Dauphine - sleeves, road markings and bad spectators

Day one of the Dauphine, and we are nearly treated to another spectator-caused career-ending crash, as a silly bloke runs out into the road after the leader, waving and grinning at the moto, not realising that the second rider in the break is RIGHT BEHIND him.

I won't add a photo of him doing it, as I don't want to give ar**holes like that any additional publicity, but I was encouraged to see him being pushed off the road by a Police official: I live in hope that he'll be reprimanded or, better still, fined for that stupid action.

Moving on...  nice to see Johan Van Summeren....

 .... with his sleeves tucked up again.

There he is on the far right of the picture, leading out the AG2R train, with his sleeved tucked up.

I would so love to know why he does it!

Coug: "So, JVS, why do you always  tuck your sleeves up?"
JVS (in Dutch) "Er, sorry? I don't speak English."
Coug (makes gesture to biceps): "Sleeves?"
JVS (in Dutch): "What? My arms? Yes, they are a bit skinny, but I have very long bones, it's not like I'm a weakling or anything, I'm perfectly strong, it's just a proportion thing."
Coug (confused): "Oh. Thank you." 

The other thing that made me laugh was the road markings on the final circuit - we get accustomed to seeing things written on the road, and sometimes there are logos, but this one baffled me first time round (right).

Was it an advert for Pommi Bears?

Was it a rather obscure graphic indicating the turn-off lane for the diving pool?

After seeing it a few more times, LLB and I decided that two of them were indicating places where pedestrians could cross, and the other two were, er, possibly either indicating that the whole area was safe for pedestrians - which seems a bit odd, as there is clearly a pavement on the left - or the man who drove the marking machine got a bit carried away and plopped them down wherever he felt like it.

The day ended in triumph for Peter KenYack (Kennaugh) or Sweet-Little-Pete as he's known (well, that's what Fran Millar, sister of David Millar, calls him) as he peeled off the front with nearly 2k to go, stormed away, and made it over the line to take the first stage, and the first yellow/blue leader's jersey of the race.

Well done, SLP!

Tour des Fjords

A rare treat, we actually got some tv footage of some of this race. Only stages 1, 3 and 4, for some reason:  rather annoying not to get coverage of the final day, but hey, we take what we can get.

As always, the scenery is just fascinating, and what I love most is that in the moto footage, you see the riders faces coming towards us, and the backs of the heads of the spectators, because they are actually watching the race, instead of gurning at the cameras. Which is lovely!

It's also fun to see the spectators all wearing gore-tex walking coats, makes LLB and I feel that we would fit in well, if we ever got to go out there to watch it.

This year we have the usual crinkly routes, with lots of tunnels, lots of coastal roads, and we have Fabian!  Yay, go Fabs! Terrific to see him back on a bike after that vertebrae-crunching fall at E3 Harelbeck.

As I said, we didn't get coverage of every day of racing, and only edited highlights of those few days, but we did see the bizarre crash on day 1, when a moto doodled off the edge of the road, fell over, and the bike slid back across the road right into the peloton, causing a massive skittle-crash and ten riders injured - none of them seriously, luckily.

Here he is just before the crash - the moto is on the far left of the road, safely out of the way, doing nothing wrong, but on the absolute edge of the road.

He then wobbles off the tarmac onto the verge, the pilot falls off down the ditch, and the bike spins back to our right, across the tarmac, taking out half the peloton as it does.

After the recent Shimano fiasco, this is just bizarre, as the pilot really wasn't doing anything wrong!





Thrills and spills aside, it was an enjoyable race: checking on the internet tells me that EBH won the last stage, his first win in two years, which must come as a huge relief. He's riding for MTN-Qhubeka now, of course. Race winner was one of the Dark Lords, never heard of him but he worked hard for it. Fabs came in 49th overall on GC, and I'm sure he's happy with getting safely through his first race back.

