Yay! Andy is back on track!

Cheers and hoorays, Andy not only finished the Criterium International over the weekend, but he did some attacking, got his face on tv, and did not have to put up with any sarky comments from the commentators.

It was a three-step event, if you missed it: on the Saturday, a short road race in which Andy finished just 6 seconds back, with the bunch: then a very short TT, in which he came 44 seconds down on the winner, in 65th position of 121 riders. Quite respectable, considering what happened the last time he went out on a TT.

Then on the Sunday, a longer day of racing with lots of loops - towards the end Andy was in the chasing bunch, and at one point he even made his own attack, which was excellent. Not a huge attack, but people were dropping like stones behind him, and he looked quite comfortable.

At the end, he came in with the tail end of the bunch, but he didn't give up! From 121 riders, only 60 finished the race, so although coming 57th of 60 sounds like a poor result, it's actually more important to realise that half the field just gave up! Otherwise he'd've been 57th of about 117, allowing for a few that failed to start in the morning.

So hooray for Our Andy, back on track, and getting better every week.

According to the Radioshambles site, he was asked "is the old Andy back?" to which he replied that he had never been dead.

Nice one, Andy!

Most important of all, he said that he enjoyed riding his bike, so cheers and hoorays for Our Andy!

E3-Harelbeke

Not the catchiest of titles for a races but it turned out to be very interesting, not least because Fabian went off the front with, ooh, 35k to go, and stayed out there, to take the win! Fantastic riding,

I was only listening to it, honest, due to the heavy rain outside (had to explain the phrase "chucking it down" to Kathy, a far-side-of-the-Atlantic reader) but Eurosport were having technical troubles, to the extent that they left us with no sound at all. So I was compelled to watch the horrible-quality stream, which I don't normally do.

The commentators were Rob Hatch, honorary Schlecklander, and Dan Lloyd, who we often see doing end-of-race interviews. I was, as usual, teasing Rob Hatch about his pronunciation - honestly, why does he still say BeeEmmSea, surely it should be B-M-C in the language of whichever part of Switzerland they're based in, if you'll pardon the grammar.

Then we lost them altogether, so I tweeted Rob with a suggestion that he'd passed out with excitement, and was lying on the floor of the commentary box receiving artificial respiration from Dan.

He replied!

I just love it when they respond! And fancy him taking the time to tweet back, in the middle of a technical crisis? I'm well impressed, and might even promote him to cabin boy.

However, he made an interesting comment part-way through (once they had returned - by phone, would you believe, from the studio in Hounslow) when we saw one of the IAM riders making a bit of an effort - he said that Fabian was likely to be joining IAM next year, when his contract expires: then he casually said "as Radioshack are folding at the end of the year."

Huh! And there was us saying it was just rumour and speculation, and trying not to get too excited about it. Wonder if IAM could afford to buy Andy, Frankie, Jensie and a couple of others as well?

Jensie denies forming new team!

In a recent comment, Elle suggested that there might be a new German team being formed for next year:

 I was, of course, joking when I suggested that two riders might be involved.

Then today, Jensie tweeted that he was in an airport with a 50 minute wait, so I thought there was no harm asking him - and he denied it. Not surprisingly!

But the really funny part is that I mis-read Elle's comment, I thought that she'd said Hondo and VOIGHT with an H, so I was making a joke by implying that it was Jensie.

Yet, of course, there was no H!! Whoops!!

Oh well, let's hope it brought a smile to Jensie's face while he was waiting for his flight.

So, Schlecklanders, you heard it here first: Jens Voigt (without the H) is NOT forming his own team!!

The End (of RadioShambles) Is In Sight!

I  know,  I know,  in this post-Lance era it's wrong to be happy about the loss of yet another cycling sponsor, but honestly, in this case I think I am justified in being just a little bit happy at hearing the news today that RadioShambles are pulling the plug at the end of this season.

Well, not definitely pulling the plug, nothing has been confirmed yet, and - typically - the team don't know anything about it.

