Poor Tommy! A third broken collarbone...

... well, technically, it's the same collarbone, the right one, which he has now broken three times.

He first broke it five years ago during a race, which is not unexpected, it's a typical cycling injury: like horse riders, when you fall, the tendency is to put out your hands to save yourself, and the shock ricochets up the arms and snaps the collar bone.

Then he broke it again during the Amstel Gold race last year, and he had the plate and screws taken out just 12 days ago.

Despite still being in what you might call the "recovery" phase, he went off to the Tour Down Under, and was out on a training ride when the car in front of him braked suddenly to avoid a pedestrian, and poor Tommy hit the back of the car, fell off, and snap! there it was, broken again.

Now he's languishing in the heat, and as Europcar didn't have a spare rider (must admit, I didn't think they were allowed to have "spare" riders, I thought they had to confirm their team a certain number of days before the race, and it's due to start on Monday...) they are going to be a man short this year.

Poor Tommy! Apparently he's not popular in the peloton - or at least, that's what the news reports always say - but he's quite a character, and always fun to watch, as he pulls faces and shouts at himself.

Let's hope that Frankie is luckier: do you hear me, Frankie? Be careful! He's out there now, with the rest of the team - oh, pfff, I've just opened the Trek Factory Racing website to get the names of the other riders, but it's a horrible site, all cluttered and with the black graphics ever-changing, and I can't find the page that ought to be called Calendar. So I gave up looking.

Trek, that's another "Fail" from me. Come on! Get your act together! All we want is a clear, well-structured website, where we can find what we want without having to wait several seconds for the graphic to load, then another several seconds for the graphic to swim into focus, then again for the page to scroll down a little. The current one is just too time-wasting. And I'm on my home PC, which is new: I hate to think how impossible it would be to view that website on my little laptop, or a mobile device...

Right, enough ranting for one day: I'll say "Good Luck, Frankie" and I'll be looking forward to reading the reports of the race next week. We are unlikely to get any TV coverage in the UK at all until the following week, so hopefully,  any Schlecklanders in the southern hemisphere might be able to add a comment here, now and again.