Aww, bye bye to Jurgen Van de Walle...(Andy Schleck girlfriend update)

So sad, poor old Jurgen Van de Walle: what a crappy Tour he's had.

Firstly he crashed spectacularly hard while trying to warn other riders about a hazard.

Then he spends pretty much the rest of the day pulling the entire peloton, despite having bandages all over the place.

THEN I get his name wrong on this blog, due to my own laziness in not checking the team roster properly....

...and now, after struggling through the TTT, he's finally had to admit that he's not fit enough to finish the stage, and he's the Tour's first official withdrawal.

Aww, poor Jurgen. Most non-Schleck riders who are mentioned on this blog go on to win whole races, (JVS, we mean you!), but alas, not this time.

Maybe he'll have better luck later in the season, when his inside-thigh muscle has healed. I do hate the phrase "groin strain", don't you?

It looks as though Christophe Kern from Europcar (he won a stage in the Crit Dauphine recently) might be next to withdraw, he's having knee problems: but good news about Solar, he's no longer in a coma and is starting to make very slight improvements.

Great news for us today: Contador is now 1'30" down on Andy: Frankie came in 7th on the same time as Cadel Evans, who pipped Conti to the win by, apparently, "the width of one tyre and a deep section rim." Well done, Cuddles. This leaves Frankie in 3rd place in the GC, with Andy 9th and Jakob 10th.

Hey, remember our outrage about the TT bike checks? (*pat on back to BoulderEl for spotting it*)

Incidentally, (*sniggers heartily*) Johan Bruyneel of Radioshack and Bradley McGee of SaxoBank have been fined 200 Swiss francs (each!) for unprofessional conduct over the saddle-checking fiasco.  (I put these links in, by the way, so that you can check that I am not making this stuff up.)

The UCI are saying that they told teams a month ago that they would be checking this item. Ah, how the story keeps on changing.  An interesting point is made by Mr Bruyneel, that these same bikes have been scrutinised and accepted by the same officials in the Tour de Suisse and the Crit Dauphine.  And yet the UCI saw fit to make a big fuss at the Tour, and now these two guys have been heavily fined for, presumably, looming over the officials in a threatening way.

Did I say "heavily fined"? 200 francs, wow, that's (*pause while I find a calculator - drat, can't find one, have to take my socks off, hold on a tick:*)  $237, or £148 good old British pounds, or 222 Aussie dollars ("Hey Leelu!") wow, that's nearly two visits from my plumber to fix the boiler, then. Yes, dear readers, my boiler is dripping gently upon the floor and alas, I have no hot water.

Anyway, getting back to bikes,  it looks as though the UCI are determined to stir up trouble - or possibly, to distract us away from drug problems. They've announced that they are going to start random bike checks, immediately.  This means that they can grab a bike and take it away for testing, with no notice. If a bike goes missing on the way to the commissaire's tent, or if a team is found trying to substitute another bike, then the rider will be immediately disqualified from the Tour.

Seems harsh, huh?

But there could be a reason: and it's down to our good friend Contador, who might be in trouble again.

It seems that during the Giro, he did a lot of bike changing in the mountain stages, for no apparent reason. Not changing a wheel, but changing the entire bike, and not once but "several times".

There's a chap called Cyrille Guimard, described as a former DS, who is suggesting - well, no, insinuating - that Conti has been using "mechanical doping" or, in short, a bike with an engine.

Oh dear yes, we all remember the slanderous attacks on Fabian last year. This Guimard appears to be suggesting that the common link between Fabian's alleged engine-in-bike, and Conti's undoubted leaping-up-a-mountain-like-a-little-lambkin is Bjarne Riis, who is (he thinks) the purveyor of these electric bikes.

The UCI announced last year that they were going to x-ray bikes, but nothing came of it and, as far as anyone knows, they are no longer doing so. Which means that anyone accused of having an engine in their bike can't really prove that they hadn't....

...Poor Bjarne, things are not going well for him. Not least because SaxoBank only signed up for one more year of sponsorship because he got Contador on board the squad.

That means that Bjarne is once more hunting for a sponsor for 2012, and with the doping scandal etc hanging over Contador's head - well, he's not finding it easy.

And as well as that, Bjarne has to keep just a little bit of attention free for Baby Bjarne, Thomas Nybo,  who has just been selected to ride in the Tour of Denmark.

Cute little thing, ain't he?

I wish I could say that we have found out more about ANDY SCHLECK GIRLFRIEND 2011 JIL and other annoying search terms, but all we know is that now he refers to her most casually: “I have a girlfriend, yes. I have a busy life and I’m away for long periods, but I would not change it. She has to live with this for the time of my career.”

A-ha-ha neighing!  No, I don't know quite why I find this so funny. I mean, funny ha-ha, rofl funny. And sort of cute. I know things often get lost in the translation, but it seems so un-characteristically heartless of him, and at the same time he makes it sound as though she's already agreed to put it up with it until he gives up racing, like a long-term thing. (*sound of breaking hearts all over the continent*)

Or, perhaps we should say that this is the true Andy, utterly dedicated to his racing? Which, frankly, is what I would expect. I'm still a bit surprised that Jakob has the Lovely LouLou, she just kinda looks like a high maintenance girlfriend that would get all pouty when he has to go off and live in hotels with the boys for weeks at a time. (Apologies to the perfect stranger LouLou, we know nothing about you so we have to extrapolate and I may well be completely wrong.)