Catalunya - Stage 4

Eurosport are doing well so far this year, we are getting the stages in the right order with none missing - well, apart from stage 3, and we can't blame them for that.

So, we started stage 4 with massive discussions from David Harmon, the commentator, about the fiasco of stage 3, and his views - which were extensively aired - on what should have been done.

Apparently all the riders who DNFed (Did Not Finish) were offered the chance to start again, which is about the only decent  thing the organisers could possibly have done: but only 3 riders took up the offer, so yar boo sucks to that! Of those three, one was TJ "Bumfluff" Van Garderen: what it is with these honorary Schlecklanders? I pick a rider at random and make rude comments about him, and then they somehow come to prominence. Or is it just coincidence? Yes, you are probably right, it's just coincidence.

We are barely five minutes into the coverage and lo! the Andy-bashing starts: the second race on the trot that he has failed to finish, they say. Just like Basso, who hasn't actually finished a race this year. LLB looks smug, I sit there refusing to comment.

The race has now changed into a sort of Handicap race: instead of the "big" teams dominating, we are seeing that the smaller teams  now have a full squad and can perform tactical manoeuvres, whereas the big team are mostly down to three or four riders. Andalucia - nice kit, by the way - suddenly have a chance!

Talking of kit, what does anyone think about the Cofidis kit this year? Am I the only one to think that the one white arm with cross-strap makes it looks like a natty off-the-shoulder evening dress?

Right, we're back to the debate about stage 3 -our commentators don't seem too interested in what's happening on the screen. Brian Smith is standing firm that riders who Did Not Finish yesterday should be penalised, they should not be allowed to just restart along with everyone else, with their GC times unchanged.

I think he's right, actually, and I quite like his scheme for the penalties: for every 10km before the (eventual) end point, a rider is penalised one minute.  So if he dropped out 40km before the end, he gets 4 minutes added to his time.  Neat! But not of any use, as the race organisers just let them all start again. All three of them.

Oh dear, more Schleck-bashing: but at least they are saying exactly the same things about Basso. Mind you, I thought that Basso was not looking in particularly good form, we kept seeing him falling off the back of groups, whereas I don't think I actually saw Andy during the race at all: which is bad from an Admire-A-Schleck point of view (oops, no, no, don't drag me back to Andyhab, I meant admiring as in good form and likely to do well, not - oh dear.) but at least it means that he was staying out of trouble, and wasn't being dropped.

At this point LLB paused the recording, and to my surprise there was a tandem on screen:

hmmm, it looks as though Albasini (chorus of "Yay! Go, GreenEdge" from all the Southern Hemisphere Schlecklanders) is teaming up with Lotto to ensure that he gets safely through the stage.

Ah, more information from our puzzled commentators (who are not enjoying this race, we can tell - there are no graphics showing the kms to go, for a start!), apparently the BMC twitter feed is saying that Bumfluff did NOT start the race today.  We don't know if that means that only two of the DNFs re-started, or if it was someone else altogether, but apparently it wasn't "Teej" so he's gone home to sit in a sauna then thaw out gently at room temperature.  ("before being popped into the oven at gas mark 5 for two hours...")

As mentioned yesterday, these commentators must thank their lucky stars for Twitter!

LLB commented that one reason why so many of the 50-or-so DNFs  did not exercise their option to restart is that there might be problems if one of them did well in latter stages: I mean, can you imagine the reaction of someone who half-killed themselves finishing stage 3, to someone who skipped out half-way through, then came back the next day with no penalties, and beat them? There might be Things Said, or possibly it might be bicycle wheels at dawn.

To give you an idea of how unexciting this stage was, our Eurosport commentators became fixated by the fact that the person doing the graphics had made a mistake - one of the riders in the two-man breakaway was number 175,  Markcynski of Vaconsoleil, but the graphics operator had clearly mis-read the number as 75, so it read Kritskiy of Katusha. Again and again. David Harmon could NOT let it go! He made comments about ineptness of graphics operators, of the possibility of a swift clip round the year: he was glad to see the commissaire's car coming up behind the break in the hopes that they would tell the broadcasters that they had the number wrong: then he suggested "making a book" on when the graphic would be changed, and he bet the other commentator, Brian, £10 that it would be done in less than three more viewings.

This went on for, well, at least ten minutes and one advert break, until finally, finally, the graphic was updated, and he claimed his tenner. Although then several people apparently Tweeted that he'd missed a few sightings, and that there had actually been five more viewings so he wasn't entitled to the tenner.

Ho hum.

There was one moment of humour when the two-man break were seen approaching the finish line, and the commentators got all excited, thinking that this was the actual finish: no, it was 30kms to go, they were still doing loops, but the lack of kms-to-go graphics and the general boredom of the stage had distracted them completely.

30kms later, we were looking at a six-man break which were being pulled back agonisingly slowly: would they make it? Would they be caught? Would they be caught less than 4" from the line? It ended in a nail-biting finish, with a sprint finish between five climbers, which was novel, and a lot less heart-stopping than a sprint finish between sprinters. And Rigoberto Uran from Sky won it! Yay for Sky! Go, second team!

Here he is, receiving his stage win award.

Technically, Uran is actually Uran Uran (and he's from ColOMbia, Pahola!) which always leads to the temptation to call him Duran Duran. Must....Resist....

And look at his little face! The love-child of Frances de la Tour and a bassett hound, possibly.

Have to say, *with deep sarcasm*,  "loooove the award".  Honestly,  who makes these things? Local schools? Local primary schools? You can see on the underside of this one where they have painted the sides of the base, and it has dripped round to the underneath.  Clearly whoever makes them has never seen a cycling presentation, and does not know that they are also seen from underneath.

So, there we are for Catalunya so far: over the weekend I'll be hoping to finish watching this one, and with luck we'll get some footage for the Criterium International, where Frankie will be leading the team - and hopefully not swallowing bees, falling over arnco barriers or being snowed on - along with Jensi, Linus, George Bennett (who? don't know him yet) MM,  Nelson Oliveira (don't know him, either) Joost and the amusingly-named Ben King. Why amusing? It always sounds like one word - Benking. A bit like Bonking but presumably doing it sideways.