Tour de France 2017: Day One, Time Trial. Or: Hooray For LouLou!

Hooray for LouLou Fuglsang, she had their baby earlier this week! Good girl, LouLou!

Why such joy and elation? Well, if the baby had arrived on schedule, ie sometime next week, there was a good chance that Jakob would have left the Tour in order to be there, and quite right too: but thankfully the lovely LouLou managed to produce their baby girl a little bit early (nothing to do with all the Jakob fans gritting their teeth, and murmuring "Push! Push!" under their breath for the last fortnight: no, nothing to do with that at all) so the lovely Jakob could attend the Tour with a clear conscience and a heart full of joy. So welcome to Jamie Lou (no idea if I spelled that correctly, that's what it sounded like in the interview) and heartfelt thanks to your Mummy for bravely allowing hubby to go on a road trip around France for the next three weeks!

So, on to business: Day one, ITT, just to get some gaps and some jerseys out there.

Talking of which, how odd to see Peter "more fun than a jammy dodger" Sagan (ah, Figgy, where are you now, you funny little creature?) in the black Bora kit, instead of his apparently permanent white Worlds hoops. What with that, and the hair suddenly made invisible (presumably some industrial strength hair bands under that helmet), he was only recognisable by his bow legged style. As usual, he went off like a train: love him or hate him, he's an incredible athlete. Pity he has such a whiney voice, though....

It was interesting to hear Ned Boulting ("How's that yellow Jumper, Ned?" *laughs*) (in-joke referring to his book "How I Won The Yellow Jumper" which LLB gave me for Christmas) confirm the consternation at the plethora of white jerseys, on the part of both commentators and officials: apparently Trek were dead miffed that they unveiled their new kit shortly after Sky had unveiled theirs  - and the two are very nearly identical. Oops. 

What did I say about having a Kit Officer? How long have I been saying it?

Interestingly, when I came back to this blog yesterday, after a gap of , ooh, about a year (look, I'm still getting over the loss of Andy Schleck, ok?!) I found that I'd left a blog entry as a draft, from last June, it started thus:

"How many times am I going to have to say this?

Cycling needs a single point of reference for kit design, where they can submit their draft colours, and be told how many other teams are already using that combination.

There need not be any names mentioned (is a new kit really that much of a "let's keep it secret" item?), and I would be perfectly happy to volunteer for the position: I would also be compelled to make a few comments on the kit design, although I would take care never to use a highlighter pen, as we all know that's how the Vini Fantini kit originated."

Clearly I don't have enough influence (cries of "Mr Cookson! Sir! Why aren't you reading my blog? I've been saying you could reduce accidents in the peloton by telling teams to supply a nine-man team but only 7 of them ride each day, with GC contestants having to ride every day, but domestiques being interchangeable etc for YEARS!!") so it's up to you, dear readers, to publicise this blog at every opportunity: link to it, follow it, tell your friends about it, tweet about it, please!

Anyway, back to le Tour: the weather was filthy, and not a particularly nice course either: highly technical, lots of evil sharp corners, some scarily narrow bits (that section with the yellow barriers made me flinch every time), all on town roads, and the rain made it as slippery as you want - at one point, Jumbo's George Bennett crashed, requiring a new bike, and the mechanic who pushed him off did a perfect Torville and Dean slide along the road in his wake.

It was interesting to see the tactics - some riders were clearly protecting themselves against a disastrous injury by tiptoeing tentatively round the greasy corners, while other, non-GC guys could fling themselves around with gay abandon, taking the chance of getting a bit of a lead while they could.

The lovely Jakob made it round safely in 70th position: he ended up just 54seconds down on GC and what's more to the point, he only lost 2 seconds to Fabio Ugly "Eddie the Mad Flat Mate" Aru. That's about as much as we can hope for, at this point. 

