cummings and Garret Dillahunt as partners that battle a biased legal system for the right to adopt Marco (Isaac Leyva), a teenager with Down syndrome. Burn documents the men and women of the Detroit Fire Department, faced with protecting the city with the highest arson rate in the country. At its world premiere, four Detroit Fire Department firefighters joined directors Putnam and Sanchez and executive producer Denis Leary and were presented with a $25,000 grant by Momentous Insurance Brokerage and the Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company, facilitated by the Leary Firefighters Foundation.

The Tribeca (Online) Film Festival Best Feature Film, determined by audience votes throughout the event, was won by a documentary about the level of dedication required to excel at high school wrestling, On the Mat, written and directed and by Fredric Golding (USA).

All in all, the 2012 Festival hosted nearly 400 screenings and numerous panels. A total of 89 features and 60 short films from 46 countries were attended by 116,000 movie-goers during the course of the 12-day Festival, with theatres frequently at 95 percent capacity.

A tale of two sprinters

Tue, 01 May 2012 10:30:00 +1000

Mark Renshaw made a leap of faith joining Rabobank in late 2011. The pretence was that he would be given more opportunities for himself with the full support of the team behind him. But with Rabobank's unashamed pushing of the case of Dutchman Theo Bos, that pretence is wearing thin, writes Al Hinds.

Leading out Cavendish is a prestigious job for sure, but I still have ambitions. I think this year I'll have a little more of a chance to fight for some objectives myself, and get the chance to win a race or two.Mark Renshaw is no different to most sprinters, he likes to win. When he made the above remarks at an HTC training camp at the end of the 2010 season, it was clear that the Australian was already beginning to itch for his own chances at races, to fulfil his own ambitions.

At 29 years of age and approaching his physical prime, Renshaw made the decision to part ways with comfort, security, and I'm sure a handsome pay cheque to move away from the formidable pairing he had honed with Mark Cavendish at Highroad, and forge his own way at Rabobank, which had parted ways with its lead man Oscar Freire.

"For many years I’ve helped others to win race, now I'm going to try to win some of the biggest competitions myself," said Renshaw of his hopes for his new team.

But if Renshaw was of the belief that he'd be 'numero uno' at Rabobank, the equivocal welcomes of team manager Erik Breukink and another ambitious sprinter, former Dutch track king Theo Bos, suggest something less conclusive.

"Mark is the best lead-out man in the world," Bos said. "I'm really thrilled that Renshaw has chosen us. The partnership with Mark will help me in my own development."

For me Bos's words were a sign that Rabobank were not fully committed to either rider becoming a leader.

Things became more uncertain still after Renshaw's misfiring start at the Santos Tour Down Under in January, and the Tour of Qatar a little over a week later.

From a management perspective, you can understand Rabobank's approach. Neither Bos, nor Renshaw are what you would call proven winners, and the team clearly wanted to see who would best represent them by giving both riders ample opportunities.

But rather than carving up the racing calendar between them, Bos and Renshaw have ridden together consistently throughout the season.

What's more, Bos has never supported Renshaw in a road race, he's never been able to. The Dutchman more often than not gets dropped before the finish, but where Bos has been able to hang on, he has been given the lead-out from Renshaw.

Unsurprisingly Bos has benefited by taking a couple more victories so far this season than the Australian who has more or less had to go it alone.

It's like having Robbie McEwen give Gert Steegmans a lead-out at Lotto, or Thor Hushovd lead-out Julian Dean at Credit Agricole. Sure it's going to be damn effective but it's a slightly eccentric way of going about things.

Despite this growing inequity, Rabobank has continued to stress the idea of a partnership between the two riders.

After winning his first race in Rabobank colours on stage 4 of the Tour of Turkey, Renshaw said he was happy with the arrangement.

"I was the lead-out man for Mark Cavendish but now I'm a sprinter who splits the roles between lead-out and sprints with Theo Bos. It has worked pretty well for us here."

Hold on, that's not what was talked about at the start of the season though was it?

Added Bos:

"There is certainly no conflict. I'm not strong enough in the hills. He is stronger uphill, stronger in harder races. In flat, fast races, that's my strength. We're divided a little bit like this. If it's windy and rainy, were going to work for Mark and if it's not, it's for me."

In other words; when Bos is there Renshaw is meant to give up his own chances. Hardly a sweet deal is it? To his credit, Bos agrees.

"I can't do anything for Mark at the moment. It's not a nice feeling. I have to improve so that I can pay him back."

Rabobank has invested significantly in Bos to get him to where he is today - winning minor races. As a Dutch rider in a Dutch team I get that they want him to succeed. But in a sport of tiny percentages, sacrificing an arguably stronger rider to bolster the chances of a weaker one will ultimately not be something that yields the team long-term success.

It's gotten to the point where it's now beyond questionable or slightly eccentric. Renshaw needs a vote of confidence from the team. For what he's given up at SKY to pursue his own ambitions, the team owes him that much.
We’ve seen it in Turkey, Renshaw is the best man in the lead-out for Theo Bos.Sadly, it doesn't seem like things are going to change any time soon.

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A word on wild mushrooms? Don't do it

Tue, 01 May 2012 09:39:32 +1000

Don’t do it. That’s the simple advice for those interested in picking wild mushrooms for the table. People die. Others end up on dialysis. Others are just very, very sick for the rest of their lives. Some mushrooms must be cooked. Others are safe at one time in their life cycle and not others. There are those that react with alcohol to make you crook, and mushrooms that some people have a sensitivity to, while others can eat them with impunity.

Unless you know what you’re doing, DON’T PICK WILD MUSHROOMS.

So, for my birthday, we went foraging. Nick and I were parenting. And foraging, like fishing, is just a great excuse to get out amongst it. We found a dense forest of pine nearby, drove in through the open gate and spent a couple of hours scouring the forest floor for slippery jacks. Even found a few, but mostly the pine needles were littered with poisonous varieties. For a forage, it was unsuccessful. As a day in the woods, and as a picnic, it was magnificent. Some leftover sourdough baguette from the Peasant’s Feast I’d cooked the night before. Salami, ham, a couple of cheeses. Cherry tomatoes, apples, pickled onion relish. A dry spot on a creek bank with glimpses of glade in a couple of directions. Our boys ran amok up the creek, under the trees, the sound of their play filling the forest with joy.

So it was a bit of a bugger to find the gate we’d driven through locked when we returned. Not just locked; seriously locked, with a padlock the size of a lumberjack’s fist, a chain you could anchor the Titanic with, and steep banks that wouldn’t let you drive in or over. Whoever fixed this gate had obviously seen a few gates broken open in their life, and this wasn’t going to be one of them.

With two tired boys in the back seat, we looked for an escape route. We bounced up every other conceivable road in the forest. And a few that looked ill conceived. Logging roads, where big four-wheel drives and timber trucks had carved through deep mud in the hollows. More than once I thought we’d get stuck. And the locked gate, it must be said, was the only access, and exit point. No wonder it was firmly fixed.

What to do? A simple forest walk at lunchtime had turned into a late afternoon headache. How to explain, if we were discovered at the road’s edge by the owner of the lock, that we didn’t realise it was a private forest? That the gate we drove through seemed inconsequential when open, and insurmountable when closed?

So I rang my neighbour. A long time local who I hoped might know the area. In an instant he knew the property, and, by sheer luck, knew the name and number of the bloke who owned it. Perhaps he could persuade the owner our intentions were honourable. All we needed was understanding, and the key to the padlock, and all would be right. Except the bloke who owns the joint lives in Hobart. Thankfully, it turned out the key was more local than that. An old timer, George, had been using the forest that day, collecting a bit of firewood, and locked the gate on his exit.

When he showed up, George wasn’t a complete stranger to me. Cygnet’s a small town, and I’d already had dealings with the fella’s grandson. George had taught him to box. If we’d been loaded up with firewood instead of fungi, I doubt George would have let us out of the gate without a lesson or two ourselves. Instead, he seemed to find it a bit funny that two grown men had snuck into a private property to pick wild mushrooms, of all things, and ended up locked in. He smiled warmly as he let us out, and told us to throw the mushrooms away. “They’re poisonous, those things,” he muttered, as he reshackled the lock on our release. “I don’t know why you’d want to eat them.”

Unless we knew what we were doing, we wouldn’t.

The LA Riots, 20 years on

Tue, 01 May 2012 08:09:32 +1000

The intersection of Normandie and Florence Avenues in Los Angeles was the meeting point of anger and despair 20 years ago and a place where you would not have wanted to be.

Fueled by two separate yet connected incidents, LA went into meltdown. Infamously, there was the police beating of Rodney King followed by the death of 15-year-old Latasha Harlins, shot in the back of the head by a store owner over a carton of orange juice.

Both incidents carried strong racial overtones. Both incidents saw justice skewed – the acquittal of the police and a light punishment for Harlins’ killer. If you were poor and black in LA at the time, you had reason to be angry. Very angry.

April 29th was the 20th anniversary of the riots. The unrest lasted for six days the tally card reading over 50 people dead, 2,325 people with reported injuries, 1,573 buildings damaged or destroyed and the total cost estimated at $1 billion.

As footage from the time reveals, these were scenes more common elsewhere, in the trouble spots on the other side of the world, not from within one of the world’s greatest cities.

Amid the violence, looting became the sport of choice.

And then there was the beating of truck driver Reginald Denny, pulled from his semi-trailer, hit with bricks, and left in the street. In an interview in 2002, he was perhaps surprisingly circumspect about his experience.

Today, Rodney King is unemployed and broke and has nothing left from the $3.8 million he was awarded after suing the city over his beating. The police who beat him are no longer on the force. Richard Denny lives in Arizona and is no longer keen to discuss the incident. His attackers are dead, in jail (for other crimes) or full of remorse.

But it’s not just people who still bear scars. The city has moved on but the legacy remains. This excellent photo series from the LA Times shows riot sites during the unrest and today.

But as one writer has noted, 1992 were the riots LA was destined to have, if not had to have. It was inevitable. Some of the problems, the divides, still exist today.

New immigrant groups, mainly from Mexico, have moved into the areas most affected by the 1992 riots and reenergised them. Spanish is the dominant language heard on the streets. Yet not everyone is happier.

“No jobs, no jobs," one old timer told The Guardian. "All you can do here is hustle.”

“People were upset back then, and they're upset now,” said another.

How'd you like d'em apples?

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 15:00:00 +1000

Too much too soon? Not at all, says Anthony Tan, believing Bradley Wiggins to be very much the leader among men for July.

Too much too soon for Wiggins. The pressure of being the no. 1 favourite at the Tour will crack him eventually.
I found it rather perplexing that the first three reader comments under Monday’s lead story on Cycling Central, ‘Wiggins firms as Tour de France favourite’, essentially dismissed Bradley Wiggins as the man to beat come July. As my sometimes friend, sometimes Bike Shorts sparring partner, Mike Tomalaris, sagely observed in Sunday’s TV show: “Wiggo looks as good as Cadel did this time last year… Is that a fair call?”

Fair indeed, Don Tominator, for in 2011, as Evans won Tirreno-Adriatico, followed by the Tour de Romandie, most of you, including myself, said: ‘This is Cadel’s year, this will be the year he wins the Tour’.

Yet in 2012, as Wiggins won Paris-Nice in March, followed by Romandie last Sunday, courtesy of a superlative performance in a challenging 16.5 kilometre time test (where he calmly recovered from dropped chain incident at the beginning of the climb of Crans Montana), you seem to be saying, ‘Wiggins is peaking too soon; I’m not convinced’.

What gives?

The fact is, just as Evans enjoyed last year en route to overall victory in Le Tour, Wiggins experienced the perfect off-season, which, believe it or not, is where a season can make you or break you. (Just ask Simon Gerrans, who told me after winning the Tour Down Under: “I’ve never trained so hard in the off-season to be in the shape I’m in now.”)

