Tweets of the Week: The Revolution will be twittified, Kimmage vs UCI and #FreeFabs

Funny, cruel, odd, personal … you get it all on Twitter. Each week, we’ll have a rundown of some of our favourite tweets. Here are the tweets for the week ending 23rd September 2012, although I fudged it a bit this week, due to the nature of the content.

Over the past week, we’ve had a cracking World Championships and have come away with worthy wearers of the rainbow jersey. We also have a number of riders climbing off their bikes to start enjoying their off-season and tweeting about their adventures in the real world. But in the Twittersphere, there was really only one subject that truly electrified cycling fans and that was the UCI‘s pending lawsuit against Paul Kimmage for defamation. If you don’t know the background, read this.

There are a number of tweeters who have been at the forefront of calling out the UCI – @millarmind, @UCI_Overlord and @velocast are the stars of this column, with healthy support from @PaulKimmage, @inrng, and @tourdejose, among others – and I’m pretty much giving over the column to them. If you aren’t following these people, you should. [Don’t forget @DavidWalshST too – Ed.] Whether you agree with them or not, this is the most important anti-doping issue in cycling and anyone who loves cycling needs to get informed now.

Let’s raise some money

Let’s start with the Kimmage Fund, which was set up to help offset his legal fees and has (at the time of writing) passed the $20,000 mark. For background on this, here is InnerRing explaining it all.

And in the most ironic case of the left hand not knowing what the right is doing, we have this little gem spotted by @dimspace, posted up on the official UCI Twitter feed.

David Millar calls out the UCI

David Millar has never been backwards about coming forwards and he was in full flow last week. (Here’s some background if you missed it.)

Velocast opens up a new front

The sartorially superior Scott O’Raw goes short and sweet on the velocast blog. Click that link now to see what we’re talking about.

(Sorry for the crappy split in the middle of this headline – my laptop screen wasn’t big enough to capture the whole screen grab. See what I have to work with?) [If you’re looking to buy a new laptop on expenses, tough luck. You emptied the expense account restocking the VeloVoices drinks trolley, remember? – Ed]

But what does it all mean? Scott and Derek from @flammecast work it out on the channel.

Who you callin’ nom de plume?

There was much exploration of legal options this week by the ‘Nom 5’ …

These tweets are, of course, the tip of the iceberg. And, again, whether you agree or not, it is imperative to read up on what is happening. If we want a clean sport, we need to fight for it. There are some who think that the debate raging on Twitter is just a bunch of idiots shouting their mouths off – and sometimes that’s a fair definition – but revolutions have started with much less. Whatever you do, get informed.

And now for something completely different

I am ending this column with my own little campaign … It was reported this week that My Beloved™ Fabian Cancellara had tried to break his contract with RadioShack but his lawyers couldn’t find a way (seriously, Fabs, put in something about moral turpitude next contract you sign, yeah?) and he wouldn’t/couldn’t stump up the approximate €1.65m to buy himself out. Well, I want that man out of his RadioShackles so I have a subtle and cunning plan. [And you say Tim’s man-crush on Cav is out of control? – Ed]