Christmas Wishes to all Schlecklanders!

Well, it's been a hectic year for us Schlecklanders, we all had to move our loyalties from SaxoBlank onto the new team, and we had barely had time to get used to the new kit before we sadly lost one of our new team members, Wouter Weylandt.

It seems as though we had hardly had time to recover from that before the Tour was upon us, and of course we had the immense thrill of Andy and Franky taking two podium places, balanced by the disappointment that we had all wanted Andy to be on the top step. (*pets Andy: "there, there, next time."*)

But then things all went spectacularly wrong, with the leaked news that Leopard Trek was a dead duck, and was being taken over by RadioShack, a team which unfortunately brings with them connotations of past misdemeanours, and the present iron rule of their current DS. They also bring with them a feeling of obligation to support their particular charity, another reason that many of us Schlecklanders have not opened our arms to them.

Still, we won't have much longer to wait before we see the new kit, the new operation, the new team: and let's all hope that it's going to be a fun, thrilling, and enjoyable new year for the new team.

So Merry Christmas to all Schlecklanders, past, present and future:  Good Luck to all RadioShack-Nissan-Trek riders, old and new: and let's hope we all enjoy a successful 2012.

Obviously there will be a bit of a gap in blogging for a few days, there's this little celebration thingy that we have to do, but I hope you all have a good time, and I look forward to your merry comments on future posts.

Coug
(Virtual Hugs all round)

Reprieve for my work shirts.. the O lives on.

Thanks to Boulderado for prompting me to have a look at the old Leopard Trek website, which is still there and still called Leopard Trek. I've rather lost heart in it lately, now that the races are over, and I haven't been there in weeks.

But look!

Ooh, look, a tempting link, I wonder where it will take us?

Answer: to what appears to be a new website, now called Radioshack Nissan Trek.    Oh dear, I might have typed that incorrectly, darn, I will have to check the press release again... anyway, here is what you get, just the one page for now... annoyingly, they have remembered to block the dir list so I can't have a sneaky peek to see if there are any other pages being made (you can often get a lot of extra information like that, particularly when companies are lazy and don't tidy up their websites properly.).

Whoo hooo and yay, the O logo appears to be staying - well, for the time being, at least.

My work shirts will live on next summer! 

And for the benefit of the curious, this photo shows the backs of the shirts, not the fronts.

Not even I am prepared to wear the logo slap bang in the middle of my modest chest!

No, the logos are on the back, so while I am hard at work in the summer, everyone passing by can see them. And as I walk around my local supermarket, passers-by can look in amazement as I walk past them, and could - if only there was another single Leopard Trek fan in the whole of South England - call out "Hey! You must be Coug!"

So far, it has utterly failed to happen...

And let's not forget a minor grumble that once again, January: once again, special invitation to a launch; once again, it's in Luxembourg.....  technically, I don't go back to work until the 9th, so I suppose that, if I were really keen, I could take that lovely new passport of mine and just fly over there.  But I'm still not sure if I'm going to be supporting the Shack, or just supporting Our Boys.  So I think I'll save the money, and use it to go over to Belgium for one of the spring classics instead.

And now the bad news, the old RadioShack site is also still going:

...so there is still a chance that we will be lumbered with their ugly ole' red and black blobby site.

I'm not quite sure if this is sinister or not: it's entirely possible that they will leave up both the old sites, for the benefit of old fans, then quietly take them down after a few months.

I suppose it could be said that it's too early to take down the two old sites, as the year hasn't quite finished yet. Oh well, we will see.

Finally, with thanks to Leelu for reminding me about it: on Twitter, we've had a sneaky peek at what could well be the new GreenEdge kit:

Well, what else could it possibly be?

It's the GreenEdge swoopy logo all right, and it bears more than a passing resemblance to the Leopard Trek kit: the bike is a Scott, and they are sponsoring GreenEdge, so I think we can believe in this one!

Unless there is a very, very keen fan somewhere in Australia who has his own screen-printing set-up......

RaidoSchleck

"Who?" I hear you ask.

Apparently OGL has only just realised the obvious terrible pun, the one we all discarded months ago, that the new team name could be RadioSchleck rather than RadioShack.

