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!!
Showing posts with label Race Reports. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Race Reports. Show all posts
Monday, 14 March 2016
Saturday, 27 February 2016
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!
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!
Thursday, 25 February 2016
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?!
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?!
Sunday, 21 February 2016
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!
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,
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!
Saturday, 20 February 2016
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!
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!
Saturday, 11 April 2015
Flanders - Suspension, suspense and Shimano
Ah, the Tour of Flanders, and our first sight of the much-vaunted Sky cobbles-bike, with suspension. Not really a new idea, Trek bikes produced models with suspension ten years ago for Discovery, but presumably Pinarello, working with Jaguar (who now own Land Rover, so they might know something about off-roading) have found new ways, new materials, new applications, to make the idea actually work this time.
Unfortunately, our first sight of the bike is Bradders taking a really silly tumble for no apparent reason, and flinging the expensive new bike to the ground in disgust. Sky bunged him onto a normal road bike, and shoved him off down the road, leading to speculation on the sofa that the new bike was no good at all. However, just a few kms later, there was another bike change, and Brad was back on the bouncy bike, so it must have some things in its favour.
This lead to me speculating that the mechanic and the bike had been bundled into the back seat of the car, so that he could frantically work on it, in order to get it back on the road. I pictured the scene as being something like the illustrations of Alice in the White Rabbit's house, with one leg up the chimney and one arm out of the window....
However, before all this happened, there were shrieks of dismay at the horrific sight of a neutral service car - this time, a dark blue Shimano-sponsored car, not the usual bright yellow Mavic ones - side-swiping Jesse Sargeant of Trek, spinning him across the road and right out of the race with a broken collarbone. Shades of Fletcha at the Tour! Just a few minutes earlier, LLB and I had been commenting on how many cars and bikes there were, and wondering what the justification was, for such high numbers.
This crash was unforgivable, the car cut up on the inside of a corner, exactly into the space where a cyclist would want to be: and as far as we could see, there was no particular need for the car to be overtaking the lead group at all. Service needs to be behind the riders, not in front of them, and the gap was something like four minutes at that point.
I do hope that Trek are going to press for compensation.
According one report, the driver of the Shimano-sponsored car was a policeman, a professional driver, and someone who really should know better. He is reported as not remembering anything about the incident.
Hmmm.
Anyway, the race continued and, as is typical in the Classics, it was a race of attrition, with riders tumbling off in all directions. Bucking this trend, Little Luke Rowe (Schlecklander Pet) took THREE bottles at a feed station, one after the other, and managed not to drop any of them. Impressive bike handling skills, eh!
Sagan was getting a lot of name-checks, but mostly along the lines of "he hasn't performed this year so far" which is a bit harsh, the year is yet young... naturally, it's hard not to wonder if his poor form is down to changing teams, which has to be disruptive for him, along with the hoo-ha about Uncle Bjarne getting the sack, not to mention the possibility of Ass-t'naa losing their World Team licence... not a good time to be in Ass-t'na. (*sighs - poor Jakob!*)
Just as we all feeling rather sorry for poor Sagan, there is a major crash which holds him up, and he takes a leak right there, in the middle of the road, while waiting for the riders ahead of him to sort themselves out.
There goes our sympathy...
And instead, it goes to John Degenkolb: he's never been a favourite of mine, in fact I have had an irrational dislike of him, based solely on his stupid pencil moustache, which makes him look like Private Walker in Dad's Army. (For the benefit of non-UK residents, and those under about 45, Private Walker was a black market spiv, very dodgy.) However, in a pre-race interview, he came over as being very nice, very pleasant, sensible, articulate and fairly humble and - best of all - he's stopped plucking the moustache and it is now a "proper" moustache and goatee beard, which is much better.
I have therefore promoted him to Schleckland Pet: Provisional.
As an aside, there was lots of squeeing on Twitter earlier, when Trek and Fabs announced that he would be their twitter representative for the duration of the race - knowing how tangled he gets in normal tweeting, I can only imagine how he must have been spluttering at the sight of his team-mate being flattened by the Shimano car. But I'm not allowed to go online and look, as LLB and I are watching the race slightly delayed, we are about 20 mins behind everyone else, so if I go on twitter, I will see what is happening in real time. Oh well, I can always catch up later.
At 77k to go, there are screams of horror from the sofa: another rider has been hit by a car! This is unbelievable, and the screams were in stereo, as LLB and I both yelled at the same instant. Not quite such a bad incident this time: the FdJ car screeched to a halt to service Sebastian Chavanel who was standing at the roadside. Then another Shimano car shunted the FdJ car so hard that it was pushed forward 20m, and the already-opening door slammed into poor Chavanel. He didn't break anything, but was badly bruised and presumably shaking like a leaf, so he withdrew from the race. Can't say the same about the team cars, they both appeared to be badly dented.
This simply has to be sorted out - there are far, far too many cars, and far, far too many motorbikes.
Presumably, if we had had the normal Classics weather (ie rain), the rate of attrition would have been much higher, and there would have been fewer riders left - but there still seem to be way too many vehicles.
Of course, that's how the organisers make money: people pay to be in the cars, and presumably they also pay to be on the motorbikes? There are clearly some that are camera bikes, some that are marshalls - although they should all be either way ahead, or whipping round the back roads, not following the break - and I think there are occasionally bikes doing live commentary, but I think I counted nearly 40 bikes at one point, and this just can't be right.
On a different note, I have been intrigued throughout the recent races to see, if Wanty were riding, that there seems to be a very loyal and determined fan who has a huge two-handed banner with the Wanty flag at the bottom, and a handwritten "LUC" at the top.
Anyone know what this means? I tweeted Wanty and asked them (twice) but there was no reply, boo: and there is no Wanty rider called Luc.
Whatever it means, this fan has a positive knack for being filmed by a camerabike as the break go past, he then legs it to his car, and pops up later on in the race just in time to be filmed again. Clever advertising, but who or what is Luc?
At 69k go, O'Rica get someone in the break, and Sean Kelly starts talking about Michelle Docker. That's Mitchell, Sean, Mitchell.
Talking of mis-pronunciations, I'm surprised to hear about a team called Borer Aragorn. Aragorn? Son of Arathorn? Oh, it's Bora-Argon. Pronounced Air-gorn. Big disappointment, thought they might produce The Bidon That Was Broken, but apparently that is not going to be the case.
60k to go, and there is a deflating air-bridge! Panic and pandemonium as the break just barely squeeze underneath it, while the team cars - with bikes on top - cannot pass. Well, I suppose it's one way to keep the neutral service cars out of harm's way.
Aha, another climb: boy, I wish they'd ban those stupid confetti "bombs". If I were huffing and puffing up a hill, the last thing I would want would be a lungful of lightweight paper particles. Those horrible coloured smoke things are bad enough, but confetti - ugh!
My day is brightened by seeing a bunch of Fab fans, all holding placards saying We Heart You Fabian. Aww, bless! They do know he's not in the race, don't they? Perhaps they know that he'll be watching it (while tweeting, or "twetting", probably).
By 46k to go, we're down to just three Sky on the front, still pulling hard, and I have to say that I have never seen a huge peloton at this stage of a Classic. Must be due to the dry weather, although the neutral service cars have done their bit. No, I won't be forgiving them, for quite some time.
We see an amazingly slick flying bike change, as an FdJ domestique nobly gives his wheel and a shove to his team leader. That's the sort of change you want to video, and send round to cycling clubs with the instruction "watch and learn, guys". It's not just the technicality of the fast change, but the selfless loyalty of the domestique that I appreciate.
By this point in the race, LLB and I are exhausted with shrieking "mind the car!" every time a blue can is in the shot, and at one point even Sean Kelly says it! We speculate as to what else can possibly go wrong with this race: earthquake? Sink holes opening in front of the break? Then a level crossing comes in sight. Oh no! A train? But no, nothing happens, and we are told that the trains are stopped for the race - how very enlightened of the Belgian authorities.
Again, Sagan runs out of steam at the very end of the race, and ends up rolling forlornly over the finish line, head drooping, and looking a picture of misery. Mind you, our sympathies are all with
poor G, who, having dragged the chasers for most of the previous 60k, was mugged at the end, ran out of ooomph in a rather Sagan-like way, and ended up not even getting in the top 10.
So that was the tour of Flanders: more exciting than I would like, and a good warm-up for Paris-Roubaix which is on tomorrow - so let's hope that there are no more car-related injuries!
Unfortunately, our first sight of the bike is Bradders taking a really silly tumble for no apparent reason, and flinging the expensive new bike to the ground in disgust. Sky bunged him onto a normal road bike, and shoved him off down the road, leading to speculation on the sofa that the new bike was no good at all. However, just a few kms later, there was another bike change, and Brad was back on the bouncy bike, so it must have some things in its favour.
This lead to me speculating that the mechanic and the bike had been bundled into the back seat of the car, so that he could frantically work on it, in order to get it back on the road. I pictured the scene as being something like the illustrations of Alice in the White Rabbit's house, with one leg up the chimney and one arm out of the window....
