USA Cycling bans radios. Is TV next?

//USA Cycling bans radios. Is TV next?

USA Cycling bans radios. Is TV next?

No music in peloton!

Turn that radio off!

Following the lead of the UCI, USA Cycling voted to ban all radios at US national races. You know what that means –no music at all during races. No punk and electronic tunes to warm up to on the trainer before the time trial. No country western to cool down with at the end of a hard day of racing.

No rock ‘n’ roll to get the team pumped up before blasting out of the team bus. Nothing. No show-tunes, hip hop, classical, be-bop jazz, zilch. No radios period. No talk radio, stock quotes, rabble rousing political diatribes on  the airwaves. No NPR, baby, no crazy latino music going a million miles an hour.

We’re running radio silent from here on out. Why? Because the submarine captain says so, that’s why. Too many cycling fans are complaining that their cycling heroes were so engrossed in their music that they never looked up, waved, signed an autograph and said hello. That kind of behavior is finito, a victim of tifosi backlash.

Put yourself in their fan shoes — they stand on the side of the road waiting for the magic five seconds when you whip by and you’re so oblivious listening to Iron Maiden or 2Pac oldies or Taylor Swift that you can’t be bothered to make eye contact.

The ban covers AM and FM, all short-wave, satellite radio, wifi and 3G radio transmissions. Just forget listening to music until the race is over and the massage table is set up. And no singing to yourself in the gruppetto– no humming, either. Every radio infraction will result in the loss of UCI points. You sing, you lose.

The radio ban is just the first step in a peloton-wide media diet. Next up, the TV ban. Study after study shows conclusively that TV is lowering the collective IQ of bike racers. Cycling journalists are fed up with dull riders who give boring quotes that make writing exciting stories impossible. (We know you just rode 160k but that’s no excuse.)

The UCI already has a Reading For Pro Riders program on the drawing board. No more laying on the couch recovering with moronic reality TV. The UCI-supplied Kindles will come preloaded with 25 classics — from Moby Dick to Lolita and the Lance Armstrong books.

You think Twisted Spoke is pulling your pedaling legs? Think again. First the biological passport, next the educational passport. The UCI plans to establish a baseline IQ for all riders in order to track and measure any changes in intellect. The whereabouts program will award points to riders who are found at any library, bookstore or any literary cafes. Riders caught doping or watching TV will undergo re-education in more ways than one. Two years and a very extensive reading list.

Riders will soon be required to give blood, urine and submit to a pop quiz.

By |2019-02-03T16:30:07-08:00February 3rd, 2010|Humor|0 Comments

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  1. oJ0J0 February 3, 2010 at 11:52 am - Reply

    Oh, come on. The radio is good for the sport.

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