Somehow winning the Giro wasn't enought to win Hesjedal Canada's athlete of the Year award

Hesjedal wins the Giro, but it's not enough to win Canadian athlete of the year

First, let me say congratulations to Christine Sinclair for becoming the first female athlete and first soccer player to win Canada's Lou Marsh award as athlete of the year. She had an outstanding year and elevated the woman's team further than it ought to go at the Olympics, to a bronze medal. She was top scorer in that tournament and was part of what was probably Canada's uniting moment of those games. But now let me ask the obvious question: What on earth were the writers who voted for the award thinking in overlooking Ryder Hesjedal's Giro d'Italia victory?

For everything great Sinclair did this year, I can't quite comprehend how winning what was arguably the hardest sporting event on the planet in 2012 -- even by comparison to the route of the Tour de France -- wasn't enough to seal his name for the award. That no Canadian athlete had won a Grand Tour in cycling before only added to the magnitude.

I suppose you could say that having remembered all the jokes about Canada forever winning Bronze at the London Olympics -- taking twelve in all by comparrison to their solitary Gold -- perhaps it's fitting the Athlete of the Year is someone who came third. But that would be unfair ... to say that would be to ignore the status of Canada in woman's soccer and to look at what the expectations were coming in not to mention the roll Sinclair played in the teams success. Yet if I'm to say that, then it should have been factored in what Canada's status is in professional cycling and what the expectations would normally be at a Grand Tour.

Where have you gone Greg LeMond? Cycling turns it's lonely eyes to you

One of the most recent times a Tour was likely won clean

On July 11, 1991, I was sitting in the cafe of our holiday camp on the west coast of France with my dad, brother and our cycling club watching stage six of the Tour de France. I was nine years old and I was trying to figure out how my favorite cyclist Greg LeMond was doing, which was proving a challenge given I didn't speak a word of French. Each morning one of the men on our trip would pick up a French paper and inform us who was leading and what was happening. I'm not sure if he spoke French or just looked at the results and made his assumptions but it kept us in the loop at least.

The stage that day was won in epic fashion by Thierry Marie, who rode clear of the bunch early and stayed away for 234 kilometers to win by almost two minutes and take back the Yellow jersey he had won at the prologue a week before. Two days later we traded in watching the Tour on TV for standing at the side of the road to watch it for real. We made the 300 kilometer trip from Saint-Jean-de-Monts to Alençon in the clubs old mini-bus that had managed to get us all the way from Bangor, Northern Ireland, across to Scotland, down through England and across the North-West portion of France without falling apart. It was the first individual time-trial of the Tour and it was the day LeMond would strike.

But he didn't ... well, not really. A Spaniard by the name of Miguel Indurain beat LeMond by eight seconds with nobody else close. But LeMond moved back into Yellow and the next day when we went 180km to Rennes to watch the final three hundred meters of the stage, standing for several hours catching all sorts of goodies thrown from the passing caravan. After watching a break of ten men speedy by, in which Mauro Ribeiro won, I caught a brief glimpse of LeMond as he flashed past in Yellow while surrounded by the fast moving collection of colours, metal and skin of the peloton. Had I held my breathe the moment the first rider of the peloton past, I'd have no fear of oxygen deprivation by keeping it held until the last went by and everyone started making their way home.