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Cycling News #1
Welcome to the trial edition of a weekly cycling news update! This is where we'll summarise all that's gone on in the past week of Cycling.
Doping Unfortunately, there's little else to start out with than this week's biggest news story concering Ivan Basso. Basso has finally revealed that he is Birillo, only time will tell what will happen to him. Another italian, Michele Scarponi has also confessed to being 'Zapatero'. Today brough us another revelation, this time from Floyd Landis. No, he hasn't admitted yet but he now claims he was offered to have a very small sentence if he was to give USADA incriminating evidence on Lance Armstrong.
Tour de Romandie Onto the real cycling and the final preparation for the Giro concluded this week - the Tour de Romandie. Paolo Savoldelli won the prologue and led in the early stages before losing the lead to American Chris Horner, in perhaps the crucial stage. The stage was won by Igor Anton, but second placed Thomas Dekker needn't have worried as he won the final stage time trial to take overall success. 1 Thomas Dekker (Ned) Rabobank 17.27.02 2 Paolo Savoldelli (Ita) Astana 0.11 3 Andrey Kashechkin (Kaz) Astana 0.34 4 Cadel Evans (Aus) Predictor - Lotto 0.43 5 Chris Horner (USA) Predictor - Lotto 0.46
4 Jours de Dunkerque The peculiarly named 4 days of Dunkirk, is a 2.HC category race that began this week. The 6-day event began with a short Prologue, and Brit Bradley Wiggins took advantage of the weather conditions to take victory. Piotr Zielinski and David Boucher held off the pack in Stage 2 as Zielinski took the stage as Boucher claimed the overall lead. The Scheldeprijs Vlaanderen champion Mark Cavendish took the honour in a sprint finish for Stage 3, and the runner-up on that day took victory in Stage 4: Gert Steegmens. Frenchman William Bonnet now leads, with 2 stages to go.
Giro di San Marino This weeks biggest Women's race was controlled by World Champion Marianne Vos. She won the opening time trial and went on to win the sprints of the remaining 2 stages for a comprehensive victory.
Other Races Juan Jose Haedo warmed up for the Giro beating Dane Alex Rasmussen at the danish Colliers Classic. In Italy, the GP Larciano and Giro di Toscana were won by Vincenzo Nibali and in Spain the mountainous 5-day race Vuelta a Asturias was one by Spaniard Koldo Gil.
After a pretty hectic week in the world of (real) cycling, sit down and relax by reading last week's most important news :)
.. and the world champion is .. After a close final, the World Champion in Pro Cycling Manager 06/07 has been found. A-Davis won with 284 points ahead of Hush_WC who had 274 points. Third place was _Stunt. All in all, 12 people participated in the finals. A-Davis will receive a version of Pro Cycling Manager 07/08 as 1st prize.
Congratulations to him and the runner-ups.
[Edit] I have just been let known that the finals are actually not over yet. Two days of gaming are still left. I'm sorry for the misunderstanding.
Danish site to be closed? Roumours are saying that the largest Danish PCM-site, PCMGeeks.dk, will be closed down soon. No reasons for the drastic decision has been given, but it might be due to the fact that a new Danish website is underway and already now has been able to capture a few of the "prominent" crew members of PCMGeeks.
According to the roumours, the site will be closed on the 6th of June 2007 - exactly one year after the opening.
Beta tests have started Another unconfirmed roumour is that the beta tests of PCM 2007 have started. A few members who used to be beta testers and translators have not received any invites, though. And being a translator without being able to try the translation out in-game seems unlikely.
We will follow up on the story.
Donations are welcome We have currently received 0 donations. That is of course fine, but it also require us to be creative when finding space for the PCM 2007-files. With that I mean that we will have to remove most of our 2006-files when PCM 2007 is released and the files for that version starts being released. For us, having both is preferred, but since we are close to be out of space, and since I have limited money resources, donations are very welcome.
You can donate by clicking the "Paypal Donate"-button. You can pay with credit cards or through Paypal. During the coming time, we will focus more on this.