As early as February 13, before he had won anything – in fact, before he had even pinned on a race number – he wrote in his blog in The Guardian: “In cycling terms it’s not long until the Tour and the most important part of the preparation is over: I’ve done the hard work, stayed healthy. It’s just a matter of taking my training head off and racing now.”

“All the evidence suggests I’m way ahead of last year in my fitness – the numbers I’m producing, the work I've been doing, the tests I’ve had – and you start to think ‘I was third in the Paris-Nice with what I had last year and now I’m ahead’. You can’t help wondering what you can do.”

Six days after posting this entry, he would win the final time trial at the five-day Volta ao Algarve in Spain, where he helped teammate Richie Porte (who, after a lacklustre year at Saxo Bank, also is back to his best) to victory and did enough to finish third overall himself.

One month later, he would win another last-day time trial – after leading the race for the previous six days and having made the crucial 30-man break on Day 2 – to clinch overall victory in Paris-Nice. “If I’m capable of winning it, I’m capable of winning the Tour de France. I’ve now won the two biggest stage races in France. There is no longer any question of my fourth place in the Tour in 2009 being a fluke,” he wrote in his March 12 post in The Guardian.

Wiggins also said he would “try to take my foot off the gas, probably playing a team role, riding on the front of the bunch, working for whoever needs it among the team” at the Tour of Catalunya from March 19-25, which, sure enough, he did. In fact, abominable conditions saw Wiggins and Porte err of the side of caution there, exiting stage right out of Spain after three days.

Entering last week’s Tour de Romandie, a race I covered a number of times in the field in the mid-2000s when I based my butt en Suisse, Team Sky declared they had come to win – even before a pedal was turned. It sounded like big-noting braggadocio but they duly did as they said, as well as taking home half of the six stages on offer.

You can just imagine the scene inside the team bus following Wiggins’ time trial. A lot of backslapping, a few ales downed, and 32-year-old Brad, who has a knack for impersonations, invoking Matt Damon’s character in the 1997 film, Good Will Hunting.

How d’ya like dem apples!

“We’ve had a flawless performance on the bike. People don’t see it but it’s becoming a well-oiled machine both on the road and off the road. That’s very pleasing and people are really starting to establish themselves in their roles,” Dave Brailsford, Team Sky’s principal, said.

“The other key thing was that there was a lot of discussion pre-race about Bradley and Mark [Cavendish] riding together. Obviously that has been a positive and I think when you see Mark riding on the front up a second category climb it tells you more than any words can.”

After Paris-Nice, responding to innuendo he had timed his run too soon, Wiggins fired off a rebuttal: “I don’t believe any of that stuff about peaking too early. I went into Paris-Nice with the form I had. We had a plan, I’m not ahead of it, but there are still some areas to work on. My trainers have pushed me hard all winter with a view to peaking for July and I think I’m at about 95 per cent of my potential now. The rest will come from the work I do between now and July.”

His uninterrupted off-season preparation, away from the glare of the media, combined with carefully timed breaks between races, has allowed him to maintain the form he’s had. And if one considers the way Wiggins assiduously approached his goal-setting and goal-getting throughout his track career, few, if any, know how to time their run better than he. Meanwhile, Evans needs to make further inroads if he’s to hit tip-top shape by the Tour. “Unfortunately, things haven’t been going so well for me this year for reasons a little bit beyond my control,” he said after an uncharacteristic 40th place in the time trial (1:45 down on Wiggins) at Romandie, which left him 29th overall (2:07 down).

The only detritus of doubt I have with Wiggins is his ability to handle the pressure of outright leadership over three weeks – that is, be the leader of the team from the lead-up, to the get-go, to the finish line.

It was not the case at the 2009 Tour when he finished fourth, and last year at the Vuelta a España we saw him falter in the final week, albeit a result of coming back from a broken collarbone at the Tour, where he then made way for teammate Christopher Froome and eventual winner Juanjo Cobo. “I think in terms of pressure I’ve got to grips with that now,” he said on Sunday.

Nonetheless, for Evans, the brothers Schleck, Vincenzo Nibali et al, their race and training plans from here on in have become that little bit more important, because right now, Wiggins is the leader among the Men for July.

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Stapleton breaks out after Animal Kingdom

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 11:17:09 +1000

The 34-year-old is among the latest wave of Aussie actors who are carving out international careers.

If you asked Sullivan Stapleton where he lives, he’d reply, “Wherever the work takes me.” That’s not a glib answer because the Australian actor has criss-crossed the globe since his breakthrough performance in Animal Kingdom.

Last year, Sullivan spent six months in South Africa shooting the US cable TV series Strike Back, then went to Los Angeles to work alongside Ryan Gosling, Sean Penn, Josh Brolin and Emma Stone in the Warner Bros./Village Roadshow movie The Gangster Squad.

After a three-week break over Christmas staying with his mother in Melbourne, Sullivan returned to South Africa for the second season of Strike Back. In June he heads to Bulgaria to play the lead role of Themistocles in Warner Bros.’ 300: Battle of Artemisia, the sequel to Zack Snyder’s 2007 blockbuster.

In 2013 he’s signed up for a third series of Strike Back and WB has an option on his services for a second film which might be another edition of 300 or an entirely new project.

The actor, who paid his dues in the late 1990s as a regular in Neighbours, Stingers and Something in the Air and later in The Secret Life of Us, is modest about his accomplishments since Animal Kingdom. “It’s quite unbelievable; I never dreamt this would happen. All I wanted was to be successful enough to buy a house and look after my family,” he told SBS Film on the line from Cape Town.

He confesses he was a bundle of nerves on his first day on the set of The Gangster Squad, the saga of the LAPD's efforts to take back their city from a Brooklyn-born Mobster, set in 1949. “I thought ‘holy shit, I don’t know what to do’. It was pretty intense and kind of scary.” But Gosling and Penn soon put him at ease and he looks forward to seeing the film, which was directed by Ruben Fleischer.

Playing the Greek general in the 300 sequel, he’ll appear alongside Rodrigo Santoro as Xerxes, Eva Green as the goddess Artemisia and Jamie Blackley as the teenager Calisto, with Noam Munro taking on the directing chores from Snyder, who is the executive producer.

Stapleton said he went through “quite a process” with auditions and screen tests in Los Angeles to win the role for which Joel Edgerton originally was in the frame.

After he finishes that project in December, the actor declares he’s “keen to come home and speak in my own accent” before he heads back to South Africa.

In between acting gigs, Stapleton has worked on building sites and as a grip (lighting technician) on numerous film and TV productions.

When he’s in the US he’s now being recognised from his work in Strike Back, in which he plays a former US Delta Force operative who was discharged on the eve of the US invasion of Iraq and now roams the globe with a top-secret intelligence agency known as Section 20.

His mates on building sites and grips keep him grounded, as he cheerfully acknowledges, “I don’t think there is any danger of my getting too far up my own arse.”

When his commitments allow, he’s keen to work again in Australian movies and says, “I have read a few scripts but I don’t know if they’ll happen.”

Casting Aspersions: Wong Kar-wai & Jessica Chastain

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 14:51:48 +1000

Wong Kar-wai takes on Bruce Lee's trainer, while Jessica Chastain's hot streak continues.

Wong Kar-wai began filming his next film, The Grandmaster, in December 2009, so obviously it’s wrapped by now, hasn’t it? Actually no, it hasn’t. The demanding Hong Kong filmmaker, the perfectionist behind the likes of In the Mood for Love, Fallen Angels and 2046, is scheduled to do his final reshoots and inserts next month, with the film tentatively scheduled to release in mainland China on December 18, 2012. This is pretty much par for the course for Wong, who sometimes gives the impression that he doesn’t finish a film so much as keep going until the film is finished with him. (There was a joke among Wong’s crew on 2046 that the film’s title was actually his intended finish date.)

Interest in The Grandmaster will be intense, as it follows the public misfire of My Blueberry Nights, Wong’s 2007 English language, American-set road movie that found aimless uses for the likes of Jude Law, Natalie Portman and Rachel Weisz. With his forthcoming picture he’s back working in Chinese, telling the story of Hong Kong martial arts master Yip Man, who trained Bruce Lee amongst others before dieing at the age of 79 in 1972. His life has already been the subject of several biopics, such as 2008’s Ip Man, but while the teasers for The Grandmaster are purely stylised hand-to-hand combat (with fight choreography by the revered Yuen Woo-ping), it’s difficult to believe Wong wouldn’t explore more diverse ground.

Wong gravitates to actors used to his methods, so as Yip he’s cast Tony Leung (Hero, 2046, Lust, Caution), while the supporting cast include two other actors who’ve worked with Wong before: Zhang Ziyi (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, 2046) and Chen Chang (Happy Together, Red Cliff). After the charged atmosphere and romantic languor of his previous Chinese language movies this could be a major departure for Wong, who long ago confused audiences and critics with 1994’s Ashes of Time, a wuxia (martial arts) picture that was infamously light on story and strong on metaphor.

Jessica Chastain had a remarkable 18 months where she went from being an unknown with a few television credits to being one of the leads in the likes of Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, John Madden’s The Debt, Ralph Fiennes’ Coriolanus and Tate Taylor’s The Help (and those are just the high profile roles). Nor does she appear to be slowing down, playing up her diversity even further with roles in Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty, the story of the U.S. army unit that pursued Osama bin Laden where her co-stars include Australians Joel Edgerton and Jason Clarke, and John Hillcoat’s Depression-era moonshine crime tale Lawless, where she stars with Tom Hardy, Shia LaBeouf, Guy Pearce and Gary Oldman, and another Malick feature.

After that, possibly Iron Man 3, where she’s in talks to play a scientist as smart as Robert Downey Jr’s insouciant superhero Tony Stark. The cast for the latter, which will have to exist in the considerable shadow of this week’s first-rate caped supergroup, The Avengers, has also added Ben Kingsley and the aforementioned Guy Pearce, who suddenly appears keen to be in everything.

Winning the Vino way

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 12:00:00 +1000

Congratulations to Maxim Iglinsky, Kazakhstan and Maxim Iglinsky's mullet, all of whom can revel in what was a thrilling victory at Liege-Bastogne-Liege, made more so by the wildly inaccurate timegaps displayed by the host broadcaster as Vincenzo Nibali snuggled down inside his hurt box.

Although the victory is Iglinsky's first, it is the third by a Kazakh in the same race in eight years – making the landlocked Central Asian nation infinitely more successful in recent seasons than, say, Italy, which has won not one of the last 21 monuments.

The previous Kazakh winner at Liege was, of course, Alexandre Vinokourov, who won in 2005 and 2010. His political ambitions seemingly on hold, Vinokourov is set to take up a role as team manager at Iglinsky's team, Astana. Vino was several hundred miles away preparing for the Tour of Turkey as Iglinsky crossed the line on Sunday, but did not let that stop him claiming partial credit for the win.

"I called Maxim yesterday morning before the start," Vino honked at Cyclingnews. "I had noticed that he had good legs at Amstel Gold Race and Fleche Wallonne ... He rode to perfection. He did it the Vino way!"

Many of you will recall the specifics of the Vino Way from the time Vinokourov won his second Liege-Bastogne-Liege in 2010. By the Broom Wagon's recollection it (allegedly) involved a gentlemen's agreement and 100,000 euros and is the subject of a UCI investigation.

Weekend at Bernie's
The week after the last of the spring classics and before the Giro d'Italia is a time of transition. While the Cadels and Frandys of the world are stepping up their Tour de France preparation, riders like Simon Gerrans are putting their feet up for a few weeks, restarting after an intense one-day campaign before another tilt at the summer stage racing. Likewise, Tom Boonen's memorable spring is over, even though his unsupported towel lives on.

Mark Cavendish is one who has high ambitions for the back half of the season. Cav has both the Olympic road race and the green jersey in his sights, and this week he underlined his intention to finish the Tour de France, rather than abandon before Paris in order to focus on winning gold in London.

At the Tour of Romandy, Cavendish explained Sky's decision to field both himself and overall contender Bradley Wiggins in the same race by saying, "Julius Caesar used to flank his armies on both sides". (Essay question for fans of cycling and English football: Is Cav becoming Joey Barton? - discuss).