Andy! Where have you been?? Have you not been reading this blog properly? *shakes head in disappointment.*

Perhaps he's been spending his spare time with TinkerJil instead of stalking around on the internet... mind you, there's all those wasted hours, stuck in airports, or on team buses, you'd think he'd find time to keep  up to date.... oh all right, I know he doesn't actually read it! *waves cheerfully, though, just in case...*

Anyway, we all thought of RadioSchleck, aaaages ago: then we went to RaNT, which was good for a giggle for several weeks, then we got the whole business about the UCI stating the only two sponsor names are allowed. So it would only be RaN, which wasn't nearly as funny.

Somehow, though, Andy has missed out on RadioSchleck - which I suppose is a tribute to the modesty and general niceness of the Schleck brother, don't you think?

A couple of days ago, though, a new player popped up on Twitter: presumably taking the place of Ken Sommer (*pulls glum face - we liked Ken, he occasionally used to respond to our tweets, I bet this new Shack guy doesn't).  The name is Lee Applbaum (is it just me, or is there an "e" missing from that name?) who seems to be the Marketing Manager for the Shack. Oh, I beg his pardon, "Chief Marketing Officer".

So, this Lee Applbaum - who I assume is a fella - sent out a couple of tweets on the subject of the team name. Andy seems to have been completely oblivious to it, until these tweets,  which I find very sweet.

Here they are,  and I have put them in the right order for ease of reading:

Well, it shows he has a sense of humour, which is a good thing.

Andy responded:

Ah, isn't it nice to see that Luxenglish appearing again?  I was particularly amused by the use of the French idee rather than idea: by the hilarious mis-spelling of Radio as Raido, which does sound just ever so slightly like something you spray on unwanted fleas; and of course, the spelling of Schleck without the first "c". Oh, and I'm not even mentioning the missing apostrophe.

Ok, ok, he tweets in a hurry! Seriously, we don't mind, Andy, pet, we're just very happy to hear from you these days.

So there we have it, the new team name is RaidoShleck, please note correct pronunciation as per this press release that was issued by Trek earlier this week.

RadioAndySchleckTrekNissan are IN!

Phew, big sigh of relief, I have just come in and checked the cycling news, and at last, we have a licence, as do GreenEdge.

The UCI are calling the team RadioShack-Nissan, so alas, no more RaNT acronym, looks like we're stuck with RSN which doesn't really convert easily into an insult pet-name. I suspect we are going to be calling them The Shack....

But I'm telling you all now, I am NOT going to be shouting "Up the R's ! "  I won't! I won't!

The full list of teams will be released on the 12th, which is next Monday: and already there are subtle attempts to lure Leopard fans to other teams - thanks to @DivingCaroline for bringing this to my attention:

Clever, huh?

Their blurb describes it as being "white, black and Blizzard Blue".

Good to know that shade of blue has a name.

They also waffle on about how this will make them stand out in the peloton: hmm, they are betting that Leopard are going to be shoved into red-and-black Shack kit, aren't they?

They're also copying the idea of having the riders' names on the back.

Now I am a big fan of this idea, but I prefer the way Sky have done it, with the rider's name along the side panel, so that it is clearly legible when they are in the cycling position.  Great for camerabike shots.

Still no news on the new Shack kit: but Mr Bruyneel has issued the team roster, so at least those questions have been answered. Now we just have to learn the faces of all the Shack riders!  Well, all but one: there's no point trying to learn the face of poor Markel Iriza, as he did a major face-splat in training and wasn't able to go to the first meet-the-team outing in Calpe (to which I was not invited, surprisingly) due to a broken jaw, broken finger, and multiple stitches in his eyebrow and lip. Ouch!

I'm not quite prepared to publish the photo of him, all stitched and bruised, but if you follow this link, you can check it out for yourself.

Other news today? Andy says he might do the Giro after all. This could be a good thing, especially if Contador doesn't do it, and if Andy can therefore concentrate on winning the race, instead of beating Contador...

I don't mind what he does, as long as he gets lots of coverage: so, Attack, Andy, Attack! There, that's my tactical advice for the year.

