i think my heart is just about back in the right place...

... after having been in my mouth for the last 18km of Stage Eight, watching Chris Froome scurrying down the hill like a demented black beetle, pedalling while sitting on the top tube ("ouch!") and taking what appeared to be insane risks on the corners.

I guess it was worth it, as he took the stage, took the extra 10 seconds, and took the yellow jersey - but my word, it was hard to watch!

Sean Kelly, on the commentary, actually said: "My god. The descent he's making here at the moment - I'm scared."

It seemed like the sort of risk to take if you have nothing to lose: but for such a high profile rider, already sitting high up in the GC to do it - whoooo hoooo! I loved his quote in the pre-podium sweaty-face interview: "it was fun!"  Teammate G later said "He takes bigger risks than I do in training. I'm not surprised. He's a bit of a nutcase when it comes to that."

I think team boss Dave Brailsford nearly had a heart attack as well: when he greeted Chris en route to the face-mopping tent, there was a big man-hug, then Sir B turned away, possibly with a tiny tear in his eye. He doesn't seem like a man to get particularly emotional, but I thought he was maybe just a little bit overcome, at that point.

Meanwhile, bad news for Poor Pierre - he didn't actually fall, but a slow puncture lead to a tyre misfunction, bike out of control and a hard scrape along a wall. He lost 1:30, and most of the left-hand side of his shorts:

Ouch! That's got to hurt.

He later had stitches in his hand - much later, after being made to wait and go though doping control before being allowed back to the team bus for treatment - and says he has scratches "everywhere", so he's going to have a painful night.

But he remains upbeat, despite slipping down to 15th place in the GC.

Go, Pierre! A worthy Schleckland Pet!

There isn't any other news today, apart from a quick nod of respect to Cav, who always hates the Pyranees. and who had a long, hard day of it: he was pushed into contesting an early sprint point in order to prevent Saggy Sagan pinching the green jersey, and by the time they hit the first climb, he was already cooked. He and faithful Bernie Eisel spent most of the race all alone, 30 minutes behind everyone else, doing their own private TTT while calculating what the cut-off time was going to be in order not to use one watt more than they needed to.

Cav said:"It's just too hot for me, I'm from the Isle of Man. I have white skin and that, I can't deal with this heat. Especially this year as I haven't really been training in Italy, I've been training on the track so I haven't seen the sun. I just want to go and sit down.."

D'aaaw!

Holy Collapsing Arches, Batman!

Stage Seven of the Tour was exciting for many reasons: the break was huge, 29 riders, with all but two of the teams represented in it: Greg van Avermaet, in Yellow, already five minutes ahead of everyone else, was in the break - IN THE BREAK!!! - and the peloton still let them go: Steve Cummings made a fantastic lone attack and won the stage for Dimension Data; and the Flamme Rouge collapsed.

What a ridiculous thing to happen - apparently a spectator innocently killed the inflatable arch, by accidentally pulling out the cable connecting the generator to the pump. "It caught on his belt" a witness said.

Psssssssss! down goes the arch, just as Adam Yates, having leapt off the chasing group and looking like a dead cert for the White Jersey, came up to it. It slaughtered him, and ate his bike, leaving him hobbling around on the course with blood dripping off his chin, while the marshalls frantically tried to hold up the soggy sausages of the arch, allowing riders to duck under it and forcing the moto passengers to limbo themselves backwards in order to get clear.

 Here's Frankie, trying to push the wobbly sausage out of his way...

And here's Alex Howes being eaten by it.

What a shambles!

ASO said that they have emergency back-up plans in place for this sort of problem, but there just wasn't time to get it up and running before the unfortunate Adam Yates and then the chasing bunch ran whee-splat right up against it.

Other news from this stage includes a lovely row in Stinkoff: apparently, back in Stage Five,  Roman Kreuziger failed to wait for Bertie, despite being told to do so four times.  Whoops! Unusually, Mr Stinkoff did not rip him publicly limb from limb, but made this very reasoned and calm statement:

 "I've not seen the situation to be honest," he said in relation to the moment Kreuziger rode away from Contador. "I tried to check on Youtube but not found it. I can't see that situation with Roman and Alberto but my observation is that once dropped on the final climb there's not much a teammate can do. If it's two or three climbs to go and in the wind then it's different but again I've not seen the situation."

I'm impressed, this is not what I expect from him. Perhaps his PR manager has slipped some sedatives in his lemonade?

So moving swiftly away from the unlovely Mr Stinkoff, how are we doing so far?

Pierre Rolland, Schleckland pet, came in with the main bunch nearly 4 mins down on Stevo, and is sitting at 9th in the GC on the same time as Froome, Dan Martin (and his teeth), Onion Barguil and Quintana, which is nice company to be in.

The lovely Jakob continues his low-key race, 36mins down in 93rd place:  Frankie is in 41st position, only 13mins down, while his doppelganger, Brice Feillu, is 27mins down in 66th place.

Tibbles didn't have a good day, and is now 27th, 9 mins down, but Nibbles is feeling better, came in all alone in 4th, and has risen to 39th overall, 13mins down. He was given the award for Combatative rider, so he got to stand on the podium, but he barely managed to smile.

We're all set for another hilly day today, with the full 198 riders due to start, which is pretty amazing in itself - despite some bad crashes, and some quite serious injuries, we haven't lost a single rider yet. Long may it last!

And we're off to the mountains!

Stage 5 today, first day in the mountains, unusually early in a Tour: generally, we don't hit the mountains until the second week, thus allowing lots of crashes in the nervous first week, on those boring long flat stages that are the bane of the commentators.

Well honestly, how would you like to waffle on, live, for 5 hours while nothing, nothing, happens? I know that a lot of people criticise Carlton Kirby, Rob Hatch et al but I think they do an amazing job. One year, we had a problem with the sound and all we got was pictures, so LLB and I tried to do our own commentary.

We were funny for about five minutes, then we were less funny and just talking, and after ten minutes we were both exhausted, with the effort of trying to get out the name of the rider as they came on the screen - it's not as easy as it looks, you know.

So, no long boring stage today - mountains! And an uphill finish! And I have to work all day, so I won't be able to watch it,  booo!

Jakob's dangling - but that's ok

Many of us Schlecklanders are watching the lovely Jakob with slightly worried expressions,  as he is now over 6 minutes down, for no apparent reason.

Is he injured? Did he crash? Is he being bullied by Eddie the Mad Flatmat Aru, on the grounds that he, Jakob, should be supporting Aru instead of Nibbles?

It might be none of the above - it's quite possibly just team tactics. If Jakob is several minutes off the GC, then he will be allowed to get away in breaks, and this has several advantages for Ass-t'na:

1) It gets the name on tv, as the break always get coverage and even a team as big as Ass-t'na need sponsor time.

2) It puts a rider way, way up the road so that if Nibbles and/or Mad Eddie make a break, Jakob is there to drop back and help them with it.

3) This one is not relevant at this point, but by having someone in a break, a team with a jersey can use them to mop up any points along the way, which might prevent another team from stealing a jersey off them.

and of course, best option from our point of view,

4) If the peloton just doodle along, well hey! Jakob is such a strong rider that whatever break he is in, there is a real chance that he could nip off the front of the break and take a sneaky stage win, which would be fab for all concerned.

I have fingers crossed that it's team tactics and not crashes!

Stage three seems to have been one big yawn - apparently Tom "Desperate Dan" Dumoulin was caught pretending to yawn to a camera bike, and they certainly took the stage much slower than planned. I often wonder what sort of problems this causes for all the little villages along the route:

"Maman, esker vous allow moi to cross le rue yet?"

"Non, mon petit, le race is n'est pas ici, vous must remain in le maison for un petite while longer"

"Mias, Maman, je has been waiting ici for troi heures et trente cinq minutes, je suis bored!"

And what about all the pavement cafes, itching to set out the tables again?  You do sometimes wonder what the organisers are up to, putting in such long stages: I guess it's all part of the stamina/wear you down aspect of le Tour. Luckily, I was at work all day so I didn't have to sit through it!

Sexism is finally dead!

Good to know that we finally have true sexual equality:

Here's the unlovely Mr Stinkoff, with a hastily-made tee to celebrate Scruffy Sagan taking the yellow jersey.