At the same press call he was asked whether his sleep patterns had been interrupted by living with a newborn.

"The baby wakes up maybe once a night," he said. "Bear in mind that Bernie Eisel is my usual roommate. If you can sleep through his snoring, you can sleep through anything. He cries just as much as the baby, too. No, more. He cries more than the baby, he eats more, and he shits more."

Is it any wonder this man is, according to Omega Pharma Quick Step director Brian Holm, a role model for cyclists who wish to tweet?

Sample recent Cavtwattle:

Are there many things less glamorous than having a poo in a filthy petrol station toilet?

— Mark Cavendish (@MarkCavendish) April 20, 2012 The week in ...

... glamour
Next time you look with envy at journalists swanning their way across France, remember that life on the pro cycling circuit is not all wine-tasting with Phil and Paul and bold Hawaiian shirts. Velo News contributor Gregor Brown posted this photo of the Liege-Bastogne-Liege press room, set up in a gymnasium which, while the race was on, also hosted a dance class. "They'll stop jazzercise soon, they say"

Life in cycling actually is glamorous if you are lucky enough to be in charge of the whole shebang, but even then you have your hard days. Shortly before the Tour of Korea was rained off this week, UCI president Pat McQuaid went for a bike ride with South Korean president Myung-bak Lee. The grimace on McQuaid's face suggests conditions weren't the best.

... role models

Today,profiting the "World Bicycle Day",I invite you to practise this wonderful sport;)

— Alberto Contador (@albertocontador) April 19, 2012 ... silver linings
Denis Galimzyanov's provisional suspension after admitting to taking EPO is a setback for his career as a pro cyclist. Still, as Pro Cycling magazine's Daniel Friebe pointed out on Twitter, the suspension leaves Galimzyanov with much more time to devote to what, according to his rider profile on Katusha's website, is his favourite hobby: papier mâché.

Galimzyanov reportedly tried to convince dope testers the positive test was the result of his frequent contact with paper and glue, but his story didn't hold water.

Dispatches from the Twitterverse

Thomas Frei wants to prove he can be successful clean after ban. He wasn't successful while doping, so that may be tough

— Gerard Vroomen (@gerardvroomen) April 22, 2012

Back racing in Tour de Romandie: 'Don't take any risks' they all said...'Did I make the time cut?'(!)

— Cadel Evans (@CadelOfficial) April 24, 2012

A word of advice: do not shave when face is numb from being at the dentist. #wherearemylips?

— Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) April 25, 2012

What is in toothpaste? Dozing off watching Giro del Trentino last night, brushed my teeth and went to bed then I was wide awake.

— Matthew Keenan (@mwkeenan) April 19, 2012
Classic YouTube
GreenEDGE's latest backstage pass features cameos by Philippe Gilbert, who pops in for an autograph; the cat who makes cornflakes, and yet another free-thinking European child who refuses to accept a GreenEDGE cap

Seven West Media shares slump, Kardashian stock soar

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 18:05:52 +1000

It seems like if you’re running a television network these days, profits are on the decline.

If you’re on the network, starring in a successful show, then your personal profits are up.

Shares in Seven West Media slumped as much as 23 per cent today, after investors reacted to the company’s profit warning two days ago.

Seven West, which owns Network Seven and The West Australian, said a lacklustre advertising market will see earnings for this financial year fall to between $460million and $470million.

Brokers are also unhappy with the underperformance of shows like Dancing With The Stars and Australia’s Got Talent when you compare them with their respective 2011 ratings.

Only last week, Network Ten also blamed a soft advertising market for a 70 per cent drop in half year profit.

But as traditional media stuggle to grow profits, the reality is, others are growing their bottom line.

One of the biggest bottoms in the business, and I can say that because she trades on her curvy figure, is Kim Kardashian.

Forbes has reported, the Kardashian clan has just signed a $40million three year deal with America’s E! Network, to continue with the show, Keeping Up With The Kardashians.

At that price, it is the most profitable deal in reality television history.

It’s interesting because a number of US media outlets have been predicting the decline of the Kardashian conglomerate, most noticably, the New York Post which attempted to point out cracks in their empire.

But the new deal cements the Kardashian’s place in pop culture, whether you like them or not.

I’m indifferent.

If the family is smart enough to grow their own personal empire and businesses on the back of their television exposure, then well done to them.

However, let’s not forget though, that what really triggered the Kardashian’s rise to fame, was Kim Kardashian’s sex tape. Moral much?

But as they say, sex sells, and Americans are buying in to the Kardashian story in droves.

In fact, 3 million Americans watch the show every week and season 7 is about to premiere across the Pacific next month.

The new deal, doesn’t include current spin off shows like Kim and Kourntey Take New York and Khloe and Lamar, so there’ll be extra cash coming in there.

And get ready for more spin off shows, because the deal reportedly allows E! first look privileges at any unscripted projects by the family.

The irony of all of this, is that while the show is broadcast on FOXTEL in Australia, Seven also runs it on its digital channel.

I wonder if there’s a market for “Going with the Goncalves’”

Two homes: Australia's South Sudanese

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 10:58:39 +1000

Since South Sudan gained independence in July 2011 many south Sudanese Australians have returned to their homeland. And whether it's because of a love for their country, cultural ties, or a sense of duty of it's been a very challenging experience of many of them.

On July 9th, 2011, I was fortunate enough to cover the Melbourne celebrations of South Sudan’s independence. Even though many of the South Sudanese Australians at the celebrations were thousands of kilometres away from their homeland, it was just as significant celebrating here as it must have been in the capital Juba. The pride that filled them all as they sang their national anthem in public for the first time, waved their flag and could finally – as it seemed at the time -- identify with a particular place. No longer were they just refugees who’d fled the war, they now had a place they could proudly call home. Many of the South Sudanese Australians I spoke to told me about their need to go back and help build the new nation.

A few months later, in January of this year, I travelled to South Sudan and met some of them that had indeed gone back after independence. What I later discovered was just how complex Australia’s South Sudanese community is. Despite being just nine months independent, many still struggle with their 'identity'. Some were not even born in Sudan, but instead in refugee camps around East and North Africa. To some, calling Australia home added an even more confusing and often confronting view of what it means to be a South Sudanese living in the diaspora.

One man I met in South Sudan, Akoc Manheim, moved there just before independence to witness the occasion first hand. He is the former director of the Lost Boys Association in Australia and left behind his family in Melbourne to work at the Passport and Nationality office in Juba. He said it was a dream of his to come back and help his people, and he found that he was more ‘useful’ in South Sudan than in Australia. He talked about the frustrations he faced after moving back to South Sudan and how difficult the first few months were transitioning back to life there. But in spite of this, he strongly believed that if he didn’t go back and help, he wouldn’t be able to live with himself. I asked him if even with the small salary he received (he told me it was around $200), was it still worth making such a commitment? He said he believed he was doing the right thing. He has plans of coming back to Melbourne and considers Australia to be his second home.

I met Gabriell Agur and Awan Kwet by chance while grabbing a coffee after meeting with Akoc. They were both friends from Melbourne who had come back to South Sudan for the first time in many years. Gabriell said that he couldn’t stay back for so long after independence without seeing his new country. He also came to see his brothers and sisters who had stayed behind during the war. Thirty-seven-year-old Awan Kwet also said that he came back to see his family, including his mother whom he hadn’t seen in 21 years! They both expressed their views of returning again and helping their country build from the ground up.

In Melbourne, I met a Nyadol Nyuol, a young woman studying law at Melbourne University. She expressed her frustrations with aspects of her culture and identity that make her question who she really is. Unlike most of those I spoke to, Nyadol was born in Ethiopia, and as a result of the war there in the early 90s, she was forced to flee to Kenya were she sought refuge until coming to Australia in 2005. She said she felt she had a complicated relationship with South Sudan. Although she’s returned a few times, she said she felt more Australian than she did South Sudanese. Perhaps her biggest frustration with her culture was with what she believes are certain standards and expectations that are required of women within the South Sudanese community. She said because of this, she didn’t really feel like she would ‘fit in’ in South Sudan because her views on some of the traditions were completely different to what was expected.

David Vincent works at the Brotherhood of Saint Laurence in Melbourne’s Fitzroy suburb, where he oversees programs mainly dealing with migrants and refugees settling in the community. He fled with his father to Ethiopia at the age of seven, and when the war broke out in Ethiopia, he was forced to return to Sudan. Upon returning, he joined the army at a young age to fight in the war. He wasn’t conscripted, but says it was what happened at the time, when most people were fighting for an independent state. When the war broke out again, he fled to Kenya were he stayed before being granted a humanitarian visa. He said he felt more Australian than he did South Sudanese simply because of the privileges Australia has afforded him. However, he says he won’t be abandoning Australia and does travel back to assist in many areas.

Archangelo Madut Nyuol Paul also lives in Melbourne and he’s the father of two little girls. He said he plans to move back permanently to South Sudan later this year, and his young family will join him at a later stage. He said after what he experienced as a child soldier and what he witnessed during the war, seeing people being killed, women raped, villages razed, a part of him strongly feels and obligation to give back to his homeland and he could not live with the guilt of knowing that he hasn’t at least tried to make a difference in South Sudan.

Adut Akec is a 20-year-old woman from Geelong. She was born in Egypt and has never been to Sudan or now, South Sudan. She does however have plans to visit South Sudan later this year. Tradition and culture are very important to her and going back to see South Sudan for herself is significant.

Despite the complexity, and often times harrowing accounts of these South Sudanese Australians experiences during the war and what they went to, what was interesting to see was how they’ve all managed to carve their own idea of what being South Sudanese means -- which has at times not been by choice. After many years of associating themselves with an ethnic group, to suddenly having a national identity brought many questions into focus. Some continue to travel back to find these answers, others choose to stay. But whatever the decision, the journey of being a South Sudanese Australia is more than skin deep.

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Creative tension

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 13:00:00 +1000

There is only one race that can now save the season for Andy Schleck, his older brother Frank and RadioShack-Nissan, the Tour de France.

To say this season for the Schlecks and RadioShack-Nissan has been one to forget is an understatement, and the latest news coming out of the team camp suggests there are also a few internal management tensions.

Back in February, as the reality of the freshly minted RadioShack and Leopard Trek merger was starting to sink in, it was all sweetness and light. Optimism reigned and success for Andy and the team was all in front of them, with Johan Bruyneel driving the bus.

"We had training camps two-and-a-half weeks in Mallorca. Johan is now also in Luxembourg so we meet quite a lot We did testing on the track with time-trial bikes," Andy Schleck told Cycling Central’s Sophie Smith at the Tour of Oman.

"I see more and more it's definitely a good direction to go with Johan because he really has a lot of experience more than I actually thought before. I always knew that he was good. He's worked with the best in the world. It's hard to put it in words what you learn because you talk a lot, you train a lot, you work a lot. We did a lot more than the last year already," Schleck explained.

“For me, Johan is really good because as a cyclist your body has got to be strong but you've also got to be strong in the head and confident and that’s definitely a strong point also.

"When I was in good shape last year I never had any problem with confidence in races. But it's not just confidence it's to make the right decisions in the right moments, in a race and also in training. That’s something you've got to work on and something you can learn."

And it is the relationship with Bruyneel that most keen watchers of the pro cycling scene were scrutinising. With many predicting the man who shepherded Lance Armstrong to seven Tour de France victories would either provide a rod for the backs of the seemingly hesitant Schlecks or the whole thing would come crashing down.

But in the fullness of time, in reality three months later, and with no real results or form to show for the Schlecks' new association with Bruyneel the outcome remains uncertain. And news that long time Schleck confidant Kim Andersen has been effectively sidelined from involvement in the Tour de France only adds to that uncertainty.

"It's the plan we set out with in the past at the beginning of the year and I have the people I've worked with for a number of years who have shown that they know how to manage a big tour and with those people there I’m sure that everybody will have the necessary support they need to make the right decisions," Bruyneel explained to Daniel Benson at Cyclingnews about the side-lining of Andersen.

