Honestly, we are still struggling with the legacy of PEDs in cycling: we had the controversy of Fabian and the alleged motor-in-the-frame, we've only just stopped laughing about the Team Sky skin-suits (jealous comments from certain French non-Tour-winning teams saying the new fabric gave a 25 second advantage, yeah, right!), and now a blatant example of cheating has slipped under the radar.
Fabio "Ugly Boy" Aru has admitted - admitted! Has he no shame? - that he has undergone surgery to enhance his performance.
Outrageous!
Team Sky members must be quivering in their bib-shorts this morning, wondering if they will be forced to undergo surgery in order to make a not-exactly-marginal gain. (that is a JOKE.)
Anyone with the tiniest bit of a snuffle, or any rider who regularly flails his way up a hill with mouth a-gape will no doubt be looking this up on the internet to see if it could benefit them.
What has he done?
He's had his nose enlarged. (mutters of "as if it wasn't large enough to start with...") Well, to be accurate, in January this year, he had some of the inner workings of his nose removed to allow more air in.
Isn't that cheating? How far is that from "oh, if my legs were longer I would have a more efficient pedal stroke so I'll have both legs surgically broken and pins inserted to make them 1.25cms longer" or something of that type?
Will we see members of the peloton turning to surgery to give themselves the perfect physical form?
What are the UCI going to say about that - you can't add a wing or a hump to a skinsuit, but you can have your nose enlarged?
And the most important and soul-searching question of all: while the surgeons were fiddling about with his nose, could they not have made him a bit less ugly?
Friday, 7 July 2017
Wednesday, 5 July 2017
Tour de France 2017 - sprint deviation
What with all the kerfuffle about Peter Sagan elbowing Cav and his subsequent dismissal from the Tour, not to mention poor Cav being now out of the Tour himself with a broken shoulder, it's easy to overlook that there were other problems on the day.
Apparently Boo-hoo-hanni was ALSO blocked on his way to the sprint.
Ha! Ha!
Poor cry-baby Bouhanni, bleating to the press that he was cut off in the sprint, otherwise he would clearly have won it, as he is clearly the bestest ever sprinter ("not"). At least he stopped short of demanding that Arnaud Demare, sprint winner, should also be thrown off the Tour....
Apparently Boo-hoo-hanni was ALSO blocked on his way to the sprint.
Ha! Ha!
Poor cry-baby Bouhanni, bleating to the press that he was cut off in the sprint, otherwise he would clearly have won it, as he is clearly the bestest ever sprinter ("not"). At least he stopped short of demanding that Arnaud Demare, sprint winner, should also be thrown off the Tour....
Tour de France 2017: Day 4 - I can't believe it's not on Youtube!
Day three was a typical first-week Tour day - a long day in the saddle, nothing much happens for five hours, then a bunch sprint at the end, won by Peter Soggy Sagan. Sky still have Geraint Thomas in yellow, and three out of the top ten places. OK, that last bit is not exactly typical, but very satisfying for all us Sky fans.
Day 4 however, started in Mondorf, home town of the Andy Schleck, and I didn't quite manage to get the day off work, hop on a plane, and be there for the start. Drat! However, I was optimistic that someone somewhere would manage to get an interview with Our Glorious (Former) Leader, and BikeGirl confirmed that this happened - but where is it? I haven't seen the stage yet, I have my fingers crossed that LLB recorded it and - most importantly - doesn't delete it before I get a chance to watch it. I assumed that someone would put up the clip on Yootoob but so far, no sign of it.
Darn!
Meanwhile, in the rest of world, Day 4 was another of those long, flat days, designed to take the stuffing out of the riders, and test their stamina. It ended in a bunch sprint, and this time Soggy Sagan, for an unknown reason, elbowed Mark Cavendish in the final metres, flung him into the barriers, and left him crashed and broken on the ground. Mark's out with a broken shoulder, and Sagan has apparently been disqualified and thrown off the race, although it's half past six in the morning as I write, and things may yet change before the day starts in Europe.
Having watched videos of the sprint, it does look rather like a nasty, spiteful elbow. But if Cav had only hit the deck, and hadn't broken his scapula (ouch!!) would it still have been a DQ? Or would it just have been a fine and a time loss?