However, before all this happened, there were shrieks of dismay at the horrific sight of a neutral service car - this time, a dark blue Shimano-sponsored car, not the usual bright yellow Mavic ones - side-swiping Jesse Sargeant of Trek, spinning him across the road and right out of the race with a broken collarbone. Shades of Fletcha at the Tour! Just a few minutes earlier, LLB and I had been commenting on how many cars and bikes there were, and wondering what the justification was, for such high numbers.
This crash was unforgivable, the car cut up on the inside of a corner, exactly into the space where a cyclist would want to be: and as far as we could see, there was no particular need for the car to be overtaking the lead group at all. Service needs to be behind the riders, not in front of them, and the gap was something like four minutes at that point.
I do hope that Trek are going to press for compensation.
According one report, the driver of the Shimano-sponsored car was a policeman, a professional driver, and someone who really should know better. He is reported as not remembering anything about the incident.
Hmmm.
Anyway, the race continued and, as is typical in the Classics, it was a race of attrition, with riders tumbling off in all directions. Bucking this trend, Little Luke Rowe (Schlecklander Pet) took THREE bottles at a feed station, one after the other, and managed not to drop any of them. Impressive bike handling skills, eh!
Sagan was getting a lot of name-checks, but mostly along the lines of "he hasn't performed this year so far" which is a bit harsh, the year is yet young... naturally, it's hard not to wonder if his poor form is down to changing teams, which has to be disruptive for him, along with the hoo-ha about Uncle Bjarne getting the sack, not to mention the possibility of Ass-t'naa losing their World Team licence... not a good time to be in Ass-t'na. (*sighs - poor Jakob!*)
Just as we all feeling rather sorry for poor Sagan, there is a major crash which holds him up, and he takes a leak right there, in the middle of the road, while waiting for the riders ahead of him to sort themselves out.
There goes our sympathy...
And instead, it goes to John Degenkolb: he's never been a favourite of mine, in fact I have had an irrational dislike of him, based solely on his stupid pencil moustache, which makes him look like Private Walker in Dad's Army. (For the benefit of non-UK residents, and those under about 45, Private Walker was a black market spiv, very dodgy.) However, in a pre-race interview, he came over as being very nice, very pleasant, sensible, articulate and fairly humble and - best of all - he's stopped plucking the moustache and it is now a "proper" moustache and goatee beard, which is much better.
I have therefore promoted him to Schleckland Pet: Provisional.
As an aside, there was lots of squeeing on Twitter earlier, when Trek and Fabs announced that he would be their twitter representative for the duration of the race - knowing how tangled he gets in normal tweeting, I can only imagine how he must have been spluttering at the sight of his team-mate being flattened by the Shimano car. But I'm not allowed to go online and look, as LLB and I are watching the race slightly delayed, we are about 20 mins behind everyone else, so if I go on twitter, I will see what is happening in real time. Oh well, I can always catch up later.
At 77k to go, there are screams of horror from the sofa: another rider has been hit by a car! This is unbelievable, and the screams were in stereo, as LLB and I both yelled at the same instant. Not quite such a bad incident this time: the FdJ car screeched to a halt to service Sebastian Chavanel who was standing at the roadside. Then another Shimano car shunted the FdJ car so hard that it was pushed forward 20m, and the already-opening door slammed into poor Chavanel. He didn't break anything, but was badly bruised and presumably shaking like a leaf, so he withdrew from the race. Can't say the same about the team cars, they both appeared to be badly dented.
This simply has to be sorted out - there are far, far too many cars, and far, far too many motorbikes.
Presumably, if we had had the normal Classics weather (ie rain), the rate of attrition would have been much higher, and there would have been fewer riders left - but there still seem to be way too many vehicles.
Of course, that's how the organisers make money: people pay to be in the cars, and presumably they also pay to be on the motorbikes? There are clearly some that are camera bikes, some that are marshalls - although they should all be either way ahead, or whipping round the back roads, not following the break - and I think there are occasionally bikes doing live commentary, but I think I counted nearly 40 bikes at one point, and this just can't be right.
On a different note, I have been intrigued throughout the recent races to see, if Wanty were riding, that there seems to be a very loyal and determined fan who has a huge two-handed banner with the Wanty flag at the bottom, and a handwritten "LUC" at the top.
Anyone know what this means? I tweeted Wanty and asked them (twice) but there was no reply, boo: and there is no Wanty rider called Luc.
Whatever it means, this fan has a positive knack for being filmed by a camerabike as the break go past, he then legs it to his car, and pops up later on in the race just in time to be filmed again. Clever advertising, but who or what is Luc?
At 69k go, O'Rica get someone in the break, and Sean Kelly starts talking about Michelle Docker. That's Mitchell, Sean, Mitchell.
Talking of mis-pronunciations, I'm surprised to hear about a team called Borer Aragorn. Aragorn? Son of Arathorn? Oh, it's Bora-Argon. Pronounced Air-gorn. Big disappointment, thought they might produce The Bidon That Was Broken, but apparently that is not going to be the case.
60k to go, and there is a deflating air-bridge! Panic and pandemonium as the break just barely squeeze underneath it, while the team cars - with bikes on top - cannot pass. Well, I suppose it's one way to keep the neutral service cars out of harm's way.
Aha, another climb: boy, I wish they'd ban those stupid confetti "bombs". If I were huffing and puffing up a hill, the last thing I would want would be a lungful of lightweight paper particles. Those horrible coloured smoke things are bad enough, but confetti - ugh!
My day is brightened by seeing a bunch of Fab fans, all holding placards saying We Heart You Fabian. Aww, bless! They do know he's not in the race, don't they? Perhaps they know that he'll be watching it (while tweeting, or "twetting", probably).
By 46k to go, we're down to just three Sky on the front, still pulling hard, and I have to say that I have never seen a huge peloton at this stage of a Classic. Must be due to the dry weather, although the neutral service cars have done their bit. No, I won't be forgiving them, for quite some time.
We see an amazingly slick flying bike change, as an FdJ domestique nobly gives his wheel and a shove to his team leader. That's the sort of change you want to video, and send round to cycling clubs with the instruction "watch and learn, guys". It's not just the technicality of the fast change, but the selfless loyalty of the domestique that I appreciate.
By this point in the race, LLB and I are exhausted with shrieking "mind the car!" every time a blue can is in the shot, and at one point even Sean Kelly says it! We speculate as to what else can possibly go wrong with this race: earthquake? Sink holes opening in front of the break? Then a level crossing comes in sight. Oh no! A train? But no, nothing happens, and we are told that the trains are stopped for the race - how very enlightened of the Belgian authorities.
Again, Sagan runs out of steam at the very end of the race, and ends up rolling forlornly over the finish line, head drooping, and looking a picture of misery. Mind you, our sympathies are all with
poor G, who, having dragged the chasers for most of the previous 60k, was mugged at the end, ran out of ooomph in a rather Sagan-like way, and ended up not even getting in the top 10.
So that was the tour of Flanders: more exciting than I would like, and a good warm-up for Paris-Roubaix which is on tomorrow - so let's hope that there are no more car-related injuries!
Friday, 21 March 2014
Frankie wins a stage! Well, nearly...
It was Paris-Nice, last day, and in the UK we only got the last 27k to watch.
We were greeted with our commentators telling us about the five riders who failed to start today, and the 15 or so who had already abandoned... I could feel the hateful phrase "Schleck-chute" hovering in the wind, unspoken, but luckily it continued to be unspoken, and Andy wasn't mentioned.
I took this as a good sign: if he had withdrawn, they would surely have been making a bit deal about it *rolls eyes and sighs* so as they haven't mentioned him....
As the coverage starts, LLB is laughing at Sean Kelly pronouncing Rojas as Roe-Djass, which is quite a nice counterbalance to Rob Hatch and his exuberant over-pronunciation.
Talking of which, I was Tweeting earlier in the race, and I'd said something about being distracted by Rob Hatch's pronunciation... he took me up on it!
I do love it when they respond... during the same day, I got this response to a casual comment from the PR department at Omega Pharma Armbands:
It's such a little thing for them to do, but it means so much.... one day, one day I'll get a tweet from Andy... *sighs*
Sooo, back to the race: "Oh dear, here we go again, at the back" says Hatch. It's Andy! *waves*
We had just been watching Tirreno with nothing but Contador for the final 30k, and LLB had been complaining that we don't get to see anyone in the top ten, just the front and back of the race. Hence my pleasure at Andy being right at the back - at least we get to see him!
Frankie is working well, as is Jakob: Frankie is now leading the group, and to great excitement on the sofa - well, on my end of the sofa - he pings off the front. And again! It's all very thrilling, until we see a sharp bend approaching, one with an arnco barrier... noooo! Don't look at it, Frankie!
Luckily he managed to avert his eyes and misses it, then leads the leaders, if you see what I mean, over the top of the hill. "He's doing much better than his brother" says Hatch the Hatchet Man. Hmmm. Rob, I shall go off you if you keep saying mean things like that! But it's true, Frankie is descending well, even though it's not his best skill, and especially considering that just the previous day, he was hanging over the barrier.
There are a lot of comments about Frankie's descending, and how generally impressive it is, although I could have done without the snide suggestions that he'd been practising "while he was away". Yes, yes, we all know he was (wrongly) banned for a year...