Meanwhile, round the back of the Ass-t'na bus:

Jakob is on the phone.
LouLou: "Hello?"
Jakob:  "Babe! "
LouLou: "Darling boy! "
Jakob:  "You ok? "
LouLou: "We're both fine - how's the plan going? "
Jakob:  "Really well, I let him get 2 seconds on me. "
LouLou: "Nice! Is he all smug and smirky? "
Jakob:  "Yeah, huh! *laughs* He's trying to be all like 'oh, we'll support each other, we work really well together' but I know he plans to ditch me and steam off later on. "
LouLou: "Of course - but you won't let him, will you? "
Jakob:  "Nope: the plan is On Track. "
LouLou: "Great stuff. Ellker doo mar? "
Jakob: "Yay... yar elker darr."

[that last bit is phonetic, as I don't speak Danish]



Talking about the course, I feel slightly guilty about Anyone But Valverde, as he is now rather spectacularly out of the race, having slidded off (as Sean Kelly says) into a barrier, breaking his kneecap and bashing his head quite hard as well. I was hoping he'd have an  unspecified stomach upset:  I didn't really want him to have a serious crash. But heyho, such is the power of Schleckland.

Of course, half the armchair commentators are now bleating about unsafe courses, but come on,  it was raining, it was on town roads, it was a TT,  of course people are going to crash. Remember every other single edition of the Tour, first week? Clear blue skies, flat boring stages, kaboom! a hand-grenade goes off in the peloton, tons of crashes, and we usually lose half a dozen riders in the first week. It's nothing new. The course was technical, but not dangerous: as the winner, Geraint Thomas of Sky, said "if you don't want to fall off, don't go so fast."  And he got round the course faster than anyone else. If you watch any of the many videos of that TT, and in particular of Valverde's crash, you can see that he goes into that corner incredibly fast. At least he only fell because he misjudged his own speed: unlike certain other riders whose careers were cut short by falls which were caused by stupid spectators. Not to mention all the moto and car problems we've had recently.  No, I won't accept any criticism of the course, it was purely down to the conditions and the will to win of the participants.

So, how did the White Block do? Surprisingly well, considering how many of them had to rip off the white jerseys and put on their normal team kits for the TT: despite this, they had 9 out of the top 10, if you count Quick-Step with their white shoulders.  It looks as though this year's Tour is going to be all about the helmets!

As an aside, Tony Martin, the Dripping Cod, appeared in his white Worlds hoops, which is fine, but apparently he also holds the German National jersey for TT, which means that the German jersey is never going to be seen on tv, as the Worlds clearly trumps the Nationals. I think this is wrong: listen up, Mr Cookson, there needs to be two changes:

1) a new UCI rule saying that whoever wins a Worlds jersey should not be eligible to compete in their National for the same discipline in the same year: and:

2) move the dates so that the Worlds are  held just a week or two before the Nationals, to make it easier to implement and enforce Rule 1).

Don't you agree?

It's a real shame that Tony Martin didn't actually win the TT - although I was thrilled to see Schleckland pet Vasil Kiryenka holding the top slot for so long - as it would have been a big boost to German cycling and, more to the point, German sponsorship. Oh well, if Tony couldn't win it, at least ...(*bites tongue to resist saying anyone but Valverde which would, frankly, be a bit tasteless at this point, as he's lying in a hospital with his kneecap in shreds awaiting surgery)...at least it was a British win, yay, G! Delighted to see him win it - I always love the man-hugs in lycra - with Froomey coming in a tactful 12 seconds down. Good to have no less than 40% of the top 10 slots occupied by Sky! *waves home-made Team Sky flag*

Have you ever noticed, by the way, how virtually all riders, no matter what their nationality, say "Yuh!" in a German accent, along with "For sure" instead of "certainly" in all of their interviews? G managed to say both of them in his pre-podium interview, despite being Welsh. The worst thing is that LLB and I have started saying it as well.

And finally, a note about change of allegiance: we recorded both the ITV4 coverage and the Eurosport coverage, in order to decide which one we would be following through the Tour this year. Alas, Eurosport have dragged Boring LeMond back in again, whose stuttering, stumbling, inarticulate burblings annoyed us so much last year. So we're abandoning them, and will be following ITV4 this year.

And what of today, Sunday? We're off to Liege for a bunch sprint, so there should be a hard day of the GC teams trying to stay on the front: I'm expecting Wanty ("Go, Bears!") to feature prominently in the break, and will be waving my flag for them. See you later!