Worlds: Luxembourg having trouble finding a team.

I know I shouldn't laugh at this, but it did make me chuckle: there's a report out in Cycling News that says:


"Luxembourg is struggling to field a team for the Elite men's road race, with Fränk Schleck (Trek Factory Racing) confirming that he will not ride.

Bob Jungels has pulled out the time trial and road race due to a saddle sore, while Andy Schleck is still recovering from his operation after rupturing his knee ligaments on the London stage of the Tour de France.

Luxembourg national coach Bernhard Baldinger needs to find two riders to complete the three-rider squad with Ben Gastauer."

If they need to find two more riders to complete the minimum three-rider squad, then they only have one rider don't they...  that's not so much "struggling to field a team" as "not having a team!"

To be fair, it's a very small country, but what happened to Didier? And the whole of the Leopard Trek feeder team? 

Fighting in la Vuelta? Surely not!

It's that time again, it's silly season in the peloton.

Headlines read: "two riders ejected from Vuelta for fighting."

Fighting?

Pro cyclists? Surely not.

We all remember the last "fight", it was Barredo and Rui Costa, Barredo hit Costa with his wheel and they fell to the floor like a pair of girlies.

This one was actually better: not even a proper fight, just Brambilla of Omega Pharma Armbands and a Stinkoff rider (Rovny, never heard of him) slapping each other while riding along.

They were tootling along in the normal way, side by side, with Brambilla giving the Stinkoff rider "the eye", I don't know why: then from our angle, Brambilla was slightly behind Rovny, who suddenly turned round and slapped at his hand. It looked for all the world as though Brambilla had poked Rovny on the bottom. Alas, no on-board cameras on the bikes, we'll never know what really started it, but Brambilla slapped at Rovny's arm, Rovny pulled at Brambilla's shoulder and nearly shoved him off the road, then Brambilla gave Rovny a lovely backhand slap in the face.

Brambilla looks back at Rovny, who ducks like a complete girly, clearly expecting another slap, which he then gets, he slaps back, gets slapped, slaps back, etc etc, The rest of the group cycle past them, looking at them and clearly thinking "What the **** are you two playing at?!", while Rovny waves his sunglasses at Brambilla, presumably shouting "You broke my shades, you nasty boy, I'll tell my DS of you."

Brambilla puts his hand on Rovny's shoulder and pushes him, but it backfires totally, leaving Brambilla riding on the grass verge. Rovny waves his shades at the nearest car, but oh dear, it's the red commissaire's car: they have seen the incident, and Rovny is told to go back to his team car in disgrace.

The commissaire then catches up with Brambilla and a conversation ensues:

Commissaire: "You! Off!"
Brambilla: "What! Why? "
Commissaire: "You know perfectly well why. "
Brambilla: "No I don't. "
Commissaire: "Yes, you do. You were fighting. "
Brambilla: "Was not. "
Commissaire: "Was too. "
Brambilla: "He started it. "
Commissaire: "Look, I don't care who started it, you're fired.  "
Brambilla: "You can't fire me. "
Commissaire: "Of course I can you stupid man, I'm the commissaire! "
Brambilla: "Oh. "

Brambilla drops back to his team car.

Brambilla: "They fired me! It's not fair! "
Omega Armbands DS: "Pull over, son, you're out of the race for punching Rovny. "
Brambilla: "I never did! It was like this: " *demonstrates backhand swipe a couple of times*

Omega Armbands DS: "Look, it doesn't matter if you punched him or slapped him, you are off the race. Now pull over and get in the car."
Brambilla: "Shan't. It wasn't my fault. He started it. "
Omega Armbands DS: "You poked him, we saw you! "
Brambilla: "Well, he wasn't taking his turn. "
Omega Armbands DS: "That doesn't matter. You're fired, you're off the race, so get off the bike. "
Brambilla: "No. "

He pulls away from the car and continues cycling, swinging his arms mutinously.

Omega Armbands DS: "Get. Off. The. Bike. Now"
Brambilla: "S'not fair.... "
Omega Armbands DS: "Right, that's it, off the bike: wave bye bye to the folks at home, then get off the bike. "

Brambilla cycles away from the team car, waves  bye bye to the camera bike, makes a heart-shape with his fingers, blows a kiss to the camera bike, then stoically looks ahead as he cycles his last hundred yard in the Vuelta. His lower lip wobbles, and he tries not to cry.

The unforgiving camera bike won't go away, despite having had the wave, the gesture, the kiss and everything. Brambilla's lower lip wobbles even more, and a tear rolls down his face, as he mentally starts composing his letter of resignation, updating his CV and contemplates life in the Pro-conti league...

Tour of Britain: first day, first crashes

Well, that was a turn-up for the books - the Tour of Britain has started, and the sun was shining on them!