Day 4 however, started in Mondorf, home town of the Andy Schleck, and I didn't quite manage to get the day off work, hop on a plane, and be there for the start. Drat! However, I was optimistic that someone somewhere would manage to get an interview with Our Glorious (Former) Leader, and BikeGirl confirmed that this happened - but where is it? I haven't seen the stage yet, I have my fingers crossed that LLB recorded it and - most importantly - doesn't delete it before I get a chance to watch it. I assumed that someone would put up the clip on Yootoob but so far, no sign of it.
Darn!
Meanwhile, in the rest of world, Day 4 was another of those long, flat days, designed to take the stuffing out of the riders, and test their stamina. It ended in a bunch sprint, and this time Soggy Sagan, for an unknown reason, elbowed Mark Cavendish in the final metres, flung him into the barriers, and left him crashed and broken on the ground. Mark's out with a broken shoulder, and Sagan has apparently been disqualified and thrown off the race, although it's half past six in the morning as I write, and things may yet change before the day starts in Europe.
Having watched videos of the sprint, it does look rather like a nasty, spiteful elbow. But if Cav had only hit the deck, and hadn't broken his scapula (ouch!!) would it still have been a DQ? Or would it just have been a fine and a time loss?
Monday, 3 July 2017
Tour de France 2017: Day Two. Bunch sprint and Big crashes
Well, I have to say that Sky have possibly peaked: they start this second day of the Tour with G in Yellow, Schleckland Pet and Diesel Engine Vasil Kiryenka in Green (who'd've thought it!!) and the whole team in yellow hats (except for Kiri, who's wearing a green hat) for leading the team classification. Also, Stefan Kung has defected from the Red Team and has joined Sky in the White Block for now, as he's in the White Young Riders' jersey.
Can it get better? Will it be only downhill from here? Will G stay in Yellow right to the end?
Who can tell... but we'll be watching with interest, I can tell you: this is the best, most exciting start to a Tour that I've ever seen, and I've been watching for over a decade now.
So, this is the Tour of the Helmets: the only way to differentiate the members of the gigantic Red Team, Black Team, and now the White Block, is by their helmets. I'm well bogged off with Sky, by the way, for going to white for the Tour: for heaven's sake, whose bright idea was that? They have a totally distinctive, 100% successful existing livery, easily spotted from all sides, tasteful, stylish, etc, and they change it to a white jersey - a foolish move considering all the white Nationals jerseys, not to mention poor old Krys, sponsor of the Young Rider jersey and apparently quite cross about it all - which is almost identical to that of Trek, and on which the blue stripe can't even be seen from above. I don't even know what hats they were planning to wear - they had white ones with a blue stripe for the TT, so presumably it was going to be white lids for everyday wear as well, had they not been holding the Teams classification and therefore allowed to wear yellow lids. Like at least two other teams, three if you count the nasty "gold" of Bahrain Merida.
Ho hum.
So, stage 2: the first proper day of racing, and on paper it was a fairly standard Tour first-week day, being mostly sort of flattish, with a bunch sprint at the end. As predicted by me, Wanty ("Go, Bears!") were in the break, and the four of them spent the whole day out there all alone, in the rain.
Talking of the rain, and the White Block, there was an added complication today when it started to rain: Team Sky put on their normal black Sky gilets and the White Team suddenly lost a whole batch of riders, while the Black Team smugly expanded. And Team Jumbo were astonished to find that G was suddenly riding for them!
Honestly, UCI and ASO, you are really going to have to do something about this kit issue!
After the slips and spills yesterday, the commentators are going on about safety, barriers etc for at least the first hour of racing, so LLB and I decided that the answer was for fans to bring along their own "pad", which they could hang over the barrier in front of themselves. Teams could sell covers, in team livery: there you go, job done!
At 28k to go, there was a totally unexpected hand-grenade right at the very front of the bunch - one of the Dark Lords slid sideways and took out the whole of the peloton, the whole of Team Sky, the Maillot Jaune, and everyone. Panic!
This meant that we didn't see any more of the valiant break until they were caught with just barely 1k to go - awww! We would have liked Taylor Phinney to get the stage win, it's great to see him coming back from 3 years recuperation after a horrendous injury: but at least he got the KOM jersey. And we would also have liked to see Wanty get the stage win, as Offredo has had his own share of trauma this year, as he was attacked while out training by two blokes in a car, with a baseball bat and a knife, resulting in a broken nose, broken rib, and knife wounds to the face and arms. What is this world coming to? Anyway, he, too, has recovered from those injuries and deserved a win, but instead he got the most combative rider, which is something, at least.
