Tour de Suisse

Oh, aren't we enjoying this! Frankie is doing well, no-one has crashed and hurt themselves, despite the awful weather, and the final two days are over the weekend, so I will be able to watch them as they happen, yay!

Wednesday - stage 5 - began with us being shown pictures of Tour de Suisse, but all the talk was about the Tour and la Vuelta: yes, this was the day the news broke that Andy had cracked his pelvis ("Poor boy!" ) and was not going to be fit enough to ride the Tour. Clearly, bad news for all us AndyFans, but then on reflection, it wasn't truthfully likely to be a winning year for him, and how much better will it be for him to come back next year and win it against Conti, Evans, Bradley and everyone, and all the news reports will start "Despite having missed much of last season due to a fractured pelvis,....."

Eventually our commentators - that would be David Harmon and Brian Smith (Elle, are you listening? Not Sean Kelly. Mind you, you can be forgiven for that mistake, David calls Brian "Sean" half the time anyway, so I think he was a bit hard on you!) - settled down, stopped talking about Andy, and started talking about the race we were actually watching.

The break of 7 riders were way, way off the front, with the peloton not inclined to chase them: one of the breakaway was a SaxoBlank rider, Karsten Kroon, who we all remember with fondness from one of the Mondorf videos: he phoned Andy while filming was underway, and was invited for lunch, so Andy had to double the amount of pasta he was cooking. Remember?  He lives in Belgium, so I never was quite clear if he was visiting Lux at the time, or whether he lives close enough to the border to routinely do a circuit of training that includes Lux. (and yes, I had to find a map to check how close one was to the other. *grins*)

Bjarne: " Karsten!"
KK:  " Yes, Boss?"(panting slightly)
Bjarne: "Good work! Good break! How are you feeling?"
KK: "Not too bad, Boss. What's our gap?" (still panting)
Bjarne: "It's good. You have 10 minutes."
KK: "Are they chasing? Who's on the front?"
Bjarne: " Movistar."
KK: " Are they catching us? "
Bjarne: "No. I told you, Movistar on the front."
KK: (sniggers, while panting) "Heh, good point."
Bjarne: " Try to drop two of the break if you can."
KK: (rolls eyes) "OK Boss, if I get the chance, I will."

The camera bike following the break was doing strange up-butt shots - I can only assume the cameraman was holding the camera right down at wheel level, and I'm really not sure why. Perhaps he thought we were bored of seeing faces in profile,  and backsides (the usual shots) so he thought we might like to see armpits instead:


Very odd.

As you an see, another horrible day in England - err, Switzerland, sorry. Rain on the road, rain on the cameras, dirty faces in the peloton.

Being presented with a lycra-clad bottom reminds me of a Twitter conversation with Anne, who described Frankie's backside as being like two volleyballs wrapped in Spandex (which I think is the same as Lycra), I try to explain to LLB why I am laughing and he gives me a very odd look.

Luckily I'm used to that.

The race is turning into a Sunday training ride for the peloton - no-one in the break is at all a threat to the GC, I think the nearest contender is about 13 minutes down, so they can afford to give them 9 minutes and not worry about it.

Bjarne: " Karsten!"
KK: "Yes, Boss?" (panting slightly)
Bjarne: "Good break! Good work! How are you feeling? "
KK: "Feeling good, Boss. " (still panting slightly)
Bjarne: "They're still not chasing. Movistar still on the front. "
KK: "Heh, ok, Boss. "
Bjarne: "Try to drop at least two of the break."
KK: (rolls eyes again) "Yes, Boss. If I get a chance, will do."

This continues pretty much all through the race, until with 9k to go we are down to just 6 in the break, still with a 10-minute lead.

Bjarne: "Karsten!"
KK: "Yes, Boss?" (panting heavily)
Bjarne: "Good break! Good work! How are you feeling?"
KK: (panting heavily) "OK, Boss."
Bjarne: "Down to 6 now."
KK: (panting heavily) "Yes, Boss."
Bjarne: "Lose one more if you can."
KK: (barely has energy to roll eyes) "Yes, Boss."
Bjarne: "Good boy. Bonus for you tonight."
KK: (pants) "Thanks, Boss"
Bjarne: "One more thing:"
KK: "Yes, Boss?"
Bjarne: "Don't come 6th."
KK: "Points?"
Bjarne: "Only to 5th place. Come 5th or higher."
KK: (pants heavily) "I'll do my best, Boss."
Bjarne: (approval in voice) "Good boy."