Look at the tiny waist on him... the cartoon Sagan, not Stinkoff... isn't it good to know that blokes have to be airbrushed, re-shaped, slimmed to an unrealistic point and forced to live up to an unattainable body shape, too?

(Note: this post is a JOKE, a JOKE, okay?)

Stage Two:

We're really enjoying this first weekend of le Tour, with long hours of coverage of the first two stages. Today we are presented with filthy horrible weather and warnings from Carlton and Sean that the last few km are dangerously narrow, slippy, congested with road furniture, reverse camber and all sorts of horrible things. Nice to have something to look forward to, eh?

Thrill of the day is to see Cav in yellow, for the first time in his career, and beaming from ear to ear, with yellow helmet and matching bar tape. In his pre-race interview with the lovely Lowra - who we now know to have two eyes after all - he modestly admitted that he was unlikely to keep the jersey, so he was enjoying it while he had it, and was pleased to be wearing it, in respect for the charity... well done Marky, always good value for your sponsor!

No sooner had our coverage settled down, but we had one of those odd little inserts - JuanTo's picks of the riders to watch today. In an appalling piece of bad timing, just as he started speaking there was a massive crash, which we could see on the small inset screen, but not clearly enough to work out who was involved.

"Get off the screen, Juan!" we screamed at the tv, as we could see - well, was that Contador having to wait for another bike? Lampre all over the road, BMC looking for bikes, even Sky in trouble, but we couldn't see who, or how badly, and it was maddening the way that poor JuanTo unknowing continued burbling on, as we shrieked in frustration.  Oddly, it was about another 30kms until we finally got a replay of the crash and some details of what happened: Bertie definitely had to have a new bike but didn't seemed to have any new road rash or bruises to add to the ones he carried from yesterday.
 
With 82k to go, the original break of four were still plugging merrily away, with a nice big gap of around 5 minutes, and hooray for Bora Aragorn, they managed to get two riders in the break. Cunning plan, eh - lots of tv coverage, for a team that (with due respect) is not really able to compete for a stage win. Presumably they also want to cunningly mop up any KOM points on the way, so that Paul Voss can keep it: or at the very least, to prevent anyone else taking the jersey off him.

One thing about le Tour which is disappointing for me personally, is the lack of inflatabubbles. Remember them, from the Tour of Poland? They used to just come in a sort of light-bulb shape, so they were known (in Schleckland, at least) as inflatabubbles: but now there are inflata-tee-shirts, inflata-arches, inflata-clocks, inflata-candles and various other shapes. The Giro had a really good selection of them (I did try to find out how much they cost, in case I could get one of my own, but for some reason if you search for inflatabubbles you don't get much useful information) and one in particular caught my eye: it was promoting Selle Italia, which turned out to be an Italian bike manufacturer. It had a matching camper-van, and I began to wonder how much fun it would be, to be the person who was tasked with moving the Selle Italia inflatabubble around.

I mean, just think about it - a three week holiday in a beautiful new campervan: each day you drive to a new part of Italy, and quite possibly the company do the research ang give you a list of locations. If not, you might have to spend some time working out the best place to set it up: LLB and I thought that the "best" slots, by the sprint points, kom points, plus the 5km and 1km markers for each of those, would be auctioned off to the highest bidders, and indeed many of the arches (both banners and inflata-arches) had a matching inflatable, so presumably if you pay to have your name on a banner or on the hoardings, then you get first dibs on putting up your co-ordinating inflatable there.

So the Selle Italia inflatabubble team would have to find a place where they were most likely to have tv coverage: potential accident spots, long slow curves, narrow pinch points, and anywhere within the frame of a famous landmark. Having blown it up and tied it down, all you have to do is sit around enjoying the sunshine, wave to the Tour caravan as it goes past, wave to the race, then as soon as they are safely past, you deflate your inflatabubble, pack it away. and drive off to the next location on your list. If it rains, you can sit inside the campervan and put the kettle on: if it's hot you can sit outside and enjoy a cold drink from the fridge. There's no hassle about finding hotels, as you have your own bed with you!

And, best of all, you get paid! Either the person who does it is a Selle Italia employee, in which case you're already being paid, or (more likely) you are hired in for the occasion, in which case you get an all expenses paid three-week holiday, and get to see the Tour every day! Fab! How can I sign up?

I'm thinking about campervans at this moment, in case you are wondering, because the peloton has just gone through a roundabout with a vast number of campervans parked on the verges all the way around it, and I asked LLB why there should be so many of them, in what appears to be the middle of nowhere. He suggested that, by parking on a roundabout, you gave yourself a quick exit to drive out sideways and get ahead of the race, which sounds perfectly sensible to me.

Obviously the Selle Italia inflatabubble team won't be in the Tour, but I was hoping that I would find another promotional inflatabubble to covet: alas, there don't seem to be any. Shame.

Getting back to the race, we're down to less than 50k to go and a five minute gap, which normally means that someone from the break would win the stage: however, this would mean that they would also take the yellow jersey: and we somehow think that Dimension Data would not be keen to lose the maillot jaune to someone like Fortuneo, or Bora Aragorn!

Lotto are presumably leading the team competition, as they have turned out in horrible yellow helmets: I know it's "allowed", but really, urgh, nasty shade of yellow and it causes quite a lot of spectator confusion, as we can't work out where Cav is.

Special Award of Heartbreak Of The Day has to go to the Trek guy in the original break - Yasper Styvesant - who was finally caught within 1k of the line, which is always heartbreaking, but worst of all, no-one noticed that the time break indicator was showing us the gap between him and Cav, not the gap between him and the chasing group, so we all thought he had a minute in hand and was actually going to win the stage.  I can only hope that his DS, on the headset, was better informed.

In the end, as you all know now, Scruffy Sagan won the final sprint and took not just the stage, but the yellow jersey as well: and the hilarious part about that was the way he gamely sprinted to beat Allaphillipe, but totally failed to celebrate the win, crossing the line with a glum face. He said afterwards that he thought there were still two guys ahead of him, and that he was only sprinting for 3rd place! 

Stage One: - Grenade launcher at the ready.

Despite terrible forecasts of wind, hail, rain, snow and frogs, the day started in nice sunshine - some clouds, but not much.

It also started rather unexpectedly with a tiny, fast breakaway consisting of two Bora Aragorn riders and an IAM rider, which was quickly whittled down, by correct application of the "two against one" tactic, to one Bora Aragorn rider (Paul Voss) way out front. He then picked up the two single KOM points that were on offer for the day, and therefore will take the polka dot jersey, if it just makes it to the end of the race. Not a bad tactic, and a great way to start the race: with a jersey, they will be able to enjoy lots of publicity today, and a nice easy ride tomorrow.

We always expect the first week to be nervous, twitchy, and full of crashes, and today was set to be particularly bad, with sidewinds forecast: but when it came to it, it wasn't really that bad. Possibly because the general speed was quite low: with the small break out the front, the rest of the peloton seemed to relax.

We even saw a very narrow shave for Frankie: one of the other riders kindly told him that he had a plastic bag wrapped round  his rear mech (I think that is the correct technical term) and he had to get a sticky mechanic to lean perilously out of the car window and pull it off, while Sean drew in his breath sharply between his teeth and reminded us all how dangerous this was, and how it was a good way to lose a finger or two.

So, the happy gentle riding continued in a happy manner until about 90k to go and the feed zone, whereupon the pace suddenly rose, and instead of a nice neat bunch, it turned into a single line, and a feeling of impending doom.

Sure enough, within 20k, an unseen drone launched a tripwire and a couple of guys slidded out (Sean's phrase) even though they were doing it all correctly, ie keeping at the front out of trouble. The worst hit was Contador, who left quite a lot of his jersey on the road and took a significant tow from the medical car while they frantically attempted to get a bandage to stick to the jersey. He also had to change his shoes, which is always fun to watch.

Apart from that little burst of excitement, it was almost the dullest day of racing every seen: as LLB said, if you were wanting to introduce someone to the joys of watching pro cycling, this would have been exactly the wrong stage to show them! It was lovely of Eurosport to give us the whole day, and we always enjoy watching "the whole day" to see how the early breaks develop, to see the domestiques doing their bit, to see who does what early on: but honestly, as an introduction to the sport *insert that annoying wack-wack noise to indicate a dismal failure*  ... not so good.