At 10k to go, Frankie and one of the Dark Lords - Spilak - are working really well together, and I make a mental note that some time, I really must tell Rob Hatch that it's not Froink, it's Fraaaank, as in Frank Sinatra. You might remember that we know this, due to one of Frankie's former school teachers, who told us so, back in Schleckland days.
Meanwhile, Jakob is leading the group which is 20 seconds behind Frankie and the Dark Lord, and they are all steaming along. Frankie keeps on pushing, even when the Dark Lord sits up and gives up for the day: not our Frankie, he even attacks again! Go Frankie! Of course, the group of chasers catch him up just a few metres from the line, but he nearly made it!
Meanwhile there has been a huge crash, and Rui Costa scares us all by lying inert at the base of the barrier. Luckily, like G, he manages to get himself together, is lifted onto a new bike, and wobbles over the line under his own steam.
We return to the finish line to find that Frankie is officially 6th in this final stage, which puts him 34th overall. Jakob finishes 5th overall, just 29 seconds down, which is pretty darned good: a big group comes over the line some 7 minutes down, and there is Andy, and he is grinning! He must have heard the news on race radio. He is 65th today, which puts him, by coincidence, 66th overall, 41 minutes down.
I don't care, I'm extremely happy to see him finish, and he said on the jangly, here-comes-your-headache Trek website,
“I am feeling fitter after this week, and I am really motivated to get back home to train hard. We have a good plan [for me] and I am really excited and to get back on the level I had before. I have no doubt I will be ready for the Ardennes Classics."
Let's hope so - go, Andy!
Friday, 8 March 2013
Rob Hatch promoted to Honorary Schlecklander!
If you read any of my race reports, you'll know that I have opinions about the commentators - I like Magnus Backstedt very much, and Rob Hayles: and to date I have been taking the mickey out of Rob Hatch, who tends to over-pronounce the foreign non-English names.
Now, I don't mind anyone pronouncing names correctly - ah, remember the lovely Leelu and the "Graeme Brown?" voice post - but it seems to me that pronouncing AG2R in French - Ahh-gzee-durrs-air rather than the usual Ay-Jee-Two-Arr - is what you might call over-egging the pudding.
And I've accused Ron Hatch of this a couple of times.
Err, well, every time he's commenting, actually.
Yesterday afternoon Iwas skiving wasn't able to work due to weather, so I was on Twitter following the Tirreno-Adriatico rainy flat stage.
The race ended, but there was no notification as to where Andy finished, so a fellow Tweeter, Jen, tweeted the question to Rob Hatch.
I joined in:
LOL! Oh, I just love it when these guys read our tweets, and answer nicely, with humour! Rob, you are now an honorary Schlecklander, and I will never again criticise you for your pronunciation. Well, let's be honest, I will still take the mickey, but only in a nice way. Promise.
And hey, isn't he young? I had sort of formed the impression that he was, errr, quite senior... sorry, Rob!
Now, I don't mind anyone pronouncing names correctly - ah, remember the lovely Leelu and the "Graeme Brown?" voice post - but it seems to me that pronouncing AG2R in French - Ahh-gzee-durrs-air rather than the usual Ay-Jee-Two-Arr - is what you might call over-egging the pudding.
And I've accused Ron Hatch of this a couple of times.
Err, well, every time he's commenting, actually.
Yesterday afternoon I
The race ended, but there was no notification as to where Andy finished, so a fellow Tweeter, Jen, tweeted the question to Rob Hatch.
I joined in:
LOL! Oh, I just love it when these guys read our tweets, and answer nicely, with humour! Rob, you are now an honorary Schlecklander, and I will never again criticise you for your pronunciation. Well, let's be honest, I will still take the mickey, but only in a nice way. Promise.
And hey, isn't he young? I had sort of formed the impression that he was, errr, quite senior... sorry, Rob!
Tuesday, 9 October 2012
Cycling news today...
... includes the bad news that poor Frankie's LADA hearing has been put back by a week, boo. As if it isn't bad enough having all this hanging over his head, now there will be another week for the gossipers to gossip, plus the worry that, well, we all know how the Contador thing worked out.. it took months, years, before it was sorted out.
Please, please, UCI, WADA, LADA, and for all I know, SAGA: don't drag it out, get on with it.
On a lighter note, forget to share this with you:
What, exactly, is our lovely Tour of Britain podium girl doing? Well, she appeared throughout the Tour either in a red dress, or in this blue one. The red one was fine, but she seemed to be having trouble with the blue one, and kept having to adjust the neckline by firmly gripping it with both hands and heaving it upwards.
Pretty brave of her, really, to adjust her bosom in full view of everyone, and the TV cameras.
It became a running joke with LLB and I - every time she appeared with a new jumper, she would put it on the lucky winner, do up the back, come round the front, and heave her bosom up again. By the end of the presentation, we were both miming along with her.
In much the same way that every time the Basque Tour, or the Basque region, are mentioned, one or other of us (sometimes both) do a mime to indicate an hour-glass figure and the pinging of a suspender....
I do hope you enjoy these little excursions of My Life While Watching Cycling.
Ooh, ooh, talking of real life, big excitement locally, I have now seen, not once but TWICE, a local cyclist wearing Leopard kit!! Yes! Contrary to previously thought, I am NOT the only Leopard fan in the whole of southern England! Now I just have to manage it so that that one day, I will be carrying my Leopard musette-converted-into-useful-shopping-bag when I see him, so that I can wave it at him.
Any guesses as to how fast he will pedal away?
Please, please, UCI, WADA, LADA, and for all I know, SAGA: don't drag it out, get on with it.
On a lighter note, forget to share this with you:
What, exactly, is our lovely Tour of Britain podium girl doing? Well, she appeared throughout the Tour either in a red dress, or in this blue one. The red one was fine, but she seemed to be having trouble with the blue one, and kept having to adjust the neckline by firmly gripping it with both hands and heaving it upwards.
Pretty brave of her, really, to adjust her bosom in full view of everyone, and the TV cameras.
It became a running joke with LLB and I - every time she appeared with a new jumper, she would put it on the lucky winner, do up the back, come round the front, and heave her bosom up again. By the end of the presentation, we were both miming along with her.
In much the same way that every time the Basque Tour, or the Basque region, are mentioned, one or other of us (sometimes both) do a mime to indicate an hour-glass figure and the pinging of a suspender....
I do hope you enjoy these little excursions of My Life While Watching Cycling.
Ooh, ooh, talking of real life, big excitement locally, I have now seen, not once but TWICE, a local cyclist wearing Leopard kit!! Yes! Contrary to previously thought, I am NOT the only Leopard fan in the whole of southern England! Now I just have to manage it so that that one day, I will be carrying my Leopard musette-converted-into-useful-shopping-bag when I see him, so that I can wave it at him.
Any guesses as to how fast he will pedal away?
Monday, 1 October 2012
Tour of Britain: the Finish.
At last, the final day of the Tour of Britain, and LLB and I were off to Guildford for the day.
The race was due through a little after one o'clock, then off round the countryside in a big loop, and back again at about four-ish for the finish.
We arrived in plenty of time, and were staggered to find the streets of Guildford (Note for non-UK readers: Guildford is a negligible town just south of London, far enough out not to be of any use or any interest, but close enough to be entangled in the London traffic and inflated house prices. End of Note) packed with people.
Staggering amounts of people! Yes, we were standing up, but we were still staggering!
We located the team buses, and yes, I did consider another mumping expedition, but there was no-one to be seen, in most cases: and the buses were mostly roped off from the road. I tried to catch the eye of a mechanic or two, but with no luck.
We found the finish line, and worked out where they would be going on the first circuit, but the crowds were already three or four deep along the barriers, and a lot of people had brought chairs and were camping out, determined to keep "their" spot. So we made our way down the cobbled hill away from the start line, and eventually settled ourselves by the barriers.
It wasn't a particularly good place, being at the bottom of the hill leading into the town, just as they started going uphill to the finish line, which on this circuit would be a sprint point - so they would be going at maximum velocity.
But we didn't care, we stood there and cheered, waving our Sky flags, as the lead group - including Jonathon Tiernan-Locke, eventual winner - whooshed past, followed a minute or so later by the peloton.
We then had at least three hours before they returned to Guildford for the finish, so we wandered off, had some lunch, I made my successful foray to the Orica team bus (see Mumping the Musettes for full details) and on the way back, found Elz, one of my Twitter chums who was working as a Marshall for the race, and proudly showed her the Orica musette. She was easy to spot, she had a sign pinned to the back of her high-vis bib which read "Call me!" It was quite an experience, to actually meet someone I have only ever Tweeted to! I still live in hope of finding other Schlecklanders....
(Note for Alice: it would be more correct to say "It was quite an experience, to actually meet [oops, split infinitive] someone with whom I have only ever Tweeted." rather than "someone I have only ever Tweeted to." But that is a bit formal. End of Note.)
LLB and I found a much better place to stand to watch the end of the race: just past the finish.
"Past the finish?" I hear you ask, "But surely you won't see anything?"
Quite the reverse: at the finish they all come steaming in at five hundred mph, so all you see is a blur. But just after the finish, that's where they mill about, slap each other on the back, cry on each other's shoulders and so on. The finish was to our right, and the team buses were all to our left, so we knew that every single rider was going to have to come past us.
