You may already be a winner

"They see me rollin', they be mining.."

Giuseppe stood waiting on a narrow sector of pave.
For him the race was over.
His bike broken and his body spent

For the 2014 season the new UCI approved bikes and kit was presented at the Del Oro team presentation.
Here Andrea awaits the arrival of his teammates

All you platers suck my gold

The guy at the shop told me that this was actually built for the pope

Me and the Cornish Pasty logo are like this man.

The winner has been announced in our house organ, but I won't keep you in suspense: it was Boris Johnson. There is no truth to the rumour that the London mayor was only chosen because I happened to have a clean head of his lying around. A jersey tailored to Mr Johnson's physique was not available at the time of going to press.

2nd prize is shared between hippy of LFGSS for "I use a fisheye for this shot fella," judged favourably for its technical merit, and rhb, also of LFGSS, who was very fast off the mark with "Lesson: don't piss off your powder coater."

Hippy gets this .jpg certificate, which grants honorary credentials to teach frisbee. I have a small supply.

rhb is free to claim a meal at Tibits, a veggie eatery. Just tell staff you've participated in the NACF 'golden man' caption competition and I'm sure they will accommodate you. [Note: if the cashier appears to reach for a button underneath the counter when you attempt to redeem your prize, you might want to dash out the exit, which is fortunately close to the registers.]

Honourable mention goes to everyone who took part, including jordan_217, Cornerblock, ArdyOCD, Blacktemplar, dmclite-3.0, Mr Goo, gaz, Ray, 661-Pete, Audax67, Mick F, Canardly, Eccentrica Gallumbits, clockwork_killa, adroit, Aroogah, cliveo, ParryMan, Rod Munch, blue fleet, marcom, Jonerfun, wiganwill, sumo, and Plastic Pedals. RonB of BikeRadar, this one's for you. Jogler of Yacf led me to Cycling Cartoons by Dave Walker via the Falmouth Wheelers, which was nice, and Si of CTC prompted one last bit of (admittedly crude) photoshopping:

Finally, happy new year to those using the Chinese calendar. Live long and prosper.

^ that's all pretty random, but thanks nevertheless for allowing us to join in the fun...

^ that's all pretty random, but thanks nevertheless for allowing us to join in the fun...

It's life that's random. I try to tie it together with a golden thread.

– Opening pic taken in London, Boris is mayor, Boris is one of those people who has the gold (if not quite as much as NYC's Bloomberg) and so makes the rules

– Hippies traditionally have a known affinity for pastimes such as frisbee; an outlier I couldn't pass up as I really did have one of those certificates sitting around and hated to see it go to waste

– Tibits was started in Switzerland, where all those cash-for-gold envelopes get redirected to already overstocked vaults

– The gold busker I dug up for RonB's Jimmy Savile reference was a double hit, with bird perched on knee (I also had a pic of the busker luring in a child, but resisted)

– The gold woman in the British Museum and Bradley's gold necklace wrapped it all with a bow

The Chinese coda was inspired from both the museum gallery shown above, where China has a large presence, and the happy coincidence that yesterday was the start of a new year, which seemed a good day not only to cast horoscopes but to announce winners, the only better one being April 1, unfortunately still some time away.