Andy in Happy video!

Life is not all doom and gloom for Our Andy - he managed to find time to make a couple of brief appearances in a Luxembourg video:


Firstly here he doing some bunny-hops up the steps: nice paint-stained jeans, Andy, does TinkerJil know that you are wearing them in public? *laughs*

 Next we have him doing some dangerous descending on sort-of-cobbles:

And finally, doing a wheelie, just for the fun of it:

There you go, don't say I don't strive to bring you any snippets of interest, even when Our Andy is not actually racing!

All we know about racing, at the moment, is that he returned from training in Mallorca, where he got "a wet ass" according to Twitter, and that the forecast for Luxembourg was more of the same.

I've checked the weather news, and today in Mondorf it's going to be showery this morning, sunnier this afternoon, but with 100% chance of rain. Not cold, nor windy, but not very nice. Although a quick peek at the Howald Tunnel ("Ah! The lovely Howald Tunnel!") reveals that the roads are dry, and the traffic is moving freely in both directions:

I'm a little disappointed today, I have the day off, but there is no Giro to watch, as it's a rest day. Drat! Heaven knows they need it, but it's a shame I can't listen along with the live broadcast, and make pithy remarks on Twitter. Oh well, maybe later this week.

The Giro itself is getting quite interesting, despite having very few Schlecklander Pets in it, and of course having no Andy. I was making rude remarks about the Trek kit failure at the TT the other day, as Kiserlovsky seemed to have cut the sleeves off his skinsuit:

You can see by the tan-line that something is missing!

According to "someone on Twitter",  Trek don't have enough skinsuits to go round, so he had to borrow one from another rider, who had national championship bands on the sleeve.

So he had to cut them off.

Seriously? Our Andy is riding for a team that can't even afford to provide skinsuits for all the riders? Or can't even provide a handful of spare non-personalised skinsuits?

That's a bit sad.

The weather at the Giro has been weird as well - no doubt they thought they were leaving the wet stuff behind when they escaped from Ireland, but it followed them: and then, earlier this week, they were merrily pedalling away when Rob "Over-precise Enunciation" Hatch said something like "you won't believe the weather that is occurring 30kms further up the road - it's hailing!"  and when they got there:

No kidding! There was so much hail that the ground was white with it, it was quite impressive! Luckily the road had been cleared by all the traffic, but there were some tense moments when the peloton reached this corner, I can tell you!





Luckily, they managed to get round it without a single fall, which is quite remarkable when you think how many falls there have already been in this year's Giro.

So there you have it, no real news, the Giro continues,  and only 39 days until le Tour starts!

Giro 6; ouch, ouch, ouch

I sit here in pink knickers (don't worry, I am wearing the usual amount of clothing over the top) shaking my head in dismay at the number of crashes in the Giro so far.

The first couple of days, well, rain, Ireland, what do you expect? It's not called the Emerald Isle for nothing - it rains nearly as much as it does in Vancouver, or Oregon, hence the greenery.  I still don't quite understand why the Giro - Italian race, based in Italy, nice warm country - would want to go to Ireland in early May.

I'm not even mentioning the whole Northern Ireland/borders/bombs thing.

Luckily, the race won't be expected to fend off an invite again for at least another ten years. Although apparently the amount of interest it sparked has meant that some sponsors have come forward to get the Tour of Ireland going again. I'll believe it when I see it (the situation regarding north V south is, it would seem, interminable, with problems insurmountable. If there were a simple answer, someone would have thought of it by now) but it's always good to hear of cycling getting non-adverse publicity.

So, rainy days in Ireland, ok, not unexpected, and crashes were bound to occur, although I have to say I was horrified to see Garmin hitting the deck in the TTT in such a wholesale way. Poor Dan Martin! His poor teeth! Two broken collarbones from one incident, half the team on the deck, and everyone shouting at poor Little Fab, who had earlier dropped off the back due to having a stomach upset.

The last thing you want, when you are cycling with a dodgy tummy, is to be told that the entire team is now relying on you... they needed five riders to get across the line, if you remember, so without Little Fab they would not have finished the stage, and would have been disqualified from the race.

So he bravely clenched, and pedalled on, saving the team from the ignomy of being sent home on the first day.

Ok, privately we would hope that in a situation like that, the organisers would give them some leniency and maybe give them a finish time of five minutes below the last team... luckily it didn't come to it, and Little Fab saved the day.

However, getting back to the crashes, they finally escaped from Ireland and made it back to Europe, only to find that the rain had followed them, and today - Thursday - there was a massive, massive pile-up which wiped out about half the peloton, leaving honorary Schlecklander Svein Tuft, who had been having such a good Giro, looking like this:

 Ouch, ouch, and double ouch.

That's the elbow, the forearm, the shoulder, the hip - he won't be sleeping well tonight, that's for sure.

Then what about this poor Belkin rider? There's more of his jersey missing than there is remaining.

I only saw the highlights - or "low lights" in this case - so I don't have all the info on what happened, but one of the Dark Lords was carted off in an ambulance, looking very bad indeed, and one of the Cannondale Chipmunks could barely pedal, and had to be pushed by a team-mate. There will no doubt be a fine for that, later, but for heaven's sake, have some mercy, let them get away with it for once.

As usual when there is a bad crash, there is a lot of discussion (mostly on Twitter) as to whether it is morally wrong for the leaders, who avoided the crash, to continue racing. I dare not say anything on the subject, as I have worked out over the years that my response to that question depends entirely on whether any of my pets are involved in the crash, or not.

