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!!
