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......