There was a horrible moment just after the finish, when the leaderboard gave Ugly Aru 9th place. What??!! Phew, it was all a mistake, what a relief. I can't tell you where the lovely Jakob Fuglsang came, as ASO haven't put up the full results yet. But I would imagine that they both came in with the bunch, so they will still be just 2 seconds apart.
Now, one final point before I go: to my eternal shame, I have only just noticed that stage 4 starts in Mondorf. Mondorf!! Damn, there isn't time to get a day off work and book a plane ticket. I just hope that someone remembers to interview a famous former rider who just happens to live there.....
Can it get better? Will it be only downhill from here? Will G stay in Yellow right to the end?
Who can tell... but we'll be watching with interest, I can tell you: this is the best, most exciting start to a Tour that I've ever seen, and I've been watching for over a decade now.
So, this is the Tour of the Helmets: the only way to differentiate the members of the gigantic Red Team, Black Team, and now the White Block, is by their helmets. I'm well bogged off with Sky, by the way, for going to white for the Tour: for heaven's sake, whose bright idea was that? They have a totally distinctive, 100% successful existing livery, easily spotted from all sides, tasteful, stylish, etc, and they change it to a white jersey - a foolish move considering all the white Nationals jerseys, not to mention poor old Krys, sponsor of the Young Rider jersey and apparently quite cross about it all - which is almost identical to that of Trek, and on which the blue stripe can't even be seen from above. I don't even know what hats they were planning to wear - they had white ones with a blue stripe for the TT, so presumably it was going to be white lids for everyday wear as well, had they not been holding the Teams classification and therefore allowed to wear yellow lids. Like at least two other teams, three if you count the nasty "gold" of Bahrain Merida.
Ho hum.
So, stage 2: the first proper day of racing, and on paper it was a fairly standard Tour first-week day, being mostly sort of flattish, with a bunch sprint at the end. As predicted by me, Wanty ("Go, Bears!") were in the break, and the four of them spent the whole day out there all alone, in the rain.
Talking of the rain, and the White Block, there was an added complication today when it started to rain: Team Sky put on their normal black Sky gilets and the White Team suddenly lost a whole batch of riders, while the Black Team smugly expanded. And Team Jumbo were astonished to find that G was suddenly riding for them!
Honestly, UCI and ASO, you are really going to have to do something about this kit issue!
After the slips and spills yesterday, the commentators are going on about safety, barriers etc for at least the first hour of racing, so LLB and I decided that the answer was for fans to bring along their own "pad", which they could hang over the barrier in front of themselves. Teams could sell covers, in team livery: there you go, job done!
At 28k to go, there was a totally unexpected hand-grenade right at the very front of the bunch - one of the Dark Lords slid sideways and took out the whole of the peloton, the whole of Team Sky, the Maillot Jaune, and everyone. Panic!
This meant that we didn't see any more of the valiant break until they were caught with just barely 1k to go - awww! We would have liked Taylor Phinney to get the stage win, it's great to see him coming back from 3 years recuperation after a horrendous injury: but at least he got the KOM jersey. And we would also have liked to see Wanty get the stage win, as Offredo has had his own share of trauma this year, as he was attacked while out training by two blokes in a car, with a baseball bat and a knife, resulting in a broken nose, broken rib, and knife wounds to the face and arms. What is this world coming to? Anyway, he, too, has recovered from those injuries and deserved a win, but instead he got the most combative rider, which is something, at least.
There was a horrible moment just after the finish, when the leaderboard gave Ugly Aru 9th place. What??!! Phew, it was all a mistake, what a relief. I can't tell you where the lovely Jakob Fuglsang came, as ASO haven't put up the full results yet. But I would imagine that they both came in with the bunch, so they will still be just 2 seconds apart.
Now, one final point before I go: to my eternal shame, I have only just noticed that stage 4 starts in Mondorf. Mondorf!! Damn, there isn't time to get a day off work and book a plane ticket. I just hope that someone remembers to interview a famous former rider who just happens to live there.....
Sunday, 2 July 2017
Tour de France 2017: Day One, Time Trial. Or: Hooray For LouLou!