For a few days ago, Panaflex wrote me a private message, telling me that he wanted to quit the crew due to limited time. And since I can't force him to stay I would just like to say "thank you" for the work he has done during the short time he was here. Panaflex will continue on visiting the site, but will be more passive than what we have seen before.
Since a lot of you have requested more articles I am of course happy to give you some ;) The first one is written by Alex135 and is a part of his monthly Pro Tour Review. Since we are in May, he concentrates on this month's Pro Tour-events which - of course - includes the Giro 'd Italia. Read it here: http://pcmdaily.com/readarticle.php?article_id=22
We have also added a new database review. The article, written by Crommy, reviews the new 2009 DB V3 - and it could seem like it needed a little bit more work ;) You can read the full review here: http://pcmdaily.com/readarticle.php?article_id=23
Well, with four seperate news articles this week it really proves what a "mess" the community is right now ;) Information is rampant all over the net, and you can't even be sure that all of it are true. We are doing our best, though, to keep you updated.
Starforce to be implented in PCM 2007 As I said on several forums last week, it finally seems like we have a clarification on the Starforce-subject. Many have asked me whether or not the Starforce protection system would be in PCM 2007 or not, and I brought the question to Clément who answered the following: "I don't know if it will be Starforce or not (editor's choice). As it's the only real protection in the game industry (all other choices seems to me pure marketing to make the community happiest, but their games are cracked before the release :p) i guess it will be the same."
My conclusion? Starforce will definitely be implented ;)
Short beta phase More 07-news. The beta tests have still not started at Cyanide which logically means that the beta phase will be quite short. For the same reason it seems like Cyanide will only choose few beta testers - and probably also only testers who have tried it before. So, for those of you who applied, well, don't get your hopes up too high.
No PSP-demo? Even though the PSP-version of PCM 2007 will be released on the same day as the PC-version we still don't have a lot of information on that subject. That is proved by the fact that it's still undecided whether or not a demo of the (PSP) game will be available since it's actually Sony's choice. Unlike the PC-game market, the PSP game market are strictly controlled by Sony who - after all - are positive about the game. The game did pass Sony's alpha test earlier this month.
About the PSP-version, we have also been told that the beta phase will start very soon.
"Flawed" cover After the cover was revealed in the PCM community people immediately started questioning if the cover was real or not. That is due to the fact that some of the shirts the cyclists wear on the cover are outdated:
1. The Cofidis-man in the middle wears the 2003-shirt of Cofidis; not the new one which is a lot more red. 2. The helmet worn by the guy in polka dots looks like the old Domina Vacanze-one. 3. The Kazak national jersey in the very left part of the cover is the one Vinokourov wore while riding for T-Mobile.
Another funny fact is that some of the riders have been copied from this picture: http://blog.erdener.org/archives/images/20050706-stage5-mcewen.jpg Notice the facial expression of the man in the Green jersey (Boonen) and the Cofidis-guy and compare them to the cover -- yep, it's the same.
As mentioned in our news article earlier today the cover is not fake, though. You can read more about the case in our news article: http://www.pcmdaily.com/news.php?readmore=47
V3 of DB 2009 released The futuristic career database by Weale and Belokiller has now gone into its 3rd version. The new version is pretty much the same as the V2, but it does bring new objectives for the teams and revised stats for some riders. For those who don't know the concept, it's a database which tries to predict the future. Therefore, you will find completely new teams, new riders, and more in this database. Download it by clicking here.
A review of this database will be released soon - I promise ;)
Germany brings another database Another ambitious DB-team has released a 2007 DB - the German CyM Team's 2007 DB. It's a pretty large 2007 DB which contains almost everything. Leader Jerseys have been included for every single PT-race, rider pictures for more than 95 % of the riders, new flags and accesories, true faces of about 150 riders, UCI 2007 calendar.
It also contains a lot of new 2007 races - and as something unique, they have made a tool which makes it easy to change the sponsors from race to race.
