I saw Massetti ride his 1957 Gilera at Phillip Island 8 years ago at the Historic races, glorious sound. With talk of changing 250cc to four-stroke 600, maybe those great Gilera sounds will return.
Great players don't always make great captains, and a great captain doesn't make a great team. Talented players peaking in performance and sticking to good strategy will be required when the Aussies return to seek revenge for 2005.
The more we hammer them the stronger they get. The Taliban will not cease to exist. The very forces that seek to destroy them are precisely what motivate them. Now there is talk of sending foreign troops into Pakistan to take the Taliban on in their homeland, in order to prop up the failures in Afghanistan. Pakistan have enough instability problems to deal with as it is. Eventually western powers will see that it will be politically expedient to forge a secret peace deal with the Taliban, giving them control of the border region. It will also be necessary to guarantee that they will be left alone in their mountain retreat in Pakistan. This will return Afghanistan to a state of perpetual unease where a peace exists only because each of the waring factions can't defeat the others. This will provide the West with the easy way out, and the 'Mayor of Kabul' will take his tiny empire and retire in the south of France, or wherever he can maintain his elegant dress sence.
After the 9th stage of the Tour de France Aussie Cadel Evans will wear the leader's yellow jersey for the first time. Using the 'get injured to get inspired' technique, Evans fell off in stage 8 and had to ride for his life in stage 9 up the Col du Tormulait to claim the maillot jaune by just one second.
Now for every day he remains in yellow, Australians will start dusting off their old bicycles and hitting the road. There is nothing like Aussie sporting success to motivate amateur 'give it a goers' in this country. Hopefully this cycling surge will ease transport congestion and reduce greenhouse emissions. Maybe, if we ever reach our greenhouse reduction targets, we will be able to point to Cadel Evans and say ' he started it!' Unfortunately I can only forsee an increase in physiotherapy visits as unprepared bodies try just a bit too hard (especially if they get inspired by the upcoming Alp d'Huez stage).
Go Cadel.