At least there was some good field art to look at: the best one was probably the one with farmers leading cows (cries of "Les vaches du Tour!" from the sofa) around to be the wheels, where one of the animals refused to co-operate and headed off in the wrong direction, prompting LLB to say that it was "not playing bull".

Note for non-native English speakers: the phrase is "not playing ball" to indicate that someone is not joining in properly. End of Note.

Getting back to the race, after about 10k of the slowest-looking 57km/hr sprint lead-out ever seen, there was a classic sprint finish, a classic double crash into barriers on one side and into each other on the other side, and Cav did a fantastic sprint , clearly faster than Scruffy - er, Sagan, faster than Greipel and Kittel, and took not only the stage - his 27th Tour stage win, by the way - but his first ever yellow jersey.

So well done, Cav!

As mentioned yesterday, he's such good value for the sponsors - even when pink in the face and almost in tears with emotion, he still manages to name check the sponsor, the charity, to mention bikes for kids in Africa, to mention his respect for the race, and so on.

A note of amusement from the catch-up with the lovely Ashley (I'm developing a mild asexual crush on him) and the equally lovely Juan Antonio Flecha, to see that JuanTo had presumably spilled something down his shirt and had to buy a new one, as you can see the original folds and creases in his abnormally crisp white shirt. *snorts through nose*.

Tour de France presentation

It seems as though every year, the TdF organisers have to find a more ridiculous way to bus in the teams for the big Depart.  This year, because of the commemoration of 100 years since the Somme, they chose a WW1 theme, with teams forced to perch precariously in rickety old vintage vehicles, each one with a group of randomly-decorated walkers in front of it, although none of them was waving a red flag.

(Note for young people: when cars were first invented they were very slow, and drivers were forced to have a bloke with a red flag walk in front of them to warn pedestrians of the oncoming mechanical monster. How things have changed.)

This meant that the tv coverage was, well, spotty to say the least: the host broadcaster did their best to show us each team arriving on stage and being introduced, but they were often hopscotched by the lovely Lowra (well, that's how we pronounce it) interviewing random riders, so we frequently missed a bit: and they would intercut each presentation with shots of them trundling up towards the stage area, even though they were clearly already on the stage, which gave the whole thing a weird time-warp effect.  Or maybe that was the intention?

Direct Energie (did I say Bora Aragon originally? Oops!) started the presentation by putting up two strong contenders for Worst Hairdo:

Brian Coquard looks as though he was aiming for the Kittel rootlift but instead did a Woody Woodpecker - or do I mean Roadrunner? Tweetie Pie? I'm sure there was a yellow bird-like cartoon once with a sticky-up quasi-quiff, and it looked just like this.

Sylvan Chavanel, on the other hand - what on earth's going on there? It looks like a wig! Possibly, a wig that's been put on back to front!!

Bora Aragon (well, that's how everyone says it) trundled up in their camo truck (nearly didn't see them arrive, ha! ha!) taking selfies all the way.

And yes, Michelle, they did indeed submit their usual entry for the competition: Shane Archbold and his mullet, yay!

We can only assume that he likes to have long flowing hair over his neck, but can't bear the heat of having all that mop under his helmet, so he cuts the top short and leaves the back long. It's sort of like the opposite of a pudding-bowl haircut: instead of cutting off everything outside the pudding-bowl, he cuts off everything inside it.

At least he doesn't tie in back in a "bad ponytail", so things could be worse!

Lotto Jumbo were led out by Wilco Kendermann, and luckily no-one made any jokes about the British wartime slang. Pity they don't have a rider called Roger, really. They could line him up in front of Wilco, followed by Oveur and possibly someone called Out and there you have it.

Next up were Cannondale, now rebranded as Cannondale-Drapac, phew, thank the lord for extra sponsors: their team leader is of course Schleckland Pet Pierre Rolland, but I had a bit of a shock when they went up on the podium, as I realised that I had never actually seen his face before.

Well, I mean, I've only ever seen him with his helmet and sunglasses on, and apparently this is what he looks like without them (slightly scary).

Oh well, at least LLB can't accuse me of picking him as a pet because he is "cute", eh?


Next up were Trek, and you have to feel a bit sorry for whoever their team leader is, because everyone wanted to talk to Fabs.

He was as delightfully incoherent as usual, charming to the last, and playing down his retirement in favour of paying respect to le Tour.

We don't, of course, include Fabs in the Worst Hairdo competition, because he doesn't "do" his hair, it just naturally goes like that.

How Sagan must grind his teeth in envy....

IAM took the stage, and for some unfathomable reason they decided to embarrass the youngest member of the peloton, someone who appeared to be called Sandra Enger by forcing/letting him do some dance moves on the stage: it didn't quite work, mostly as the live band were producing light jazz. Still, if your team is about to fold and you are a complete unknown, there are worse things to do than draw attention to yourself by dancing at the Grand Depart. He will forever now be "oh, you're the one who did that weird dance thing at le Tour, aren't you?", which is better than sinking without trace.

Lampre got a bit of a raw deal, just a quick chat with Rui Costa then another with the apparently 12 year old Louis Minkies, before they were hustled off the stage in favour of Dimension Data and Cav.

Cav, true to form, managed to look charming (with his Bambi eyelashes and thank-god-he-had-them-straightened perfect teeth) and belligerent (with the top-heavy wartime haircut with sides shaved shorter than his stubble) at the same time, but proved his enduring value to sponsors by managing to mention the sponsor name, the charity name, and what the charity does, ie bicycles for children in Africa, all in the space of a brief interview.

He repeated this feat when Lowra interviewed him shortly afterwards too: he may be a bit of a rough diamond, and a challenge to many interviewers, by my goodness, he is good value. My favourite quote still has to be that one where the rather dim interviewer - who had clearly never seen him race - asked a really dumb question about "do you always try to win, in a sprint finish?" to which Cav replied, with a dirty look, "Of course I always try to win, it's not a f**king hobby, you know."

Fortuneo, one of the shitsmall teams, appear to have Frankie riding for them:

The caption said it was Brice Feillu, but don't you think it looks a little like Frankie?

And, they appear to have made a bit of a gaffe with their kit design, as they appear to be wearing fishnet stockings:

I was expecting them to break into the can-can at any moment.

Luckily, they didn't, they just rode calmly off the stage, making way for O'Rica and another squeaky speaker, Simon Gerrans, followed by the non-team of Cofidis who, without Boohoohanni *snorts through nose*  don't have a snowball's chance of doing anything in this Tour. I suspect that we will either not see them for the entire Tour, or - if they have any sense - they will be in every single break from the moment the racing starts.

Next up *scary chord* the Dark Lords, who are taking the principle of "uncluttered kit" to an extreme, as they now appear to have no sponsors at all apart from the breakfast cereal, Special K.

Another red kit appeared, this time Lotto Soudal, and the terminal embarassment of Gummy Bear Greipel in his German national jersey, which prompted whistles and cat-calls from the audience, who have spent the last two hours or more being whipped into a pro-French frenzy by the WW1 memorabilia and the heavily biaised French presenter. Oh dear. Luckily, he was not actually torn limb from limb and hung up on the town clock along with the dummy and the parachute, but it was a close thing.

Ettixx-Quickstep bounded on the stage to defuse the situation: it was slightly unfortunate that their team leader, Marcel Kittel, is also German, and he does rather embody the blond-hair blue-eyes looks-like-a-Greek God sort of German ideal. However, he exuded charm, plus he has that wonderful root lift, so the host let him live, and elbowed him out of the way to have a word with rising star Julien Alaphillipe, thus cunningly bypassing the other German star of the team, Tony Martin, and another possible GC contender, Dan Martin who, along with his teeth, was completely ignored.

Then there was an unexplained musical interlude - presumably one of the vintage trucks had broken down and they were trying to wrestle a museum-quality WW1 stocking off of one of the period-costumed walkers in order to fix it - before Ass-t'na made it to the stage.

Ass-t'na, the pyjama boys, were lead on stage by Fabio "Eddy the Mad Flatmate" Aru, leading contender for Ugliest Smile in the Peloton. Nibali stood next to him, barely able to look at him, and totally unable to smile. The hyperthyroid over-enthusiastic host did his best, he had a chat with Aru then pushed him over to make a space so he could talk to Nibbles, which he did in English, which was probably a subtle dig at Aru not being able to do so.

