The revival of the Monday morning Armstrong Radio Sirius Faction 28 report. I notice that it is now called Armstrong Radio, a change since before I left for the Tour. Armstrong Radio logo is in red, white and blue... So this was a Special Edition Tribute to Lance Armstrong. Lots of sound bites from folks we know, like Bill Clinton, Tiger Woods, John Kerry, Tony Hawk, Johnny Moseley, and Sheryl Crow. Sheryl said that Lance is “bad ass” and a “good kisser”. Hey, what else do ya need? It’d work for me....

Anyway, lots of praise from the rich and famous, and congratulations from regular folk like us, plus carefully selected, cool music to add to the tribute. I’m sure that Lance liked this one....

On another note, (Ha - ‘scuze me) I see that some of our favorite guys may have been ripped off in the Grand Prix of Prague Crit on Wednesday. Billed as a Tour look-alike cycling extravaganza, it was a fiasco. Jan was there, so was our George Hincapie and Chechu - they all left without any money and refused to race. Gilberto Simoni was the winner and he received nada.... Jan says he’s gonna sue ‘em. The race organizers had contracts that said the money (I think they use crowns) was to be paid the day of the race, but it didn’t happen. So, I hear that Chechu, George, Jan and others refused to race. Guys like Simoni and Nico Mattan and Daniel Becke who raced, didn’t get any money, either. Simoni called it a “fraud”. Everyone paid their own way to get there. Here in the States, the race organizers that I work for usually cover those expenses...

So the race organizers say that they will be paid, but nobody thinks that will happen. I also hear that the organizers promoted the race as having Lance Armstrong, but they knew that he was not gonna be there... Here’s a quote from Radio PRAHA, "A lot of people came because last year was a great show, with Lance Armstrong, and 80,000 people wanted to see the same thing again. But in the few minutes before the start, the moderator said we have some technical problems." The technical problem was m-o-n-e-y, or the lack of it in the rider’s Discovery and T-Mobile jersey pockets....

They shortened the crit to 55 minutes, but Prague live TV pulled the plug after two minutes... George supposedly said that he had never experienced anything like this ever before. A lot of these post-Tour crits and one day races around Europe are just promotional deals for that particular race - the famous cycling stars show up and get paid big bucks to ride around. Nobody cares who wins.... The operative words here are “get paid”.

Photo is one that I took of George during the Solvang Training camp in 2005.