Created by the unlovely Mr McQuaid: shoved in after the end of the season, when everyone is tired and needing a rest; thousands of miles away from Europe and the centre of cycling (with apologies to the Tour Down Under); in a country with little understanding of pro cycling (First year - "no spectators will be allowed at the finish line") and a terrible, terrible smog problem.
Oh, and possessed of wide, flat, ie boring roads, and practically no hills.
Not exactly what we want to watch.
But *sigh* it's a UCI race, it has all the pro teams in it, so we may as well watch it, even though many teams have not sent a full complement, and most teams have not sent their big names.
The welcome ceremony seemed to go all right - the riders were up on a stage without bikes, and in trainers, so that must have been moderately comfortable for them. I always feel sorry for the riders, watching them having to clatter up steps in cycling shoes, carrying their bikes...
Movistar are there, we see Rui Costa proudly wearing the rainbow jersey of the Worlds: I wonder how he is going to enjoy it? The good side is that he will now be sent to all the big races, in fact to as many races as he can possibly manage (mental image of an exhausted Costa, with training wheels on his bike, being towed along by his team-mates with a musette), in order to get the jersey out there. The bad news is that every camera will be on him, so every weakness or failure will be well documented. Just look at poor PhillyGilly this year - didn't win a thing until about a fortnight ago.
Of course, the smiles on the Movistar management are a bit strained, as Costa is moving to Lampre for next year, so they won't get the benefit... maybe that's why Alex Dowsett is looking so glum. Err, no, he always looks like that. Cheer up, Alex!
Ah, there's Vacansoleil, their last appearance before the name change to Wanty (too many opportunities for mis-spelling that one) and the drop to Pro-Conti level.
Oh, and there's Euskaltel, another team under sentence of death - also Champion systems, the Chinese Pro-Conti team who are also folding at the end of the year.
Shack have sent just seven riders - no Andy, boo hiss - mind you, we still haven't heard what happened at the Giro de Lombardia. Andy was booked to start, our commentators made just one reference to him: "there was an early crash," they said, then "Andy Schleck has abandoned" but we never heard if it was due to the crash, or to a recurrence of the sinus infection that pulled him out of Milano-Torrino, or any other problem. The RadioShambles site doesn't even mention him in their own news report, which seems pretty mean, but then they do seem to be downplaying him as much as they can.
Anyway, getting back to Beijing: here's a nice picture of the arch at the start:
Organiser 1: "Right, let's get a nice big arch arranged for the start."
Organiser 2: "Errr, this is a UCI race, right?"
Organiser 1: "Well, yes, of course it is."
Organiser 2: "So all the pro teams will be here?"
Organiser 1: (somewhat impatiently) "Yes, all of them. Every single one."
Organiser 2: "Including O'Rica?"
Organiser 1: (long suffering tone) "Yeeeessssss."
Organiser 2: "OK let's go for the open topped arch then."
(pause)
Organiser 1: (briskly) "Very good. Open top arch. Well done."
At the sign-on, they even had a sort of podium girly, handing the pens to the riders and trying to get them back for the next person. She was wearing a fetching little red and white number, slightly tasteless in that it was strapless (which may be ok for evenings but looks odd during the day)(and on plump-shouldered bridesmaids, but that's just my opinion), and somewhat spoiled by her clunky shoes, which looked like trainers, and made her feet look enormous.
Richie Porte was seen approaching the sign-on board, going straight for the 151 slot, pausing, twisting himself round to read his own number, (yes, it was 151) looking back at the board in some confusion, as the team 15 numbers said Radioshack. Sky had been put at line 17, which was Saxo's numbers. Radioshack were actually team 14.
Oh dear.
He signed himself in on slot 151 anyway, so he's now riding for Radioshack.
There's no prologue, and no TT, we go straight into a day of racing, with the standard underwhelming start, for which "relaxed" is an understatement. Even been at the start of a race? The commentators do their best to whip everyone up into a state of high excitement, getting the crowd whooping and hollering, then someone fires a gun - in this case, three Chinese gentlemen fired guns simultaneously, all we needed was for a couple of dead pigeons to flutter down - and the riders lazily get onto their saddles, stop chatting over the barriers to spectators, finish signing autographs, and get under way in a leisurely manner. It's hard to explain this to non-fans.
Carlton Kirby is our commentator on Eurosport, along with Magnus Backstedt, and he puts the first nail in his coffin by referring to the "heat haze" that we can see. No, Carlton, it's smog.
We have barely got racing under way when the commentary is unceremoniously over-ridden by the first of the interminable travel adverts for China, showing unrealistic sunny, blue-sky weather and beautiful scenery, none of which we ever see in the background of the actual race footage.
It's a fairly normal flat day - a break of four riders gets away quite early, and stays out there for mile after mile. One of them is a Vacansoleil rider, we have no idea why he's make the effort other than to possibly get himself a contract with someone else next year. They cycle past miles and miles of bunting, just one single line of it: hardly any spectators, but lots of bunting. As always, I am amused to see that they paint the tree trunks at the roadside white to about chest height, presumably to save on street lighting for the cars.
