Andalucia, Astana and what the hell is a 'non-negative'?

We're a bit short of cycling coverage in the UK at the moment: Dubai was great, but we didn't get Qatar at all, nor the Tour of Oman.

Luckily, we had a little of the Ruta del Sol, or Tour of Andaloothia, as it's now called.

Our coverage started with an ITT, and baffling remarks in the commentary about various jersey wearers. How they can be wearing jerseys and have time gaps, we wondered. Ah, there was a short stage in the morning, which they annoyingly didn't show us. Particularly annoying as they spent the whole of the ITT coverage referring to the "massive crashes" which occurred, but without any footage of it being available.

Not that I want to watch cyclists crashing, I hasten to add, but there was a reference to Frankie being barely able to walk away from it, and not starting in the afternoon. I can't imagine how upsetting that must have been for Andy, presumably watching from the sofa at home.

Highlights for me included looking out for JVS in his new AG2R livery, still easy to spot as having possibly the longest legs and arms of anyone in the peloton, although he has a rival for the title of skinniest limbs, in Mirko Selvaggi, who was the Wanty rider (pale blue) who went off with Geschke of Giant, wheel-sucked for about 100k then left him for dead and was hilariously caught just on the 1k to go banner, and finally crawled in in 40th place, 5 minutes down on the leader (Froome). He - Selvaggi - has no calf muscles at all!

Other highlights were, predictably, watching Froome stuff it to Contador, and laughing every time the commentators mention Greg Ebola. Makes me laugh, every time. Oh, and watching my pet, Sky's Vasil Kiryienka, lead the puffing and panting peloton uphill whilst looking as though he is out on a Sunday afternoon ride, la la de da,with no sign of stress or discomfort while setting a pace that is killing almost everyone else. The man is a machine!

Other news today is an astounding short piece in Cycling News, all it said was " UCI requests withdrawal of Astana's WorldTour licence" with no story below it, just the phrase "more to come shortly..."

Half an hour later, the story has been updated: it's a lot of flannel but basically, the UCI have requested the withdrawal of Ass-t'na's licence!

What this is going to do to Contador, I can barely imagine. He'll probably threaten to retire again. But what of poor Jakob? Perhaps he could take Andy's place at Trek?

Talking of which, anyone booked on the "Ride with Schleck" holiday yet? *laughs*

Finally - as I do have some work to do, you know - one of the most irritating phrases in cycling at the moment appeared in Cycling News:  some unknown rider from a shitsmall team returned a "non-negative".  That would be a positive, then. *grinds teeth in annoyance*

OOh, before I go, I've found video of the crashes, thanks to Steephill TV for, as ever, getting all the good stuff and putting it in one place. The video shows the first crash was a fairly minor affair, but the second one was a massive crash, total skittles wipe-out, and guess who caused it? Oh dear, it was my pet Kiryienka, although it wasn't really his fault, the AG2R rider wasn't looking as Kiryienka swung off the front, they touched wheels and kaboom! from above it looked as though a grenade had gone off, bodies everywhere, and seven-eighths of the peloton were on the deck, in the ditches, and in the surrounding fields. Ooops.

Putting that behind me, I now have fingers crossed that we get some covering of Omloop tomorrow, one of my favourite Classics, not least because it's so close to the Loop of Loupe (also the ticker day),  which I really enjoyed. Pity it hasn't been televised again, really: Loupe, that is. *laughs*