According to the Velonews version of this story: 

“We do not know anything. I cannot confirm it,” RadioShack-Leopard spokesman Philippe Maertens told VeloNews via telephone. “I don’t think [RadioShack] has even decided yet. We don’t know anything.”

*hollow laugh* We know how that will turn out, don't we? The riders will be the LAST to know about any changes that are going to completely change their lives....

So  how is this likely to affect Our Andy?

On the one hand, my heart bleeds at the thought of our brave Leopards having yet another major upheaval: they will either be dispersed among other teams, or - vague rumour from Boulder Elle - go en masse to a new German team.

On the other hand, a fresh start might be just what Andy needs. Taking the rest of this season to get his fitness back, then moving to a new team next year, without Mr Bruyneel, without the tainted RadioShambles name,  and hopefully without the weeble-like Mr Becca holding the purse-strings.

Meanwhile, other news, Andy went on Lux tv last night, which is exactly the right thing for him to do, and it's been reported today that he has said the Munich drunken episode (rather cruelly referred to on the forum as Shandygate)  is "ridiculous".  Not quite a denial, but good enough for me.

He also said:

"I'll keep working and I know that the people who believe in me will keep believing in me."

All together now: "WE BELIEVE IN YOU, ANDY!!"

Which Way Forward?

Well, it's been a bad few days for Our Andy, there's no doubt about that.

My thought now is that the team should take him off the Tour squad list, to remove that pressure: then send him out to every single Pro Conti race they can get him in.

He said himself that he felt like a neo-pro, having had more or less half a year off the bike - and bear in mind that he has been riding since he was, what, 15? He went straight into competitive racing, has never done anything other than race, and has never had more than a short holiday off the bike. And we know that even when on holiday (Curacao, for example) they still ride their bikes most days.

 So he would never have experienced what it's like to be totally unfit.

(Unlike you and I, ha ha)

I think it's too much, to throw him back into the high publicity, high tempo races: yes, I know that other riders have done it, but as we have seen, Andy is struggling, and the constant criticism from the media and the commentators is not helping.

So, my suggestion is to get him racing on quiet, un-televised races at a lower level, where he will quickly feel that he is stronger and better than most of those around him.This will raise his confidence, he can then slot back into the A team, and who knows, he may even perk up in time for the Tour.

But unless he is really feeling good, I would rather see him miss this year's Tour, and maybe go with Frankie for the Vuelta instead.

Makes you wonder what on earth RadioShambles are going to do for the Tour, doesn't it? No Frankie, possibly no Andy: Horner and Kloeden are still hanging on the Lance Armstrong hook, and may yet be hauled off to answer doping charges: they don't have a lot of options, do they? Can't say that I am sympathetic, as I have very little regard for Mr Becca and Mr Bruyneel (who seems to have disappeared without trace, which is not a bad thing), and I still resent our Leopards being shoved into the Shack team without so much as a consultation.

How long is Andy's contract, does anyone know?

And you believe an unknown Frenchman?

 "Andy Schleck drunk?"

Lots of horrible comments on the forums this morning, concerning a Twitter comment from some unknown Frenchman, who said that he met a bloke in Munich who was wearing a Leopard-Trek jacket and was staggeringly drunk.

The (anonymous) blog Inner Ring report it here, if you want to read their version.

You'll note that their version is clearly marked as "their translation" and we all know how details get lost in the translation, and they are basing it on a Twitter entry - and we all know how they are honest, and accurate, right?

Honestly, it doesn't seem like much of a story.

My opinion? I don't think Andy would be walking around in his old Leopard-Trek clothing. I think it is much more likely that one of the thousands of fans who bought the old kit two years ago is walking around wearing it, getting drunk, and maybe even boasting that he IS the real Andy Schleck.

And even if it were Andy (unlikely), then why exactly is he not allowed to get drunk, in a hotel/airport, when he is neither racing nor at a training camp? After the year he's had.... who would blame him?

Update at lunchtime: (I don't normally get time to check my computer at lunchtime, but today..)