Oh look, there's an Euskaltel rider having a natural break - LLB says "Are they allowed to do that in China?" I don't know, but I imagine there will be fines to pay later.
More bunting.
Suddenly we get a flash of a graphic on screen - 58k to go. Good to know. The four-man break are still out there, manfully pedalling - ooh! look! spectators! five of them! - and there is more bunting. One member of the break is Nishizone from Champion: another graphic pops up on screen, giving his name, but putting an Italian flag next to it. Hmm, he's Japanese. Carlton comments "the Japanese flag is not popular in China, for historical reasons." The graphics operator is either being very diplomatic, then, or is very incompetent.
As an aside, about the only good thing on this Tour is the "out and back" layout of the stages, such that the riders don't have to suffer great long transfers from hotel to hotel. In fact, I think that they are staying in the same hotels for the whole race, which must be quite a treat. Magnus describes at some length what a good thing this is, and also describes how most riders, at this time of year, would be wanting to wind down the mileage that they are racing, preferring the traditional end-of-season small one-day races, not a great long stage race like this one. It amuses me that even cyclists, who work in kms, refer to getting race miles in their legs, and in increasing or reducing their mileage. I guess there's no such a word as kilometerage.
Back to the race, and the peloton are doodling along, chatting merrily: I always find it interesting to watch them chatting, I always speculate about what they are saying (poor LLB, he has such a lot to put up with) and whether it could indicate transfers for next year.
There is yet more bunting, there seems to have been a single line of it almost the entire route so far, but it's only one side of the road - what we would call the off side. And by coincidence, the camera bike seems to be mostly sitting on the near side of the road, such that the bunting always appears in shot. Interesting.. something else that keeps appearing in shot is riders having a natural break, it's clear that the Chinese camerabikes don't know the protocol for discreetly turning away, or filming something else, or in desperate cases, pulling the focus. No, they just continue filming, and we are treated to several views of streams of pee.
Alex Dowsett displays again his terrible bidon-handling skills ( see Tour of Britain) as he bungs away a bidon, which bounces off some road furniture, pings back into the peloton and nearly takes down another rider. Oops.
At this point Carlton Kirby starts saying some very strange things about Mr Tinkoff - how good it is that he's staying in the sport, how great it is to meet people who are truly dedicated to cycling, what a good thing it is that Mr T is moving around within the sport, he uses the phrase "sharing the love" of cycling. Is he mad? Has he forgotten about the insane tweets, the insults, the huffy withdrawal of sponsorship right at the end of the season? I am beginning to wonder if this is all politically motivated, along with the insistence of calling the choking smog "heat haze".
The break has been down to three riders for some time, but we don't know what happened to number four, or how long it's been going on, as we don't have any on-screen graphics.
Aha, another natural break is caught on camera - oh dear, one of the smaller scattered groups of spectators is coming up fast, and one of them has a video camera - oh no! He's going to get more than he bargained for, as the peeing cyclists scoots past... let's hope they're wearing waterproof coats, eh?
What! No bunting?? We're suddenly told that there is 27k to go, we appear to be heading back into town as we are getting concrete underpasses, and they have apparently run out of bunting. The break have also run out of steam, and are swept up by the peloton, all except for the Lotto bloke, who makes a brave bid for freedom and the stage win.
The helicopter shot, no doubt intended to give us a glorious panorama of Beijing with the brave lone Lotto rider being pursued, instead reveals a thickening haze of smog over the city. At last Carlton admits that smog is a problem, but immediately goes on to say that it occurs mostly in cities like Shanghai. He's definitely getting paid off. And let's hope he spends it on cough medicine, as we can hear him coughing and hacking in the background every time he hands over to Magnus. LLB comments that Carlton is probably getting a lot of stick on Twitter for his comments on Tinkoff, and for not admitting to the smog problem!
15k to go, it says: the teams are clumping, the gap is dropping, there is no bunting, and no spectators, and Carlton is asking Magnus increasing complicated questions in order to get him to talk for longer, so that Carlton can have a good hack in the background.
At 10k to go there are suddenly more spectators, and oh look! remember them? The grim-faced green-uniformed guards standing in the road, facing outwards, to keep the spectators under control. They don't show images like that in the travelogue bits, do they?
It's going to be a bunch sprint, and it looks really dangerous, as the road is smooth, wide, flat, and dead straight. I know that sounds illogical, but anyone who's watched much cycling knows that a narrow, technical finish is safer, as it gets everyone well strung out, and leaves only the lead-out teams (ie the ones who know what they are doing) at the front.
And indeed it's a huge bunch sprint, and Thor gets it, after Carlton nearly chokes with excitement. Come on Carlton, get a grip, and get some cough mixture!
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