Also, we had a lot of faces to watch: there was a constant stream of people wandering up and down towards the podium, not least being Dave Brailsford of Team Sky, along with his PR lady, Fran Millar (sister of rider David Millar of Garmin). She was getting a bit exasperated that Dave kept stopping to sign autographs and chat, as she wanted her lunch. We exchanged some words of encouragement - and suggested she put him on a lead - and next day, on Twitter, we had this exchange:
At this point, I have to say to anyone planning to attend a cycle race, it helps to develop sharp elbows and quite a thick skin, as people are incredibly rude about barging their way in to the barrier. People who arrive early have earned their spot at the barrier: people who arrive ten minutes before the event cannot expect everyone to make way for them. Woman with annoying whiney voice, That Means You.
Another annoying tactic which we saw being used repeatedly is for a parent to shove a small child towards the barrier, with the unspoken sub-text of "aww, my tiny child is too small to see from back here, just let him in in front of you, go on," but then the parents push in alongside the child. One woman in particular was trying to work her way along the barrier to the finish line in this fashion, making enemies all the way.
A long time, and many elbows later, the race finished, Cav won, yay! and suddenly we were right in the middle of it.
This is the scene just before the finish, you can see all the soigneurs are gathering, and yes, that is the podium, that semi-circular thing. It looks so big on the TV, but it's tiny in real life!
For the next ten minutes we had a succession of riders whooshing past us: here are a selection of my shots, starting with Christian Knees:
Below: left-hand United Healthcare rider: "Hey, don't cry!"
Mark de Marre, other United Healthcare rider in yellow (Curacao national champion kit) "Waaaaaaah!"
Cav is mobbed by Sky riders and journalists.
Sky's Jeremy Hunt needs a push: well, it's his last race, he's retiring now.
My pet, Luke Rowe: "Yay, Luke!"
The blackboard girly being squashed by the cavalcade. Talk about chaos!
Dan Lloyd, done for the day.
The blackboard girly is still stuck in the traffic jam, and narrowly avoids being squashed by the Raleigh team car - for the second time! They reversed to let the UK Youth car into the gap, and very nearly got her.
"Hi, Yanto!" The benefits of coming in 6th: you don't have to go on the podium or doping control, so you can get changed out of your sweaty kit before the rest of your team have even crossed the line!
And yes, it was complete coincidence that we happened to be positioned exactly opposite the UK Youth van. Honest.
Garmin riders arrive... in the background, UK Youth are already packing up their bikes.
Dan Craven "Mr Beardy" of Sigma Sport, with a serious amount of bandaging.
And so on. Well, there you have it, I've now been to a Start, and to a Finish, all that leaves is a Mountain stage, and I will have done the lot!
Oh, nearly forgot one other moment of note: as the Sky team cars came round the corner, LLB and I waved our hand-made Sky flags, and they beeped and waved at us, which was nice.
The race was due through a little after one o'clock, then off round the countryside in a big loop, and back again at about four-ish for the finish.
We arrived in plenty of time, and were staggered to find the streets of Guildford (Note for non-UK readers: Guildford is a negligible town just south of London, far enough out not to be of any use or any interest, but close enough to be entangled in the London traffic and inflated house prices. End of Note) packed with people.
Staggering amounts of people! Yes, we were standing up, but we were still staggering!
We located the team buses, and yes, I did consider another mumping expedition, but there was no-one to be seen, in most cases: and the buses were mostly roped off from the road. I tried to catch the eye of a mechanic or two, but with no luck.
We found the finish line, and worked out where they would be going on the first circuit, but the crowds were already three or four deep along the barriers, and a lot of people had brought chairs and were camping out, determined to keep "their" spot. So we made our way down the cobbled hill away from the start line, and eventually settled ourselves by the barriers.
It wasn't a particularly good place, being at the bottom of the hill leading into the town, just as they started going uphill to the finish line, which on this circuit would be a sprint point - so they would be going at maximum velocity.
But we didn't care, we stood there and cheered, waving our Sky flags, as the lead group - including Jonathon Tiernan-Locke, eventual winner - whooshed past, followed a minute or so later by the peloton.
We then had at least three hours before they returned to Guildford for the finish, so we wandered off, had some lunch, I made my successful foray to the Orica team bus (see Mumping the Musettes for full details) and on the way back, found Elz, one of my Twitter chums who was working as a Marshall for the race, and proudly showed her the Orica musette. She was easy to spot, she had a sign pinned to the back of her high-vis bib which read "Call me!" It was quite an experience, to actually meet someone I have only ever Tweeted to! I still live in hope of finding other Schlecklanders....
(Note for Alice: it would be more correct to say "It was quite an experience, to actually meet [oops, split infinitive] someone with whom I have only ever Tweeted." rather than "someone I have only ever Tweeted to." But that is a bit formal. End of Note.)
LLB and I found a much better place to stand to watch the end of the race: just past the finish.
"Past the finish?" I hear you ask, "But surely you won't see anything?"
Quite the reverse: at the finish they all come steaming in at five hundred mph, so all you see is a blur. But just after the finish, that's where they mill about, slap each other on the back, cry on each other's shoulders and so on. The finish was to our right, and the team buses were all to our left, so we knew that every single rider was going to have to come past us.
Also, we had a lot of faces to watch: there was a constant stream of people wandering up and down towards the podium, not least being Dave Brailsford of Team Sky, along with his PR lady, Fran Millar (sister of rider David Millar of Garmin). She was getting a bit exasperated that Dave kept stopping to sign autographs and chat, as she wanted her lunch. We exchanged some words of encouragement - and suggested she put him on a lead - and next day, on Twitter, we had this exchange:
At this point, I have to say to anyone planning to attend a cycle race, it helps to develop sharp elbows and quite a thick skin, as people are incredibly rude about barging their way in to the barrier. People who arrive early have earned their spot at the barrier: people who arrive ten minutes before the event cannot expect everyone to make way for them. Woman with annoying whiney voice, That Means You.
Another annoying tactic which we saw being used repeatedly is for a parent to shove a small child towards the barrier, with the unspoken sub-text of "aww, my tiny child is too small to see from back here, just let him in in front of you, go on," but then the parents push in alongside the child. One woman in particular was trying to work her way along the barrier to the finish line in this fashion, making enemies all the way.
A long time, and many elbows later, the race finished, Cav won, yay! and suddenly we were right in the middle of it.
This is the scene just before the finish, you can see all the soigneurs are gathering, and yes, that is the podium, that semi-circular thing. It looks so big on the TV, but it's tiny in real life!
For the next ten minutes we had a succession of riders whooshing past us: here are a selection of my shots, starting with Christian Knees:
Below: left-hand United Healthcare rider: "Hey, don't cry!"
Mark de Marre, other United Healthcare rider in yellow (Curacao national champion kit) "Waaaaaaah!"
Sky's Jeremy Hunt needs a push: well, it's his last race, he's retiring now.
My pet, Luke Rowe: "Yay, Luke!"
The blackboard girly being squashed by the cavalcade. Talk about chaos!
Dan Lloyd, done for the day.
The blackboard girly is still stuck in the traffic jam, and narrowly avoids being squashed by the Raleigh team car - for the second time! They reversed to let the UK Youth car into the gap, and very nearly got her.
"Hi, Yanto!" The benefits of coming in 6th: you don't have to go on the podium or doping control, so you can get changed out of your sweaty kit before the rest of your team have even crossed the line!
And yes, it was complete coincidence that we happened to be positioned exactly opposite the UK Youth van. Honest.
Garmin riders arrive... in the background, UK Youth are already packing up their bikes.
Dan Craven "Mr Beardy" of Sigma Sport, with a serious amount of bandaging.
And so on. Well, there you have it, I've now been to a Start, and to a Finish, all that leaves is a Mountain stage, and I will have done the lot!
Oh, nearly forgot one other moment of note: as the Sky team cars came round the corner, LLB and I waved our hand-made Sky flags, and they beeped and waved at us, which was nice.
Wednesday, 26 September 2012
Tour of Britain: Done it! Again!
At last, the Tour of Britain was underway, LLB and I went to a couple of stages, and some of my predictions were coming spookily true...
Luke Rowe, for example, winning the first stage, and generally whizzing about the place. Go, Luke!
Mark "Marky Mark" Cavendish going for every sprint stage: check!
Bradley waving at the crowd and signing autographs along the way: ok, not terribly accurate on that one, he worked like a real domestique for days, then on the very stage that LLB and I went to, he went down with a stomach bug, drat. So we didn't get to see those famous sideburns in person this year.
Boy Van Poppel certainly did me proud - he won the overall points jersey, so well done to him.
I also mentioned John Herety who runs Rapha Condor - check! Saw him, in fact he nearly ran my foot over in the team car, but more of that later.
Didn't see Sean Kelly of An Post Sean Kelly team: but I saw quite a lot of team UK Youth, and Yanto Barker (pause for mild swooning) came 6th in the final stage, quite literally in front of me.