This makes me spit: Wort.lu had the nerve to print this:

Let me get this straight - someone told one of their reporters that someone had made a comment on Twitter, they took a screen shot of it, and they call it a "report"?

They think it's worth including it, as a story in their newspaper: an unsubstantiated social network comment from some unknown French bloke, who is "said" or possibly "reported" to be a French politician - my, that just makes him so trustworthy, doesn't it?

There is no confirmation that it was Our Andy, there is no indication that the Frenchman in question even knows anything about cycling - would he actually recognise the real Andy Schleck if he saw him? The Inner Ring story, mentioned above, quotes this muck-stirrer as describing Andy as having just lost a race in Italy.

If he were a cycling fan, he would know the name of the race.

And cyclist don't actually "lose" races. They just don't win them.  This may seem like splitting hairs, but it's not: if you have two people in a sport against each other, then one can win and one can lose. But not in a sport with multiple participants, otherwise you would say that Jensie has lost just about every race he's ever been in. And that would hardly be a fair reflection on his career, is it?

You could say that if two riders were neck and neck, then whoever came second would have "lost out" to the winner. But you wouldn't say he lost the race. Especially if, as in this case, there was no expectation whatsoever for Andy to win it, he was just there to get some race miles in his legs.

Andy himself said, of the Tour, er, what was that quote? That in previous years he had not won, ie he had done his best but wasn't quite good enough:  but in that year, he had lost it. Meaning that it was within his power to win, but he had not done so - due to the Prologue, as I remember.

 My point is that any cycling fan would not use that phrase - "he just lost a race" - which lends weight to my suggestion that this French bloke may not actually  know what Andy Schleck looks like, enough to recognise him in person, especially if the person was staggering drunk at the time.

And I think it is pretty disgraceful for a Lux newspaper to report it as fact, having not even bothered to contact Andy or his family for a comment: we don't even know for sure if Andy was anywhere near Munich that night - oh, won't it be funny if he turns out to have been elsewhere? - and why does a Lux newspaper want to be so mean to a Lux person? I can imagine some other continental newspapers being happy to print bad stories about him, but his own country?

That's pretty low, don't you think? What do they hope to achieve by it?

Oh, poor Andy!

Awww, poor Andy, he must be feeling so low.. news today that he's had to pull out of the last-but-one stage of Tirreno-Adriatico.

As always, it's too early to know exactly what the reason was: the report, above, seems to indicate that it wasn't a physical problem, for which we are eternally grateful.

However, Andy's own team spokesman said:

"...we believe the problem is more than physical"  

and the report goes on to talk about psychological problems.

In the same report it mentions casually that:

"... team director Dirk Demol said that Schleck had a lot of fear while riding in the peloton and needed to get his courage back"

As usual, this may have lost something in the translation, but it does sound somewhat harsh, don't you think?

I am hoping that this is not going to be another session of Schleck-bashing from his own team, and I really do feel that RadioShack have been extremely unsupportive, especially those who talk to the press.

On the one hand, of course I don't want them to lie and say that he has a stomach upset: but on the other hand, I do feel that publicising any sort of confidence issue is only going to make it worse. Now everyone will know that he has "a lot of fear" when in the peloton, and I can imagine some other riders taking advantage of that information.

It doesn't help that we haven't seen any photos of a happy Andy lately - other than the new website kit team photos, that is: perhaps it is time they dug out Roland Miny and sent him round to Andy's flat to get some new photos of Andy relaxing with TinkerJil, playing with Leea, laughing and joking with his brother, etc, to show the cycling world that he is not to be written off.

I even saw one report -I didn't bother to read it, as it was obviously highly speculative - that was suggesting that 2010 was Andy's peak, and it was all over now. Huh! I think not!  *waves Schlecklander flag indignantly*

Once again, poor Andy, I feel so sorry for him *reaches out a very long arm all the way to Lux and pets Andy* having to go through all this, with everyone looking.  Let's hope for better news, soon, eh?

Rob Hatch promoted to Honorary Schlecklander!

