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?