Sammy Sanchez - check! He's not as scary in real life as on the TV, possibly because I saw him on his way to sign in, so the scary corrugated forehead was not in sight, he was quite relaxed. And rather smaller than he appears on TV.
Orica Greenedge were there, saw them, got a musette, check! Did the "Call me" to the team car, got a big smile and a return of the gesture: check!
Team UK Youth: check! I have to report that Magnus Backstedt is a huge bear of a man, even allowing for the fact that, like all pro cyclists, he's lean: he's very easy to spot in the peloton! I think he's as tall as JVS (honorary Schlecklander Johan Van Summeren) but much beefier. I am now a confirmed UK Yoof supporter, or had you already guessed?
So, what are my impressions of a Start, then?
You might remember that last year, LLB and I went to a couple of stages of the ToB, we learned about good places to stand, how to find a good spot on the route, what fun TTs are, how close the cyclists get, and how to avoid being caught on camera - well, except for that one video - and we experienced a stage race, a loop, a crit, and a TT.
This year I specifically wanted to go to a start, and to go to a finish,
Our "start" was Stage 6, Welshpool to Caerphilly, and I had cunningly lured LLB on a short holiday, just a couple of days, to visit a couple of places in Wales that I had been wanting to see, and to just casually, on the way back, take in the start.
We agreed that we wanted to get to Powis castle nice and early, about an hour and a half before the start, so we left the hotel straight after breakfast and headed out.
There was I, merrily driving along the Shrewsbury by-pass, both of us full of Little Chef cooked breakfast, when suddenly I noticed a UK Youth car coming up on the outside. Followed by a UK Youth van. And then another UK Youth car.
Aha, the UK Youth team are clearly on their way to the event! I waved at them as they passed, and was tempted to follow them, but they were pressing on a bit, and we weren't in a rush, so we let them go.
On arrival at Powis, we were quite surprised to see the queue of cars ahead of us, bearing in mind that we were good and early. Car parking was beautifully organised in a massive field, with lots of marshalls on hand to direct the stream of people up to the Castle - and there was a constant stream, far more than I would have expected for a mid-week, somewhat overcast day in the middle of Wales.
If you've never been to a start, I can tell you, the podium area is really, really, noisy! They seem to think that playing loud music is the way to get everyone excited, along with a hyper-thyroid children's TV presenter (well, that's what he sounded like) geeing everyone up.
They also bus in as many loads of schoolkids as possible - the younger the better. They rope off areas against the barriers right by the start for the schools, thus ensuring the maximum volume of screaming.
Not wishing to lose our hearing, we strolled away from the start in search of team buses. There were only a couple on site, which rather surprised us: the three UK Youth vehicles, of course, and the big Garmin bus and their team cars. We did wonder where the UK Youth riders were: were they squashed in the back of the van? Surely it was a kit van, not a mini-van?
The Garmin bus was, obviously, getting all the attention: there was a significant crowd gathered around it on all sides. Slightly unfortunate then, that one of the mechanics decided to move one of the team cars, and didn't quite realise that the car park area was far from level. CRUNCH!!!! Heads turned from all directions, and gales of laughter swept round the audience once they realised that no bikes had been harmed, just the bumpers of the two cars.
Luckily for the extremely embarrassed Garmin workers, the Deathstar appeared - you know, that huge Sky coach with the satellite dish on top.Apparently they have two of them, Deathstar 1 and Deathstar 2. Deathstar 1 does all the big races, the Tours and so on, while Deathstar 2 covers the less important outings. We were clearly being honoured with Deathstar 1, and it swept slowly into the parking area, like a gigantic black magnet that pulled all the spectators away from Garmin and the dented cars. I think the driver had planned to stop the coach next to the Garmin one, neatly in line, but he had to stop where he was, because of the huge crowd.
At that point, taking advantage of the sudden silence around the Garmin bus, I made my quivering way to the bus in my search for a musette. See Mumping of the Musettes for the gory details.
Shortly after the Deathstar, other teams started arriving, including - about half an hour later - the UK Youth hired minibus and the nauseating pink Wyndy Milla van, they being the company who supply the bikes. They've changed their logo from horrible pink:
Yes, they used to sponsor a domestic team, and forced them to ride horrible pink bikes while wearing horrible pink lycra.
I have nothing more to say on this subject.
...to a very tasty Union Jack logo on white background, which is far, far nicer.
Sadly, their kit van is still pink, and now rather faded pink at that. But as we know, the UK cycling scene is still at the bottom of the scale of popularity etc, so sponsorship, and therefore funding, is still hard to come by. Obviously, it's a lot cheaper to put up with the pink van than to have an expensive respray.
The UK Youth kit is likewise mostly white (cries of "No! Not white shorts!") although sometimes they wear black shorts with their white jerseys, of which I approve highly.
The time was ticking by... for a 10.30 start, it was a bit odd to see buses still rolling into the car park at gone 10 o'clock. And hardly any signs of riders, just mechanics doodling around, checking bikes, and fending off nervous but determined Cougs who were mumping for musettes.
Oh, before I leave the subject of UK Youth, LLB and I did our bit towards supporting them: being first in, they were parked right at the top, by the big metal sign saying "Team Parking" or something similar. It was a heavy metal sign, but not quite heavy enough for a windy day in Wales: LLB and I looked at it and said "let's hope that doesn't fall over on the team car." A little later, we were inspecting the bikes on the team car roof - they are a great deal chunkier than you would expect, btw - and the wind caught the sign, which started to fall over. Luckily, quick-thinking LLB caught it before it fell, and stood on it, to hold it upright, while I attracted the attention of one of the management team, and advised them about the sign.
They moved the sign away from their team car, and then additionally moved the team car back a couple of feet. We felt happy that we'd prevented an accident.
Even more so five minutes later, when, with a loud CLANG! the sign fell over, right where the car would have been.
Hey, we saved them money on their car insurance! And they have the nice mechanic to thank for it - if he hadn't kindly given me the musette earlier, we would not have been hanging around by their cars admiring the bikes, confident that they wouldn't shout at us to go away.
The buses kept rolling in, right up until about 20 past 10 - and don't forget, the start was due at 10.30, and I found this really weird. Presumably riders have done their warm-up on rollers at the hotel, or maybe on the roads, earlier on? They certainly would not have had much time at the start zone.
Note for would-be stalkers: not much point hanging out at the buses, everyone else is there and you will be just a face in the crowd. Plus, they keep the riders locked on the buses until the last minute, behind mirror glass...... however, they all have to go up to the podium to sign on, and they do this very, very slowly indeed. So, if you want a good close look at them, work out the route between where the team buses are parked, and the start podium, and get yourself somewhere between the two.
We found a nice spot on the lead-in road, settled down with flags and cameras, and watched everyone coming past once in order to sign on, then coming past us again to return to the team buses. Absolutely near enough to touch, if you really want to get yourself arrested for molesting a cyclist.
We saw most of the Sky guys coming past at least once - three times, in the case of Jeremy Hunt - but no Bradley. We kept wondering where he was, and it wasn't until we got home and checked the news that we heard about him having to drop out due to a stomach bug.
There now follows a selection of the photos I took on the day, just to prove that I was there: my captions are below each one.
Magnus Backstedt, of UK Youth, coming back from the podium, fiddling with his shoes. Pity there isn't another rider in the shot, to illustrate just how very BIG he is!!
Oh, and yes, barriers on one side, but no barriers on the other side, you really could mingle with them, if you wanted to.
Liquigas coming back down.
Drat, I missed him. Sorry about that.
Endura racing, one of our domestic teams: merging with NetApp next season, which means they are going up to Pro Continental status, just as their star, Jonathon Tiernan-Locke, leaves them. Ironic, huh? Rumour has it that JT-L is going to Sky, but we don't know for certain yet.
Ah, that will be an elbow, then.Behind the elbow, Christian Knees! No, not really, it's VacanSoleil.
Sky's Jeremy Hunt.You can tell, he has it written on the side of his jersey.
Euskaltel - ah, dear little carrots. Sadly, one of them was dead within a week.
Team Great Britain: nice kit! Last-minute addition to the Tour, apparently.
My pet, Luke Rowe. Go, Luke!
Are you ready for a terrible religious joke? *in voice of thunder* And God cried out to Luke, crying "Luke! Luke!" But Luke never looked, and fell down an 'ole. OK, it works better when said in a northern accent.
Marky Mark Cavendish, not looking happy. He rarely does, actually.
Jeremy Hunt returning.
Oh, Jeremy Hunt going back up again. With a different UK Youth rider. (no arm warmers, did you notice?) Perhaps he's on escort duty. Funny, we didn't see him come down again...
Rapha Condor looking nervous.
Pff! That kit is even worse than that of Farnese...it's Node 4, in case you've never heard of them.
NetApp look nervous...
"Call me, maybe" Drat, Christian Knees got in the way. Never mind, I'll catch them later.
The start line. As you can see, crowds of people. Just after 10.30, nothing happened, and after a while the announcer-car came backwards up the start funnel, saying "Sorry, folks, slight delay, we're going to be about 15 minutes late in starting due to a technical problem."
LLB and I decided we'd had enough of the crowds, so we made our way along the route away from the start, until the crowds thinned right out, and there was plenty of room to stand right at the roadside.