This almost made Nibbles smile... and he was quite jovial in his reply, right up to the moment when he couldn't think of the word, and his face darkened like thunder as he lost his thread. He turned to the lovely Jakob, and quite clearly hissed to him in Italian "what's the word for xxx?" and Jakob, that well known English/French/Italian/everything-speaking Dane, slipped him the next phrase. Phew, storm averted.

Our commentators, Carlton Kirby and Sean Kelly, were happily burbling on about the rivalry between Aru and Nibbles, and the tension thereof, which was a very funny counterpoint to the thundery faces on the podium.

Ahh Djhee Duurs Air appear to have sent along a squad of 12-year olds - is it me, or are cyclists getting younger? - led by Romain Bardet who is very nearly a Schleckland pet, until he turns sideways to reveal a racing keel of a nose.

Giant Alpecin appear in their Tour kit, which is now white with black stripes. They have sent a really strong team, with Tom "Desperate Dan" Domoulin towering and glowering, Warren "Onion" Barghee looking surprisingly cute, Wolfman Ten Damme and various others. Unfortunately, their kit designer must be working with Fortuneo, and their stockings-and-suspenders were even more blatant:

I'm afraid this is definitely a can-can moment. Lookit!

Their interviews included John "Bad Boy"  Degenkolb, looking less like a WW2 spiv than usual, thank heavens: and I am still undecided as to whether I like him or not. You might remember that he was promoted to Pet status, then demoted: now, after that dreadful accident, he's worked so hard to get fit, that I feel he ought to be promoted again. We shall observe his behaviour, perhaps, before deciding.

Next up were BMC and of course they are also having team leader issues, but in their case Richie Porte bounced up on the stage and squeaked happily about the joys of co-leadership: the mean-minded host, probably still sweating from the narrow escape of fisticuffs from the pyjama boys, actually asked him about the rivalry between him and Teej - incidentally, anyone know what Mr Van Garderen's first name is? Presumably he is Mr T Van Garderen, and TJ is "T Junior"? I remember watching "Rosanne" for years, and accepting that yanks give their kids weird names, because the little boy was apparently called Deej. It must have been several seasons before I realised that it was a contraction of Dee Jay, which in turn was short for Dan Junior. I know, I know: we didn't have the internet in those days, and I never saw it written down anywhere...

Anyway, good old Ritchie just gave one of those megawatt grins while burbling happily about what fun it was going to be.

FDJ have sent a chirpy team, lead by Tibbles, who looks like a bit of a ruffian but is somehow irresistible at the same time. They were all clearly thrilled to be there, which made a bit of a change from the other teams, many of whom were looking positiviely miserable. Maybe it was the weather.

Then we had an extended interlude for Stinkoff: blimey, what a performance. Sagan appeared with a wild mass of hair, and his usual "I'm a mass murderer and somewhat ashamed of it" hangdog expression, complete with whiney nasal voice, and we learned that he is equally nasal in Italian. For some unknown reason, the host gave him the microphone and told him to introduce his team, which started with him almost bypassing team leader Contador altogether, pretending he didn't know the names of the others - at least, we hope he was pretending - and then introducing Tossato as "Tosser". He clearly doesn't know that in English, to call someone a "tosser" is a significant insult. The only funny bit was Sagan's use of the word "...nice..." after describing a team-mate's achievements.

The host finally managed to grab the microphone back, and scolded Sagan for not doing a proper build-up for his introductions, saying "this is how you should have done it.." then giving Contador a huge, massive, introduction, probably because Conti was standing there with his nose so far out of joint that the others might not have been able to get past him to leave the stage.

Unfortunately, the way the audio had been set up meant that for us tv viewers, we heard a hugely loud build-up from the host, an elongated "COOONNNNNTTAAAADOOOOOOOOOR!!!!"  and then a mere murmur of "... yay...." from the crowd. Presumably, you had to be there.

Next up were Movistar, the Wiggly Worms, and they appeared to have Harry Potter on their team:

Let's hope he can work some magic, huh?

Presumably his youthful energy is there to counterbalance the 82-year-old Quintana, who seems to be going very strongly for such an old man.

Finally, last team up, Team Sky hit the stage,  and Chris Froome bravely responds to the host in French, thus endearing himself to the gathered crowds.

Not so much G, bless him, who is so laid back that he hasn't even bothered to prepare his answers: he can't remember how long his own team has been going "Err, it's been like, err, wot, seven years now is it? Six? Seven? Wotever, not long..." and then he can't remember how many times his own team have won the Tour: "Well, 's like, four times, innit? Four? Free? Four?"

Hilarious!

Only three other items of interest: firstly, the lovely Lowra - who usually only does the Giro and la Vuelta - appears to be doing interviews for Eurosport at the Tour this year, which will be nice, as LLB and I can overdub her interviews with our own versions, in which she is usually inviting riders to meet her for paella, and they are refusing her with various degrees of politeness. For the first time, she turns to face the camera. My god! She's pretty! I've only ever seen her profile before, so it's quite a shock to find out that she does actually have two eyes.

(Oh, I'm talking about Laura Meseguer, of course)

Secondly, the presentation ended with liddle kiddies on stage holding up the flags of the nations; which was lovely, but would have been a bit classier if they had ironed the flags, as they were clearly just taken out of a box ten minutes beforehand.

And finally, what was going on with the graphics on the backdrop?

Is it me, or are those money boxes?

Is this the latest way to raise sponsorship or funding - make cyclist-shaped money boxes and go along the crowd asking for small change?

Actually, they might have something there...!

Well, there you have it, my round up of the presentation - did I miss anyone out?

Boohoohani out of le Tour - shame, shame

OK, those are crocodile tears:  my, I did laugh at reading that Boohoohani had been in a punch-up, and had broken his hand on someone else's teeth!

Apparently he and a couple of teammates were staying in a hotel during the French National road race, and some other guests were being a bit rowdy. At 4am, mindful that he would have to get up early in the morning, Boohoohani and his brother went along the corridor to complain, only to get into a fisticuff fight with three drunken guests.

Oops!

Despite being a former boxer, Boohoohani fractured his hand and needed four stitches, so the next day he was in no fit state to race, and had to withdraw.

Shame, shame.

It gets worse: apparently he's now out of le Tour, because the hospital did not do a terribly good job: the later news report said  "We don't know if the stitches were badly applied or if the wound was badly cleaned but it's a significant infection, which has forced him to stay in hospital for two days and receive treatment for several more,"

Good thing this didn't happen in America, Cofidis would be suing the hospital! Luckily for the hospital, it was in France, and luckily for Cofidis, there was just time to slide in a replacement rider, so Nico Edet will be feeling the pressure as, frankly, the Cofidis team is not exactly an A team. They have had the decency to give us all a giggle by sending along Geoffrey Soupe, whose amusing surname is such a ludicrous contrast to his extremely un-French first name.

Meanwhile, here in Schleckland, we have some extremely serious news, in the loss of another Schleckland Pet: Johan Van Summeren has had to retire from the sport due to ill health: he's had a recurring heart problem for most of this year, and he has finally had to announce that he's retiring.

*glum face*

I shall miss him terribly in the pro peleton: not only the tallest rider, at 6'7" (be still my beating heart) but he seemed to be a genuinely nice guy, with a strange habit of tucking up his sleeves, as though his arms weren't long enough already?  At least he will always live on in Shleckland, not least for being immortalised in the famous Loupe episode:



16.15 CET At last, the peloton are getting organised, Garmin are at the front and are pulling well.

"Garmin Base to Garmin Car, tell Garmin 2 to stop rolling his sleeves up. Over."
"Garmin Car to Garmin Base, he always does it. Over."
"Garmin Base to Garmin Car, well we don't like it, it spoils the look. Over."
"Garmin Car to Garmin Base, well I've told him, and told him, but he always does it. Over."
"Garmin Base to Garmin Car, well tell him again. Over."
"Garmin Car to Garmin Base, tell him yourself. Over."
"Garmin Base to Garmin Car, don't give me that, get on to him and TELL HIM. Out.