Hooray for LouLou Fuglsang, she had their baby earlier this week! Good girl, LouLou!
Why such joy and elation? Well, if the baby had arrived on schedule, ie sometime next week, there was a good chance that Jakob would have left the Tour in order to be there, and quite right too: but thankfully the lovely LouLou managed to produce their baby girl a little bit early (nothing to do with all the Jakob fans gritting their teeth, and murmuring "Push! Push!" under their breath for the last fortnight: no, nothing to do with that at all) so the lovely Jakob could attend the Tour with a clear conscience and a heart full of joy. So welcome to Jamie Lou (no idea if I spelled that correctly, that's what it sounded like in the interview) and heartfelt thanks to your Mummy for bravely allowing hubby to go on a road trip around France for the next three weeks!
So, on to business: Day one, ITT, just to get some gaps and some jerseys out there.
Talking of which, how odd to see Peter "more fun than a jammy dodger" Sagan (ah, Figgy, where are you now, you funny little creature?) in the black Bora kit, instead of his apparently permanent white Worlds hoops. What with that, and the hair suddenly made invisible (presumably some industrial strength hair bands under that helmet), he was only recognisable by his bow legged style. As usual, he went off like a train: love him or hate him, he's an incredible athlete. Pity he has such a whiney voice, though....
It was interesting to hear Ned Boulting ("How's that yellow Jumper, Ned?" *laughs*) (in-joke referring to his book "How I Won The Yellow Jumper" which LLB gave me for Christmas) confirm the consternation at the plethora of white jerseys, on the part of both commentators and officials: apparently Trek were dead miffed that they unveiled their new kit shortly after Sky had unveiled theirs - and the two are very nearly identical. Oops.
What did I say about having a Kit Officer? How long have I been saying it?
Interestingly, when I came back to this blog yesterday, after a gap of , ooh, about a year (look, I'm still getting over the loss of Andy Schleck, ok?!) I found that I'd left a blog entry as a draft, from last June, it started thus:
"How many times am I going to have to say this?
Cycling needs a single point of reference for kit design, where they can submit their draft colours, and be told how many other teams are already using that combination.
There need not be any names mentioned (is a new kit really that much of a "let's keep it secret" item?), and I would be perfectly happy to volunteer for the position: I would also be compelled to make a few comments on the kit design, although I would take care never to use a highlighter pen, as we all know that's how the Vini Fantini kit originated."
Clearly I don't have enough influence (cries of "Mr Cookson! Sir! Why aren't you reading my blog? I've been saying you could reduce accidents in the peloton by telling teams to supply a nine-man team but only 7 of them ride each day, with GC contestants having to ride every day, but domestiques being interchangeable etc for YEARS!!") so it's up to you, dear readers, to publicise this blog at every opportunity: link to it, follow it, tell your friends about it, tweet about it, please!
Anyway, back to le Tour: the weather was filthy, and not a particularly nice course either: highly technical, lots of evil sharp corners, some scarily narrow bits (that section with the yellow barriers made me flinch every time), all on town roads, and the rain made it as slippery as you want - at one point, Jumbo's George Bennett crashed, requiring a new bike, and the mechanic who pushed him off did a perfect Torville and Dean slide along the road in his wake.
It was interesting to see the tactics - some riders were clearly protecting themselves against a disastrous injury by tiptoeing tentatively round the greasy corners, while other, non-GC guys could fling themselves around with gay abandon, taking the chance of getting a bit of a lead while they could.
The lovely Jakob made it round safely in 70th position: he ended up just 54seconds down on GC and what's more to the point, he only lost 2 seconds to Fabio Ugly "Eddie the Mad Flat Mate" Aru. That's about as much as we can hope for, at this point.
Meanwhile, round the back of the Ass-t'na bus:
Jakob is on the phone.
LouLou: "Hello?"
Jakob: "Babe! "
LouLou: "Darling boy! "
Jakob: "You ok? "
LouLou: "We're both fine - how's the plan going? "
Jakob: "Really well, I let him get 2 seconds on me. "
LouLou: "Nice! Is he all smug and smirky? "
Jakob: "Yeah, huh! *laughs* He's trying to be all like 'oh, we'll support each other, we work really well together' but I know he plans to ditch me and steam off later on. "
LouLou: "Of course - but you won't let him, will you? "
Jakob: "Nope: the plan is On Track. "
LouLou: "Great stuff. Ellker doo mar? "
Jakob: "Yay... yar elker darr."
