The real dope

Got home yesterday with this waiting for me: The first day of the Padyak Pinoy tour saw favored bets take the backseat, with some Feliciano being handed the yellow jersey for today's scheduled Quezon City-Cabanatuan massed start. It may sound like a news item, but it is actually how my cousin related to me Thursday's individual time trial.

He wanted to let the news out immediately, I supposed, that he was able to tell it directly. Together with our neighbor, the cousin followed it up with how good the bikes were, especially Vellum bikes, some anecdotes, and more anecdotes.

Later I went online and saw the results of the initial stage, through a post by Manila Standard Today sportswriter Peter Atencio at the Philippine Cycling Network. Neither Victor Espiritu nor defending champion Santy Barnachea would be wearing the yellow jersey at the second stage of the tour.

Clocking in 3'55”, Vellum's Frederick Feliciano, a perennial fixture on the Philippine national cycling team and runner-up to last year's bike tour, took first place. But of course hardly anyone remembers the runner-up.

Anyway, I should have taken a leave from work and watched the time trial. I didn't and only the list of Thursday's results is what I can write here. But I wouldn't write it here. Tomorrow it would not be important and interesting. My cousin's anecdotes still would, I supposed, because they sounded like the real dope.

Larga!!!

One thing I used to look for in a neighborhood was a basketball court. It's only now that I stay on the lookout for a group of cyclists, and although I'm looking for it now there is very little that I can say about it because outside of the bay area in Manila cycling remains unpopular in the Philippines.

What makes a sporting event popular? Maybe not if you open it on a weekday. As is the case of this year's Padyak Pinoy tour. Today, Thursday, at the bay area in Manila, the tour is scheduled to hit the road. The route seems impressive and very much makes my feet itch. When the peloton kicks off only the mediamen and the tour organizer probably will know what has happened in the following stages, except of course to the participants and those in the circle. It's that something that stays with the person.

I hardly know why the sport is unpopular, and let us not try to examine it and spoil the magic of the tour. Yes, the Tour is magical if you ask me. I only follow it in the newspapers, but the hard work and endurance of Arnel Quirimit and Jun Ricafort at the past Padyak Pinoy tours and its predecessors, the Tour Pilipinas and the Marlboro Tour, are incredible. It's hard to explain, but it was something edifying.