16.20 CET There's something happening at the front of the peloton, one of the Garmin riders appears to be having an argument with his team mates, and is now sitting up. The rest of the Garmin team are losing their cohesion, and several of them are pulling at their sleeves. HTC are moving up towards the front of the peloton.

"HTC Car to HTC 1, get up the front with the others, would you? Over"
"HTC 1 to HTC Car, why bother, it's a shitsmall race. Over"
"HTC Car to HTC 1, shut up and pedal. Out."

Yes, now it's all over, I can reveal that "Garmin 2" was of course JVS, and here's a quick montage of some of his moments:

Best of luck JVS and Jasmine, for future health and happiness.

Two days to Le Tour!

Hi Schlecklanders! *waves enthusiastically*

Time has passed, broken hearts are healing, and it's time for men in lycra, moans about motos, and les vaches du Tour - not to mention bus-stop-spotting and Schleckland Pets.

More of all those in due course.

For now, it's two days to go: we have the team presentations tomorrow (not that I will be watching them as I will be working, but heyho, we all have a cross to bear), nothing much on Friday, and then on Saturday, at long last, the first stage.

We start at Mont-Saint-Michel → Utah Beach, which seemed like an awfully long first stage, with a big wet bit in the middle, until I realised that Utah Beach was not, in fact, a beach in Utah, USA, but was actually just across the peninsula from Mont-Saint-Michel. Phew. I wouldn't want to have been diverted into watching Triathlon - with all due respect to everyone who does it, I just can't come to terms with men riding bikes in swimsuits.

Yes, I know that a pair of lycra bibshorts are a very short step away from being a swimsuit, yes I know you can swim in bibshorts, and yes, I know that I am frequently heard referring to our tough guys "riding bikes at perilous speeds with no padding and while wearing what is basically a swimsuit" but it's not ACTUALLY a swimsuit, and somehow men riding bikes in swimsuits looks, well, slightly indecent.

OK, I admit it, I'm a little weird. *shrugs in gallic fashion*

So, leaving that aside, two days to le Tour! I shall make a big effort to come on here and comment every day, so I hope you'll drop in, read it, leave a comment, start a debate, ask questions, all the usual stuff, which I will respond to, encourage, answer, or ignore, depending on whether or not I know the answer. I'll also be on Twitter from time to time, depending on how busy I am: I'm @SchlecklanderCG there, so do come along and say hello.

In the meantime, a strange thing happened while LLB and I were watching some shitsmall race or other a couple of months back:

Apologies for the fuzzy camera-phone pic of tv,  but what do I see there? It's the Leopard logo!

And yes, sure enough, it turned out to be the Lux based Leopard Pro Cycling, a continental level (ie third tier) feeder team. Remember them being set up, when Leopard-Trek folded? We made all those jokes at the time about them taking a dozen boxes of Leopard kit and the big old team bus, and getting some more miles out of them. Well, it appears that's exactly what they did, and they are still going, so hooray for Leopard Pro Cycling!

In another shitsmall race, or it might have been the same one (hang on while I check the photo details - yes, it was the same race, they were taken at the same time) I also nearly had a bump of the heart, when I saw what appeared to be the old beloved Leopard kit: but it turned out to be One Pro Cycling, whose kit is spookily reminiscent of the old black-white-and-pale-blue kit. 

And would you believe it, they are a British team!  They are Pro Conti, and they have - be still my beating heart - the lovely Yanto Barker riding for them, and he is definitely a Pet. I thought he'd retired from pro cycling, that's why he was commentating a couple of years back, but apparently he's back on a Pro Conti team, much to my delight.

I did consider joining the fan club of One Pro Cycling: in the UK, money is so tight that they have to try to lure people into micro-sponsorship, by becoming a member of the fan club. It costs a hundred quid to join, and you get a nice pack, including an actual cycling jersey. That's no more than I donated to MTN Qhebeka last year... and it's quite a good cause, to support British cycling, although not quite as good as sponsoring bikes for Africa. But if I joined, I'd have to wear the jersey. Hmmm, me in lycra? I think not...

They do have a Junior membership pack for £20, for which you get a t-shirt and a bottle and a pack of rider cards. I was very tempted to take up that membership - there is a slight chance I might wear the tee, whereas there is no chance at all that I will ever wear the jersey, quite apart from the fact that I would probably have to ask for XXXXL in order to even go round me!

Paris-Nice 2016 - yay for Tim Wellens!

Phew, what a mad exciting end to a race!

To be honest, most of Paris-Nice had been, well, a bit underwhelming: long flat stages, just the occasional bit of cross-winds to liven them up: cancellation of one stage altogether due to snow (and we didn't even get any coverage of the bit they did race, as it was - obviously - at the beginning, before coverage began), and the much-hyped dirt track sections were rather short.

Also, no reflection on the race, but our Eurosport coverage was badly organised: despite showing catch-up editions later in the day, ie edited, they over-ran their time slots and on two days we therefore missed the final few kms, which was absolutely maddening.

For Stage 6, our coverage cut out with 5.3kms to go!! We had to wind up a pc, go to Steephill TV (thank god for Steephill!) and watch a video of the end in two instalments - which confused us a bit, I can tell you! "Funny, this part of hill looks familiar?" commented LLB. "Haven't we just seen this bit?" I replied, and then we noticed the km counter had gone back to 5km. Oops.

The end of this stage was about as exciting as you could wish for, with G (Geraint Thomas of Sky) stuffing it to Contador but being pipped at the post by the unlovely unrepentent doping Dark Lord. But at least he took the lead.

Then, yesterday, we accidentally missed the live coverage owing to a slight scheduling oversight, and had to wait until the evening to catch up with it. We only got the last 36k or so, but we were grateful to Eurosport for that much: even if the coverage did start with the news that Sky had made a boo-boo, and Stinkoff were in the second group with a big climb approaching, while the entire Sky team were a  minute and a half behind them.

Poor old Nico Roche was on the front for about a hundred years AGAIN, having done all this yesterday, no doubt he was pondering the inequities of deja vu, if he was able to have any coherent thoughts at all... and what about Swifty? Ben Swift, well known sprinter, not only zooming up the hills with the best of them (quite literally) but taking turns on the front! Amazing stuff.

Talking of amazing stuff, a minor diversion - no surprise to regular readers - for a mention of Deer-eckt Enn-air-ghee's Antoine Duchesne, who lead the break in stage 6 for hour after hour, from 20km out, thundering on all alone, before finally being caught at the base of the final hill. What a great effort! I was impressed.

Then on Sunday, he did it all again! That is a world-tour performance, to repeat it the very next day, so he's been elevated to Schleckland Pet, and let's hope that he finds the success that often happens to my Pets!

So, back to Stage 7, and G proved time and again that he is worthy of the position of team leader: he didn't lose his cool, he didn't panic, he most certainly did not give up, but he pedalled on strongly and calmly, the team were fantastic, with a very special nod to Henao who threw aside all his own aspirations and stayed with G during a very dark period, where G was struggling up the final hill with Contador not even in sight.

There was even one strange moment when apparently Henao took the wrong turning on the descent, so G had to just go to the front and get on with it all alone, until Henao could get back to him! Would have loved to have seen that....

LLB and I were jumping up and down on the sofa for the last 7k or so, counting the seconds on our fingers, cursing Richie Porte every time he took a turn on the front ("save yourself, Richie, so you can out-sprint him at the line and take away the 10 second bonus!") and trying to work out how many seconds G would have in hand: he started with a 15 second lead over Contador, there are 10, 6 and 4 bonus seconds on the line, and Richie Porte won it last year and would therefore do his utmost to win again...

As it turned out, the wonderful, wonderful Tim Wellens beat Conti to the line, taking the 10 seconds, reducing Conti's gain to 6 seconds and thus reducing G's lead to 9 seconds: which meant that G had to come in less than 8 seconds behind Conti in order to take the race.

And he did it! With a 4-second margin! Yay, go G! Stuff it to Contador!

This absolutely made up for the rest of the race being a bit dull!!

Omloop - LIVE!!

LLB and I had a huge surprise this morning - we were trying to decide if it was worth trying to find a stream so that we could watch Omloop, as Eurosport ("the home of cycling") have totally failed to offer us any coverage at all.

