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?