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.

My next five months...

UCI confirm that I won't win the Tour de France

The offices of Pat McQuaid at the UCI headquarters

For weeks now, ever since USADA's report broke with their recommendation that Lance Armstrong be stripped of his seven Tour de France titles, I have been living in hope that perhaps the UCI will see fit to grant them to myself. I had two reasons to believe this might be possible and so you can see why perhaps I was a little saddened yesterday to learn that they were giving them to nobody. I had to assume too many people -- like numerous kids screaming for not enough chocolate -- led the UCI to say, "right, if that's how you're going to behave, nobody's getting them".

The first reason I thought I stood a chance was because I was a bike racer who has never doped. In the grand pyramid of the cycling system, with Mount Everest being the top where Lance once stood (he's currently swimming the with fishes), and the bottom being the depth of the deepest Ocean, I'm probably hovering in and around the Titanic. But there had to be this chance that they were all a bunch of dopers right the way through the system as far as me and that's why I was as low down the ladder as I was and thus the best option to reward those Tours to. Heck, for a while I even pronounced myself "7 time winner of the Tour de France ... by default," on my Twitter page.

The truth shall... get you fired

Bobby Julich (left) in his not-so-glory days on the 1998 Tour de France podium with Marco Pantani (middle) and Jan Ullrich (right).

Yesterday former American rider Bobby Julich decided enough was enough and in keeping with a new trend that has emerged in recent weeks, told all about his sordid doping past in cycling in an open letter. 'Enough with the lies,' he must have thought, 'let's come clean once and for all,' and when he did, it cost him his job with Team Sky.

Julich was a coach with the Sky Team, who off the back of recent admissions of former and current professionals across the sport, sat down with each member of their own team and asked them about their past. They got everyone to sign up to a new anti-doping policy that gave the team the right to let them go if it emerged they were involved in doping practices. Julich understood this, but came clean anyway.

"I have recently made a full confession to Team Sky senior management about my doping history and understand that by doing so I will no longer be able to work for a dream team performing my dream job," wrote the American.

The route for the 100th edition of the Tour de France looks epic

It's going to be a spectacular route for 2013. Let's hope the riders make it a spectacular race. Photograph: AFP

At first glance, the 2013 Tour de France route looks mouth watering. Two trips up Alp d'Huez on the same day, two individual time-trials, a team-time-trial, four mountain top finishes, a visit to Mont-Saint-Michel, and a night finish in Paris that will see the riders loop up and around the Arc de Triumph for the first time.

It certainly appears to be a race of firsts with the clear intention of the organisors to make it a memorable one for the 100th Tour. The race starts on the island of Corsica with three stages that could potentially see a sprinter snag the Yellow jersey from day one, a scenario that is surely mouth watering for Mark Cavendish.

From there the race hits the south coast of France for a team-time-trial in Nice. I was in Nice last summer for my honeymoon ... in fact, it'll be two years to the day that I arrived in Nice that they'll run the TTT and only highten to make me wish they'd started this whole Tour de France thing two years earlier meaning this 100th anniversary route took place in 2011.

Dreams of France; More on Lance; and McQuaid blasts Hamilton and Landis: An ode to cycling news today

Which small towns will the race visit next year?

TOUR DE FRANCE ROUTE UNVEILING ALLOWS ME TO DREAM FOR A LITTLE WHILE

Before I get started, let me ask a question: Anyone else hoping the unavailing of the Tour de France route for 2013 tomorrow will, at least for a day (or even a few hours), cool the obsession and non-stop beating of the drum that is the Lance Armstrong saga? It's all been quite interesting at times, but it's also getting a bit old and here's hoping that in revealing tomorrow's tour route, we get a little break from it all and remember that there's still cycling going on in the present.

So how about the unveiling of the route? It's always a fun day for cycling fans to see what exactly the organisers have in store for us, and given the way the race format has chopped and changed in recent years, it's hard to know just what we're going to get. Some people say more climbing, some say even more time-trialing. I say, whatever they come out with will make for a great race and also for some quality day dreaming.

I'm sure I'm not alone in that regard. When the route comes out I trace the route around France looking at the various stops and start to wish I had the money and the time to head off there next July and watch the race pass. From some quaint little French village in the middle of the country, to some warm sea-side city on the south coast, to a hair-pin bend on the side of one of the Alpine giants. I'll scope out where I would love to watch the race, then face reality and scope out which stages I'll have to make sure I make time for to watch on my television.