We watched in amazement as twenty teams of about six riders each - not too sure as the ToB website, in a display of staggering ineptitude, lists the teams but doesn't bother to list the actual riders, nor their bib numbers - rode around Liverpool in glorious sunshine, while in Spain, on the same day, the Pro Teams struggled in heavy rain, ice-slick roads and (comparatively) low, low temperatures.

Life, eh?

So what did we get? Alas, no Trek, so no hope of seeing Andy, not that he's riding again yet, as far as we know: maybe he's sitting indoors watching the Vuelta? I think it's highly unlikely he'd be sitting indoors watching the ToB, ha! ha!

It was not exactly exciting, being a Crit, eight laps around the unlovely town of Liverpool, taking in the back of the industrial areas, the city centre with the terribly complicated road markings (easy to follow from the helicopter shots - city centre that way, car park THAT way - but it must be massively confusing if you are in a car, at road level, with cars in front of you covering up the road?) and the rather nice round green park at the end of the loop.

The crowds were not exactly "crowded", if you see what I mean - five deep around the finish line, as you would expect, but plenty of space elsewhere on the loop. It does seem that cycling fever only hit the UK for the actual Tour, not so much for the domestic race. Even though apparently it's been upgraded from a shitsmall race to a second tier race (presumably merely "small") much to the pride of various domestic team DSs, who were interviewed at odd intervals.

Our coverage started right at the beginning, and we get a good look at the finish/start overhead gantry, which looked extremely flimsy: good thing they didn't invite O'rica, their bus would have finished it off in an instant.

No sooner do we start than Cav - wearing his own personal brand of helmet, it seems, and riding his own personal brand of bike with no sponsor names on it - pulls over, gets off the lovely un-decalled bike and, to everyone's horror, sits down on the pavement. Heart attack? Feeling faint? A mechanic runs up and pushes something into his hand. A gel? Is he passing out from lack of sugar, so early in the race? No, it's an Allen key, he's fiddling with his shoes: no doubt this will prompt him to design his own range of shoes.... after a shortish time, he's back on the bike, and drafting behind the car more closely than I have ever seen it done before, so we all sat with hearts in mouths in case he bumped the car and crashed into the back of it.

A small handful of riders gradually manage to get off the front, I get all excited as the commentators say that the lovely Yanto Barker is among them (I have no idea which one he is as we have no team list, nor bib numbers, thanks to the major failing of the ToB website as mentioned earlier, but don't think I am going to forgive them) but alas, he's not one of the four who eventually manage to get away.

It's very odd to see different kits, as there are only a handful of the familiar Pro-teams here: Giant, Garmin, BMC,Sky, Omega Pharma Armbands and Stinkoff. Many of the conti teams are copying the style of pro teams, but most of them lack the one single sponsor name, so their kits are cluttered with small names and hard to sort out. Eventually we deduce that the four in the break are Bardiani, looking just like Cannondale but without the stripes: NFTO (who have seen the BMC kit and liked it very much); An Post (who apparently also liked the Cannondale kit but didn't have any fluorescent markers, so the little old lady who ran up their kit did it in plain dull green) and the all-black Rapha Condor BLT. 

That last one might not be BLT, ("Bacon-Lettuce-Tomato", a popular sandwich combination) but that's how I see it.

70k later, they are still going round the loops, the four are still a little way up the road, and I've decided that the bloke doing the commentary has what is possibly the dullest voice and least interesting turns of phrase in cycling. BriSmithy is doing his best, and gently correcting the many mistakes as we go, but it does not make for fascinating listening.

Nine and half hours later, they get to the final, with a bunch sprint finish, but what a mess! No proper lead-outs, a mad dash to the line, a major crash on the left, Ian Stannard of Sky does a lovely porpoise-style dive above the peloton, elbows in all directions, Adam Blythe does a terrific turn of speed but starts it way, way too early and is left in the dust: and Kittel takes it quite convincingly, with Cav in third, just edging Tyler "Also-Ran" Farrar off the podium. Apparently Cav crashed earlier in the race, but we didn't see that.

Finally, we get a sweet little podium girl, all by herself, visibly hoping that the rising wind doesn't flap her full skirts around too much, carefully helping the tall strapping German into a selection of jerseys, and luckily he co-operates by bending at the knee, as she is nowhere near tall enough to get the jersey done up. He's a complete star, and helpfully holds the bottom together behind his back while she does it up, and the pair of them laugh all the way through it.

Andy takes the Ice bucket challenge!

Mad, mad.... but it shows he's a good sport.

What's the Ice Bucket Challenge? Blimey, where have you been?  It's a fund-raising charity-bullying tactic currently going the rounds, where you get nominated by a so-called "friend" to have a bucket of water dumped over your head while you are videod, and you give some money to charity. If you don't want to do it, you have to give a much larger sum to charity.

This is fine for celebs, and people who want publicity, and it's a perfect fit for pro cyclists, especially the ones out in Spain for la Vuelta, who were suffering in temperatures way up the 30s and into the 40s.

