Tour de Suisse Finals: and the Mollema Incident

OK, at last we have finished the TdS footage, and it was very interesting to watch Stage 8, the last road stage, with the hindsight of having read about the Mollema Incident.

Mr Mollema is currently crying about the Leopard boys steaming away from him when he unfortunately punctured, just 15kms from the end. However, his own DS Franz Maassen, said "Bauke's already small chances of victory are now completely gone." Well, that doesn't exactly make it sound as though they really thought he could make it to the podium, does it?

Then in Velonation, we get "Mollema Pledges Revenge!" Well, we can't really argue with that, as OGL did say last year that he would take his revenge, so revenge is perfectly acceptable. "We won't forget this when it comes to the Tour de France," Mollema vowed, comparing his puncture with the major crash in the TdF last year when "the Leopard guys [then riding for Saxo Bank] neutralised the race when some of their guys had crashed".  "Some of their guys" yes, including a large number of other riders, too. Not exactly a comparable incident, actually.


But leaving that aside, here is my take on the Stage.

Firstly, all was sweetness and light as they were pedalling along:  there was time to eat, drink and be merry.

Here is OGL having another troublesome toffee moment.

Frankie, Jensi, and another rider were all laughing at him, while Fabian was pedalling away very seriously just in front.

I often wonder what goes through their minds during flat, non-eventful sections, when they aren't actually talking to one another, but are apparently day-dreaming. I'm sure they are NOT day-dreaming, except possibly about making it onto the podium: I expect they are reviewing tactics, trying to remember the route, worrying about injuries, trying to ignore the nagging pain in their left shin, or trying to decide whether it's worth the bother of trying to get leg-warmers off over their shoes.

I saw that done, by the way, recently, and it was quite impressive. If you've ever tried to remove a pair of tights, ladies, you'll appreciate the complexities of the movement, and to do it on a bike... well! It seems the accepted practice is to get a team-mate to steady you, while you roll one leg down, unclip your foot, peel the legging off over the shoe, wobble crazily at the last moment when it gets stuck over the heel, then re-clip the foot, and repeat with the other side.  Not to be attempted while descending.

 Talking of removing clothing, I have noticed that many of the teams allow their riders to peel off unwanted items as they warm up, and fling them away into the crowd.

(Cries of "Ooh, mummy, look! A sweaty leg-warmer!" from a small child in the crowd. "Very nice dear," says the proud Mamma, trying not to wrinkle up her nose, "now go and see if you can find the other one...")

But Euskaltel never do that - they always stuff them up their jerseys, forming strange aero-dynamic humps. Hey, maybe they should try this for TTs? They could remove the need for the silly helmets by making a hump further back. Hmmm. OK, maybe not.

Presumably "some teams" have bigger budgets and can afford to throw their stuff out, and the rest of the teams with perhaps smaller budgets have to be a little more careful.

Talking of budgets, we spotted the Europcar Team Bus along the way (left).

We were quite impressed with the number of team buses that Europcar have, actually: they were popping up all over the place!

(Ok, ok, I know that these are not the posh team buses but are hire vans, I was trying to be funny..)

Now, all this time, we'd been looking out for the Mollema Incident, and were beginning to think that we'd missed it, when we heard Carlton Kirby , one of the two Eurosport commentators, say that they had just noticed that Mollema was not in the lead group, and they were speculating as to what had happened to him. He said that it "Never came across on Race Radio that he'd had a mechanical or anything." and there hadn't been any footage of him.

So, Leopard  Trek weren't told that he'd had a flat.

Don't forget that at this point, Garmin Cervelo were at the front, pulling hard.

Leopard Trek have Frankie in the GC, and they knew that the peloton had split, so it would make sense for them to pull along with Garmin simply in order to get Frankie a little more time against much of the rest of the field. We all know that TT is not Frankie's strongest point...