Trouble is, the illicit streams are absolutely terrible in quality: not only is the picture dreadful, but the picture keeps locking up, so we gradually get further and further behind, to the point where other people are tweeting triumphantly about who won, while we are still yelling at the screen with 50m to go.

So imagine our surprise and delight to find a new, hitherto unheard-of tv channel called BIKE.

We watched in amazement as a very nice girly called Fillipa, overdubbed by a repressed middle-England actor, cycled around a lake somewhere in Italy, meeting a variety of men who were all overdubbed by the same male actor, which was slightly disconcerting. She was moderately enthusiastic about the scenery of the lake, and the map which had been provided by - I think - the local tourist office. She meets a chap at the landing stage where she proposes to cut short her 39k round-the-lake cycle ride by taking a boat back across the lake, and asks him about an island.

"Does it have any legends?" she asks.
"Yes, it has many legends," come the overdubbed reply.
"do you have a favourite legend?"
 "Yes, I have a favourite legend, it is said..."

Thrilling stuff, eh?

It would appear that it's an Italian channel, which someone has bought in, and added quick (and cheap) English dialogue to, then pushed out on UK tv.  The quality is not exactly HD, but frankly after the streams, it seems perfectly acceptable to us. It started on 10th December, but we didn't know about it until this morning.

And now, here we are, happily watching Omloop in perfectly acceptable quality, and with the inimitable Rob Hatch commentating, all alone, and with no backing music to help him. It's not easy to keep talking continuously for 2 hours, and he's doing a sterling job - particularly when you think that the content of each race, ie the riders, are constantly changing. I can only assume that commentators have a large print version of the start list, another list sorted alphabetically, and a quick crib of what each rider has done in the past. That, or a wonderful memory.

I always enjoy watching the cobbled classics, it's probably a combination of the truly lovely scenery, which is the very best of middle England, but without the mess, and the constant changes to the leading groups, due to the constant presence of punctures, crashes with road furniture, etc.

Talking of crashes, Tony Martin comes down a whopper with 44k to go, he  just loses his front wheel on a cobbled corner, taking out a couple of other riders as he does so - luckily he does not appear to be damaged, and hops back on it. This might well be a relief to the front groups, which include our very own Luke Rowe, who is out there with the leaders in a small group of 8, which is now forming a very small echelon as they encounter a slightly more open section.


At this point there is a massive crash towards the end of the peloton, and we see Philly Gilly hit the deck and stay down for a worrying length of time, although in the end, he's the one who gets back on his bike and rides on, leaving a fellow BMC rider sitting on the bank, along with Jempy Drucker from Loooks'm'burg (as Rob Hatch says it).

There are far too many black kits in the not-just-pro peloton! At this rate I am going to have to start learning which bikes they are all riding, in order to work out who is who. "No, you won't," says LLB reassuringly, "it just takes a while to get your eye in, that's all."

Let's hope so, otherwise you will have to read about Specialized (Veranda's Willems), Pinarello (Team Sky) etc, instead of "and the lovely Jakob is looking good today."

We all remember the ludicrous ending of this race last year - three Etixx guys and one lone Sky rider (Stannard) for about the last 20k, and the lone Sky rider beat the lot of them and won it.

So this year, we are expecting Etixx - with their prominent Diddlye-Dee (Lidl) advertising on the shoulders - to make an effort not to be left behind too badly: if they don't at least pull the break back, they will be laughed out of the peloton. And width 11k to go, there is still a break of five guys nearly a minute up the road, one of which is Peter "Jammy Dodger" Sagan is seen tightening up his shoes in preparation for a sprint effort.

With just 7k to go the gap is not coming down at all, and it looks as though we are all going to laughing at Etixx, with no mercy and much pointing of fingers:  in fact, they have had to ask Direct Energie (formerly Europcar) to do some pulling, and finally the time is starting to come down.

However, they left it far too late, despite Sylvain Chavanel in his unfamiliar balck kit doing his utmost to bring the time down, and it's a big sprint by the lead group at the line. Poor Luke doesn't quite have the oopmh to take it right to the line, and settles for 4th place, with Greg van Avermaet just beating Sagan to take the lead.

Well, we are very happy with the new BIKE channel and we look forward to watching it again in future!

Tour of Oman 4-6

Another stage, another grey mountainous martian landscape.... today's stage is due to end on the alleged Green Mountain, which - you will note - is not Green at all, but is the same murky grey martian colour as the rest of the landscape. Such a disappointment.

We start our brief coverage with a small break, containing not one but two members of Wanty "Go, Bears!" - presumably they had to send two ordinary riders to take the place of Kenny de Haas and his flowing barnet - and then suddenly it's 10k to go, and Daniel 'Oss is panting like a dog at the front of the bunch, closely followed by Richie Porte who I simply cannot recognise in his BMC ladybird kit.

The lovely Jakob Fuglsang is pulling on the front for Nibbles again (I do hope he is being well paid for all this domestiqueing, considering he left Leopard Trek in order to flower and grow and no longer have to domestique for the Schlecks...), and Romain Bardet clips off the front - so I really don't know who to cheer for.

I'm impressed to see Tom Dumoulin (who looks like being quite a contender for the gc later this year) "doing a Frome", ie he gets dropped on the climb, but instead of giving up, or overstraining himself trying to catch up, he is plugging away at his own pace, and steadily gaining ground.

Romain pings off the front! Nibali goes with him! While the eyes of the world  - well, the couple of hundred of us watching Eurosport, at any rate - are on those two, Jakob cleverly sneaks up on the other side of the road, which is so wide that he can do so unobserved quite easily.

Dumoulin is still plugging away remorselessly, gaining on the lovely Jakob as the finish line - 2k further away than it was last year, cruelly - comes into sight.

"Not exactly the Alps, is it?" comments LLB: no, there's a five foot high wall on one side, a wall of grey rock on the other, you can barely see the sky, and certainly can't see any scenery.

In the end, Nibali takes the stage, with dear little Romain in second place, Jakob in third and Dumoulin bringing up a very respectable fourth place.

Bardet is interviewed (en Francais, so I have no real idea what he was saying) surrounded by a pushing, jostling crowd of other riders, and then it's Nibali's turn: oh, they've found him a folding chair to sit on, hmmm, guess that shows who is the senior rider, then?

Stage Five is a short stage, ending with three times up and down the final hill, but going twice up on side of it, and once up the other side, just to stave off boredom for the riders.

As always, there is an unintentionally hilarious commentary from Rob Hatch, doing a sterling job of commenting all alone, and totally failing to conceal the fact that he knows perfectly well what the outcome of the race would be. This gives a lovely "psychic" slant to his commentary - he mentions what riders are going to do just before they do it.

Still flabbergasted by the lack of scenery and colour, LLB and I wonder if the climbs - particularly the repeated one - are completely soul-destroying for the riders. With grey mountain on one side, and grey walls on the other, all they can see is an unending ribbon of perfect grey tarmac as they toil upwards and onwards, tongues hanging out.

Today's finish is apparently at the "Ministry of Tourism" which I assume to be a building, rather than a political movement. Very 1984....

With 1k to go, the "could try harder" DDDs come to the front and pull like trojans, and it's all worth the effort as EBH takes the stage: he truly is the best of the second tier sprinters.

Once again we have Jakob on the podium along with Nibali and Romain: and my attention is distracted by seeing a real, live woman walk past the back of the podium - clearly the Ministry of Tourism is monitoring this blog, and have taken steps to address my concerns about the repression of women.

Now we are onto Stage 6, final stage of the race: this is the third and final race set in the arab peninsula - we didn't see Quatar but we know it's pretty much the same as Dubai, ie hot and flat: this is the first hilly race of the season, so it's good to see everyone stretching their legs and weaving from side to side.

Kristoff is charming in his pre-race interview: I still can't believe that he's not a Dark Lord at all (although he is riding for the Dark Lords) but is Norwegian!  Nibali has clearly been bribed to say nice things about the race, and comments "there's a lot of different scenery here" which is an absolute fib, of course: it's yet more of the grey, martian landscape with sand at the bottom, and rocks sticking up.

The start is quite nice, all things considered, with crowds of European spectators (which you can tell because not even the women are wearing dresses) at least one or two deep all the way along the barriered section.

