Tour de Suisse - Stage Two

"Stage Two?" I hear you ask, "what happened to Stage one?"

Well, on Sunday, LLB and I decided to be wild and reckless and watch the TdS (thinking it would be stage 1) as it happened, instead of catching up with some of our backlog of Giro and Crit Dauphine.

"And here we are with 37kms to go of Stage two of the Tour de Suisse" said an unfamiliar voice.  "Uh?" said LLB and I, in two-part harmony.

Our Eurosport coverage here in the UK is a bit spotty, bearing in mind that we have to programme up the recorder at the weekend, so if there are any changes or additions to the cycling coverage, we miss them. Apparently we completely missed Stage One.

OK, we'll watch Stage 2, then,  having no idea of the positions etc, and also no idea as to who was commentating. We gathered from what the chap said that Fabu had won the prologue (also the bright yellow jersey was a bit of a give-away) and that Linus had come 10th, but that was all we knew. Drat! I would have liked to have seen Fabu storming across the line, in his home country... and apparently OGL dropped his chain - whoops! - so he didn't get a terribly good start to the race.

However, we warmed to the commentator, as he pronounced Jean Vois' name correctly, and he was very informative, if a bit over-keen on saying "and everyfink" (that's "everything" pronounced in a faintly Essex Boy/Norf London accent).

One of his comments concerned Frankie and  his hoops:  you'll all remember this one, that back in February The Federation of the Sport of Cycling in Luxembourg (FSCL) made a fuss, they weren't happy with the bands of colour around the jersey, and wanted Leopard Trek to produce a jersey that was pretty much all done in national colours.

Frankie himself said “We can see the bands of the Luxembourg champion, but this jersey also has the advantage of respecting the design of our team".

And I am with you on this one, Frankie! I'm really not keen when a National jersey is so different from the normal team kit that you have trouble working out which team the rider belongs to.

Of course, the L-T jersey does rather lend itself to having hoops of the national colours around the middle, whereas some other teams don't.

My answer, if you want it (you didn't ask, but you're getting it anyway!) is that I actually like to see the actual flag, in it's entirety, slapped on the back of the rider concerned.

Of course, again, some teams have jerseys where the sponsor name positioning doesn't allow for a big flag to be plonked on the middle of the back....

And this leads right back to my suggestion that the UCI should have a small department, maybe just one person, who keeps a record of the kits, encourages teams to confirm to a few minor general outlines for kit layout, and who can gently encourage teams not to pick the same colours as everyone else...  I don't want for one minute to have any sort of repressive regime (we're back to those Russian cyclists again!) where the UCI dictates what the kit must look like, but it wouldn't be that hard to say to teams that when redesigning, they should allow either space for a national flag on the back, or should allow for hoops round the middle, whichever is preferred.

Talking of leaving space for things, ever wondered about how they get those jerseys ready so quickly?

You know, the race leader comes storming across the line, short pause while he pants for breath/throws up over the barriers/shoulder-barges irritating camera people out of the way - within a minute or two he's up on the podium being slid into a jersey, after the briefest of brief wipe-downs by the soigneurs.

But how do they know who is going to win? How do they get the yellow/green/polka dot etc jerseys ready?

The answer is that each team have to supply several sets of their logos - team name, sponsors, any really noticeable decoration etc - and as soon as the winner of each jersey is confirmed, they literally iron-on the stickers round the back of the podium, ready to present the jersey to the winner.

Apparently if the same person keeps winning the jersey and looks as though they will continue to do so, they make a more permanent version of it for them.

Otherwise, this is what can happen:

Geraint Thomas of Sky won the yellow jersey in Stage Four of the Bayern-Rundfahrt last month.

Here he is wearing it the next day, during Stage Five.

Oh look! There is a strange plain white panel on the front of his yellow jersey.

Hmmm (*pulls Sherlock Holmes expression*) I wonder what could possibly be missing there?

Is it possible that something has - in hushed tones - dropped off during the race?

And here he is on the podium at the end of Stage Five, having retained the jersey as overall race winner:

Oh look! The blank panel now has the Sky logo on it!!

In fact, if you look closely, I think you can see that the Sky logo is actually slightly too big for the panel, and is overlapping the text of the sponsor name underneath it.

There, don't let anyone tell you that reading blogs is a waste of your time, you are learning things every day!

Anyway, where were we? Oh yes, back to the Tour de Suisse Day Two.

Frankie attacks! He stirs them all up! Oh, except for Andy, who is plodding along in a very contented way, but who is not exactly making a great effort.

The commentator  - at this point, we still have no idea who he is - raises some speculation that OGL is off form? Or is he saving himself for later in the stage? Or later in the race? I think that he just likes to go at his own pace, and that he's using this race as a final race-training session for the TdF, that's all. He's here to help Frankie, not to win it himself... at least, that's what I'm thinking.

They start the "final" descent, and oh noes! There's a bend in the road, a barrier, and a ravine on the far side of it, and Frankie is leading his group straight towards it - panic!  What's worse, Frankie is looking back over his shoulder - look, you two, will you just stop doing that?

Luckily Frankie makes it safely round the corner, and the rest of the descent is done in good form.

Jakob does his star turn, pulling Frankie's group up the final hill, but I find myself shouting at the TV "It's pronounced Fool-sang, not Fool-Shlang!"

LLB looks at me strangely.

Minutes later, LLB is trying to work out which Sky rider is in a particular group, and he's leaning sideways on the sofa to get the camera to move over.

I look at him strangely.  But secretly I'm laughing, as we fangirls already know that leaning does NOT make the camera move, even though it should!

Frankie coasts in to the finish for 3rd place, yay Frankie! And 5th overall, can't be bad.

I saw just a little bit of Stage 3 earlier today, thanks to Nim giving me a link to a live stream - but it wasn't very good quality and kept breaking up, so I'll wait to watch it properly at the weekend. But  I was pleased to see OGL at the front for a good chunk of time, and judging by the report on the LeopardTrek site, they're well pleased with his performance, and with Jakob, and with Frankie, in fact, with everyone!

Oh, and the commentator turned out to be Anthony McCrossan, who I haven't encountered before.