Andy's in England!

Well, it's Saturday morning, and less than 197 miles away, Andy Schleck is getting out of bed in a hotel, opening the curtains and saying "Uurgh! What horrible weather!"  as he views the grey clouds of England.

Such a change from last week - all week long it's been blue skies and warm sunshine, beautiful weather, just what you want to welcome the Tour to England, especially after the filthy weather of the Giro start in Ireland this year.... but alas, it's business as usual, and the forecast is for rain. Ho hum.

Last night we watched the Tour Presentation, which was the usual would-be spectacular, but which had flashes of amateurism all the way through - microphone problems, people looking the wrong way and, bizarrely, large numbers of the riders taking "selfies" (short for Selfish Lookit-Me) while they were actually on the stage! Incredible,  so rude.

The Eurosport presentation was absolutely lamentable,  they have gone with a pair of hosts to discuss the Tour before and after each stage, and this year it's some French bloke who is at least enthusiastic, and Greg le Mond, who is an ex-cyclist who spoke out long and hard against Lance Armstrong when everyone else thought he was a god.

Now that he has been proved correct, he has been given the job of co-hosting the Tour coverage, but oh dear, oh dear, he really is not up to the job. Quite apart from the fact that he can't seem to string a sentence together clearly, he can't actually speak English. Not knowing who he was, I asked LLB what his native language is, on the basis that he was clearly struggling with English-as-a-second-language, like many of the riders who he was interviewing.  "American" answered LLB, sardonically.

Just as the presentation was getting into some sort of rhythm, Eurosport decided to drag riders in for little interviews with the two hosts, regardless of the fact that the presentation was continuing behind their backs. Presumably someone had worked out that there was sufficient gap between one team and another to allow for an interview, but it all went horribly wrong and at one point we were listening to a non-English interview with Valverde (ex doper, unrepentant) while in a tiny box in the corner of the screen, we could see Team Sky arriving on stage.

Even worse, they cut back to the team presentation halfway through Richie Porte's piece, then started talking to Froomey - last year's winner, I would remind you - but cut away mid-sentence to another little interview! No disrespect meant to the rider concerned (I can't remember who it was, through the red haze), but I do think that live on-stage talk with the previous winner should take precedence over any other interview.

Luckily, Trek had appeared earlier, before the little interviews began, so we got to see all of them, and thanks to the plethora of English-speakers, they got three individual pieces: Frankie as leader, Fabs, and Jensie, who is always good value for money. Frankie did well, the presenter, Jill Douglas (who did a cracking job, incidentally) asked him a question about the cobbles which he clearly did not want to answer, probably as he didn't want to be reminded of the last time he fell on the cobbles in le Tour and broke his collarbone.  So he simply didn't answer the question at all, choosing instead to make a pleasant remark about how nice it was to be here. Cunning, eh?

Unluckily the Ass-t'na section was cut out by another little interview, so we didn't get much of a look at the lovely Jakob, who is wearing number 42, which has caused much laughing here in Schleckland.

It was interesting to see how many of the riders had shaved heads this year - Jakob had a cap on, so we don't yet know about him - and even JVS had had his hair cut. Which made him surprising good-looking!

The exception to this was Froomey, who appears to have let his hair grow for the event - instead of being shaved to the bone as he normally is, he had a very-very-short crop instead.  No doubt Team Sky have carried out extensive research on hair length....


So that's the Team Presentation out of the way, and here are my instructions to Andy for the weekend:

Today: take rainjacket in car, just in case: stay near front, avoid sprint and possible tumbles.

Sunday: take lots of gels, hard day with lots of annoying little hills, careful at the end going round the shopping centre, do not detour into shops.

Monday: maintain position within the peloton, watch out for drop-bears when going through Epping Forest (wear old-fashioned aero helmet with the point uppermost to deter them), then when approaching the Embankment, get yourself on the right-hand side of the group, ie away from the River, so that I can see you.

After that, you can do what you like! *laughs*