If you read any of my race reports, you'll know that I have opinions about the commentators - I like Magnus Backstedt very much, and Rob Hayles:  and to date I have been taking the mickey out of Rob Hatch, who tends to over-pronounce the foreign non-English names.

Now, I don't mind anyone pronouncing names correctly - ah, remember the lovely Leelu and the "Graeme Brown?" voice post - but it seems to me that pronouncing AG2R in French - Ahh-gzee-durrs-air rather than the usual Ay-Jee-Two-Arr  - is what you might call over-egging the pudding.

And I've accused Ron Hatch of this a couple of times.

Err, well, every time he's commenting, actually.

Yesterday afternoon I was skiving wasn't able to work due to weather, so I was on Twitter following the Tirreno-Adriatico rainy flat stage.

The race ended, but there was no notification as to where Andy finished, so a fellow Tweeter, Jen, tweeted the question to Rob Hatch.

I joined in:

LOL!  Oh, I just love it when these guys read our tweets, and answer nicely, with humour! Rob, you are now an honorary Schlecklander, and I will never again criticise you for your pronunciation. Well, let's be honest, I will still take the mickey, but only in a nice way. Promise.

And hey, isn't he young? I had sort of formed the impression that he was, errr, quite senior... sorry, Rob!

Is TinkerJil a bad influence?

Oh no, now Andy's girlfriend is coming in for criticism.

RadioShambles's new DS, (the one who is replacing Mr Bruyneel due to him being taken off the team because of his involvement with the whole Lance doping scandal) is starting to sound as though he is made from the same mould as Mr Bruyneel.

Apparently he's been saying that Andy should never have gone back to Lux for winter training, but should have been somewhere warm, where he could get his legs back at work.  I'm not sure from the translation if he means between Tour Down Under and the Tour of the Med, or whether he means Andy's preparation for the Tour Down Under.  But he's pretty clearly saying that Andy should not have been rushing back for home comforts, but instead, he should have been hard at it in a warmer climate.

He also made a rather odd comment, something like "I think we should consider paying Frankie to train with Andy" followed by something to the effect that as splitting them up doesn't seem to work, they may as well let them work together.

Odd - I thought that they already did train together?

And although Frankie is currently serving his [unfair! UNFAIR!] ban, he won't be sitting around on his tiny ass, he'll be out riding every day anyway, so I had rather assumed that they would be training together, whether it was in Lux or elsewhere.

Oh, perhaps that's what he meant - they should have paid Frankie to go to somewhere warm to train with Andy?

My opinion? I think that the management at RadioShambles should spend more effort encouraging Andy, possibly by sending him out with Jensie as much as possible, and less time making insinuations about his lack of dedication, don't you?

Andy stays upright in the TTT ! ! !

Oh, all right, I know, a  little bit of an over-reaction, but I thought we deserved to get excited that Our Andy completed the TTT at Tirreno-Adriatico ( or Terrayno Adriatico as I would spell it, as apparently I am not very good at speeling) without any incidents.

Our tv coverage was a bit restricted here in the UK, as Eurosport only had the highlights - three hours or more of racing was squashed into less than an hour, so we didn't get much time to see each team. All we got of RadioShack was a close-up of Fabian's backside on the start ramp, then a shot of the first rider being shelled off the back of the group - oh look, it's Andy.

This was a bit annoying, but as LLB said at the time, the trouble with being a superstar is that the media will always focus in on you, which means that all your problems and shortcomings are going to be made very public.

It's nice that LLB describes Andy as a "superstar", isn't it? *laughs*  I mean,

The RadioShack website says:

"we...decided not to have Chris and Andy pull today and that we’d work with six riders." 

I  know that team tactics have to be kept within the team, for many reasons, but that is a tactic that it would have been nice to know about beforehand, as it would have avoided all those "oh dear, there goes Andy again, will he even finish the race?" comments from the commentators, who were rude enough to say that at least Andy finished a race last week, "for the first time in about a hundred years" .  Humph!! Cheek!