We found a good place at the head of the cavalcade, and (being me) I struck up a conversation with the Blackboard motorcycle. Well, with the rider and passenger, obviously, not with the actual motorbike, that would be strange.
Coug: "So, Mr Motorcycle, how are you enjoying your participation in the Tour?"
Bike: " "
Coug: "Is it tough on the clutch?"
Bike: " "
Yes, best not to go there.
The blackboard girl was very nice, she was happy that the weather was improving, and that they were not likely to have to drive through deep puddles today, but commented that they - her and the rider - were now famous as they'd been on the BBC news following the Blackpool stage: apparently there was deep water on the road, and she'd lifted her legs up to avoid getting wet feet. We had to admit that we were away from home on holiday, and hadn't yet watched that footage.
(But we did when we returned, and sure enough, there she was lifting her feet up - very comical.)
The chap on the front said it wasn't his first Tour, he'd been a motorcycle rider in the Giro and the TdF as well, in fact he was very experienced at doing it. He said the worst part about working the Tour of Britain, apart from the girl on the back (who swiped him with her blackboard for saying it!) was having to work with some of the domestic teams, who were not as savvy as the Pro Team riders, and who would always try to take a draft from him. He said that the pro riders didn't do that, they just kept on cycling.
The technical problem turned out to be the police outriders who were having problems with their radios, but new batteries had been found, and sure enough, ten minutes later, they got the word that all was ready, so we said goodbye, wished them well for the day, stepped back and let them make their way off.
The rest of the leading motorcade went past, then the cyclists, led by Team Sky:
And when the Orica GreenEdge car got to us, that was the moment when I gave the "Call me, maybe" gesture and received it back from the driver.
Proud!
It was a good time to do it, they were going really slowly, as they were still within the grounds of the Castle, well within the neutralized zone, and the driver's big smile made it all worthwhile.
And that was that! We made our way back to the car par field, and I was staggered to see how many cars were there. It was an enormous field, and it was completely covered in cars - there must have been way more than a thousand cars there, which is fantastic, and I'm really thrilled to think that so many people in Britain are now interested in cycling.
So there you go, that's the "start" done - check! - now just the finish to go.
Luke Rowe, for example, winning the first stage, and generally whizzing about the place. Go, Luke!
Mark "Marky Mark" Cavendish going for every sprint stage: check!
Bradley waving at the crowd and signing autographs along the way: ok, not terribly accurate on that one, he worked like a real domestique for days, then on the very stage that LLB and I went to, he went down with a stomach bug, drat. So we didn't get to see those famous sideburns in person this year.
Boy Van Poppel certainly did me proud - he won the overall points jersey, so well done to him.
I also mentioned John Herety who runs Rapha Condor - check! Saw him, in fact he nearly ran my foot over in the team car, but more of that later.
Didn't see Sean Kelly of An Post Sean Kelly team: but I saw quite a lot of team UK Youth, and Yanto Barker (pause for mild swooning) came 6th in the final stage, quite literally in front of me.
Sammy Sanchez - check! He's not as scary in real life as on the TV, possibly because I saw him on his way to sign in, so the scary corrugated forehead was not in sight, he was quite relaxed. And rather smaller than he appears on TV.
Orica Greenedge were there, saw them, got a musette, check! Did the "Call me" to the team car, got a big smile and a return of the gesture: check!
Team UK Youth: check! I have to report that Magnus Backstedt is a huge bear of a man, even allowing for the fact that, like all pro cyclists, he's lean: he's very easy to spot in the peloton! I think he's as tall as JVS (honorary Schlecklander Johan Van Summeren) but much beefier. I am now a confirmed UK Yoof supporter, or had you already guessed?
So, what are my impressions of a Start, then?
You might remember that last year, LLB and I went to a couple of stages of the ToB, we learned about good places to stand, how to find a good spot on the route, what fun TTs are, how close the cyclists get, and how to avoid being caught on camera - well, except for that one video - and we experienced a stage race, a loop, a crit, and a TT.
This year I specifically wanted to go to a start, and to go to a finish,
Our "start" was Stage 6, Welshpool to Caerphilly, and I had cunningly lured LLB on a short holiday, just a couple of days, to visit a couple of places in Wales that I had been wanting to see, and to just casually, on the way back, take in the start.
We agreed that we wanted to get to Powis castle nice and early, about an hour and a half before the start, so we left the hotel straight after breakfast and headed out.
There was I, merrily driving along the Shrewsbury by-pass, both of us full of Little Chef cooked breakfast, when suddenly I noticed a UK Youth car coming up on the outside. Followed by a UK Youth van. And then another UK Youth car.
Aha, the UK Youth team are clearly on their way to the event! I waved at them as they passed, and was tempted to follow them, but they were pressing on a bit, and we weren't in a rush, so we let them go.
On arrival at Powis, we were quite surprised to see the queue of cars ahead of us, bearing in mind that we were good and early. Car parking was beautifully organised in a massive field, with lots of marshalls on hand to direct the stream of people up to the Castle - and there was a constant stream, far more than I would have expected for a mid-week, somewhat overcast day in the middle of Wales.
If you've never been to a start, I can tell you, the podium area is really, really, noisy! They seem to think that playing loud music is the way to get everyone excited, along with a hyper-thyroid children's TV presenter (well, that's what he sounded like) geeing everyone up.
They also bus in as many loads of schoolkids as possible - the younger the better. They rope off areas against the barriers right by the start for the schools, thus ensuring the maximum volume of screaming.
Not wishing to lose our hearing, we strolled away from the start in search of team buses. There were only a couple on site, which rather surprised us: the three UK Youth vehicles, of course, and the big Garmin bus and their team cars. We did wonder where the UK Youth riders were: were they squashed in the back of the van? Surely it was a kit van, not a mini-van?
The Garmin bus was, obviously, getting all the attention: there was a significant crowd gathered around it on all sides. Slightly unfortunate then, that one of the mechanics decided to move one of the team cars, and didn't quite realise that the car park area was far from level. CRUNCH!!!! Heads turned from all directions, and gales of laughter swept round the audience once they realised that no bikes had been harmed, just the bumpers of the two cars.
Luckily for the extremely embarrassed Garmin workers, the Deathstar appeared - you know, that huge Sky coach with the satellite dish on top.Apparently they have two of them, Deathstar 1 and Deathstar 2. Deathstar 1 does all the big races, the Tours and so on, while Deathstar 2 covers the less important outings. We were clearly being honoured with Deathstar 1, and it swept slowly into the parking area, like a gigantic black magnet that pulled all the spectators away from Garmin and the dented cars. I think the driver had planned to stop the coach next to the Garmin one, neatly in line, but he had to stop where he was, because of the huge crowd.
At that point, taking advantage of the sudden silence around the Garmin bus, I made my quivering way to the bus in my search for a musette. See Mumping of the Musettes for the gory details.
Shortly after the Deathstar, other teams started arriving, including - about half an hour later - the UK Youth hired minibus and the nauseating pink Wyndy Milla van, they being the company who supply the bikes. They've changed their logo from horrible pink:
I have nothing more to say on this subject.
...to a very tasty Union Jack logo on white background, which is far, far nicer.
Sadly, their kit van is still pink, and now rather faded pink at that. But as we know, the UK cycling scene is still at the bottom of the scale of popularity etc, so sponsorship, and therefore funding, is still hard to come by. Obviously, it's a lot cheaper to put up with the pink van than to have an expensive respray.
The UK Youth kit is likewise mostly white (cries of "No! Not white shorts!") although sometimes they wear black shorts with their white jerseys, of which I approve highly.
The time was ticking by... for a 10.30 start, it was a bit odd to see buses still rolling into the car park at gone 10 o'clock. And hardly any signs of riders, just mechanics doodling around, checking bikes, and fending off nervous but determined Cougs who were mumping for musettes.
Oh, before I leave the subject of UK Youth, LLB and I did our bit towards supporting them: being first in, they were parked right at the top, by the big metal sign saying "Team Parking" or something similar. It was a heavy metal sign, but not quite heavy enough for a windy day in Wales: LLB and I looked at it and said "let's hope that doesn't fall over on the team car." A little later, we were inspecting the bikes on the team car roof - they are a great deal chunkier than you would expect, btw - and the wind caught the sign, which started to fall over. Luckily, quick-thinking LLB caught it before it fell, and stood on it, to hold it upright, while I attracted the attention of one of the management team, and advised them about the sign.
They moved the sign away from their team car, and then additionally moved the team car back a couple of feet. We felt happy that we'd prevented an accident.
Even more so five minutes later, when, with a loud CLANG! the sign fell over, right where the car would have been.
Hey, we saved them money on their car insurance! And they have the nice mechanic to thank for it - if he hadn't kindly given me the musette earlier, we would not have been hanging around by their cars admiring the bikes, confident that they wouldn't shout at us to go away.
The buses kept rolling in, right up until about 20 past 10 - and don't forget, the start was due at 10.30, and I found this really weird. Presumably riders have done their warm-up on rollers at the hotel, or maybe on the roads, earlier on? They certainly would not have had much time at the start zone.