If Bruyneel is anything at all it’s a results based realist, as his comments post another result free race at Liege-Bastogne-Liege attest.

"I hope this will serve as motivation for the second part of the season. If we look back there isn't a good explanation for why things haven't worked, other than that both of the Schlecks have had some illness this season. So we have to use this lack of results as motivation and tell ourselves that we start from zero and try to get back to earning good results."

So it may be that this entire season is a 'year zero' for Andy and Frank and Bruyneel is only doing what a good manager does. Prudently trimming the fat and ridding the team for the biggest race of the year of any previous associations that have only delivered runner-up results (I’m still counting 2010 as a second).

With Bruyneel’s proven management and the Schlecks' significant talents there may yet be a surprise in store in July. After all, creative tensions often produce successful collaborations.

We all know the received wisdom about Andy's prospects for the 2012 Tour; there are too many time-trial kilometres on the agenda for him and Frank to make an impact. And I agree with that wisdom. But is it time for the Schleck camp to panic? Probably not.

This time last year there were many of the same questions being asked of the Schlecks as the siblings headed into the Tour de France and they answered all of them with the exception of one. Cadel Evans.
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CPI leads to 0.5% rate cut call

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:43:55 +1000

With today's surprisingly low inflation figures, the question isn't if the Reserve Bank board will cut interest rate next week, but rather by how much.

The Consumer Price Index rose by just 0.1 per cent in the March quarter to be 1.6 per cent higher on the year.

But the underlying measure -- the key measure which the Reserve Bank board looks at when considering monetary policy,--is up by only 2.1 per cent. That's at the very bottom of its 2 -3 per cent comfort band and is in fact, at the lowest level in two-and-a-half years.

The biggest price rises for the quarter came from pharmaceuticals (+14.4%), secondary education (+7.7%) and tertiary education (+4.7%)

But they were more than offset by massive falls in fruit prices (-30.0%) visual and computing equipment (-6.3%) and furniture (-6.0%).

"Banana prices fell about 60 per cent driven by favourable growing conditions and a recovery from shortages as a result of Cyclone Yasi early last year, " St George Chief Economist Hans Kunnen says.

"A raft of items have recorded the biggest annual price declines on record, including food, personal care, newspapers, books, stationary, snacks and confectionary, Commsec's Craig James says.

"Car prices have fallen to the cheapest levels in 24 years."

The falls in TV, computer and furniture prices are a testament to just what a difficult time it is for Australian retailers.

They now have to sell more items to make a profit because prices are down.

"The sluggishness in the domestic economy has ensured that businesses continue to absorb any increases in costs, while the strength of the Australian dollar continues to keep imported prices low. In addition the uncertainty and downside risks to the global economy have resulted in subdued commodity prices in recent months, " Craig James says.

What concerns Justin Smirk at Westpac the most is a rare 0.1 per cent fall in house purchase prices.

"We understand that food prices are likely to reverse in Q2 but falling house prices suggest something more fundamental is underway," Mr Smirk said.

The data all but confirms an interest rate cut next month.

"Today's number puts a May rate cut beyond doubt," Westpac's Bill Evans says --due to lower than expected house purchases, utilities and education.

“The rare negative read on house purchase emphasises the perilous state of the housing construction sector and certainly that sector's need for some interest rate relief," Mr Evans added.

Craig James believes rates will be cut by at least a quarter of a per cent in May.

"There is the risk that the Reserve Bank cuts rates by half a per cent, but we expect the Bank to remain conservative. The RBA is still wary about the huge income flowing in from resources."

Robert Henderson from NAB agrees ta May rate cut is very likely.

"The politics currently surrounding monetary policy suggests the 'hard heads' at the RBA will not be able to resist calls for a cumulative cut of 50bps and perhaps more after that. Hence, today we are adding an additional 25bps cut to our forecasts for June," Mr Henderson said.

Clifford Bennett from 'The White Crane report' is more damning, saying the RBA has badly misjudged the economic reality for quite some time.

"There is zero justification for the high official interest rates we have in this country."

He believes the Reserve misjudged the benefit of the resources boom on Australia's economic growth, especially the flow on effects to other sectors.

“The Reserve Bank has further crippled the Australian economy through forcing the Australian dollar higher that it would otherwise have been, via again its penchant to keep rates higher than they need to be," Mr Bennett added.

He's calling for the central bank to slash the official cash rate by 50 basis points next Tuesday. It's a sentiment shared by a number of investment banks, including economists at Barclays Capital.

The major negative with a 50 basis point cut would be that it may provoke a sense of panic and policy error.

In a note Barclays conceded that "the market has 100bp of easing priced in by year-end. While 100bp of easing is not outside the realm of possibility, we believe it remains aggressive given the weakening in the global macroeconomic backdrop we have seen over recent months."

Shane Oliver from AMP Capital expects cuts in May, June and probably also around August/September.

"Given ongoing global uncertainties, the softness in the economy, borrower caution, a circa $40bn turnaround in the budget for the next financial year and a benign inflation outlook, interest rates should fall between 0.75 per cent and 1 per cent over the next six months.," Mr Oliver said.

But he wants to see a 50 basis point cut next week to "ensure a decent cut in mortgage rates, given the ongoing uncertainty as to how much the banks will move by and their independent rate hikes so far this year."

Clifford Bennett says there's no excuse for Australia's lenders not to cut borrowing costs.

"As the rest of the world continues to prosper, at a rate far exceeding our own stalled economy, overseas funding costs will continue to moderate as markets price out any risk of the European crisis continuing. At the same time our Reserve Bank will be forced to reduce domestic funding costs. The combined result should see all the major banks reducing mortgage rates over the next few months, as there simply will be no excuse not to."

The ANZ may have jumped the gun with its 6bps rate increase a fortnight ago, at a time when the rest of the banks sat on their hands. While the increase will benefit its bottom line in the short-term, the fact that the other banks held back may hit its brand, especially if it is forced to reverse its decision when rates are cut next month.

The Reserve Bank board meets on Tuesday, May 1st.

Refugees, welcome to America

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:24:54 +1000

Since 1975, the US has taken over 3 million refugees, most of them from Bhutan, Burma, and Iraq.

"We are a compressed version of Ellis Island," suggested John Bateman, the man from the United States' government Center for Disease Control, and one of several officials responsible for overseeing the arrival of refugees on American soil.

Bateman was referring to the now-famous island that sits in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. For decades, Ellis Island was the first stop for immigrants arriving in America, eloquently paid tribute in a poem by Emma Lazarus that now stands on the pedestal of Lady Liberty: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free."

Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey may not inspire the same romanticism as New York's spectacular harbour but as Bateman explained, in 2012, it serves as a point of welcome for people aspiring to some kind of the American dream, whatever that is in the 21st Century.

Bateman and I were standing by an airbridge gate, waiting to meet a group of 30 or so refugees whose plane had just landed from Paris. Newark was their first stop in the US, an almost end point to a journey that had begun in the Bhutanese refugee camps of Nepal and taken them to Kathmandu and Bahrain before eventually ending with a new life in Atlanta, Cincinnati, Akron, or Burlington in Vermont (which is at least kind of like Nepal - it at least has more mountains than freeways).

The US takes, by far, more refugees for resettlement than any other country in the world. Since 1975, the US has taken over 3 million refugees but - still - that number is tiny when compared with the 15 million people worldwide currently living with refugee status. For 2012, the US government will take a maximum 80,000 people for resettlement. Currently, the main intake originate from Bhutan, Burma, and Iraq.

A refugee is broadly defined as a person unable to return to his or her country of origin because of a "well-founded fear of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group". Refugees are a different kind of immigrants. Most didn't want to leave the home country and most want to eventually return.

"It was not safe," explained Ali, a former translator for the US Army in Baghdad who now lives in Portland, Maine. We were speaking on the phone about his experience leaving Iraq for the US Working for Americans in Iraq could provide serious repercussions.

"I had to live away from my family in Baghdad and they had to move twice. Some people accept it but others take it in a very religious way," Ali explained.

“Religious” translates - pun intended - as you will probably be killed.

But when you arrive in a new country, sometimes life takes over and going home is no longer an option. At least, the best option. Kids get born, they go to school. Those with school-age children have an anchor. Even with its faults, the U.S. school system offers greater benefits than, say, Iraq right now. But there's a flipside to that, too.

"If children are 18, they have their own rights," explained Faysal, a 37-year-old father from Iraq. "You cannot prevent them from doing things we don't like."

Back at Newark, John Bateman was supervising the latest arrival of refugees as their documents were processed. Refugees are mostly pre-screened for health and security before they land in the U.S. and immigration clearance have already been provided.

Non-government organisations play a big role. The International Organization for Migration run cultural awareness courses in Kathmandu for refugees before they embark for the U.S. and then oversee a refugee's journey from a camp to their new home.

"I am so tired," said one of the Bhutan arrivals as he stepped off the plane to be asked how he felt about arriving in the U.S
.
Like millions of travellers before him, another challenge was to now find his baggage and connecting flight to Cincinnati.

They never had that problem on Ellis Island.

Welcome to America.

A question of progress

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 11:00:00 +1000

Despite a welcome injection of funds from new Cycling Australia sponsor Subaru, Al Hinds questions just what impact that sponsorship has had on the grass roots of cycling after round one of the National Road Series; the Mersey Valley Tour in Tasmania.

If there has been any change [in the stature of the NRS], I don't see it.From a personal perspective it was a shame to hear the above comments over the phone in a candid conversation with the Genesys Wealth Advisers team boss on Friday afternoon, as he scouted some of the time trial course with his riders.

At the time he'd yet to see the NRS's new website launched the same day, which I'll credit Sean Muir and the Cycling Australia team as a step in the right direction, but his comments were a reflection of a greater frustration at the lack of promotion of both the race and the NRS in the lead-up.

If ever there had been a tide going in the NRS's favour the success of Steele Von Hoff and Nathan Haas last year must certainly have been it.

Having dominated last year's series, Haas made the rare leap of jumping directly from the domestic level in Australia to a berth with American WorldTour outfit Garmin-Barracuda.

Granted, Haas was (and is) a uniquely talented athlete; that the NRS was garnering serious attention from the likes of Allan Peiper and Jonathan Vaughters last year shows just how much value onlookers do place on the budding series.

That said, there was very little trickle down for that series exposure. The lion’s share of publicity unsurprisingly focused on one team in Genesys Wealth Advisers, and two riders in Von Hoff and Haas.

I’m sure Vaughters would hardly be aware of the team that came second in last year’s series (BikeBug.com), let alone the team that was third (Budget Forklifts).

The lesson thus heeded by the top teams last season was that winning the National Road Series (far from a simple task), guaranteed a certain level of domestic and international exposure, and for that several sponsors (ironically not Genesys) have bolstered their teams' war chests.

"We had to step back up and we've done that, in budget, in roster size, in equipment," said Cameron Watt whose Budget Forklifts team won the Mersey Valley Tour with Mark O'Brien. "We started to put together plans to really target this year from the middle of last. We put together a lot of racing in the summer months to be as prepared as possible for the opening round of the National Road Series, which we're taking very seriously."

And added Christie-Johnston:

"Winning the National Road Series; saying that you're the 'best team in Australia', that has a lot of appeal to sponsors. I know that Genesys (the company) used that fact a lot in its own marketing last year."

But while both Genesys and Budget Forklifts may have the funds thanks to generous sponsor support to sign riders capable of getting them wins and vying for the overall series title, not every team has the same luxury, and not every team can win.

It's the smaller teams and the Series as a whole that is desperately reliant on the publicity and exposure from broader news coverage, event reporting and advertising.

The thing is, outside of the events run by John Craven's Caribou Publications, no event in the NRS has the ability to adequately promote itself, and certainly no team has that ability.

Genesys and Drapac have strong promotion campaigns in place, with good engagement on social media and a reliable flow of team news and information, but even they are stretched.