Now we have a whole week of Dauphine to look forward to, starting today: and Wiggo is going for the Hour Record this evening, trying to beat the distance set by Schlecklander pet Alex Dowsett. Do we think he'll win? We're not sure - LLB thinks he'll set a record that is so far ahead of Alex's that it will stand unbeaten for years: I think he'll beat Alex but only just, and Alex will come back for another go at it later in the year, and will then beat him. They will continue to hopscotch each other for the next 18 months, until someone totally unexpected beats the pair of them.

That's my prediction!

"First Class Cycling...."

"... with Alpecin, caffeine sham-pugh."

She keeps on saying it, whoever she is - I thought it was Mariella Frostrup at first, but now I am having my doubts. At first is used to annoy me, but now LLB and I chorus along with her every time, competing to get the exact way she pronounces sham-pew. Sham-puh. Nope, still not quite right.

Does anyone know whose voice is saying those words, in the UK ad for Alpecin?

And does anyone know how the stuff is supposed to work?

Caffeine is supposed to help you perk up, wake up, be more alert: how does that relate to hair, I wonder? I don't know about you, but I don't particularly want my hair rushing around like a mad thing saying "Comb me! Style me!"  and nagging me to go to a proper hairdresser for a proper cut for the first time since August 2008. (I cut it myself now - I hate hairdressers, all that faff and chat for what need only be a five-minute operation, snip snip there you are, done.) Hair is, after all, dead once it leaves your scalp (good thing too, imagine how painful it would be if your hair were alive, ergh) so nothing you apply to it can have any effect on the structure of the hair, other than removing dirt and smoothing the cuticles of the hair to make it feel silkier. *runs fingers through own tresses in satisfaction*

I seem to remember that when we first heard that Alpecin were coming into pro cycling as a sponsor, I looked them up and found out it was a hair restoring product - and they were linked with Trek at the time. Ah, how things change.

But it does seem odd that a product to restore men's hair should be sponsoring what is basically a young man's sport....

Recognition - at last!

After four years of walking around all day with the Leopard-Trek logo on the back of my work shirts, someone finally - FINALLY - recognised it.

"Danny Kent!" shouted the tree surgeon's mate.

I continued weeding the rhubarb bed, having no idea that this comment was directed at me.

"Danny Kent!" the voice cried insistently "are you a fan?"

"Who?" I replied, looking round incredulously.

"Danny Kent!" he repeated, insistently "Leopard Racing! Your shirt! You have the logo on your shirt!"

"Oh!" I replied, realising what he meant, "no, no, that's the Leopard Trek logo."

"Yes!" he cried excitedly "Leopard racing!"

"No," I replied, calmly, "It's the Leopard Trek pro cycling racing team, disbanded now. Well, I suppose technically it's the logo of Leopard True Racing."

"Yesss!" he yelped, "Danny Kent rides for them! He's doing really well, he's just won his last three races! You must be a fan!"

"Oh, is he in the Junior team?" I said, patronisingly, remembering how all the old blue-white-and-black kit was donated to the Luxembourg Development team. "No, I support the old Leopard Trek team - you know, Andy Schleck? Fabs? Jensie, Stuey?"

"No!" he howled, "Moto 3!"

Yes folks, apparently Leopard True Racing have morphed into Leopard Natural, the only natural power drink (water?) and they are sponsoring motorcycle racing.  Danny Kent is their top rider - they only have three - and apparently he's doing really well.  Here's what they look like:

Something spookily familiar about their kit, isn't there!

That's Danny on the left.

Seems a shame that Leopard now see fit to throw millions of units of their currency into a minor motorsport, as opposed to a minor sport, but I guess that's the way of the world.

In the meantime, I will continue to do my shopping with a Leopard Trek musette (slightly adapted):

..in the slightly sad knowledge that it's never going to be recognised by a fellow cycling fan, but might attract some boisterous attention from moto3 followers.

*sigh*