More Other News: Jakob has been told to lose weight! Oh no, those dimples are at risk.... Kim Andersen says that he needs to shift a few kilos in order to get up the mountains better, and is dangling a carrot in front of him in the form of leadership of the Giro team, if he loses the weight. Otherwise he'll be sent to the Tour as a super-domestique again.  So brace yourself, Leelu and Nim, for a skinny Jakob.

Here he is at the Calpe meet'n'greet session, sucking in his cheeks to try to look thinner.

Tour of Colorado

Oh all right, the USA Pro Cycling Challenge, don't be so picky!

And yes, I know it was aaaaaages ago, but I didn't get around to writing about it at the time, and now there's not much to write about, so I thought I'd present you with my thoughts on the subject, under the general heading of "better late than never".


We didn't get much coverage in the UK, and theoretically we should not have been particularly interested anyway, as it's not a UCI race and therefore doesn't contribute any points, and as we all know, we need points to secure a Pro Team place.

This race is what Cav would therefore call a shitsmall race, an expression which I would never use in the real world, but which is now in everyday use when LLB and I are watching or discussing the cycling.  But, and it's a big but, Our Glorious Leader was in it! So one of us (that would be me) was anxiously hanging on for any glimpse of the action that Eurosport would deign to show to us, and trying to be cool about it to avoid being sent back to Andyhab,  having just about convinced LLB that I'm Over Him. ("He's soooo last year")

The first, absolutely first, thing I have to say about Colorado is WOW! The scenery! It's so big!

If you didn't get a chance to see much of the coverage, do take the time to go to Steephill TV and scroll through their superb Large pictures.... at the end of the page, click on the "Stage 1 photos" etc to move to the next stage.

But after raving about the scenery: hmm, not quite so keen on the loooong straight roads. Kinda dull to cycle on, kinda dull to watch. A bit like watching the slowest ever TTT.

But oh! That scenery!

So, The first bit we really saw was Stage 2, and we were quite distracted from the scenery by the truly terrible graphics.  For a start, they appeared to have been done using some software found for free on the internet, and apparently they were designed by someone in the 1970s.... most annoying was the km/miles to go graphic, which bobbed out from the left, flicked between miles and kms, then bobbed away. Then bobbed out again... etc. It was maddening!

For heavens' sake, we all know that the USA (like the UK) works in miles not kms, but -

a) we're all perfectly accustomed to watching racing with kms to go, and

b) if you really think it was necessary to include miles, you could have presented them at the same time, not flickering alternately with the kms.

I can't tell you how many times I glanced at the corner of the screen and just read the number, not the km/miles indication, and got the wrong one! Right, end of grumbles about terrible graphics.

"Andy Schleck's  looking worried" said the commentator. (One of us sprang to attention, invisibly) Well, we would have liked to have seen that for ourselves, but instead we were presented with a Monet-style impressionistic jigsaw instead.  I don't know what was wrong with the TV company's transmission equipment, but the picture quality was terrible! Absolutely dreadful,  we kept losing the picture - or rather, it kept freezing in this strange way. Mind you, some of them were almost lovely,  in a way....

But then it all went black... then suddenly we went to a different camera: no break-up, but the picture was all fuzzy and out of focus. No! No! That's no good!  Go to Helicopter-Cam! Aaagh, he's miles out of position, can't even see the race! Go to Camera Five! No! That's the black one! Go to Camera Three! Oh blimey, we're back to the broken frozen one again.

This was very frustrating.

Suddenly the view was clear - we were watching the riders cycle along a sort of dirt-track. Boulderado, you probably know the one I mean.... nothing special, we thought, until the camera started to pull back... and back... and back... until it turned into a tiny, invisible ribbon of track clinging to the side of an immense one-in-one slope, with no safety rails at all, and no reason to stop rolling, if you were unlucky enough to fall off it, until you hit the bottom, about a week and a half later. it was a staggering piece of scenery, and I can't find a single photo of it.

In my notes from the race, I have the comment:  "Hateful fans on Independence Pass".  I am seeing this more and more at big cycle races, the way the fans push closer and closer as the riders near a summit, and the way they hit the riders, wave flags in their faces, run alongside them (god, the riders must soooo hate that!) and so on.