That makes it incredibly hard for sponsors to get any reasonable value out of their support.

"You can't exactly go to potential financial backer and say 'hey we're riding in this series which gets very little publicity, can we have some money' - nobody is going to sign up to that," says Drapac’s Jonathan Breekveldt. "There is very little return on investment in that environment."

The tragedy is that from a sporting perspective, the NRS has all the ingredients of an attractive product for sponsors to get involved in. As it stands however, the glue holding that valuable asset together is incredibly fragile.

A new website for the NRS is welcome progress, but when people with long associations with the sport like Christie-Johnston say they feel things seem to be almost the status quo, the question remains - just how much progress has been made.

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Renner’s success revives a forgotten movie

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 11:05:07 +1000

After languishing on the shelf, a comedy directed by a Sydney-based filmmaker finally is being released internationally.

Four years ago, US-born, Australian-based director Jeff Balsmeyer shot a buddy comedy with a little known cast in Tucson, Arizona. It screened in a few festivals to good reviews but no one wanted to buy it.

Originally known as Lightbulb, it has since been re-titled Ingenious, and one of the stars was Jeremy Renner.

The movie finally is being released in a bunch of international markets in the third quarter of this year, tying in with the August launch of Renner’s latest vehicle, The Bourne Legacy, as distributors and the filmmakers hope to capitalise on that high-profile film plus his Academy Award nominations for The Hurt Locker and The Town.

A semi-autobiographical tale produced and written by Mike Cram, it features Renner (pictured) and Dallas Roberts as struggling inventors whose friendship survives poor judgments, broken promises and repeated failures.

“The reality-based story of two struggling inventors and their eventual, improbable success… could – with careful, deliberate marketing – tap into the current Zeitgeist and emerge an indie success story,” opined Variety’s Lael Loewenstein in his review at the Santa Barbara Film Festival in February 2009.

The critic added presciently, “Despite its winning conceit and can-do-spirit, the pic faces an uphill battle, since its cast, though impeccable, has no marquee value as yet.”

Movie City News hailed it as “a funny but also dramatic tale of what it’s like to be this odd genius of a guy who gets all these great ideas but lacks the resources to bring them to fruition.”

The Hurt Locker opened later that year, while Israeli actress Ayelet Zurer, who played Roberts’ long-suffering wife, shot to fame internationally in Angels & Demons.

Balsmeyer posted two-page, hand-written letters to the actors on his wish list and most agreed to meet him. He was keen to cast Renner having followed the actor’s career since he appeared in 2003’s S.WA.T.

“We took it to a few festivals and got great reviews and won some prizes but we ran out of money and it was finished on Avid and no one picked it up,” he told SBS Film. “Luckily we had cast really good actors who were not well enough known at the time to command big fees. As Jeremy’s star started to rise there was more and more interest in the film and Bleiberg Entertainment picked it up.”

Umbrella Entertainment acquired the Australian rights and released the film on DVD in March, which Balsmeyer discovered last week when a friend saw copies in a JB Hi-Fi store.

US-based sales agent Bleiberg clinched deals to 19 territories including Canada (VVS Films), France (First International Pictures), Latin America (Swen Entertainment), Scandinavia (Scanbox Entertainment) and Italy (Minerva Films).

“The film will be screened at the upcoming Cannes market where we expect to pick up several additional major territories,” Cram told SBS. “We've had three offers from US distributors, which included a small theatrical release, but are biding our time until August, holding out for a wider theatrical release.”

Budgeted at just under $3 million, Ingenious drew on Cram’s experiences before he struck gold as a co-inventor of the talking bottle opener and the iBottleopener, an iPhone case with a built-in bottle opener.

It’s the director’s second feature following 2003’s Danny Deckchair, an amiably comedy-fantasy that starred Rhys Ifans and Miranda Otto. Of that film, Balsmeyer reflects, “It didn’t do well here but it did quite well in the States and a lot of people have seen it on DVD so it was a great calling-card in the US.”

Screen Australia gave Balsmeyer, who married an Aussie and has lived here for 15 years, funding to write a screenplay, Why Not Me, a comedy inspired by an Italian friend who was travelling years ago with his girlfriend on a plane in which actress Brooke Shields was seated in first class. The girlfriend said, “Why not me?” and then snuck up into first class, got a seat next to Brooke and struck up a conversation. They hit if off so well they spent the next summer travelling around Europe together.

“It’s a movie about an extreme travel sub-culture, people who are daring their way around the world,” said Balsmeyer, who is shopping the script to producers.

Riis on the ropes

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 09:00:00 +1000

I’ve always had mixed emotions when it comes to Bjarne Riis. In the 16 years since first crossing paths with the 1996 Tour de France winner, he’s always come across as dour, aloof, single minded, moody and not one for simple conversation.

Riis been described by some as “cycling’s most boring man”, a description I concur with in my experience covering TV cycling as a reporter and presenter.

But is he really all that? Maybe it’s a Danish thing or a simple contrast in cultures that I haven’t been able to navigate.

Despite that I also see Riis as having many positives (no pun intended). He’s a man who has done much for Danish cycling and as a sporting director for one of the WorldTour’s most successful squads, Saxo Bank.

Speak to any rider who has worked under him and they’ll tell you he’s a canny team manager who commands and expects the utmost respect and always receives it.

Riis has been an integral member of the international cycling community for decades, so when his feathers are ruffled it’s usually for good reason.

That was the case this week when the UCI reiterated that riders returning from serving a doping sanction cannot have their points considered for two years after their return. The rule, originally ratified late last year, targets the calculation of points for each ProTeam’s ongoing WorldTour licence.

To recap. The UCI ranks the teams according to rider points, team points, ethical and financial considerations. In meeting this criteria the top 15 teams gain entry to the next WorldTour season while a further three have to prove their credentials, as GreenEDGE successfully did late last year.

In other words, when Alberto Contador comes back from suspension in August he could win the Vuelta a Espana, but his triumph will count for nothing except bragging rights.

Saxo Bank is not the only team affected by the UCI’s ruling. So is Movistar with Alejandro Valverde. But that Spanish squad is in the enviable position of having greater depth, accumulating ranking points regularly this season and as a result isn’t under any real threat of missing the UCI cut for 2013.

As Riis pointed out last week, it’s comparable to FIFA’s three-time Player of the Year, Lionel Messi coming back after a suspension yet he continues to score goals for Barcelona, but the goals don’t count.

“We can under no circumstance accept the current rules. It’s akin to a player like Lionel Messi serving a violent conduct suspension and after returning having his goals not count for Barcelona (football club),” said Riis.

“Alberto is a very expensive rider for any team to hire and naturally having him on a team and not earning points makes it difficult for a team to remain in the WorldTour."

Now you could argue Riis is motivated by self interest with his Saxo Bank team the wooden spooners of the UCI WorldTour - currently with a grand total of 32 points as a result of two victories by the injured Australian Jonathan Cantwell at the Tour of Taiwan and a recent win by their highest ranked rider, Juan Jose Haedo, at the GP de Denain.

With his suspension coming in May of this year, Contador’s two stage wins and second place on the general classification at January’s Tour de San Luis were scrubbed (along with every result backdated to the 2010 Tour de France).

Riis also has the support of riders like Karsten Kroon in his crusade against the system. And Kroon isn’t just concerned about his livelihood at Saxo Bank, he also noted how the points system affects a rider and teams approach to racing.

"The whole situation with the WorldTour has changed the way of racing. I think a lot of riders would rather go for a third or fourth than try to go for the win,” Kroon told Daniel Benson at Cyclingnews. “For me, personally, the win is more important, but of course I get paid by the team and for the team, the WorldTour points are more important.”

It’s highly likely we will see the demise of Saxo Bank at the end of this season so Riis and Kroon are fighting for their survival and can probably be excused a bit of self interest.

The latest scenario suggests Contador will have no option but to find another team for the 2013 season (rumoured to be Movistar). Disappointing given the solid relationship, faith and support he has received from Riis, and how much Saxo Bank (and CSC before it) has provided in sponsorship down the years.

It really is a ludicrous situation in which the UCI has placed the WorldTour. Let’s hope sanity prevails and they overturn their latest ruling and reassess the merits of the points system.

And while I don’t really have ambitions of connecting with one of cycling’s most complex personalities in the near future, I’ll make a special effort to congratulate Riis if he were to win this necessary battle.

The Cobra defanged

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 12:00:00 +1000

Today Riccardo Ricco was drummed out of professional cycling by Italian authorities but I take no pleasure in seeing the “Cobra” defanged for life.

In fact sadness is the feeling. For him and the blatant double standards that exist in the sport.

Sure there may be degrees of doping. From the young first timer to the hard men that see doping as a fact of life. Ricco clearly exists at the sharp end of that spectrum but did he deserve a life sentence? The ultimate scapegoat, the treatment of whom knows no limits because he is unpopular. Most likely he has doped like many who retain status and admiration in cycling. I can’t help but feel the same. In fact that was my first thought on hearing the news this morning of a 12-year ban for Ricco (effectively a life ban) which came after the announcement of an admission of guilt by Denis Galimzyanov who was pinged this week by the anti-doping authorities for EPO use earlier this season.

And lets not get into the detail of Galimzyanov’s odd handwritten “confession’ because that incident has left us with more questions than answers.

And then I thought of the hypocritical comments from one of the guys who does retain status and admiration in cycling, Erik Zabel, former sprinting mentor to Mark Cavendish at HTC-Highroad and now Denis Galimzyanov at Katusha.

First Tweet After yesterdays SadNews about Katusha's DenisGalimzyanow's positiv Test!he confessed,regrets,apologized&say Sorry!end of Story!

— Erik Zabel (@EteZabel) April 17, 2012 Followed up by another. Sergeant Schultz style:

I wish Denis,that he'll find Rest&that his Family&good Friends are Strong enough to help him Out in the next Months!good Luck&dont Comeback!

— Erik Zabel (@EteZabel) April 17, 2012 Don’t come back? This from a guy who remains gainfully employed and respected in the sport? That's a bit rich. Erik knows nothing, nothing at all.

I’ve always viewed Riccardo Riccardo as a kind of whipping boy for all that ails professional cycling. And I sometimes think he is hated more by fans for his unrepentant recidividist attitude than his doping transgressions. In fact Zabel and others prove the case.

Maybe if Ricco had admitted to doping “just that one time” like Zabel and others have done before he’d be well on the road to redemption and racing in May’s Giro d’Italia and may be forgiven (but not forgotten) by fans for utterly ruining the 2008 Tour de France, along with his Saunier-Duval team.

I hope the still young Ricco will see this as a blessing and an opportunity to get on with his life, one that can easily be lived without cycling. And maybe Erik Zabel should also join him on the sidelines.

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Casting Aspersions: Douglas, Tautou & Knightley

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 11:13:14 +1000

Michael Douglas parties in Las Vegas, Audrey Tautou breathes flowers, and Keira Knightley heads to Russia.

As the movie business tries to come to grips with the question of where and on what format and technology people will watch new releases, the parallel idea of who watches movies has also been reconsidered. The business has belatedly realised that people over the age of 50 like going to the movies, and they’re unlikely to either illegally download a picture or watch it on a tablet. Last year the New York Times reported that between 1995 and 2010 the number of Americans older than 50 who regularly went to the cinema had increased by 68%. Suddenly teenage boys aren’t the be-all and end-all.

The success of films such as The King’s Speech and Red Dog speak to the power of an older audience, and the movie business is now belatedly catching up. This could explain the sudden slew of titles being made about the making of old movies, such as the recent My Week with Marilyn and the forthcoming Hitchcock, where Anthony Hopkins plays the legendary director during the making of Psycho, as well as ensemble pieces with veteran thespians such as The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

But there’s also a tendency, as with the comic action flick Red, to take contemporary concepts and remake them with an older cast. The latest example is Last Vegas, a comedy to be directed by Jon Turteltaub (National Treasure) about a group of ageing men returning to Las Vegas for a bachelor party before one of them marries a younger woman. Yes, it’s The Hangover with pensioners, although they’re rather well preserved. The groom will be played by Michael Douglas, while those present who help events get out of hand could include Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken. The odds on at least one Viagra gag must be short.

