GIRO!! Time Trial, stage 1

Wave those pink knickers around, Jen! Wave that pink bra, Nim!

Yes, some of you are getting in the swing by wearing pink for the Giro - sadly I won't be participating as the only pink clothing I have is knickers, and I won't be making them available for public inspection!!

Mind you, as one of my Tweeps said, I could always put a red sock in with a load of whites, which would provide an entire pink wardrobe.

I think not.

So, the Giro!  LLB and I prepared ourselves for the afternoon.

Comfy sofa? Check.
Eurosport on Hard Drive, recording? Check.
Bowl of cheesy biscuits to fight over eat? Check.
Start list? Check.
Small Union Jack flags to wave? Check.
Heating on? Check. Yes, I know it's May, but in England it's cold, cold, cold...

And we were off! Oh, no we're not, hang on, what's this, an interview with Contador? But he's not even in it?! It seems that Eurosport, or possibly the Giro organisers,  have decided to have Contador giving his thoughts on the race, the participants etc. Either this is a considerate way of acknowledging his truly shameful treatment by the UCI, who told him he was ok to race then back-dated his punishment: or, it was another slap in the face for Scarponi, who was only presented with the pink jersey one day before the race started, with very much the feeling of "oh well, here, take it, you can wear it tomorrow but only for one day, ok?

To be fair, Contador was looking relaxed, fit, lean, tanned, and composed. The photography was excellent, they did lovely arty close-ups of his Bambi eyelashes, and worked hard to make him look attractive and healthy. Although you do think a make-up artist could have just tweezed out a few of those neanderthal eyebrow hairs.. and maybe just a touch of concealer on that bruise or whatever it was by his right eye, which was a bit distracting, along the lines of the "patches" that used to be worn in Georgian times.

To be unfair, he still has a whiney, monotonous voice.

Predictably, he spoke about the difficulty of getting back into form for la Vuelta, what it's felt like to be alone for the year, rather than training with a team: and he showed off his smart blue and white jersey - you realise that he can't be seen in Saxo kit while banned, of course - which is printed with phrases from the many letters of support he has received.

Right, moving on: we also had a brief interview with Frankie, who was - frankly - looking nervous! And who could blame him... also some brief interviews with other riders, some less well known: but basically it was just Contador going on and on about what he thought about all of them.

Even David Harmon, our commentator, seemed to be getting bored with it: he was translating the interview, and his translations were getting shorter and shorter.

Finally, it finished, and David and Sean Kelly, the other commentator, were burbling on about something or other when suddenly - what was that? Graeme Brown? (rising inflection) Yes! Graeme Brown IS in the Giro, yay! He's not on the start list, so we guess he must be a late replacement for a Rabobank rider that couldn't make the start: so I guess he, too, had a "Frankie" moment. We work out that he's taken the place of Jos Van Emden, but we don't know why.

LLB and I discuss tactics for the race, while we wait for the actual race footage to start: all the big climbs are at the end, and most teams have sent sprinter squads, so the first week is going to be one of tactics.

Either the climber squads will start breaks in order to tire out the sprinters: or the sprint squads will push on in order to drop the climbers off the back so that they lose time: or possibly the sprint squads will push on in order to tire out the other sprint squads.

Basically, there is going to a lot of break! split! push on! for the first 10 days - and LLB's official prediction is that Garmin and Astana are going to be the teams that do the majority of the pushing.

By now you will all know the results, but it was pretty darned exciting: Geraint Thomas of Sky ("G", as he's known) is leading by one second at the split point. David Harmon snarls excitedly "Go, G, you big hunk of Welshman, you!"  I wonder if he's forgotten that we can all hear him?

Boaro of SaxoBank takes the lead by 7 seconds, which is pretty exciting - there are 16 UCI points for the winner, so all the Saxo fans must be on their knees, begging for no-one to beat him so that they can get some  points. Bad luck Saxo, G overtakes him (much waving of Union Jack flags by LLB and I) by 6 seconds. Go, G!

Then Taylor Phinney shaves another 9 seconds off that! Wow!

By the way, does anyone know how they allocate the running order for prologues? I had assumed that they would send off riders from each team in rotation, in order to make it as easy as possible for the support vehicles, in that if you time it right, no one team will have more riders on the road than they have team cars. And logically, they would start with the number 9 of each team first, then the number 8s and so on, so that we get the "big names" or team leaders last, to keep the suspense up.

However, this does not appear to be the case, as the numbers are quite random. I wonder if the team are allocated their "slots" but are allowed to swap riders around within those slots? It would make sense to send out a domestique who is good at TT early on, so that they can report back on the course, on any danger spots, or anything that might have changed since the practise rides.

Gadret of AG2R goes off, and I "poke" him, just for old times' sake. LLB tells me off: "No! Don't do that! We all know what will happen... Frankie will fall off!"  Ooops - remember the Tour last year, I was suggesting that Conti might swallow a wasp and have to withdraw, and the very next day, Frankie swallowed a bee. Then I suggested that Conti might fall off and break a collarbone, and the very next day, Bradley Wiggins fell off and broke a collarbone... I'm sure there were three incidents, but I can't remember the third one off-hand.

Then off goes Frankie, looking nervous, and sure enough, ack! barely one minute in to his ride, he takes a massive wobble in the middle of a straight road, for no reason at all. LLB looks at me. I sink into the sofa and try not to look guilty. LLB takes advantage of my guilt to silently move the bowl of cheesy biscuits out of my reach.  From the corner of my eye I can see his shoulders shaking, so I  know he's up to something, and when I reach out for more cheesy biscuits and find the bowl gone, I spot his cunning plan. To make him feel better, I pat the sofa in a distracted, "where has the bowl gone?" manner for a while... before he relents and replaces it.

Frankie comes in 59 seconds down, which is not that bad, to be honest, but the commentators make a big deal of it, as you would expect. I didn't think he was giving it 100%:  neither did Sean Kelly, who comments that doing so would probably only have improved him time by maybe 5 seconds, and it would have been at the risk of falling, losing more time, maybe even an injury, and it probably just wasn't worth it. Frankie himself has said that he's expecting it to take 7-10 days for him to get his race legs back, which supports the theory that he should stay cool, and work up gently, hoping to make up time in the mountains.

Basso comes in, 39" down: "not bad, not bad," says David Harmon. Humph, Frankie was only 20" down on that time, and he gets all the abuse! It seems a little unfair.

So, how did it go for last year's winner? Scarponi, in a fetching pink play suit, struggled in 1'6" down, and was interviewed practically the second he fell over the line: "So, Mr Scarponi, how does it feel to have to give up the pink jersey just 12 minutes after it was given to you?". Mr Scarponi was seen getting straight into the team car and not participating in interviews any more, at that point.

And the final result: Taylor Phinney gets the pink jersey, plus the white young rider's jersey, plus the red points jersey. G, who came second, will be wearing the red jersey in stage 2, so that's a result for Sky. Oh, and Saxo came fourth in the end, so they get points! Yay! 2 of them! It could make all the difference...

So there you are, we are up and running, and I'll do my best to post my comments as often as I can.