Shortly afterwards, the other commentator, Brian Smithy, clearly said "We don't know why Mollema didn't make it over the top with the first group" and these are the commentators, they get all the race radio, the car radios, etc. so they would be expected to know pretty much all that was going on. There was no footage of a puncture either: generally whenever anything happens, you get a quick "catch up" repeat, but we didn't ever see anything of it.

It is entirely possible that one of the L-T cars saw the puncture and radioed to the boys "Go! Go! Go!" without telling them why.

But it's pretty clear that the front group would not have known that Mollema had punctured.

The footage for Stage 9, the TT, started with Carlton Kirby saying "overnight we heard Mollema punctured at 15kms, lots of fingers pointed overnight at unsportsmanlike behaviour".

This, coupled with the somewhat odd Leopard-Trek report for the race, makes me think that it was indeed someone in a car who knew, and told the team to go, and didn't want to admit that he'd known about the puncture. But it is pretty mean of the L-T website to imply that Mollema just wasn't strong enough to make it over the top with the first group, and I can understand why the Rabobank fans were frothing at the mouth.

After all, an apology costs nothing: and (Contador) doesn't even have to be sincere to be accepted. It would not have hurt Leopard Trek to say on their website that their attack unfortunately coincided with Mollema's puncture, "about which they were not informed" or something similar, and some sort of apology to him.

On a personal level, I find that the sportsmanship of pro-cycling is one of the main attractions, and I would not like to see a cut-throat, win-at-all-costs mentality arising.

Right! Back to the TT. Frankie had nothing down his front this time. Carlton Kirby made a comment about the lack of chest humps: and a little later on, when a viewer Tweeted a question about it, he said that camelbacks had been "quickly banned".  I have to say, I've looked, and I can't find any mention of it in the UCI news or rules.

Instead, I have some comments about water bottles -  I know, I get distracted by the strangest things.

I remember learning last year about aero water bottles, and the fact that a TT bike without the water bottle in the carrier is less aerodynamic than with it in place.

The question arose during one of those short TTs, when it was asked why they carried bottles for such a short race. The answer was as above, with the comment that they didn't necessarily have any water in the bottles, so they weren't carrying any extra weight, but they needed the bottle to maintain aero flow.

So during this race, which was long enough for water to be required, I was particularly intrigued by the different bottle positions.

This is Rabobank, and this rider has gone for the "between the wrists" position.

It's actually quite a good one, as it's really easy to pick it up and swig from it, as I saw one of the guys doing.

It also fills in the gap between the wrists, when seen from the front, so that might possibly add to the aero effect, I'm not sure.

And when empty, it can easily be thrown out.

This one, however, (left)  is not quite so simple: how on earth do you reach round and get that without disturbing your aero position?

I spotted only one of these rear carriers, but at least two of the wrist-height ones, so I am guessing that riders are allowed to pick what suits them.

And what do our favourite team do? Well, I didn't look at all their bikes (sorry!) but  I did notice that Jakob had a funny grey wodgy thing instead of the usual bidon, can you see it?

The UCI rules state that integrated bottles are banned, those are the ones where they are moulded into the frame, and apparently Cervelo Test Team were caught out last year, having spent a lot of money designing the moulds for them.

Leopard have got round it by making a squashed, frame-filling thing which is not integral.

Ugly, isn't it? You would have thought that they would have made it in team colours: even if it were a prototype, they could have put some blue tape round it to make a stripe!

Final observation: why do the holders of the jerseys have to wear plain black shorts?

Most unflattering, and most annoying for the sponsors, wasting that big, top-money, most-sought-after across-the-bottom position.

Finally finally, (honest) there was some discussion about riders wearing skin suits for normal road races. The commentators said that it had been done in the past, and was a growing trend. Really? Can't say I'd noticed anyone riding a road race in a skin suit. How would you have a natural break? Brian Smith said that "if you could persuade a manufacturer to put three pockets on the back" it might catch on. And a flap in the front, perhaps! (No, don't go there.) (Barbara, this means you...) (Thank heavens we don't have Original Kara! And I never thought I'd say that...)