A decade on from her international breakthrough in Amelie, Audrey Tautou is busier than ever. David and Stephane Foenkinos’ Delicacy, in which the actress plays a grieving woman courted a longtime admirer, opens in Australia on May 3, while it’s just been announced that Therese D, an adaptation of a 1920s French novel about a woman trying to escape her place in society, will close the Cannes Film Festival to honour director Claude Miller (Un Secret), who passed away just after finishing editing. Beyond that Tautou (pictured) will play a woman who suffers from an unusual illness caused by flowers growing in her lungs in Mood Indigo for the always eclectic Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind).

Electric in her responsiveness and compelling to watch, Keira Knightley was a revelation in David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method, and still only aged 27 she appears to be pushing herself. Her next film reunites her with director Joe Wright, who drew a fine performance from her in Atonement, for a new take on Leo Tolstoy’s 19th century tragedy Anna Karenina. Knightley will play the title character, married aristocrat in Czarist Russia whose infidelity amid the pressure of a cloistered society eventually drives her to take her own life, and there is a stellar supporting cast in place: Jude Law, Olivia Williams, Aaron Johnson, Kelly Macdonald and Matthew Macfadyen.

Ghost riders, and the Ardennes lover

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 11:00:00 +1000

We may as well get this out of the way. The technology used to create Hologram Tupac (above, right) MUST be harnessed for one of this year's grand tours – and let's face it, if anyone is going to take the leap, it is going to be the Giro d'Italia.

In-car cameras can wait, banning race radios can wait. If we don't have the opportunity to watch Fausto Coppi hammering up the Stelvio come May, hotly pursued by Ghostly Gino Bartali and perhaps the Notorious B.I.G, then someone isn't doing their job.

In the meantime, with only the Tour of Romandie around the corner before grand tour season really kicks in, the Ardennes Classics are spring's last hurrah.

Besides thrones, crackingly good racing and podium girls with face towels, Sunday's Amstel Gold Race was marked by a mid-race dispute between riders over when to stop for a call of nature, spectacularly dubbed 'pisticuffs' on Twitter by the geniuses behind NYvelocity.com.

Joaquim Rodriguez declared Wednesday's Fleche Wallonne win "the happiest day of my life". While those words are unlikely to thrill Mrs Rodriguez , they at least confirm that Joaquim now has a happier memory from cycling than the time teammates forced him to smoke a giant cigar in front of ONCE boss Manolo Saiz.

"This is the finest and most incredible of all my victories, the most desired," Rodriguez said. "I am a lover of the classics. I had so many beautiful places without winning. "

Philippe Gilbert, third on Wednesday, is in the process of crafting an entire season without winning, although he reckons he is in good nick for the final instalment of the Ardennes trilogy, Sunday's Liege-Bastogne-Liege. Here's Gilbert surging then wilting on the final climb of the Mur de Huy, which is notable if only for how quickly a lead of 13 seconds can be vaporised when the gradient hits 26 per cent.

The women's edition of Fleche Wallonne made for even better drama. Amanda Spratt made the early running for GreenEDGE-AIS, going alone and staying out for more than 50km. Emma Pooley, who earlier had to replace one bike because of a mechanical problem and another when she was hit by a race motorbike, reeled Pratt in by the foot of the Mur. But then Pooley's hopes were dashed when she suffered another mechanical and ran out of bikes, forcing her to abandon. Marianne Vos, unbeatable in the first few months of the year before flu forced her to miss the Tour of Flanders, led all the way up the Mur only to be overhauled at the very top of the climb.

The winner? As NBC revealed in an interview published before Wedneday's win, she is probably the only investment-banker turned pro cyclist to own a good-luck sports bra. And no, it's not Mario Cipollini.

The closing stages of the women's race are after the podium presentation right here.

The most important meal of the day
Grape-Nuts – which contains neither grapes nor nuts but is available online! – is both a nutritious North American breakfast cereal and a sort of cardboard cradle for cycling in the United States.

From the end of the month, sleep-addled Americans will munch their Grape-Nuts before probably skipping their morning coffee altogether, having been invigorated by pictures of national road champion Matthew Busche (front of the packet) and team pursuit member Dotsie Bausch (back).

This, according to leading breakfast cereal news service Cyclingnews, is cycling's first breakfast coup since 1999, when Lance Armstrong appeared on a Wheaties box.

"This will add to the ever increasing high profile of cycling in the US and sends a message of health and wellness that is associated with both Grape-Nuts and cycling," said USA Cycling President Steve Johnson, spraying wholewheat grains everywhere.

Health and wellness latest: Grape-Nuts' Russian distributors won't be calling Denis Galimzyanov, then.

The week in ...

... problem solving
How to Pee for Women (or Pisticuffs for Her), by AA Drink-Leontien rider Marijn de Vries.

... technology
The best kind of invention is cheap, easy to assemble and so simple you'll barely know it's there. The Train Horn Bicycle costs over $200, requires half an hour to assemble and fits onto your bike with all the elegance of a cannon on a water buffalo. But as Gizmodo puts it, it does allow you to announce your dominion over the bike lane with the blast of a freight train.

Dispatches from the Twitterverse

Our invitation is awesome and makes me so excited!! I would like to start already 2mrw...but still 85 days! -.- TIME! Y U NO ELAPSE FASTER?!

— Marcel Kittel (@marcelkittel) April 6, 2012

When I tap my stomach it sounds hollow #bored

— Rohan Dennis (@RohanDennis) April 11, 2012

Classic YouTube
Gravity Bike is the perfect way of getting from A to B, providing that A is at the top of a very steep hill and B is at the bottom. Fearlessness and two working knees are also prerequisites.

Flybuys gets a makeover in the latest supermarket war

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 17:52:08 +1000

Get ready to hear the words “Do you have flybuys?” a lot more, especially at the Coles cash register.

The supermarket giant is relaunching the loyalty program and it has promised to make reaching reward levels easier and quicker.

I’ve got a flybuys card. Don’t know where it is though, and I haven’t used it in years.

That doesn’t matter though because on Monday, 8 million packs containing 16 million flybuys cards will be delivered to homes across the country, in what is one of Australia’s biggest mailings in history.

Coles says, customers will now earn 1 point per $1 they spend, which is 50 per cent more value than previously and will be able to earn bonus points on around 200 items across its stores.

It’s also launching, through flybuys, the my5 discount system, which will allow customers to receive 10 per cent off any 5 products of their choice, as long as they spend more than $50.

New partners like Telstra, Webjet and AGL will be joining existing partners like NAB and Kmart.

This project will cost Coles tens of millions of dollars and is the latest shot in the supermarket wars, which IGA also entered into today.

It’s launched a national advertising campaign targeting Coles’ and Woolworths’ home brands, reminding customers that they can purchase premium brands without settling for the products with the grocery store’s name’s sake.

Tomorrow, rival Woolworths, which has its own Everyday Rewards scheme with Qantas and Optus as its partners, will unveil its third quarter sales results.

And for the record, I also have an Everyday Rewards card. I don’t know where that one is either.

Analysis: Fleche Wounds

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 16:00:00 +1000

With the wounds from La Flèche Wallonne still raw, Anthony Tan analyses the key moments and key riders, which provide a telling clue as to who will rule Sunday in 'La Doyenne’, Liège-Bastogne-Liège.

On Wednesday it was Mur(der) on the Huy, as Katusha’s 57-kilo assassin, Joaquim Rodríguez, bumped off his rivals on its precipitous slopes with the mindset of a cold-blooded killer.

The build-up of suspense was similar to what we saw in the Amstel Gold Race the Sunday previous, twice circling the final and decisive climb before the inevitable denouement. On both occasions the early break was caught inside the last 30 kilometres before another escape went in the final 10 clicks, albeit to no avail but augmenting the anticipation.

In Flèche Wallonne, such were the nerves among the Ardennes top guns – particularly after outsider Enrico Gasparotto upstaged all in Amstel – not one of the pre-race favourites dared to try their luck on the penultimate climb, the Côte de Villers-le-Bouillet, its crest a tantalising 8.5km from the finish, which race organisers threw in as bait for the opportunistic puncheur.

Instead, it was Ryder Hesjedal (Garmin-Barracuda) and Lars Petter Nordhaug (Team Sky) who went for broke once over the top of the 1.2km Villers-le-Bouillet. They needed another two to come with them but none were willing.

Still, as pair’s lead moved to double digits and the cameras panned backwards towards a foreboding sky that momentarily turned tar-black, as if God himself was drawing a curtain on the race, tension was nearing fever pitch. Maybe, just maybe, these two could hold them off… a few moments’ hesitation in the bunch and they would stand a fighting chance.

But Katusha had controlled the race beautifully all day and weren’t willing to let them slip away. Meanwhile, with just 5.5km left, pre-race favourite Philippe Gilbert was curiously at the back of the chasing bunch and with no teammates beside him. Eurosport commentator Magnus Backstedt remarked: “He’s just weighing up his options and having a final little rest there… he’ll move himself into position quite quickly now.” But why? When placement coming into the third and final ascent of the Mur de Huy would be critical, why waste valuable energy and be forced to take risks to bring yourself back to the front?

Rodríguez would contemplate no such manoeuvre and hit the lower slopes of the 1.3km climb that boasted a 9.3 per cent average gradient in perfect place. Gilbert was in good position just behind, but at what cost?

As the Mur rises above the town of Huy it gets progressively steeper with sections over 20%, and when ‘El Purito’ decided to go long 350 metres from the line, Backstedt thought it might be too early: “It’s a good move by Rodríguez but it’s not over yet. Like I said, this is the steep part, it flattens out a little bit, and there’s still some time for riders to go.”

Adopting this very move Alberto Contador had narrowly lost to Cadel Evans in 2010, when the then reigning world champion overhauled the beleaguered pistol-shooter in the final 50 metres. But Rodríguez would remain defiant and inviolable, and after finishing second the previous two editions, he cruised to victory in the Walloon Arrow.

“Everything changed from the Amstel Gold Race to Flèche Wallonne and everything can change on (this) Sunday too,” said the diminuitive Spaniard from Barcelona.

I’m not so sure. Right now, Rodríguez knows he’s having a blinder, even if he isn’t saying as much.

Sans Peter Sagan who is not riding, if you combine the other podium places at Amstel – Gasparotto, Jelle Vanendert (Lotto Belisol) – with the podium at Flèche – Rodríguez, Michael Albasini (GreenEdge), Gilbert – among this potent quintet, you more than likely have your winner at Liège-Bastogne-Liège.

Here are their odds on Sportsbet.com.au, as of midday Thursday:

Albasini: 26.00
Gasparotto: 21.00
Gilbert: 3.75
Rodríguez: 10.00
Vanendert: 19.00

A few others worth considering:
Simon Gerrans: 34.00
Vincenzo Nibali: 12.00
Samuel Sanchez: 17.00
Frank Schleck: 8.00
Alejandro Valverde: 13.00

A smokey?
Hesjedal (51.00) or Greg Van Avermaet (41.00).

Your job is to pick which one...

Twitter: @anthony_tan

Why India's surprise rate cut is good for Australia

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 17:11:12 +1000

While India's economy is slowing, it's still expanding at a phenomenal rate when you compare it with the rest of the world.

In the December quarter, growth came in at 6.1 per cent, and that's its slowest in almost three years, compared with Australia at 0.4 per cent.

But it has been battling with rising consumer prices, which has seen its central bank lift interest rates 13 times in the space of 18 months.

Late this afternoon though, the Reserve Bank of India cut interest rates for the first time in three years, by 50 basis points to 8 per cent.

Now that inflation is coming under control, the country's central bank can focus on stimulating growth, and that is good news for Australia.

In fact, India is Australia's fourth largest export market.

