Three Days of de Panne

...all happened so long ago that I'm sure you've all forgotten about it: and after all, Team Leopard Trek wasn't even in it, so why was I watching it? Well, Sky, my second team, were in it: and having been deprived of cycling all over the winter, I am now happy to watch pretty much any men's pro-cycling.

I'm even learning some of the Continental teams! They have such great names, like Veranda's Willem. The willem of Veranda? Who is Veranda? Could she be a mysterious dark-eyed former beauty queen, hiding herself away in her fading years, attended only by her faithful former lover Willem (that's William spelt wrong, by the way),  whose only other interest is his pro-cycling team.

Or possibly, Willem is her faithful attendant, who manages the household, deals with the tradesmen, cuts the grass etc, and it is her former lover, spurned and rejected when she lost her beauty but who still carries a torch for the lovely Veranda, who sponsors the team, and named it after his lover's attendant....   sorry, what was that? Time to get back into the straitjacket? Surely not, we haven't even said OGL's name yet!

OK, De Panne.Day 1.  Lovely sunny day. Described as "a climber's day", so, lots of hills. Good start to the event, two guys are carted off to hospital, oh dear. It was cat-and-mouse right up to the end, and Greipel won it, but regretted it when he was handed the most hideous trophy ever seen.

Just look at it!

Described somewhere as "a 6th form art project" and they're not far wrong.

I mean, what have we got? A sort of crescent moon, but with a mushroom (is that significant? Is is a mushroom-growing area? Are there fairies there?) growing on the end, and with strange bobbles on it.

A religious icon of some sort.

Another mushroom.

A man with a yellow jersey, no trousers, and terrible bed-head hair reclining on the steps, and either blowing into a sort of horn (that green thing under his arm) or sucking on some sort of pipe.

All very dodgy. Oh, and I nearly forgot the orange box of tissues, balancing on a snowball.

And the lovely piece of hardboard for a base! What, they couldn't even be bothered to cover up the rough edges??!!

I bet that trophy didn't even make it back to the hotel that night....

Day 2: the sprinters' day.  Ah, the famous "sticky bottle" episode: Stijn Devolder (pronounced Shtan, like Stan - very old-fashioned English name, no-one under the age of 75 called Stan any more - but while wearing false teeth) had the longest sticky bottle episode ever seen, leading Magnus Backstedt to say that he would be penalised "at least a minute and a substantial fine" by the commissaires.

Then a strange moment: a guy fell off at the very same tree that we saw in Gent-Wevelgem! The very same corner! I remember saying at the time that it was a bit mean of the organisers to set up a static camera on that particular corner, as though they were expecting tumbles - and of course there were several, it was a horrible tight corner, narrowing into a bottleneck, on a very poor surface. "How to make cycling more interesting for the casual viewer: get lots of pics of accident." Hmmm.

Back to the race, David Harmon usually invites comments on Twitter, but today he said that they couldn't get any comments, as the Twitter page was overloaded.

See, I broke it!

Finally, much excitement towards the end, as Graeme Brown broke for the line, amid many shouts of "Graeme Brown?" from LLB and I. He nearly did it, too, he was third in line right up to the last sprint.

Day 3: this was always going to be an odd day: a half-stage in the morning, a mere 111kms, short break for lunch and a lie-down, then a individual Time Trial to see who ate too many pies at lunchtime.

And it was a grizzly, drizzly day.... as they did the signing in and getting ready bit, there was a stout and homely Podium Girl.... fairly obviously someone's daughter... but aha, there's hope for me yet! I can't find a photo of her, sadly.

Shtan Devolder avoided sanctions, in the end: he withdrew from the race. Coward! Face it like a man, man!

The race wasn't particularly thrilling, other than a glimpse into the sidelines: at one point the course ran alongside a long straight stretch of canal, with a road on the other side, which appeared to have a series of minibus outings on it. There were minibuses from Topsport-Mercator, saw that one, and Quickstep: I couldn't read the names on the others, but there must have been a dozen of them. I wonder how you get a seat on one? Was it just for that stretch? Were they provided by the organisers? They were all the same model of minibus, so they weren't provided by the teams: and all the same colour, but with the team names sign-written all over them. Again, I can't find photos of them... thinks, must find a way to get a screen cap from the TV.....

Then, at 14km to go, great excitement: Miss FeeDee was leading the escape! Huh? Oh, my mistake, it was Federico, not Federica. I did wonder why Miss FeeDee hadn't mentioned it on her blog... so, Mr FeeDee Canuti of Colnago lead the escape, looking very relaxed. He lead right up to 3km to go - a classic TV break.

It ended in sprint finish, and Graeme Brown ("Graeme Brown?!") nearly won it!

Day 3 after lunch: Mr FeeDee was leading the time trial for a long time, yay!  I loved the hilarious layout of the TT course, particularly that long straight road, up one carriageway, screech round the central reservation and back down the other carriageway. Bad enough for the cyclists, but to watch the team cars all having to stop and do a three-point turn was just hysterically funny. One car failed to make the turn, was too late to do a three-point as the car behind him was too close, so he just bumped up the kerb and bashed into the hedging! Great stuff.

Although the commentators didn't mention it, Niki Terpstra of Quickstep crashed, we saw him sitting by the road with his arm in a sling. Later, it turned out that he'd broken a collarbone, poor boy.

Oddly enough, I noticed that Lieuwe Westra of VacansOleil appeared to have something down  his jumper, very much a la Frankie: again, sorry, can't find pictures of it. However, no-one said anything.

This was possibly one of the shortest time-trials, not in duration, but in lack of competitors: due to that lovely old rule about finishing in time-of-winner-plus-12%-or-whatever-if-average-more-than-45kpm etc etc, 77 riders were out of time, and only 56 were able to take part in the TT.

So there it was, De Panne over and done with.

And now for something totally non-cycling-related: easter eggs, and What Are We Teaching Our Children?

Actually, not totally non-cycling-related: you might remember me mentioning that during Fleche-Wallone, LLB and I were eating easter-eggs, and he was taking advantage of my concentration on watching OGL to steal bits of my egg. The beast!

Well, as I was putting the carton into the recycling bin (*my halo gleams*) I noticed that there were some rather strange illustrations on the box.

 Here's the first one - look , these two bullying bunnies are terrorising another bunny by painting it with splodges of brown and beige ("Soooo 70s, my dears").

You can tell the tortured bunny is not enjoying it, his ears are all down and his eyes are closed as though he was crying.

Or possibly he's asleep? Well, that would be a kinder interpretation, but it's still pretty mean to play tricks on other bunnies/people while they are asleep.

Then there's this one, on the side of the carton: one bunny is, by the look of it, bursting a paper bag (or possibly a chick, if you want ultimate cruelty, although I'm not sure that popping a chick would make a big enough Bang! unless you inflated it first....) to make the other bunny leap up, startled.

Now, you may well scoff, or say that I am reading too much into this, but it's no wonder that today's children are turning out to be little monsters, if this is the sort of subliminal programming that they are receiving?