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!