I'm also very pleased to see that the yellow Livestrong band has indeed been removed from the kit, hooray for that, and in fact the new team photos show Andy looking happier than he has done for a while. In fact, it's a good sign that the website has new photos for everyone, in their new kit: it shows a certain solidarity of sponsorship, don't you think? I always feel sorry for those teams whose websites are clearly out of date, as it makes it feel as though their team doesn't care enough about them to get new photos taken.

Now all we need is to get rid of the word "Radioshack" and get back to Leopard Trek....

Strade Bianchi

An interesting afternoon... Eurosport had promised us coverage of the race, starting at 2.30 our time, so LLB and I had a leisurely lunch, then got out our laptops to check in on Twitter to see how the early stages of the race were progressing.

At about quarter past two, our time, we spotted a Twitter comment that it was already in progress. What!! We leapt to the tv and sure enough, there it was, already going. Drat! Mad panic to turn on the recorder and change the programme to start immediately.

So, after a bit of a mad flurry of activity, we settled down to watch Fabian being watched like a hawk by Peter "more fun than a jammy dodger" Sagan.  No sign of Andy, alas, or any other RadioShack rider, in fact the tv coverage was not particularly brilliant, being mainly high helicopter shots. But who cares, it was racing!

As everyone knows, the Cannondale (formerly Lee-Qwee-Gas) rider Mosel won it, closely followed by Mr Jammy Dodger, with Fabian coming in fourth.

And where was Our Andy?

Technically, he was a DNF like many others, but he and the team are not downhearted by this. Kim Andersen said, on the RadioShack site, that the race was going perfectly until Roulston and Bushe went down in a crash, then Popo punctured, and Nizzolo crashed. So that was four of them out of contention.

Andy wasn't involved in any crashes, thank heavens, but he also punctured, then - in his words -

"...then with the crashes it became a mess with the cars.  I felt ok today, though, so I am looking forward to Tirreno.  I hope to keep these good sensations in my legs.  I didn’t finish today but this is like a classic race where we go all in for one rider and the rest are left behind so it’s not a worry for me.”

Soooo glad to hear that he is not unhappy with the result!  I'm sure that the forums are just full of Schleck-bashers all making nasty remarks about him not finishing again, but as long as he and Kim are happy, that's all that matters.

Shack, typically, haven't filled out their roster on their calendar for Tirreno Adriatico, but as Andy has already said that he's looking forward to it, there's a good chance that he will be racing there.

Shame, in a way, as it does seem that most of the teams are sending their big names to Tirreno, with lesser riders going to Paris-Nice. So Paris-Nice would be an easier race to win... maybe.... still, who cares, as long as he is riding and making progress.

One other thing did occur to me the other day - what with the ongoing Lance thing, and the close connections with RadioShack, I wonder if any of the riders get the urge to take the scissors to that yellow livestrong band on the sleeve?  I know I would... wouldn't you?

Andy finishes a race! He's back!!

Yay, cheers and celebrations from all over Schleckland,  as Our Glorious Leader has completed a UCI race.

OK, not exactly a big UCI race - the GP Città di Camaiore in Italy, to be precise, which is what Cavendish would no doubt categorise as a shitsmall race, but we don't care! Andy finished!

I'm developing a soft spot for Velonation's reporter Shane Stokes, who supplied the report about this happy occasion. Not only does he manage not to say anything insulting, but he describes Andy thus:

"When in his top form, Schleck is one of the very best stage race riders in the world".

That's what we want to hear!  We don't care about the fact that Andy came in 91st, five minutes down on the leader, Peter "more fun than a jammy dodger" Sagan, who is already having a terrific year, by the way, and looks as though he could be a serious contender this year.

No, we don't mind that Andy came in a good way down the listing, we're just happy that he finished. The report includes Kim Andersen's comment:

“I’m happy about the comeback of Andy,” he stated. “On the second to last climb, he had to drop back with some twenty other riders, including Popo and Danilo. He finished the race and was in a good mood. We are headed in the right direction." 

Yay! Go, Andy!