The breakaway play games with each other right up until the end - it's rather nice that they have enough time to do so. Brian Smith, our commentator, gets quite excited to see them "looking at each other" in the way that that track cyclists do.  Until he mentioned it, I hadn't noticed the similarity, but now I can see it very clearly. You might remember that over the winter, LLB and I actually started watching some track events, as we so desperate for cycling, and although I don't think I'll ever be "into" track cycling, it does have some points of interest.  To us, the sprint races seem weird - they come out of the starting frames so slowly that they are wobbling, and they play cat-and-mouse games to get a tactical advantage. Suddenly we see all those same moves on the road, which was quite strange.

After a remarkably interesting five minutes of mucking about in this manner,  they settle down to the finish, and it's won by the previously unheard-of Dark Lord of Katusha, Vladimir Isaychev. Euskaltel take second - well done, little carrot! - Sky just nip into third, leaving KK to come in 4th - yay! UCI points! Well, one point, at any rate. That takes them from 43 points to, ooh, let me see: 44 points! Oh dear, still last, though. (In case you are interested, RaNT are 10th with 333, Sky are top with 803 - excuse me while I wave my Union Jack flag, patriotically.)  Bjarne will be pleased with Karsten.

There's an interview with Isaychev: "Is this the biggest win of your career?" asks the interviewer. The Dark Lord looks confused for a moment. Then he grins widely: "This is the ONLY win of my career!" he says.

What do Dark Lords get as a bonus, I wonder out loud. "A new light-sabre." comments LLB.

We've pretty much done the podium stuff before the peloton finally dawdles in, 10 minutes later, making a pathetic pretence of sprinting at the very end: "look, look, we tried really hard, honest!". Yeah, yeah. *rolls eyes*.

As the white jersey is awarded, there is a slight feeling that the podium girls are not quite up to standard: we assume that they are provided by the sponsor,  Gruyere cheese in this case, and wonder if they have won an internal office competition, perhaps?

The green jersey has been stolen from Frankie by the Dark Lord! By one point! But at least we are back to proper podium girls, in the fetching green-and-white skinsuit-and-sash combination. Actually, this is not a bad thing, for Frankie to be out of the jersey - in just two days there is a time trial, and if Frankie were still in a jersey, he'd have to wear the horrible cheap skinsuit provided by the sponsor, instead of his own super deluxe performance skinsuit.

Did you know that? We had a bit of scandal in the Dauphine, when Bradley Wiggins won the yellow jersey on a stage, and thoughtlessly said in an interview that he was quite cross at winning it, and would hope to lose it the following day, before the TT. Shock! Horror! from journalists. Is he insulting the yellow jersey? How dare he! Is he insulting the race? The organisers?  Mr Wiggins had to issue a hasty apology, assuring everyone that he respected the jersey very thoroughly.

It turns out that he didn't want to wear the inferior ASO-supplied yellow skinsuit: apparently he was contacted before the TT and asked "Small or medium?"  He asked if he could try them on, to determine which was the best fit.  "Non." said ASO, "Small, or medium?".  He offered to pay for both of them, if money was the problem. "Non." said the ASO. "Small, or medium?"  He chose medium.

This all came the day after we heard from our commentators all about the recent advances in skin-suit design, with reference not just to the fabric, but even to the placing of the seams: apparently these tiny changes can make a difference.  So you can imagine how a race leader would feel, going into a TT, desperate to hold on to every second,  but deprived of his super-slick super-fitted skinsuit, and shoved into any old thing, not even allowed to try it on beforehand, creases everywhere, and a number flapping about loose on the back. (Garmin's new skinsuits have a small flap across the back, under which they tuck the top of the number. Every little helps.)

At least Frankie won't have that to worry about.  He's sitting 2nd, Jakob is 12th, Linus 31st, the others are all there or thereabouts (as they say) so we'll have an interesting couple of days to watch. There is a TT on Friday, only 34km and "quite lumpy" so that should be in Frankie's favour, and should offset some of the gains of those riders who are "good" at TT: then two mountain stages over the weekend.

Fingers crossed for Frankie!