$15.8billion was pumped out to the subcontinent in 2010/11, just behind South Korea, Japan and China.

Australia actually exports more to India, than to the US and the UK combined.

How times have changed.

A lot of it has to do with demand for Australia's resources, as India looks for materials to fuel its industrialisation.

So, a cut in rates there, may in a small part help stimulate consumer and business spending, and in turn boost demand for Australia's commodities.

For the love of guns

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 13:24:28 +1000

The National Rifle Association held its annual knees-up in St Louis last week.

The National Rifle Association held its annual knees-up in St Louis last week.

The event was not just an opportunity to possibly discuss how awesome an AK-47 is (it’s cheap, it’s reliable, anyone can use it!) but also a chance for gun politics to have its say.

Among the speakers were former Fox News TV host Glenn Beck, who claimed without irony “the media is out of control and not a source for truth.”

Add the voice of NRA Executive Director Chris Cox who said, “Mr President, we’ll keep our money and our guns – you keep the change,” and you can detect a theme.

The President didn’t attend the NRA’s convention but it’s instructive that Republican candidates for the Presidential nomination did.

Even Rick Santorum, who has suspended his campaign, made a speech in which he announced he had signed up his daughter Bella for lifetime membership. Bella is three years old.

Not to be outdone, Newt Gingrich proposed that if he were President he would submit to the United Nations a treaty that would give EVERYONE ON EARTH the right to carry a gun. Guns are a right not just for Americans but for all mankind, according to Newt.

Mitt Romney, of course, showed up. He played the fear factor on the mostly white, conservative, older audience. According to Mitt, if Obama gets a second term, he’s going to take your guns away, so vote for me. It appears the NRA vote, hardly likely to endorse a Democrat anyway, is an important electoral bed. You want its members on your side.

It may come as no surprise, though, that Romney as Governor of Massachusetts supported strict gun control measures and once said he didn’t “line up” with the gun rights group. As with other issues, he changed his line as a Presidential candidate.

All this underlines that guns play a powerful role in American culture (excuse the pun), a phenomena that is often seen as bizarre outside the country’s borders. Part of that culture is built on some people having an unshakeable belief in the interpretation of personal freedom combined with a fear – a fear that someone, somewhere, sometime, will come to harm you.

Probably with a gun.

This year’s congress took place in the shadow of Trayvon Martin’s death at the trigger finger of gun-toting vigilante George Zimmerman. Many civic leaders – mayors, chiefs of police – are desperate for increased gun controls. Contrary to NRA fears, President Obama is not going to change the Constitution’s Second Amendment. But try telling that to convention attendees. See how long it takes for them to shoot down your argument.

Trayvon Martin’s death and the demographics of the NRA base make it tricky to navigate any gun rights debate without touching on race but Gary Younge, an insightful journalist with The Guardian and The Nation, reported the NRA declared what the organization quite clearly considers its “opposition”.

“One was Obama, one was Hilary [Clinton] sitting in front a U.N. flag, one was [U.S. Attorney General] Eric Holder, and one was [Supreme Court Judge] Sonia Sotomayor.”

One white woman, one Latina, and two black men.

“This was a group of people looking at the future of this country and really not liking it. Not just what they are doing but who they are.”

Younge may be wrong and Glenn Beck may be accurate in his media analysis but some things are clear. The NRA’s fuel is fear and that continues to play big for it’s powerful membership and influential lobby. While America’s gun love continues to bemuse the rest of the world, it will not fade without a fight.

No substitute for experience

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 12:30:00 +1000

If ever there was ever an example of experience proving its value in the professional peloton, it’s been in this year’s spring classics season, writes Al Hinds.

Having won on his fourth attempt at Amstel Gold, Enrico Gasparotto, was quick to pay tribute to the road behind him at the finish. He'd been aiming to win the Classic since the first time he'd taken part in the Dutch race in 2009, but it'd taken the lessons learnt from a near-miss in 2010, a poor performance in 2011, and a hefty period of reflection to earn himself the win atop the Cauberg.

A future contender, Simon Clarke who rode Amstel for the first time on Sunday summed it up best when he talked to Cycling Central after the 260.4 km classic.You can’t turn up at a WorldTour race for the first time expecting to win. You probably can’t even expect a result the second or third time. These races are all defined by the small differences, the little subconscious things you pick up in the first 200 km of racing that you can really only get by being there, under race conditions.Clarke’s comments and Gasparotto's rewarded persistence reflect a prevailing wisdom in cycling that suggests that age and experience are the key ingredients to performances at the top level.

There are of course the special cases, not least Tom Boonen, Fabian Cancellara and Philippe Gilbert, but it’s worth noting that that trio started their professional careers younger than most and only began winning the ‘big races’ several seasons in.

Those were seasons in which Boonen and Cancellara collected a treasure trove of accumulated knowledge of the roads in Belgium in France, furthered their understanding of just how these races play out, and honed and tweaked their bodies for optimum performance.

Cue Peter Sagan.

At 22 years of age, the Slovak is one absurdly talented bike rider and a guy who is going to win one hell of a lot of races in his career. He’s been one of the standout riders of this year’s classics season, further flagging the huge future that awaits him.

But as a rider Sagan is still underdone. What's held Sagan back from converting one of his top-5s into a win this year, has been varying degrees of hot-headedness, frustration and a lack of patience; all symptoms of inexperience.

In Gent-Wevelgem, Sagan showed impatience by following and working with Fabian Cancellara after the Swiss attacked over the Kemmelberg with some 30 kilometres to go.

Why join an attack when you’re regarded as one of the punchiest riders in the peloton? Sure, Sagan showed just how dynamic he can be by pushing the move with Cancellara, but with a healthy chase behind and race favourite Boonen surrounded by teammates, the move wreaked of brashness, wasted energy for what was an inevitable sprint.

"I was trying to ride with Cancellara, but success all comes with time," Sagan admitted of his miss-step. "For now, it’s still good [to make errors], I'm still learning."

However a week later at the Tour of Flanders it appeared the lessons of Gent-Wevelgem had hardly been learned. Boonen by this point had established himself as the man to beat, so it seemed logical that Sagan had only to shadow the Belgian and wait for the critical move.

A moment of madness ensued. Sagan decided that he was going to make the race, and surged away on the Paterberg with Boonen fixed to his wheel. Again things came back together, with Sagan showing exhaustion for his efforts.

When the race-winning move did go, Sagan was caught behind a crash involving Johan Vansummeren that caused a split in the chase, but what was the Slovak doing anywhere but on Boonen’s wheel?

"I knew it was over at that point, because nobody was pulling to catch [Pozzato, Boonen and Ballan], we weren't going at a very even pace," said Sagan.

And though the excitement at Amstel Gold all played out in the final kilometre on the Cauberg, a similar Sagan presented himself there as well. He seemed impatient to come off eventual winner Enrico Gasparotto’s wheel, and ultimately arrived spent, 50 metres before the finish line.

"Had I been more patient I would have won," Sagan said after finishing third. "I race to win and I'm always sorry to miss out by only a few meters.I saw Gilbert go and I did not think twice. With hindsight I should have had waited a little longer, but after 250 km it's sometimes hard to think clearly.Not that you can blame the Slovak champion, he is only 22, and lessons in cycling are only ever learned through the failures that precede them.

Of course I’m not saying Sagan isn’t developing, far from it. To put this year’s results in context, in 2011 Sagan was 49th in Gent-Wevelgem, DNF’d the Tour of Flanders and was 98th in Amstel Gold.

Sagan has come a long way this year, but it just shows, you can’t cut corners. Success comes with time and experience.

The Slovak's classics season is now over, but watch out for him in 2013, he’s on the brink.

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The colour of money

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 09:00:00 +1000

Don’t you love it when a complete underdog such as Enrico Gasparotto wins a race like Amstel Gold? Just goes to show big money does not equal big victories, writes Anthony Tan.

Thor Hushovd, $2.75 million. Cadel Evans, $3.4M. Philippe Gilbert, $3.85M.

Give or take a few hundred thousand dollars or so, depending on our ever-mercurial exchange rates, these are the annual salaries of BMC Racing’s Big Three. For billionaire owner Andy Rihs, that’s exactly $10M outlay for just three of the team’s 26-rider roster contracted for the 2012 season.

Hardly mind-blowing relative to professional golfers or NBA basketballers or English Premier League footballers; some might even say pitiful for the monumental pain involved.

But aside from Team Sky, a figure equivalent to anywhere between 50 to more than 90 per cent of the total budget for rider salaries at just about every other team in the WorldTour. (Earlier this year, the UCI reported that the average salary among professionals riding for ProTeams and Pro Continental teams had increased from 190,000 Euros (approx. $A239K) in 2009 to €264,000 ($A332K) in 2012. The minimum wage, however, is far less. UCI rules stipulate a minimum annual salary of €30,000 ($38K), or €24,000 ($30K) for a first-year professional, on a ProTeam.)

Industry pundits estimate the BMC bicycle company’s 2011 turnover to be somewhere around the $14M mark. So Rihs, with an estimated personal fortune of $2.5 billion, clearly didn’t set up this team of superstars to augment his wealth, even if that’s what he basically told me in January 2010 when he came to Australia during the Tour Down Under.

“The base logic [to selling] is that you must afford a certain (level of) promotion. If you don’t afford it then you’ll never get an image,” he said. “We created the race team for the purpose of promoting our product.”

The bottom line is that Rihs is simply a bike enthusiast at heart. A very rich bike enthusiast at heart.

But in paying his riders far above the norm (“You have to pay them right. You give them a little higher value... that’s what we try to do,” Rihs told me), two-thirds of his Big Three appeared to have become a little lax. And they wouldn’t be the first generously remunerated athletes to fall foul of form; modern sporting history is littered with similar cases in point.

In fact, the most notable thing about BMC Racing this season is that, aside from Evans taking the time trial and overall classification at the Criterium International last month, they have recorded no other wins.

Hushovd was supposed to be good in Flanders and particularly Paris-Roubaix but was not. Conversely, Alessandro Ballan was solid in Flanders and finished third. But the Italian’s decision to skip a turn with 56 kilometres remaining in Roubaix, just when eventual winner Tom Boonen latched onto the wheel of his teammate Niki Terpstra who had flown the coop, cost him (as well as Filippo Pozzato and Sebastien Turgot) any chance of victory.

Last Sunday in the Amstel Gold Race, Gilbert, a two-time winner and the defending champion, was supposed to be at or near his best. He was permitted the best-possible run-in to the finish by two of his BMC teammates to the foot of the Cauberg, the final climb of the day where, after 256.5km and 30 climbs previous, ‘the race of a thousand turns’ would end.

In the final 100 metres he would vacillate on its slopes as eventual winner, Enrico Gasparotto (Astana), Jelle Vanendert (Lotto Belisol), Peter Sagan (Liquigas-Cannondale) and Thomas Voeckler (Europcar) all passed him. Even late escapee Oscar Freire (Katusha) who boldly attacked with 11km remaining and almost won the race, managed to finish ahead of Gilbert, who could only salvage a sixth place.

“Let’s put it this way: right now it’s not pleasant. Also because it is difficult to find a way out, to analyse why I’m lacking shape,” Gilbert said before the race.

It’s just become a little more unpleasant and confounding for Philippe, who can take cold comfort in knowing his form is on the rise, albeit not nearly quick enough.

If it were not for Evans, BMC would be without a victory this season. Extraordinary for a team boasting so much star power, so much potential and so much money.

So why has Cadel not let the green get to him?

Maybe it has something to do with Evans’ missed opportunities at the Tour de France, when, through no fault of his own, he should have ridden the race at least two years earlier than he did (2005 was his first, where he finished eighth overall to Lance Armstrong, the Texan’s seventh consecutive victory).

Instead, he found himself mired within the toxic culture at Team Telekom; where malpractice and mismanagement went hand in hand, where results would come at any expense, including a rider’s health. As his former mountain bike coach Damian Grundy told me in an interview with Cycling Central last year, Cadel wanted no part of it and was therefore not selected for the Tour in 2003/04, despite being in top shape and one of their strongest riders.