Our coverage jumps to 50k to go, with the break just over a minute ahead and an embarrassed peloton determined not to repeat the fiasco of this stage last year, where was was supposed to be a sprint finish was ruined by letting the break get too far ahead, so the sprinters wasted their day.

Not this year, though! At 11k to go, Gianni Meerkat sticks his head above the crowd in the break, and scampers off the front, just for the fun of it, as there are no KOM points to be won. We assume that someone told him this, before the race? Maybe not... but his move whittles down the leading group to just 4 riders with 7k and one lap to go.

There is an Incident: as they go round the 180 degree turn at the roundabout for the last time, I distinctly see one rider take a sneaky shortcut, apparently unnoticed by anyone else!

Daniel 'Oss is once again in good form, pulling like a train on the front of the main bunch (which did, of course, catch the break) and managing to give the Dark Lords a scare by creating a gap: however, the Dark Lords get it together, pull back the gap, and by 1k to go they are on the front, and pulling hard for Kristoff (the Norwegian) who wins the stage.

The men in white dresses applaud politely.

As always, I am staggered that these guys - the riders, not the men in white dresses - can ride in the hot desert sun for 3 hours or more, yet within a minute of finishing, can calmly give interviews, without even being breathless, and with their hair all fluffy and dry. I would be a grease-spot, with sweat running down my nose and my hair plastered to my head.

What it is to be fit, eh?!

Tour of Oman 3

Our Stage 3 coverage starts, bizarrely, with a red scrolling banner across the bottom of the screen saying "Tour of Oman Stage 3 won by Kristoff who takes race lead from Boassen Hagen" which is a bit annoying, as this is the first screening of the race coverage, and now the suspense is gone! Gone!

We watch it anyway - we're quite accustomed to knowing the end result before we start, as we don't often get the chance to watch live coverage, so it doesn't really spoil our discussion or enjoyment of the race.

The pre-race section includes a brief interview with Gianni Meerkat - er Meersman, now also riding for AG2R, who seem to have sent a team-full of my Pets, which is nice. I have no idea what happened to his hair, though.

Race coverage starts with Kenny de Haas of  "Wanty: Group, Go, Bears!" (as we call them) leading the break, and taking all the sprint points, to the accompaniment of cries of Go, Bears! and waving of imaginary Wanty flags. (Hmm, must make a Wanty flag.)

The soundtrack is back to Tangerine Dream, with strange gaps where (presumably) Rob Hatch has to stop and rewind the cassette... actually, that's a terrible fib, I tweeted him yesterday and asked about it, never expecting a reply: but 2 hours later,  he replied:

I've said it before, but these people have no idea what a thrill it is to us "little people" when they respond to our tweets! It's such a small thing for them to, but it means so much... Andy, are you listening? *laughs*

(Meanwhile, somewhere in Lux:

TinkerJil elbows Andy sharply in the ribs and says "See!  Go on, send her a tweet!"
Andy: "Not likely, you remember what happened that last time I "engaged" with a fan, it took me years to get rid of that awful Italian Stalker Woman"
TinkerJil: "Oh, go on with you, Coug has far more sense that that sad old hag - besides, she lives a thousand miles away,"
Andy: "Only 456, actually... not that she has looked it up or anything.")

So, where were we? *coughs in embarrassment* Oh yes, so the choice of music is that of ASO, and no, Rob  Hatch is not having to turn the cassette over every so often. Good to know.  Also good to know that he does not choose to do the slushy travelogues! Back to the race...

It's very odd to suddenly see filthy black clouds in the sky. Does it rain in Oman, then? Oh - yes, it does! Most of the teams are completely lacking rain capes, but it doesn't matter too much as, after about ten minutes of rain, the roads are dry again. In fact, at one point we can see blobs of rain coming down onto the moto camera lens, but the road is still dry, which is presumably a reflection of how hot it is out there. (Although not as hot as last year, when it was over 40 degrees and riders, I seem to remember, were passing out in the heat.)

So, apparently it rains in Oman, but that does not help the greenery at all, as the scenery is just rock - rocks - more rocks. I suppose it makes a change from Quatar which was just sand - sand - sand. And the rain doesn't make the slightest difference to the race, on account of them being on beautifully tarmaced four-lane highways, with no bends to speak of.

Suddenly the soundtrack changes to smooth 90s easy listening, as poor Rob is forced to give us a brief travelogue on the beauties (?) of Oman, then just as suddenly that is all over, and we are back to the race, admiring the disc brakes of Roompot,

Don't worry, you are not going be subjected to an indepth assesment of disc brakes V calipers, nor a critique of the "spinning blades of death devices", I don't have any particular views one way or the other, other than to say that push-bikes are incredibly light, and there doesn't seem to be much point in improving the stopping of the wheel spinning, when it is still only contacting the ground with a piece of rubber about the size of my thumbnail.

So it seems to me that anyone leaning too hard on their disc brakes is just going to be sliding along the road at the same speed that everyone else is going to be slowing down at, but with slightly less control.

We shall see.

Back to the race - and as always, the sight of a handful of spectators in long white dresses (men, of course - women aren't allowed out in daylight) makes me wonder what they, voluminously and decorously covered,  must think at seeing a bunch of blokes wearing basically nothing more than swimsuits, go whizzing past in broad daylight.

Suddenly it's a big sprint finish through a building site (?) and guess who wins? Yes, it's Kristoff, who would have thought it. He takes the race lead as well. Yay for the Dark Lords (waves limp flag unenthusiastically).

However, there is one final surprise in store - I didn't realise that Kristoff was Norwegian! I know, I know, how long have I been following pro cycing? But he rides for the Dark Lords, and his name is about as Russian-sounding as it can get, so you can't really blame me!

Tour of Oman 1 and 2

We're only getting a 30minute "magazine" version of the footage, so it's just a quick intro, a brief travelogue, highlights and the finish, with my pet commentator Rob Hatch over-enunciating enthusiastically as always, doing a brave job of commenting all alone, but - strangely - trying to make it sound as though he doesn't already know the ultimate outcome of the stage.

Stage one went past so briefly that I don't remember much about it, other than noting that there was background music, which seemed very odd for a cycle race. Presumably that was added to fill in the gaps when the poor lone commentator had to stop to draw a breath, or sneeze, or take a drink? Oh, and Bob Jungels from Lux won the stage, which was probably very pleasing for Our Andy, assuming he was watching the race.

(Meanwhile, somewhere in Luxembourg:

TinkerJil: Andy, love, the Tour of Oman is on, aren't you going to watch it?
Andy: (grumpily) No.
TinkerJil: Aww, come on, Jungley is in it.
Andy: (grumpily) No.
TinkerJil: (wheedling) Men in lycra? Cross winds? Come on, you'll enjoy it. (craftily) There might be echelons.....
Andy: (leaps in front of tv) Any chance of a cup of coffee, love?

end of digression.)

Stage two started with some seriously groovy background music - very much the 70s in style, like one of those self-indulgent 15-minute LP tracks by Pink Floyd in their experimental phase, or Tangerine Dream, in which case it could have been from any one of their albums.

The scenery was strange... if they had painted it red, it could easily have passed for Mars, being mostly sharp pointy unweathered rocks, sprouting directly out of flat level sand. I couldn't quite decide if the sand had been dropped on to top of the rocks, or whether the rocks had shot up out of the sand. Either way, it looked more like a film set than anything else - certainly not like anywhere that anyone would voluntarily want to live. The background music rose to a bit of a crescendo as the helicopter shot swooped over this strange landscape - I was expecting a tambourine solo at any moment, but luckily all we got was Rob Hatch pointing out that Romain Bardet - another Schleckland Pet, team leader for Ahh Djzhee Durrs Air - was working hard, which is what I would expect of him. Alas, no mention of Johan van Summeren, who no doubt did sterling work as a domestique for Romain: maybe we'll spot him later, and we can see if the new team are allowing him to tuck his sleeves up in the now-traditional JVS style.

Nothing much happened for most of the stage, leaving me time to reflect how nice it was that, even with just a 30 minute programme, Eurosport manage to find time to include a few pre-race shots of the riders relaxing before the start, sitting around in teams on the grass verges (honestly, this is the weirdest and loveliest sport there is: where else could you just walk along the roadside and say "hi!" to your favourite competitors?) including a quick word with the lovely Jakob Fuglsang, still working hard for Ass-t'na.