I really don't like that - cycling fans used to be excited and enthusiastic, yes, but they are starting to turn into football hooligans, and it's starting to get unpleasant. I'm sure you all remember me commenting earlier in the year at Andy straight-arming a fan away from himself, and of course there was the Contador Incident, where he slapped a spectator who was dressed as a doctor and was waving an enormous syringe. This is all quite unpleasant stuff, and does not help to promote cycling as a gentlemanly sport.

Anyway, enough of that: there was another hugely amusing graphic, provided by the TV company: when the commentators were talking about a particular rider (especially an American one, hem hem) they put up a graphic showing the name of the rider along with his mug-shot, which is normal enough: but they found a way to add a pointer to the graphic, which was linked to the rider on the screen. So when the rider moved around the peloton, the point of the pointer went with him.

This was hilarious, especially when the rider was bobbing up and down on the pedals, as the pointer had to bob up and down as well.

This lead to some speculation between LLB and I, about ways to make races more exciting visually: we'd like them to make a cartoon explosion, and to link it to every bidon that is thrown out.

I think I've mentioned before (possibly in the Alex Dowsett Incident) that whenever bidons are lobbed out of the peloton, LLB and I make wheeeee! Puwhhhhhhhh! noises as they arc up, then hit the ground. So it would be great if the TV coverage could include cartoon explosions for us.

Well, we thought it was funny.

One other point of note in this race (well, for me) was the performance of TeeJay Van Garderen,  or "Bum-fluff" as I call him, who calls himself, on Twitter, a Cougar Hunter. Humph.  Well, the so-called Cougar Hunter did quite well in this stage, but Big George Hincapie showed him who's boss, on my behalf. Thanks, George.

At this point there was an inexplicable jump from Stage 2 coverage to Stage 6, with nothing inbetween. Andy's great breakaway,  his blow up, we missed it all. Apparently he was awarded the Combatative Rider jersey, but we didn't get to see it. I do hope it wasn't the awful orange burger-flipper jersey.

Oh dear, it was.

Never mind, to make up for it, here's a nice pic from good old Steephill TV:

And finally, this photo - below - just made me screech with laughter (oh dear, am I such a horrible person? Yes, I most certainly am!)

Tear your eyes away from the cyclist, and look at the spectator behind. Yes, dear, you're wearing your lovely pink racer-back top, ooh, look at you all sporty and in-the-right-gear, you even kept your cycle helmet on to prove that you're a cyclist too: but oh! the bra!  No! No! NO!

If you wear a racer back top, you wear a racer back bra, ok? Simple rule! Not even a fashion rule, it's a suitable-clothing rule. You wear a racer back to stop the straps slipping down, right? Otherwise you'd just wear a singlet or running vest, whatever you call them. But if your aim is to avoid straps slipping down, then you need to wear a bra whose straps don't slip down, too!

I don't know why I find this quite so hilarious - I mean, girls show their bras all the time these days, why, think of TinkerJil and her see-through top. But she wore a black bra underneath: Correct! If she'd worn a white bra, it would have been sooooo tacky.

Likewise this girly should be wearing black underwear, or even pink: not white, and there's something about the style of that oh-so-sensible, industrial-strength bra that just makes me think Playtex Cross Your Heart.

[Note for non-UK readers, Playtex made really, really sturdy bras and corsets back in the 50s and 60s, the sort that us modern girlies would not be seen dead in. "Foundation garments" or "brassieres", they would have been called, nothing as light and insubstantial as "bra".]

OK, enough of that, back to the racing.

But staying on the subject of clothing, LLB and I were quite intrigued by the Rabobank kit: they seemed to have at least three different jerseys within their team.  Of course, I can't find any photos to illustrate this, so you'll have to take my word for it...  I mean, I know that team jerseys come in different materials: Leopard  have solid jerseys for normal races, jerseys made mainly of "net" effect fabric for the hot races, jerseys that are part solid, part net for those awkward in-between days etc - but generally, they are all printed the same.

