Ultimate Tuft

"What!" I can hear you screeching:  "Puma Babe (*"I wish!"*) has gone bonkers again!

No, I haven't gone bonkers, although the thought of being able to watch Paris-Roubaix on Sunday LIVE is quite thrilling: and knowing that in spare moments, we have all that footage, lots and lots of lots of it, of Our Glorious Leader and other fave Leopards pedalling for glory in the Basque country. And of course the beauty of having recorded it, is that if there are any "particularly good" bits, I can watch them again! And again!

Yay!

Talking of which, I've just checked the Leopard site, and has anyone noticed the incredibly poor quality of the official Leopard Trek photos for the Basque Tour? Take a look! They're all pixellated and horrible! Perhaps Mean Old Mr Watson the photographer has finally realised that everyone else and his dog are just pinching his photos off the site, and featuring them in blogs, tumblr etc without bothering to ask, so he's only putting up poor quality photos?  That'll teach him to say "no" to someone who asks politely.

So, what about this photo then? LLB brought to my attention that there is a cyclist called Svein Tuft - no, really, you can look him up on google. Until last year he rode for Garmin, but for some reason he's downgraded himself to a Canadian pro-continental team called SpiderTech. Great name. Both his, and that of the team.

And that's him, in his Garmin days, undergoing a specific sort of torture for cyclists in the space legs. I kid you not, that's what they're called. Something to do with compression - presumably considered to be funkier than support hose or tubigrip.

Sadly, though, Mr Tuft will never be a member of the Tufty Club, as he lacks the necessary appendage, ie hair.

Which means we will have to return to Our Glorious Leader for true and wonderful tuftage.

As an aside, I have just discovered, while looking at pictures of Andy researching this blog, that if you type into Google "Andy Schleck" and hair, on page four, you get my avatar! Bizarre! Look! There I am, sandwiched between Cute Overbite ("Hi Maggie!") and my favourite photo, er, second favourite photo.

I'm impressed!

So, back to Tuftage:

Gotta love that fluffy "I've just been rubbed down by my soigneur and have seen neither a comb nor a mirror since" look.

I have to wonder what the photographers behind him are up to - he's over here! You've missed him!

And now, just because I can, here's Andy being fluffed prior to the photo shoot:  you can tell he's not taking it all too seriously, can't you?

Looks a little as though she's struggling with what's left of his hair - this is not long after that brutal chop he had for the Team Leopard Trek presentation back in January - and is trying to fluff up the remains.

Ah, what a terrible job, having to run your fingers through Andy Schleck's hair while the two of you laugh and joke together......