Shebeen

https://www.facebook.com/rondevanriebeek/posts/pfbid02ky9wXo9mPkkhS8EKVMSTmyH57NfFBuvJB7NSBxv1eadvLzcp6PaDmrq4DGhUm9Fwl well it's just one ronde, but a big one at that!

This might have been covered before, I did do a search* and came up with nothing. Is anyone else surprised by the very rigid refund/subs policies some races enforce these days? Does the consumer protection act (2009) cover racing/events? OF course it does. I'm really surprised that this has not wildly changed the cancellation/substitution policy of races. *You buy a product/service (and pay up front, sometimes months in advance). *You are injured(or life happens) and can find someone else to take over this purchase for you, or want your money back (minus reasonable admin charge). There is one instance where a race is sold out, and demand is high enough that a sub could easily be found. Surely the simplest response to this is allowing an automated subs process, which most ticketing vendors offer. Obviously there needs to be a cut-off date, seeding and entry numbers need to be printed, 4(b) covers this but 10 days/week is definitely enough. A sold out race that is bound by permitting numbers/venue capacity can actually make MORE money through subs that is an additional service they charge. The second instance is a smaller race field, when you are required to give a refund and not replace the entrant then you run the risk of over catering for a smaller field. The organiser should be protected by a reasonable enough time period for this, in an extreme case imagine a big storm is coming and everyone cancels two days prior - no way should an organiser need to refund entries on this. I stand to be corrected on this, but pretty sure Cape Epic, the biggest mtb race in the world you can even bring in a sub rider/team at registration. They charge for this, but it's not an insane fleecing. But let's bring in another example, there are many others but I like to look at a specific one, and it is running. Cape Town marathon - https://capetownmarathon.com/faq/ Race date: 20 October Entries/subs: close 30 August Refund policy: none. I'm pretty sure this is in violation of the CPA. 51 days is plenty of time for CT marathon to handle a change. It has become industry practice, which is a weird way to treat people that are ultimately your customer. Am i talking codswallop? *maybe my search skills were a little basic, found this in the archives actually which is more about quality of the race offering

this came up on my feed. cool bikes it seems, https://woom.com/en_INT/our-story

I'm pretty sure you will be able to get rim brake options for a long while. The calipers are surely easy tooling, same with the sti shifter compared to hydraulic. Even if sram and shimano got together in a basement and chose to shut it down third parties would jump in. I'd be mostly worried about quality wheel sets in a few years time, but there should be demand there too

Knysna to shamwari is 400km on the willowmore route. I expect there will be daisy chain stages to double up on race villages, so maybe a basic red tent at a school ground race village entry level @R25kpp and then accom and luxury upgrades as they will have secured all the ***** beds in town. The fact that it finishes at Shamwari might have blinded my expectations of affordability. On the email, it's billed as a 7 day 850km event. Now ~120km per stage does seem a little thin if you're getting UCI pros, so I guess there will be a prologue in knysna before it starts stage 1 the next day.

I have zero issue with this, more people on bikes is better

i know you said he was 4, but so i middled it at 4.5. https://www.rcpch.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Boys_2-18_years_growth_chart.pdf he'd be >99th percentile, if he was british, so clearly you're used to buying bigger things at a younger age,

maybe they are keeping cards close to chest on this one in terms or route and pricing ACE = R113k for 2025 Dryland's Cape pioneer trek for 2024, is R42k. this is now quite pared down compared to when it was a real alternative to ACE, and just 5 stages with a lot less travel too. They have the capability of really pulling a big one off here, and will want to fill it. they might even be happy to run at a loss to get it established. to reply to the bold vote with your wallet, this is what a certain WC race has on its byline: Why does a 100 miler have to cost R1000? It doesn't!!! That's why we are charging R590! Don't worry though, XXXXXXXXXX will have all the bells and whistles you'd expect from a race of this caliber.

so far he is closer to 500km per day. https://www.instagram.com/p/C_tButcvf4k/?hl=en good luck if you can find the tracking link

4 and you're looking at a 24" bike? are you married to victor matfield's sister or something?!! My kid is turning 10 next month and is not quite comfortable on the 24" yet, choosing to stay on his 20" for now. probably an outlier but still!

@Irvin85 and you DELIVER as expected! But you did not answer the actual question, I'll repeat it in bold so you can work out how to answer it: what did your direct source tell you that you can conclusively say that abortion doping was an actual thing (pick any country). Let's call this one Q1: ok, back to the nitpicking, let's go back to the politics then. I'm confused as to how both the USSR and Romania competed at the olympics before Romania independance. Like in Helsinki 1952 (there are others) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Nations_at_the_1952_Summer_Olympics I would have said you can ignore this one, but since you chose it as the only bit to address earlier despite me saying "let's paper over it", let's have at it, call it Q2: and finally, if "Abortion doping" was an actual thing as you claim, why don't we see it these days (or is it just "under the covers" - pun fully intended)? let's call that Q3: Look forward to your expert answers

This was on my local WA group at 15:57. My guess is they were both going up the hill and motorist was looking directly into afternoon sun and didn't notice cyclist. Car has crossed the entire road, but still facing forward, guess they swerved but just too late. There's a big shoulder here on both sides, this is my local "hill" and a weird spot for an incident.

I missed this one, but it's a goodie so let's not sweep it back under the carpet @Irvin85. So you're saying, *Russian female athletes were "forced" to get pregnant before big events like the olympics, then they would get forced to have an abortion. This whole rigmarole was really good for hormone levels, and "natural doping". This was a brilliant idea because using other methods of doping was just too effective, given the lack of controls and no out of competition testing. It would still be "legal" today (let's cast the moral, practical and ethical concerns aside) but no one seems to be doing it. *Your wrestling coach from Romania (could totally be this guy who ended up in Limpopo) told you this. *now obviously wrestling was a male only sport then, and he was from Romania not the Soviet Union team, but let's just paper over that. * "direct contact" means what, he was one of the lucky guys getting them pregnant at some training camp dorm room? Come now, the guy is no longer with us, but since he didn't take his secrets to the grave, spill the beans.

this is Epic!

I remember those days like yesterday, probably to be found way back in this thread too!