There is a sudden silence, with 20k to go - oh, it must be C30 tape and Rob has to stop and turn it over.

Dan Martin (and his teeth, now both riding for  Etixx) make a tactical error and get caught in the second group when the side winds cause the inevitable echelons.

Bob "Yungly" Jungels (Rob Hatch can't decide if it is Jungles or Yungels, hilariously. Mind you, we distinctly heard him refer to the Tourist Injury earlier) gets dropped on the final climb, he goes phut! and starts drifting backwards, when Dimension Data, proud new addition to the Pro peloton, get on the front and really start to pull. I have a personal interest in DDD (as their race abbreviation calls them, much to the amusement of LLB who points out that it looks like a very poor school report) as, last year, I donated money and bought bicycle number 3,448 of their target of 5,000. Proud!

Romain is still in the front group, along with the lovely Jakob who is working his socks off for Nibali as usual, when suddenly little Pozzaviva pings off the front, and we note that the AG2R (you can pronounce it for yourselves this time) kit now has a Ass-t'na blue sleeve. Just the one. Very odd.

EBH of DDD (heh heh!) comes from nowhere to take the stage, just as the soundtrack changes from Tangerine Dream to Lord Of the Rings soundtrack, which is a bit disconcerting: both Romain and Jakob make the top 10, which is great: and EBH gives a typically modest winner's interview round the back of the podium, accompanied by what sounds like someone wrestling with a set of bagpipes.

Well, it's short coverage, and not hugely exciting, but at least it's men in lycra!

Ooh, Betty!

For once in a way, the cycling press and the BBC news website have the same article - and it's not about doping!!

It's nearly time for the annual Comic Relief fund-raising day and there is an offshoot of the organisation called Sport Relief in which, as you might expect, athletes do daft things for charity.

Presumably someone somewhere realised that half the population in the UK doesn't give a toss about Great Bake-Off competitors hurling cake mix at each other, but will watch a footballer do just about anything - and so, Sport Relief was created, to extract money from blokes.

And this year, Sir Bradley Wiggins (or "Wiggo" as he likes to be known) is going to be participating, which is quite remarkable really, as he is not generally known for being light-hearted or game for a giggle.

And what will be the subject of the cycling supremo's contribution to comedy? Frank Spencer... a name to strike fear and loathing into the hearts of everyone over the age of abut 40 or so, who remembers the long-running tv series about the hapless, hopeless, idiot and his whining, why-the-heck-did-she-marry-him wife, Betty.

In case you are too young to remember it, Frank Spencer was a tall skinny chap in a tightly-belted raincoat and a beret (yes, I know this makes him sound like a flasher but he appeared to be harmless) who lurched from crisis to disaster, breaking everything he touched and accidentally driving everyone around him demented with anger and frustration.

He was usually seen looking horrified, or simpering - left - in an annoying way, and twisting his arms in such a way as to suggest an urgent desire for the toilet.

Mmm, sounds fun, doesn't it. It was actually a comedy, although I don't remember ever finding it very funny. I do remember getting a day off school, though, when a sequence was filmed in the local shopping centre, and they wanted a bunch of kids to scream and laugh in the background. It started off at my local roller-skating rink, at Picketts Lock Sports Centre, then he burst out of the fire door and inexplicably found himself at the top of the footbridge, three and a half miles away.

If you are a real glutton for punishment, here is the clip:



And there he is, an idiot on roller skates, pretending to be out of control while skating down a hideous concrete footbridge flyover thing, long since demolished, thank god, as it was possibly one of the ugliest and least practical ways to get across the road.

You might notice that it has steps in it, so you couldn't get prams or pushchairs or wheelchairs or mobility scooters (not that we had them, when I was at school!) up or down it: but it did make for good comedic effect to see Frank Spencer jolting  his way down it on roller skates. And we got a day off school.

Apparently the "plot", if you can call it that, of the Sport Relief effort revolves around the hapless, hopeless Frank Spencer having a chance encounter with Wiggo at the Olympic velodrome....

...and I would bet money that it will involve one of them sitting on the handlebars of a bicycle, or possibly Frank Spencer sitting backwards on a Derny bike while screaming "Betttttyyyy!" in a high pitched voice.

The actor who played this idiot is Michael Crawford, who went on (picture me pulling an uncomprehending face) to star in Phantom of the Opera and other serious stuff, although I would (again) bet money that every night, someone in the audience would shout out "Frank!  Think of Betty!" or something like that.

Why uncomprehending? He's one of those unfortunate actors who was so utterly brilliant and totally convincing in the role of "total prat" that virtually no-one (including me) can ever take him seriously again, for the rest of his career, poor man.

I can hardly wait to see what hilarity he gets up to with Wiggo....

Yay, Midge!

It's always a thrill to hear my name mentioned on Eurosport, and yesterday was nearly as good - while watching coverage of the Vuelta a Valencia, which finished a week ago, but which we have only just got around to watching, Carlton Kirby was fumbling for the correct Spanish expression for Grupetto compacto, or "the groups are all back together now" meaning that the chasing peloton have caught the breakaways.

He was making things up, frankly, as neither he nor Matt knew the phrase, but then it was Midge to the Rescue!

"We've had a tweet," said Carlton, "with thanks to Midge Tremayne, the phrase is agrupado [errr, I didn't actually catch it, I was too busy squealing "Midge! Midge!" to a baffled LLB] so thank you Midge, @ParisWheels"

I was thrilled by proxy!

So why were we watching a week-old race?

Well, there isn't much on tv at the moment, and LLB hadn't realised that Sky were in this one, so he hadn't bothered to record it. When he found out that they were, he had to scrabble around to find any repeats or catch-up covereage, and in the end we only managed to see stages 4 and 5, but they were strangely satisfying: real, proper racing, despite being a shitsmall race, and even the shitsmall teams were having a go and working hard.

The surprise of the race, of course - apart from Midge getting a name check, that is - was that Wout Poels won just about all the jerseys!

Despite the race being very much in the bag for Team Sky, the last day was a thrilling race: the last 55k were filled with our commentators telling us that the on-screen km ticker was wrong, until with 15k to go they were finally told that the race had been shortened from 10 loops of the final circuit to 6.

Then Stijn Vandenbergh - now and forever known as Vandenbag - making a lone break for the finish line, picked up a large plastic bag which wrapped itself around the back end of his bike (luckily, not on the chain side) and  rustled and squeaked all the way to his brave solo across the finish line, with the sprinter teams panting down the back of the plastic bag but not quite able to get there in time.

Bizarrely, neither Etixx, Stijn's team, who won the stage, nor Sky, who won the race, have photos of the last day.  It's not on Steephill - it's such a shitsmall race that no-one covered it, it seems!

But I for one am happy to have seen it, not least for the plastic bag incident, but mostly for hearing Midge getting a name check.

Yay, Midge!

On the thirteenth day of Christmas?

Why don't you ever see Father Christmas in hospital?

Ans:  Because he has private elf care

Oh, hang on, it's all over, the decorations are down, the turkey has finally been finished, and I have no excuse to continue this short season of terrible jokes and cheap excuses to look at old photos of Schleckland.

Well, maybe just one more, then?


Pic:  oh dear - the death of my first Lux socks. (Luckily LLB bought me some more)

On the twelth day of Christmas..

What do you call a bunch of chess players bragging about their games in a hotel lobby?

Ans: Chess nuts boasting in an open foyer.


Pic:  Aww, happy days, eh?

On the elebenty millionth day of Christmas

What do you get if you cross a bell with a skunk?


Ans:  Jingle Smells



Pic:  Just another day in merry Luxembourg - Andy Schleck being "Happy".

On the tenth day of Christmas..

What do you get if you eat Christmas decorations?


Ans:  Tinsilitis



Pic: The Schlecklander Ship, with flag a-flying, me hearties!

On the ninth day of Christmas..

What do you get when you cross a snowman with a vampire?


Ans: Frostbite




Pic: Still proud of my home-made Lux ensign flags, for waving when watching races on tv.

On the eighth day of Christmas....

What happened to the man who stole an Advent Calendar?


Ans: He got 25 days.




Pic: Andy at the Trek presentation.