Andy Schleck Undergoes Mind Control to Improve TT!

Yes folks, you heard it here first: in a desperate attempt to improve his time trialling, or, what's more to the point, to avoid having to undergo Mr Bruyneel's "Special Wind Tunnel Testing" about which we have heard so little - but imagined so much - Andy is trying a new, psychological method: thought control, from Fabian.

Well, think abut it, it makes a lot of sense: Fab is far and away the best TTer around - yes, yes, I know Tony Martin won the jersey at the Worlds, but honestly, Fab's been a bit busy this year, and anyway, we know he's the best.

So, what we need is for Andy - and Frankie, for that matter, but Andy has bravely volunteered to be the guinea pig - to absorb some of Fabian's skill at choosing lines, avoiding hazards etc.

To this end, Leopard have invented a new procedure whereby Andy and Fabian are linked together mentally, and this was first tested at the Tour. Andy was, of course, in the team car just behind Fabian when he went out for his TT run: they need to keep their brains within a narrow range of one other, otherwise Andy would "lose the signal".

As we know, it was fairly successful, as Andy did what was possibly the best TT of his career so far.

Now that we are in the "off" season, they have a chance to really develop the technique, and iron out some of the side effects: one of which is that Andy sometimes finds himself repeating what Fabian is saying.

As an example, on Twitter today:

Spot the difference!


Of course, I initially wondered it if was a simple admin error, so I checked with Ken Sommer.

When I say "checked with", I actually mean "blatantly and rather rudely accused".

However, Ken is a true gentleman, and always takes these things well:

There is a tweet from Ken missing - he is worse than Figgy for deleting his tweets, I tell you - as he replied to my first tweet by saying

"@SchlecklanderCG I am innocent!"

To which I replied "I doubt that!" *sniggers", as you can see.


















OK, you do realise that I was joking about the mind control, don't you? Good.

Frankie was a bit more sensible on the subject of the first meeting of the new team: he said:

There, much better, well done Frankie!

So, all jokes about using each other's phones aside, it's good to hear that they are upbeat about next year.

Mr Bruyneel hasn't updated his blog yet, but it will be interesting (won't it?) to hear his take on the meeting.