After watching the last "monument" of the year this past Saturday, I realized that not only is Philippe Gilbert nearly human, but that the brand of cycling championed by Patty McQuaid and the UCI - a sanitized, corporate, global, and mediocre brand - is slowly taking over and gutting the sport. When that governing board recently released the 2012 calendar and moved Lombardia's date to one week after the Worlds and gave the anchor position to the Tour of Beijing, I was appalled: Now we can begin and end our season in mediocrity!

As a stand-alone event, the Tour Down Under was palatable enough, a take-it or leave-it week of watching the pros going through the motions to justify their pay and stretch their muscles. As a WorldTour points-paying event though, it is another creature altogether. Still, since the Aussies are in top form at that time of year, and they win the event but are not players for the rest of the year, it still didn't matter, except that the race was/is/will be boring. However, the advent of Team Marsupial shuffled the deck and redealt the hand, didn't it? Now the Australians have a built in advantage to the season, an advantage that the Globalizers are cackling over surely, given their hatred and fear of the current owners and riders in the sport.

In order to alienate further those same owners and riders, the UCI has again added a budget-breaking trip to China to end the year, only now that race has the added importance of being a potential championship decider. Still, as a fan, none of those things matter much. What does matter is that the race is horribly boring. The smog is so bad that we can't even have a decent view of the high rise workers' flats that surround Bird Piss Pond and the Serene Workers Prison Factory. Perhaps the smog was a good thing because it helped to disguise the fact that the course was empty of spectators, exactly as it was during the Olympic Games, despite the fact that the Chinese workers were enjoying their annual three days off. Perhaps they were all away riding their carbon Giants?

Again, though the riders may love the crazy Basques issuing death threats and the tifosi running alongside screaming "encouragement," personally, as a television spectator, I don't miss the spectacle. What I do miss is any amount of meaningful racing. When the riders complain that the race is too easy and they have to get into a day-long breakaway merely to get in a workout to prepare for Lombardia, well, then we have the confirmation our senses provided that the race was too freakin' easy. Yes, Tony Martin gave us a good time trial; yes, Highroad rode great tempo all week; but nothing else happened. I had to fight to stay awake, and that statement is not hyperbole, not exaggeration of any kind!

Does the sport need to expand to the remote reaches of the planet? I guess. Should that expansion be artificial, contrived, and force-fed? Patty's problems are many, but at the bottom lies his basic inability to lead. A few years ago, when Patty managed to bring the TdF, the Giro, and the Vuelta back into the fold, I thought he was a genius, and I staunchly defended him to anyone who would listen. Since then, he has lost the pulse of the people he represents, the professional bike racers. An overwhelming amount of the UCI's income comes from professional road racing, and over fifty percent of the UCI's income comes from one event, the elite men's world championship road race. It seems obvious to me that the UCI needs the fans, the riders, and the teams equally. As the UCI under Pat McQuaid moves further and further away from its base of support, it moves closer and closer to irrelevance.

If it continues its slide to the precipice, the UCI makes itself more and more vulnerable to a hostile takeover. Better, it moves closer to being meaningless and replacable. Personally, I hate the chaos of revolution, but there are those who have the vision, the stomach, and the cojones to wage war. If Patty doesn't start to listen to the reasonable people, those ownwers and riders whom he seems to despise, those people who merely want a say in how their livelihoods are managed, then I'm afraid he is going to sew the seeds of the storm.

No, those seeds have already been sewn, but they can be contained. Will Mr. McQuaid have the courage and vision and selflessness to exercise the leadership he has shown in the past to contain the revolution. Can he stem the tide. Will he see change as necessary and good? Does he have the vision to share power? P. McQuaid must compromise if the UCI is to survive that mighty wind which at the moment is but a breeze.