But the Rabobank jerseys had very slightly different designs on them - the blue and orange blocks didn't line up in the same way, for example. This was most intriguing.  Mind you, remember how we laughed at the new SaxoBank kit, with the eagles, some of which had, er, longer necks than the others?

So what's the story? Do the teams order a new batch of kit every month? Do they take the opportunity of a new order to make a few minor tweaks to the design each time? Do they order from different suppliers each time? (I thought that clothing companies were often sponsors, ie Craft, so you'd think that would not be the case.) Do the clothing companies not keep "patterns" or "blocks" of the kit, do they re-do the layout every time there is a new order? Are some of them actually cheap knock-offs, run off in some back-street sweat-shop to save costs?

Questions, questions.

Another question has to be Why are all the big teams here, at a non-UCI race, at an unfamiliar altitude? In the case of Frankie and Andy, we thought it was probably to do with Trek: if a sponsor says "we want you to be there" then I guess the management have to accommodate it?

So, Stage 6, we enter the Denver loop, and finally, finally! we get spectators - lots and lots and lots of them. Huge crowds! Fantastic! Now we can see why this race was referred to as being a challenge to the Vuelta - there's no comparison between this turn-out, and the strange zombie tour.

However, if Colorado want to beat the Vuelta, they really have to get their cameras and their commentary sorted out. On the little footage that we did get, we were constantly hearing the commentators complaining that they had no information on, for example, who had been taken off to hospital. Or who was in the break. Or that their start numbers didn't match the graphics. Or what the gaps were.

Well, there you have it, my comments on Colorado - with apologies for the lateness. And fingers crossed that the girly in The Bra does not turn out to be Elle......

Ken Sommer Teases Coug Again

Yesterday on Twitter - look, it's raining in the UK, all right, I can't get out to work, I'm stuck indoors, it was a bit dull, I had lots of paperwork to do but the Twitter page just opened up all by itself, and oh! as though by magic I was signed in......

Start again: Yesterday, on Twitter, I decided to change my avatar - yet again - as I'm getting a bit tired of the Crying Leopard face.

 

The time for wailing is over: Leopard Trek are no more, the merger has happened, now we all have to put on our smiley faces and make the most of it, look forward to the next season and the new challenges, blah blah blah woof woof etc.

You will remember that I horrified Ken Sommer recently with my nasty red Radio-Trek logo *sniggers and much laughter all round*.

Well, I didn't want to make him cross, so I thought I'd have another go at a better "fake" logo.

After some speculation about jersey design, I thought I might suggest that elements of the old jerseys could be retained, so I came up with this:

And actually, it's not bad, is it? In fact, think how much money they could save, by just screen printing this logo over the top of the old L-T jerseys, then adding NISSAN in big letters across the back.

There you go, we knew there was a reason for all that white space.... with a bit of felt-pen work on the Mercedes logos, and one or two others, they could be completely re-kitted at a fraction of the normal cost.

Anyway, having spent some time creating this minor work of art, I thought I should bring it to Ken's attention, to see if I'd get a seal of approval, or a tiny, tiny hint as to what the kit might actually be.

And do you know what? He replied, which is always nice: and he replied with a link to a photo, which he must have put up specially just to answer this tweet:

What can I say? Well done Ken, you  had me going there, and Kat fell for it as well, and Barbara - we all went rushing off to see what the new jersey was going to be like, only to meet his retro rebuff.

I suppose you could say that at least he has confirmed that there IS going to be a new jersey, but that was a it of a foregone conclusion really, wasn't it? Neither the L-T kit nor the Shack kit would have quite the right selection of sponsor names, although, errrr, horrible thought, the Shack kit does indeed feature Shack, Nissan and Trek (and Twitter, for some unknown reason) so a case could be made for sticking to the old kit.

Yikes!

I am so glad that no-one suggested that on any of the blogs or forums, that would have been quite worrying! But luckily Ken has now confirmed that there will be a new kit, so let's be grateful and look forward to seeing it.

And apparently they're having a press conference next week, so maybe they'll unveil the new kit there? Let's hope that they have a UCI licence by then!

Oh, and as a side issue, it's almost a pity that Leopard Trek were riding Trek bikes not Bianchi - anyone else noticed the strange similarity in colour choice?