Seeing the aerial shot of the crash, with bodies lying all over the road, I was suddenly glad that Andy is not riding there. He was away training in Mallorca, apparently, and returned to Lux on Monday. He also has another niece, as big brother Steve and his wife/long term girlfriend Elodie (apologies to the lady, I don't know what their situation is!) have just had their first baby, a girl called Ellie. So that makes three new baby Shlecks (cries of  "Marry her! Just marry her!") this year, not bad, eh?

Pink Knickers for the Giro!

Yay, the Giro starts today, Friday, and we have three weeks of pink-ness in store for us.

I have been collecting together all my pink knickers and socks, and will be wearing them all through the Giro, in silent and private salutation to the race.

*holds arms out for strait-jacket to be fitted*

Unfortunately, the start list is somewhat underwhelming, with few Schleckland "pets" in it, and of course no Andy or Frankie: even more unfortunate, they are not going to the Tour of California either, which is what I had rather expected to happen.

So what is Andy doing?  I can't be bothered to waste half of my life this morning trying to get onto the Trek website: it is so slow, so stuffed with Java, and I hate the way the pictures LURCH AT YOU then retreat *shudders*. Also, as far as I can remember from the few times that I have lost time trying to negotiate around it, there isn't a simple grid showing riders and races, so you can't easily work out who is doing what. All of which means that I have no idea what he is doing, so if any of you know, do please let me know!

The total "FAIL" of the Trek website is, incidentally, the reason why I won't ever be waving a Trek flag, seeking a Trek musette, or drawing the Trek shield logo on my work shirts - and I still can't see why they don't use it on the kit. A nice big red shield on the back would make it a little easier to spot the team from the helicopter shots, don't you think?

Anyway, *slaps self on arm to stop grumbling* time to go to work, more of the Giro later.

What sort of fan are you?

Oh dear, lots of negative press about poor Andy recently, and now even the people commenting on here (see last post) are getting caught up in it.

What's the matter with you people? Do you only support someone who wins, wins, wins? Did you scream "I luuuurve you, Andy!" with teenage tears running down your face while he scooted up Alpe d'Huez, but now you turn away, sneering, because he hasn't won anything in a while?

Pff!  *dismissive gesture*

"A true fan is not one who was there at the beginning, but one who was there until the end."

So it is said, and I don't think we have reached the end yet.

Yes, of course I want to see Andy win the Tour, "on the road" as he said. Yes, I want to see him storming up mountains and standing on podiums.

But if he never does that again, I will still be supporting him, wearing my Lux Ensign socks (third generation: memo to self, must buy some more and put them away for when these ones wear out) and waving my home-made Andy-flag.

I am constantly amazed at the vitriol from the - entirely anonymous - people on FaceBloop, Twatter etc. Anyone would think that Andy had personally stuck a knife in them, they are so antagonistic.

Do they never think how much he must be suffering, physically and mentally? He must be beating himself up every day, every night: "I must win again, I must get my form back".  Coming from a family of professional athletes, he is extremely aware that you only get the money while you are performing well, he knows that the career of an athlete is short, he now has a wife *shouts "Marry her, Andy, marry her!" over shoulder* and baby to support: I would imagine that he is fully aware of his position, and fully aware of the concern about getting a pro contract for next year. The last thing, the VERY last thing, he needs is some anonymous person on a blog, or on social meedja, telling him that he has "let them down".

Where does it say that it's the duty of the riders to support us, the spectators? Surely it's our duty to support them! These negative Schleck-schlappers are letting Andy down, not the other way round!

So, what sort of fan are you? I don't support Andy because he's a star - I started supporting Andy (as all Schlecklanders will know) at Stage 15 of the Tour, 2010 when I saw the famous "stomach of anger" interview: any other rider would have been effing and blinding, in any sport other than cycling there would have been fisticuffs, but instead he spoke to journalists politely and concisely, clearly very angry but not spitting mad, not declaring that it was unfair, not demanding that the results be changed, just stating that he would not have ridden like that, and that he would have his revenge, by which he meant that he would ride even harder, not that he would lie in wait round the back of the doping tent and brain Contador with a tent peg.

It seems to me that a lot of fans - especially male ones - have a sort of cave-man approach to it: their "chosen" rider is somehow representing their malehood, and if the rider doesn't actually win, then somehow it reflects badly on the fan. As though it makes them look stoopid for picking the wrong person as their representative.

Huh? I just don't get that. It stands to reason that only one person can win each stage, each jersey, each sprint,  so why do these aggressive fans take it so personally if "their" rider doesn't win? Did they bet their entire life savings on them? In which case, more fool them. Did they tell all their friendies "Hey, my man XX is going to win, and he's going to flatten your bloke"? In which case, blimey, how old are you, 12? What is this, the playground? Grow up!

The Frandy Fan Club will continue to run and thrive, proper fans will continue to support one or other or both of the Schlecks,  flags will be waved, roads will be written on.

And my Twatter account managed to get another follower or two over the Classics, so I allowed myself a new photo or two: here's Andy looking happy at the Amstel Gold presentation - love that nose-tan!

 And this one looks just like a ten-year reluctantly being kissed by an over-enthusiastic and aged aunt, and could probably be captioned "Aaaaaooow, Auntie, not in front of everyone, gerroff!"
 

(PS, it that's you in the photo, then I apologise for the "aged auntie" thing...)