Note for would-be stalkers: not much point hanging out at the buses, everyone else is there and you will be just a face in the crowd. Plus, they keep the riders locked on the buses until the last minute, behind mirror glass...... however, they all have to go up to the podium to sign on, and they do this very, very slowly indeed. So, if you want a good close look at them, work out the route between where the team buses are parked, and the start podium, and get yourself somewhere between the two.
We found a nice spot on the lead-in road, settled down with flags and cameras, and watched everyone coming past once in order to sign on, then coming past us again to return to the team buses. Absolutely near enough to touch, if you really want to get yourself arrested for molesting a cyclist.
We saw most of the Sky guys coming past at least once - three times, in the case of Jeremy Hunt - but no Bradley. We kept wondering where he was, and it wasn't until we got home and checked the news that we heard about him having to drop out due to a stomach bug.
There now follows a selection of the photos I took on the day, just to prove that I was there: my captions are below each one.
Oh, and yes, barriers on one side, but no barriers on the other side, you really could mingle with them, if you wanted to.
Liquigas coming back down.
Drat, I missed him. Sorry about that.
Endura racing, one of our domestic teams: merging with NetApp next season, which means they are going up to Pro Continental status, just as their star, Jonathon Tiernan-Locke, leaves them. Ironic, huh? Rumour has it that JT-L is going to Sky, but we don't know for certain yet.
Ah, that will be an elbow, then.Behind the elbow, Christian Knees! No, not really, it's VacanSoleil.
Sky's Jeremy Hunt.You can tell, he has it written on the side of his jersey.
Euskaltel - ah, dear little carrots. Sadly, one of them was dead within a week.
Team Great Britain: nice kit! Last-minute addition to the Tour, apparently.
My pet, Luke Rowe. Go, Luke!
Are you ready for a terrible religious joke? *in voice of thunder* And God cried out to Luke, crying "Luke! Luke!" But Luke never looked, and fell down an 'ole. OK, it works better when said in a northern accent.
Marky Mark Cavendish, not looking happy. He rarely does, actually.
Jeremy Hunt returning.
Oh, Jeremy Hunt going back up again. With a different UK Youth rider. (no arm warmers, did you notice?) Perhaps he's on escort duty. Funny, we didn't see him come down again...
Rapha Condor looking nervous.
Pff! That kit is even worse than that of Farnese...it's Node 4, in case you've never heard of them.
NetApp look nervous...
"Call me, maybe" Drat, Christian Knees got in the way. Never mind, I'll catch them later.
The start line. As you can see, crowds of people. Just after 10.30, nothing happened, and after a while the announcer-car came backwards up the start funnel, saying "Sorry, folks, slight delay, we're going to be about 15 minutes late in starting due to a technical problem."
LLB and I decided we'd had enough of the crowds, so we made our way along the route away from the start, until the crowds thinned right out, and there was plenty of room to stand right at the roadside.
We found a good place at the head of the cavalcade, and (being me) I struck up a conversation with the Blackboard motorcycle. Well, with the rider and passenger, obviously, not with the actual motorbike, that would be strange.
Coug: "So, Mr Motorcycle, how are you enjoying your participation in the Tour?"
Bike: " "
Coug: "Is it tough on the clutch?"
Bike: " "
Yes, best not to go there.
The blackboard girl was very nice, she was happy that the weather was improving, and that they were not likely to have to drive through deep puddles today, but commented that they - her and the rider - were now famous as they'd been on the BBC news following the Blackpool stage: apparently there was deep water on the road, and she'd lifted her legs up to avoid getting wet feet. We had to admit that we were away from home on holiday, and hadn't yet watched that footage.
(But we did when we returned, and sure enough, there she was lifting her feet up - very comical.)
The chap on the front said it wasn't his first Tour, he'd been a motorcycle rider in the Giro and the TdF as well, in fact he was very experienced at doing it. He said the worst part about working the Tour of Britain, apart from the girl on the back (who swiped him with her blackboard for saying it!) was having to work with some of the domestic teams, who were not as savvy as the Pro Team riders, and who would always try to take a draft from him. He said that the pro riders didn't do that, they just kept on cycling.
The technical problem turned out to be the police outriders who were having problems with their radios, but new batteries had been found, and sure enough, ten minutes later, they got the word that all was ready, so we said goodbye, wished them well for the day, stepped back and let them make their way off.
The rest of the leading motorcade went past, then the cyclists, led by Team Sky:
And when the Orica GreenEdge car got to us, that was the moment when I gave the "Call me, maybe" gesture and received it back from the driver.
Proud!
It was a good time to do it, they were going really slowly, as they were still within the grounds of the Castle, well within the neutralized zone, and the driver's big smile made it all worthwhile.
And that was that! We made our way back to the car par field, and I was staggered to see how many cars were there. It was an enormous field, and it was completely covered in cars - there must have been way more than a thousand cars there, which is fantastic, and I'm really thrilled to think that so many people in Britain are now interested in cycling.
So there you go, that's the "start" done - check! - now just the finish to go.
Tuesday, 18 September 2012
The Mumping of the Musettes
Note for non-UK readers: "mumping" means asking for something of low value for free. Not stealing it, or demanding with menaces, just asking, sometimes slightly cheekily.
Now read on.....
Well, we did it: LLB and I went to two stages of the Tour of Britain this year, and fulfilled my ambition to attend a start, and a finish, of a stage race. Adding those to last year, when we did a mid-point of a stage, a Crit, and a Time Trial (right to the end, in the rain), that only leaves a Mountain stage to be attended, and we've done everything!
My additional not-so-secret agenda for the ToB was to get another musette or two, to add to my lovely Leopard Trek one.
In case you've forgotten, at last year's Tour of Britain I eventually managed to get one from the Leopard bus, with much fear and trembling, and a lot of pushing from LLB ("Go on, ask them!" "Nooooo, I'm too shy!" " Go on, get up there!" "Nooooo! I can't!" "Go on, just ask them, think what your fangirls would say if you didn't even go and ask." "Oh all right.")
As soon as I got home, the musette was converted into a handy shopping bag:
...and has been in almost daily use every since. And no, not once, NOT ONCE! has anyone tapped me on the shoulder and said "Hey, nice Leopard bag!". So disappointing.
Anyway, (*pauses to wipe away a tear. Surely I am not the only Andy Schleck fan in the area??*) there we were at Powis Castle, Stage 6, nice and early, ready for the start, with time to kill hanging around the Team buses.
Team UK Youth were there, my "underdog" team for the Tour, so I waited until they didn't seem to be over-busy, picked out the youngest chap on duty, then approached them.
"Errrr, 'scuse me, I know you're busy, but-" (*big eyes*) "...I was wondering if there'd be any chance of having a musette - an empty one?" (*rising inflection, faint Leelu tone in my voice*) "I'd love one as a souvenir..." *voice trails off, bats eyelashes.*
It worked! The nice mechanic told me to "'Ang on a min," grovelled around in the back of the van and brought back an somewhat battered cotton bag. "Ooo!" I squealed like a complete girly, "Thank you very much!"
The nice mechanic leaned in, confidentially. "We call them the Bag For Life" he grinned. "Why?" I replied, with a slightly confused look. "Because they are so big," he said, "they're much bigger than everyone else's!"
Second note for non-UK readers: supermarkets in the UK, in an effort to wean us away from using millions of flimsy plastic carrier bags, now make what they call the Bag For Life, which is a bigger carrier bag, made of very sturdy plastic. The idea is that instead of lots of free flimsy ones, you pay 10p for a Bag For Life, use it instead of the free flimsy ones, then when it gets tatty, the store will swap it, free of charge, for a new one.
And yes indeed, the UK Youth musettes are huge! And please note the two handles, just like a normal shopping bag - clearly these bags have been designed and/or supplied by a company who have never seen a cycle race in their life. One strap, guys, one long strap so they can swing it over their necks, remember?!
Also, you might notice that it's a bit crumpled - yes, it was a second-hand bag, with mud and a partial footprint on it, possibly some sweat stains (not quite sure) and it contained some empty wrappers.
Awww, that's so sweet, UK Youth re-use their musettes!
Oh no - a horrible thought occurs to me - what if they were one bag short at the feed station? They are a charity, they have a really, really small budget....oops, perhaps I'd better make a donation after the race? Anyway, this bag is therefore ready for use, once it's had a quick wash.
Next was Garmin: I felt a bit sorry for them - they were the first big team in the parking area, crowds of people all around, someone decided to move one of their team cars and crash! it hit the other team car. Gales of laughter from the crowd, lots of glum faces from the mechanics. Oh dear, left in charge of the cars for half an hour and look what happens? Two dented bumpers. Oops.
Then the Deathstar arrived (Sky's big team coach, so called by Dave Millar, who is, we can guess, ever so slightly jealous) and the whole crowd flocked over to it, like metal filings to a magnet.
It was a bit sad for Garmin, really. One minute they were the "big" team, their posh coach and natty matching cars (now with matching dented bumpers. mwah hah hah!) utterly overshadowing the UK Youth's tiny little white van and odd mix of cars.
Next minute, cries of "Oooh, Sky!" and everyone had fled.
So I repeated the dialogue above, and the nice Garmin mechanic went round to their road van and found me a brand new musette:
"There you are," he said, "seeing as you asked so nicely."