Not so nice for the rest of us, who prefer to give to the charity that we choose, to give however much we choose, when we choose, and to do so privately.

But that's just me being a kill-joy. Ha ha.

Anyway, back to twitter-land and celeb-ville:  Maxime Monfort nominated Andy, and here he is doing it:

Here's a link to the video: if  the link fails, just type in "Andy Schleck ice bucket challenge" and you are sure to find it.


 In his pre-embolism speech, Andy nominates Frankie, and two bigwigs in Lux. Frankie's video is also there, it looks as though it's Martine who gets the pleasure of doing the bucketing, ha ha!

And finally, under the general heading of "what an odd creature the internet is", there is an option on YooToob for "subtitles" on these videos, and I have no idea what programme they are using, but it is clearly struggling with Our Andy's accent:

Hilarious, eh? Andy Schleck leaves cycling and starts a foundation for making sex movies. What a great headline that would make!

Contracts... but not (yet) for Andy

August is gone, and now we start the usual end-of-season shuffling, where we wait until the music stops and everyone moves round a team.

Except that this year, there are a couple of significant obstacles: loss of teams, reduction in numbers.

Firstly, the Cannondale Chipmunks are closing this year, as they are merging with Garmin to become Cannondale-Slipstream. It's an odd thing about takeovers, that it's often the "smaller" partner whose name remains.. looking at it logically, you would say that Garmin are folding, and Cannondale are taking over their remains, surely?

I know a lot of people are very loyal to the Garmin argyle, but I'm hoping the Cannondale kit is the one that remains, as it's so distinctive and easy to spot. And I like their way of putting a Nationals distinction into the stripes on the back, which does not interfere with the uniform look of the kit. I personally hate the way that Stinkoff have ruined their line-up with the faded red Denmark national kit of Valgren. And I hate to say it, but Sky have done the same with having Kenyack in his tasteless white Nationals jersey. Don't do it, guys! Even slapping a big old "flag" across the back is better than ruining the entire kit, but the Cannondale stripe is, to my eyes, better.

Secondly,  Brian Cookson has announced that he wants to reduce the numbers of riders per team. Stupid idea, Brian! With fewer teams, and fewer sponsors, surely it makes sense to have more riders per team, not fewer?

We already have some teams unable to send a full roster to every race - even Sky have been sending out short teams, for heavens sake - and there seem to be more crashes than ever before, not to mention this weird Movement for Credible Cycling group and their "your Cortisol levels are too low so you aren't fit to race" restriction. They seem to have come from nowhere, have no legal or UCI-backed influence, yet can tell teams to pull riders from races with no compensation or appeal. Weird.

Anyway, with all this going on, many of the teams are already reducing their numbers: it used to be something like 28 and a couple of neo-pros, I think, and it's going down to about 24.

This means that teams won't be able to support riders who are not contributing: they won't be able to have as many neos, they'll lose their older riders, and anyone having a streak of injury or illness - well, they just won't be able to carry any such riders, any more.

It was announced recently that Frankie has been given a new 2-year contract with Trek, but there is deafening silence about Andy.  Does this mean that Andy won't have a contract?

Not necessarily - I interpret this to mean that Trek are drip-feeding transfer and contract info, in order to squeeze as much publicity as possible, which is perfectly reasonable and is not necessarily bad for Andy.

We all know that they - Andy and Frankie - have always said publicly that they will not race for different teams, and it seems unlikely that Frankie would have signed for Trek if they were refusing to give Andy any sort of contract. On the other hand, Frankie is a family man with two children and (no matter how much we don't believe it) a past doping conviction. He might not have much of a choice. Personally I think that if he'd been forced to accept a contract without Andy, he would have said something about it... so I am hopeful that there will be another announcement soon.

Looking at it logically, though, Andy's knee injury was described at the time as "possibly career-ending" so if I were Trek, I would be waiting to see if he can get back on the bike before making a contract, and if I were Andy, I would completely understand.

Normally, before Brian Cookson announced the shrinking of the team size, I would have been promoting the idea that Trek would gain significant benefit from having Andy on the team, even if he never won another race: he's a great ambassador for the sport, he's a "good guy", he's a three-time TdF podium finisher, he's a legend in the sport, he has a terrific fan-base, and I would have thought that any race organiser would be delighted to have him.

But I'm not so sure now, how that would work, with fewer riders on each team. Can they afford to give a space to someone on this basis?

On the other hand, how many times have we seen someone have a terrific season and win everything, then completely fail to win a single race the following year? Costa, Cadel Evans, Philly Gilly, Wiggo, come to mind. BMC must have been furious, to have spent all those millions on Gilbert, only to see him fail and fail and fail. Andy, on the other hand, is probably not going to be terribly expensive for Trek to keep.. and there is every chance that he'll recover well. 

Let's hope so, eh?!