http://www.cyclingnews.com/news.php?id=news/2006/mar06/mar21news
Don't have a cow
How a farmer's brew affects riders health
By Susan Westemeyer
Did you ever wonder why so many riders come down with stomach problems after
the various spring races in Belgium? One might suspect it's the effect of
bouncing up and down so long on cobblestones, but the truth of the matter is
much more... natural, one might say. It's all due to the cow manure, says
T-Mobile's team doctor, Stefan Voigt.
"Last year in late March, Flanders experienced a spell of mild weather,
prompting many farmers to spread manure on their fields. However, the good
weather didn't hold and heavy rainfall during the 'Dreidaagse von de Panne'
(three to five days before the Tour of Flanders) caused the manure to run
off the fields and onto a few hundred metres of the race route," he explains
on the team's website.
And how does the cow manure work its magic on the riders? "When the riders
sped through these stretches, the excrement sprayed out in all directions --
onto the riders' faces and onto the mouthpieces of their water bottles.
Consequently, when a rider took a swig from his bottle, he also unwittingly
swallowed millions of E-coli bacteria. Within 12 hours of the E-coli
contamination, the riders suffered severe upset stomachs with vomiting and
diarrhea."
The solution? "Let's hope for cool and dry weather... so that the farmers
'dangerous brew' is frozen, or at least doesn't run off onto the race
route."
In Bob Roll's first book he wrote about this at length. Check it out.
Quite funny.
It will be in his second book as well, since it contains the entirety of the
first book, plus a few more stories.
--
Steven L. Sheffield
stevens at veloworks dot com
bellum pax est libertas servitus est ignoratio vis est
ess ay ell tea ell ay kay ee sea eye tee why you ti ay aitch
aitch tee tea pea colon [for word] slash [four ward] slash double-you
double-yew double-ewe dot flahute dot com [foreword] slash
Mark VandenBerghe
"ST" <n...@no.com> wrote in message news:C044BF84.19F0D8%n...@no.com...
>
>
Having ridden the streets of Paris in the rain, I've had the opportunity to
consider that it could be worse (than cow crap, that is).
--Mike Jacoubowsky
Chain Reaction Bicycles
www.ChainReaction.com
Redwood City & Los Altos, CA USA
"Mark VandenBerghe" <markvand...@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:LhYTf.2646$4L1....@newssvr11.news.prodigy.com...
Probably isn't. More likely it's commercial fertilizer which is not as good
for your health as natural cow shit. :-)
JT
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Based on personal experience from racing Snelling in 1996-97, and seeing the
huge number of cows lining the course, I'd say that Lafferty's showing his
ignorance again.
Maybe it was just me, but growing up doing a dairy that was milking
300 head I was surrounded by, and frequently covered with shit. I never
got sick from it, even when I missed a step into the barn and ended up
swimming in the shit pit in February, the good thing was that at least
it was warm. I could see riders really sucking it down in wet
conditions though and that causing problems though.
We were incredibly cheap/careful with fertilizers, but they worried me
a lot more than anything else from the health standpoint. If the
animals have eaten shit overdosed with nasty chemicals the organic
product they produce is going to be toxic too. That's a thought to keep
in mind. We had to be incredibly careful with animals undergoing
medical treatment so as not to taint the milk with things like
antibiotics since they tested everyload we sent in to the co-op. and
dumped without paying for anything contaminated.
Bill C
Maybe Bjarne ought to have his boys shovel manure in the offseason.
"B. Lafferty" <Ma...@Italia.org> wrote in message
news:C5_Tf.15899$S25....@newsread1.news.atl.earthlink.net...
Didn't John Tomac pick up a fairly bad bug of some sort from drinking off a
water bottle in a mountain bike race in Hawaii? I seem to recall something about
the bottle having been sprayed with whatever came off the front wheel of his
bike going through a cow field.
--
tanx,
Howard
Grandma Smith said a curious thing
Boys must whistle, girls must sing
remove YOUR SHOES to reply, ok?
What's a mountain bike?!
Excrement in the streets? Sounds like the French are still living in the
Middle Ages to me.
Bill: I always thought you were one of the more "real" posters on rbr. This
only confirms it. And I mean that, sincerely, as a compliment.
--Mike-- Chain Reaction Bicycles
www.ChainReactionBicycles.com
"Bill C" <trito...@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:1142991883.1...@u72g2000cwu.googlegroups.com...