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.
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