It was not till he turned 33 that Cadel found a team that understood him, that truly believed in him, and one year later before BMC provided a motley crew that could help him win La Grande Boucle, which he duly did.

Now 35, Evans has one, maybe two, more bona fide shots to win again. Unsurprisingly, his 2012 sporting goal is to repeat his feat of yesteryear. Though come July, you might see BMC being more assertive than before.

“As we go in as favourites, we also sometimes might have to take the race in our own hands more often than we did in previous years. So we need an even more solid team for that,” he told the Herald Sun a week ago in London, over in the British capital for some sponsor commitments, with a view to contest both the Olympic Games road race and time trial straight after this year’s Tour, slated for July 28 and August 1, respectively.

An “even more solid team” BMC is on paper in 2012, and likely will be when this year’s Tour lines up in Liege on June 30 for the Grand Depart.

Though perhaps riders like Hushovd and Gilbert need to take a leaf out of the Book of Cadel, who appreciates and understands the meaning of lost opportunities.

For if he is to win again, all nine men need to be at their very best.

US audiences respond to My America

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 10:39:57 +1000

An Australian documentary which takes a critical look at the superpower is gaining traction in the US. 

Selling to the US an Australian-made documentary which questions the country’s foreign policies and the reasons for its economic woes may seem a tough proposition. So it’s hats off to producer Trish Lake who has negotiated a deal which will see My America distributed on multiple platforms in the US.

As a prelude to its commercial release, Peter Hegedus’ documentary is playing at various universities in the US, accompanied by the 33-year-old filmmaker, and getting mostly positive reactions.

After a screening last week at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, Hegedus (pictured) reported on the film’s Facebook page, “What a great mix of crowd. People from Mexico, South Korea and Bulgaria could all relate to my crazy obsession with America.”

Financed by Screen Australia, Screen Queensland, the 40 per cent producer rebate and pre-sales to SBS and several European broadcasters, the doco follows Hegedus as he roams around the US and travels to his native Hungary, Beijing, Iran and Kenya to discover what people think of the world’s biggest superpower.

Lake sold the North American rights to Cinetic/Film Buff, which will release the doco on pay TV, Netflix, iTunes and other platforms and perhaps on a limited number of commercial cinemas, probably in September when the US Presidential race is in full swing. Rialto will distribute in Australia and Lake is pushing for an August debut.

“We were really nervous about how Americans would react to a film which nudges them to think about their place in the world,” Lake, who produced the film with Jane Jeffes, told SBS Film.

“The film is getting lots of feedback, mostly positive, given Americans are very touchy about their role in the world. It’s a very logical, laid-out personal story of Peter and his grandfather (a former Communist Prime Minister of Hungary) and a European/Australian’s view of America.

“It’s not a confronting film like, say, a Mike Moore or some of the other more strident political films you see. This one is far more personal and quite gentle but it actually packs a pretty good punch.”

The film is a co-production with Hungary, where most of the animation sequences were created. The Griffith University Film School helped broker the US Universities screenings and its art students designed the poster.

“Aussie documaker Peter Hegedus literally puts himself on the psychiatrist's couch in My America, a stimulating chronicle of his search for the America he loved while growing up in socialist Hungary and suburban Brisbane,” said Variety reviewer Richard Kuipers.

“Threading remarkable details of his family history into a globetrotting examination of US foreign policy and domestic issues, Hegedus starts shakily but comes home strong with heartfelt messages about the rights of people everywhere to feel safe and secure.”

Lake, whose credits include Gettin' Square, Subdivision and The Burning Season, hopes to shoot two films next year. The Red Earth is the saga of a young Chinese woman who migrates to Australia in the 1880s for an arranged marriage to a Chinese man who works in the Far North Queensland cane fields. Instead she falls in love with an English plantation owner. It will mark the feature film debut of writer-director Liselle Mei, a UK-born graduate of New York University Film School who moved to Oz a few years ago and has a background in documentaries and short films.

Lake, who’s co-writing the script with Mei, thinks Ewan McGregor would be ideal as the male lead. It’ll be shot in Mandarin and English. Lake will meet with casting agents and sales agents when she goes to London on an Ausfilm-arranged mission in May, and she intends to apply for Screen Australia funding in September. Hopscotch, whose managing director Troy Lum is Mei’s partner, will release the film in Australia and New Zealand.

Also, Lake is serving as executive producer of World of Chickens, a ‘bromantic’ comedy based on Nick Earls’ novel about the romantic travails of two guys who are best mates and medical students. Kath and Kim regular Peter Rowsthorn will play Ron Todd, proud proprietor of Ron Todd’s World of Mowers. The director is the London-based Charlotte George and the producers are Tait Brady and Chelsea Bruland. Lake aims to progress that project when she’s in London.

Blessing in disguise

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 14:00:00 +1000

By reducing the track cycling program at the London Olympics, the IOC has done Cameron Meyer a huge favour, says Mike Tomalaris.

It came as no big surprise that Meyer's last official competition in the velodrome arrived last Sunday when collecting a bronze medal in the Madison with long-time colleague Leigh Howard at the UCI World Championships.

There was no fanfare, no farewell and no tears - just a round of modest applause from an appreciative Hisense Arena for a rider who stood on the podium alongside the Belgian gold medal combination of Kenny De Ketele and Gijs Van Hoecke.

Meyer was never going to be considered for selection in Australia's pursuit team for London so Melbourne 2012 was perhaps a fitting finale to a wonderful and successful track career.

That said it's a shame the shackles of his track commitments weren't loosened some 12 months ago.

At the time Meyer was certainly in the running for a berth at London only to be superseded by the Jack Bobridge, Michael Hepburn, Rohan Dennis and Glenn O'Shea - all of whom appear to have cemented their places in the pursuit squad.

Had the Points Race and Madison still been part of the Olympic track program, there's no doubt Meyer would be the first person on the Qantas jumbo to London.

The final make-up of the Olympics squad will be announced in June when Cycling Australia High Performance Director Kevin Tabotta releases the 14-person roster that travels to London.
As much as he would love to be included, the Olympics was never an option for Meyer.

As a result the sky is now the limit.

It's time now for this brilliantly talented 24-year-old to look to the future and concentrate on carving out a road career - if he hasn't already done so.

He has the makings of a being the complete all-rounder and has already shown his wares as a road racer and time trial specialist.

Success at the 2011 Tour Down Under was just a taste of things to come, Im sure.

Many experts say Meyer has the potential of being a Classics specialist sooner rather than later, with the view of one day challenging for a place on the podium in a Grand Tour.

How content must GreenEDGE team director Matt White feel with the knowledge he will have complete reign over his prodigy now that the track is a thing of the past?

Go forth Cameron Meyer - the world is your oyster and may you reap the rewards on the pro-circuit you fully deserve.

The humble athlete

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 09:00:00 +1000

Modesty in victory can be an overrated quality, which is why Muhammad Ali is one of sport's most beloved figures and Pat Rafter is best known for underwear commercials and apologising for his ball toss.

Of the two schools of thought, Tom Boonen is more your 'I am the greatest' sort of winner than your 'Sorry, mate' – and in the Broom Wagon's opinion he is all the better for it.A fourth Roubaix is unique, especially in our time. The final kilometres, it was incredible ... I'm the best rider in history on the cobbles.If you thought the Flanders housewives' favourite was overlooking someone while puffing out his chest to proportions only previously seen in cartoon chickens and aspirant model-actresses, you'd be right.

Roger de Vlaeminck and his award-winning sideburns also won four times at Paris-Roubaix, making Boonen's achievement unique only in the special sense where the word can be taken to mean 'having been done before'. These days, De Vlaeminck's sideburns have made way for an old-man grizzle, but the gusto that allowed him to compete with the likes of Eddy Merckx and Freddy Maertens remains.

"Tom cannot help it that this time he had no opposition," De Vlaeminck guffawed at Belgian newspaper Het Nieuwsblad after Boonen's win. "They were not second, but third-rate riders."

Warming to his theme, he rubbished Filippo Pozzato for failing to hang on to Boonen's wheel and added: "Tom is the best spring rider of the last 20 years. But now he needs to try and win Milan-San Remo and the Giro di Lombardia like I did."

L'Equipe's cheeky scamps asked Boonen whether, when he held up four fingers to the camera in Sunday's closing kilometres, he had De Vlaeminck in mind.

"I thought of my girlfriend," Boonen said, probably making many of the same faces as in the Nivea commercial below. "Victory is for her. She must have suffered at home because she was not there today. I thought of my girlfriend, not Roger."

The best analysis of the race (other than, obviously, the analysis served up on Cycling Central) is here:

Slovakia's next top model
How did Broom Wagon man-crush Peter Sagan pass the time while missing out on Paris-Roubaix on Sunday? By training Slovakia's candidates for the 2012 Miss World Universe competition, obviously.

Sagan held a spin class so intense that several contestants came over all Andy Schleck and abandoned. One suffered cramp and had to be helped by gym staff. Only one girl finished: 21-year-old Sona Kiszlingova (pictured second from right in this pic of the Slovakian contestants in happier, pre-Sagan times, and in this Facebook shot apparently searching for her remote control). In a nice inversion of the usual cyclist/podium girl relationship, here's Soňa receiving a bouquet of flowers from Sagan.

The week in ...

... abstinence
A knee injury has interrupted Bjorn Leukemans' season. Regular Broom Wagon readers (hi, Pete and Brian) will recall that Vaconsoleil's Belgian had prepared for his Classics campaign by refraining from a number of guilty pleasures, including germs, late-night snacks and sex. "This is extremely frustrating," the 34-year-old told Sporza after watching Paris-Roubaix from the sidelines. "Now I feel that I still have plenty to prove and there is pressure in the boiler."

... fighting the law
Cameron Meyer, twattling ahead of Sunday's madison final at the track world championships: "Just found out I got a fine for having my rainbow sticker on my bike. Well ill be getting a second one because its staying on tonight."
45 minutes later: "Just got told my fine will more then double if I ride with rainbow stickers tonight on my bike. I will be donating to the UCI beer fund then."
Meyer's madison partner Leigh Howard: "After much debate and because of a STUPID new rule, our 'small' rainbow bands had to be removed from helmets. Grapevine said 2000CHF (A$2100) now!"

MEANWHILE: The compression gear on this promising sprinter should convince even the most hardened critic of the dystopian future that awaited before the UCI heroically stepped in to regulate sock length. But try telling that to Cycling Central alumni Bridie O'Donnell. She is riding full speed into the sockocalypse.

... team titbits you didn't know but totally needed to know
Omega Pharma-Quick Step: Slovak blonde bombshell Peter Velits listens to Guns 'N Roses. Twin brother Martin is a Pixies fan.
Garmin-Barracuda: Six weeks after winning Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, Sep Vanmarcke extends his 2012 palmares by clogging the toilet in the team bus.

... Chou-chou
Thank god technology has advanced to the point where we can have not one but two Thomas Voeckler tongue GIFs online within hours of his win at La Fleche Brabanconne.

Dispatches from the Twitterverse

Smiling like an idiot while riding the Arenberg. It must be love! #kidinacandystore

— Taylor Phinney (@taylorphinney) April 6, 2012

Imagine the IP in the Olympic games. Wow. What an amazing event that would be. What a spectacle of close racing. Be 10guys within 2secs.

— Greg Henderson (@Greghenderson1) April 7, 2012

But Hell no! Lets watch the Omnium and celebrate the averageness of an athlete in every discipline. Best averageness wins.

— Greg Henderson (@Greghenderson1) April 7, 2012

Came back from a nice,sunny day in Altea, checked mails, thought that there won't be something special to read but then: *boom*TOUR TICKET!

— Marcel Kittel (@marcelkittel) April 6, 2012
Classic YouTube
This silent short about a velodrome carpenter is part of an Olympics competition held by British Airways. If you have 10 minutes and can put that out of your mind it's rather charming.