So nicely? All I said was - well, you've already read the dialogue. Please and thank you did come into it, along with a smile: but it rather made me wonder how other people ask for things. LLB, when I reported this later, said that most people probably just stomp up to them and say, "gimme a bidon, mate," or something like that.
Here it is, very similar indeed to the Leopard Trek one, smartly printed on nylon, none of your rough calico bags for these big teams.
Next on the hit-list was the Orica GreenEdge bus. My third ambition for this Tour being, of course, to do the "Here's my num-bah, Call me maybe!" dance and get a response.
Sorry, did you miss that?
Where have you been!
With huge thanks to Brisbane Gal for bringing this to my attention, the Orica GreenEdge team did a spoof video of themselves miming along to "Call me, maybe", having seen the video made by the Miami Dolphins cheerleaders. Oddly, LLB was familiar with the cheerleader version, but hadn't seen the Orica one.
It's brilliant, and as Brisbane Gal quite rightly said, that's what we want to see, a team having fun. Fun! Our poor Leopards used to have fun, but not any more *sniffle*.
In case you missed it, try this: or just type "Orica GreenEdge call me maybe" into google...
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEvX_vKDYEw&w=560&h=315]
So I bravely made my way up to the Orica bus (well, LLB had to give me a bit of a shove, actually), asked, but was told they were too busy, and to come back after the start.
Oh well, fair enough, lots to do, race to attend.. so we left them to it.
After the start, of course, by the time we'd made our way back through the crowds, all the Team buses were long gone...
...but on Sunday at Guildford, we located the Team Bus area, and I tried again. This time, success! They brought me out a musette, and proudly pointed to the front of it:
If you can see it, there's a piece of tape with Daryl on it.
"Daryl!" they beamed at me ("they" being the two rather italian mechanics, in case you were wondering).
I must have looked a little confused.
"Daryl Impey!" they chorused.
Yes, I know who Daryl is, but why are you giving me his musette? He's not even in this race.
Oh well, who cares! For your general information, I can tell you that the Orica GreenEdge musettes are a bit of a disappointment, being a) quite a bit smaller than Leopard/Garmin, and b) made of a woven nylon fabric that has a very odd texture to it.
Well, I won't be using that one for shopping. Pity, as it's quite the prettiest one - apart from the Leopard one, of course. *she says, loyally.*
Here we are then, a selection of freshly mumped musettes:
So there you go, all ambitions achieved. "All" ambitions? Yes, I did the "call me maybe" gesture to the Orica team car as they rolled away at the start, and the driver returned the gesture! Success!
Now read on.....
Well, we did it: LLB and I went to two stages of the Tour of Britain this year, and fulfilled my ambition to attend a start, and a finish, of a stage race. Adding those to last year, when we did a mid-point of a stage, a Crit, and a Time Trial (right to the end, in the rain), that only leaves a Mountain stage to be attended, and we've done everything!
My additional not-so-secret agenda for the ToB was to get another musette or two, to add to my lovely Leopard Trek one.
In case you've forgotten, at last year's Tour of Britain I eventually managed to get one from the Leopard bus, with much fear and trembling, and a lot of pushing from LLB ("Go on, ask them!" "Nooooo, I'm too shy!" " Go on, get up there!" "Nooooo! I can't!" "Go on, just ask them, think what your fangirls would say if you didn't even go and ask." "Oh all right.")
As soon as I got home, the musette was converted into a handy shopping bag:
...and has been in almost daily use every since. And no, not once, NOT ONCE! has anyone tapped me on the shoulder and said "Hey, nice Leopard bag!". So disappointing.
Anyway, (*pauses to wipe away a tear. Surely I am not the only Andy Schleck fan in the area??*) there we were at Powis Castle, Stage 6, nice and early, ready for the start, with time to kill hanging around the Team buses.
Team UK Youth were there, my "underdog" team for the Tour, so I waited until they didn't seem to be over-busy, picked out the youngest chap on duty, then approached them.
"Errrr, 'scuse me, I know you're busy, but-" (*big eyes*) "...I was wondering if there'd be any chance of having a musette - an empty one?" (*rising inflection, faint Leelu tone in my voice*) "I'd love one as a souvenir..." *voice trails off, bats eyelashes.*
It worked! The nice mechanic told me to "'Ang on a min," grovelled around in the back of the van and brought back an somewhat battered cotton bag. "Ooo!" I squealed like a complete girly, "Thank you very much!"
The nice mechanic leaned in, confidentially. "We call them the Bag For Life" he grinned. "Why?" I replied, with a slightly confused look. "Because they are so big," he said, "they're much bigger than everyone else's!"
Second note for non-UK readers: supermarkets in the UK, in an effort to wean us away from using millions of flimsy plastic carrier bags, now make what they call the Bag For Life, which is a bigger carrier bag, made of very sturdy plastic. The idea is that instead of lots of free flimsy ones, you pay 10p for a Bag For Life, use it instead of the free flimsy ones, then when it gets tatty, the store will swap it, free of charge, for a new one.
And yes indeed, the UK Youth musettes are huge! And please note the two handles, just like a normal shopping bag - clearly these bags have been designed and/or supplied by a company who have never seen a cycle race in their life. One strap, guys, one long strap so they can swing it over their necks, remember?!
Also, you might notice that it's a bit crumpled - yes, it was a second-hand bag, with mud and a partial footprint on it, possibly some sweat stains (not quite sure) and it contained some empty wrappers.
Awww, that's so sweet, UK Youth re-use their musettes!
Oh no - a horrible thought occurs to me - what if they were one bag short at the feed station? They are a charity, they have a really, really small budget....oops, perhaps I'd better make a donation after the race? Anyway, this bag is therefore ready for use, once it's had a quick wash.
Next was Garmin: I felt a bit sorry for them - they were the first big team in the parking area, crowds of people all around, someone decided to move one of their team cars and crash! it hit the other team car. Gales of laughter from the crowd, lots of glum faces from the mechanics. Oh dear, left in charge of the cars for half an hour and look what happens? Two dented bumpers. Oops.
Then the Deathstar arrived (Sky's big team coach, so called by Dave Millar, who is, we can guess, ever so slightly jealous) and the whole crowd flocked over to it, like metal filings to a magnet.
It was a bit sad for Garmin, really. One minute they were the "big" team, their posh coach and natty matching cars (now with matching dented bumpers. mwah hah hah!) utterly overshadowing the UK Youth's tiny little white van and odd mix of cars.
Next minute, cries of "Oooh, Sky!" and everyone had fled.
So I repeated the dialogue above, and the nice Garmin mechanic went round to their road van and found me a brand new musette:
"There you are," he said, "seeing as you asked so nicely."
So nicely? All I said was - well, you've already read the dialogue. Please and thank you did come into it, along with a smile: but it rather made me wonder how other people ask for things. LLB, when I reported this later, said that most people probably just stomp up to them and say, "gimme a bidon, mate," or something like that.
Here it is, very similar indeed to the Leopard Trek one, smartly printed on nylon, none of your rough calico bags for these big teams.
Next on the hit-list was the Orica GreenEdge bus. My third ambition for this Tour being, of course, to do the "Here's my num-bah, Call me maybe!" dance and get a response.
Sorry, did you miss that?
Where have you been!
With huge thanks to Brisbane Gal for bringing this to my attention, the Orica GreenEdge team did a spoof video of themselves miming along to "Call me, maybe", having seen the video made by the Miami Dolphins cheerleaders. Oddly, LLB was familiar with the cheerleader version, but hadn't seen the Orica one.
It's brilliant, and as Brisbane Gal quite rightly said, that's what we want to see, a team having fun. Fun! Our poor Leopards used to have fun, but not any more *sniffle*.
In case you missed it, try this: or just type "Orica GreenEdge call me maybe" into google...
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEvX_vKDYEw&w=560&h=315]
So I bravely made my way up to the Orica bus (well, LLB had to give me a bit of a shove, actually), asked, but was told they were too busy, and to come back after the start.
Oh well, fair enough, lots to do, race to attend.. so we left them to it.
After the start, of course, by the time we'd made our way back through the crowds, all the Team buses were long gone...
...but on Sunday at Guildford, we located the Team Bus area, and I tried again. This time, success! They brought me out a musette, and proudly pointed to the front of it:
If you can see it, there's a piece of tape with Daryl on it.
"Daryl!" they beamed at me ("they" being the two rather italian mechanics, in case you were wondering).
I must have looked a little confused.
"Daryl Impey!" they chorused.
Yes, I know who Daryl is, but why are you giving me his musette? He's not even in this race.
Oh well, who cares! For your general information, I can tell you that the Orica GreenEdge musettes are a bit of a disappointment, being a) quite a bit smaller than Leopard/Garmin, and b) made of a woven nylon fabric that has a very odd texture to it.
Well, I won't be using that one for shopping. Pity, as it's quite the prettiest one - apart from the Leopard one, of course. *she says, loyally.*
Here we are then, a selection of freshly mumped musettes:
So there you go, all ambitions achieved. "All" ambitions? Yes, I did the "call me maybe" gesture to the Orica team car as they rolled away at the start, and the driver returned the gesture! Success!
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