[that last bit is phonetic, as I don't speak Danish]
Talking about the course, I feel slightly guilty about Anyone But Valverde, as he is now rather spectacularly out of the race, having slidded off (as Sean Kelly says) into a barrier, breaking his kneecap and bashing his head quite hard as well. I was hoping he'd have an unspecified stomach upset: I didn't really want him to have a serious crash. But heyho, such is the power of Schleckland.
Of course, half the armchair commentators are now bleating about unsafe courses, but come on, it was raining, it was on town roads, it was a TT, of course people are going to crash. Remember every other single edition of the Tour, first week? Clear blue skies, flat boring stages, kaboom! a hand-grenade goes off in the peloton, tons of crashes, and we usually lose half a dozen riders in the first week. It's nothing new. The course was technical, but not dangerous: as the winner, Geraint Thomas of Sky, said "if you don't want to fall off, don't go so fast." And he got round the course faster than anyone else. If you watch any of the many videos of that TT, and in particular of Valverde's crash, you can see that he goes into that corner incredibly fast. At least he only fell because he misjudged his own speed: unlike certain other riders whose careers were cut short by falls which were caused by stupid spectators. Not to mention all the moto and car problems we've had recently. No, I won't accept any criticism of the course, it was purely down to the conditions and the will to win of the participants.
So, how did the White Block do? Surprisingly well, considering how many of them had to rip off the white jerseys and put on their normal team kits for the TT: despite this, they had 9 out of the top 10, if you count Quick-Step with their white shoulders. It looks as though this year's Tour is going to be all about the helmets!
As an aside, Tony Martin, the Dripping Cod, appeared in his white Worlds hoops, which is fine, but apparently he also holds the German National jersey for TT, which means that the German jersey is never going to be seen on tv, as the Worlds clearly trumps the Nationals. I think this is wrong: listen up, Mr Cookson, there needs to be two changes:
1) a new UCI rule saying that whoever wins a Worlds jersey should not be eligible to compete in their National for the same discipline in the same year: and:
2) move the dates so that the Worlds are held just a week or two before the Nationals, to make it easier to implement and enforce Rule 1).
Don't you agree?
It's a real shame that Tony Martin didn't actually win the TT - although I was thrilled to see Schleckland pet Vasil Kiryenka holding the top slot for so long - as it would have been a big boost to German cycling and, more to the point, German sponsorship. Oh well, if Tony couldn't win it, at least ...(*bites tongue to resist saying anyone but Valverde which would, frankly, be a bit tasteless at this point, as he's lying in a hospital with his kneecap in shreds awaiting surgery)...at least it was a British win, yay, G! Delighted to see him win it - I always love the man-hugs in lycra - with Froomey coming in a tactful 12 seconds down. Good to have no less than 40% of the top 10 slots occupied by Sky! *waves home-made Team Sky flag*
Have you ever noticed, by the way, how virtually all riders, no matter what their nationality, say "Yuh!" in a German accent, along with "For sure" instead of "certainly" in all of their interviews? G managed to say both of them in his pre-podium interview, despite being Welsh. The worst thing is that LLB and I have started saying it as well.
And finally, a note about change of allegiance: we recorded both the ITV4 coverage and the Eurosport coverage, in order to decide which one we would be following through the Tour this year. Alas, Eurosport have dragged Boring LeMond back in again, whose stuttering, stumbling, inarticulate burblings annoyed us so much last year. So we're abandoning them, and will be following ITV4 this year.
And what of today, Sunday? We're off to Liege for a bunch sprint, so there should be a hard day of the GC teams trying to stay on the front: I'm expecting Wanty ("Go, Bears!") to feature prominently in the break, and will be waving my flag for them. See you later!
Why such joy and elation? Well, if the baby had arrived on schedule, ie sometime next week, there was a good chance that Jakob would have left the Tour in order to be there, and quite right too: but thankfully the lovely LouLou managed to produce their baby girl a little bit early (nothing to do with all the Jakob fans gritting their teeth, and murmuring "Push! Push!" under their breath for the last fortnight: no, nothing to do with that at all) so the lovely Jakob could attend the Tour with a clear conscience and a heart full of joy. So welcome to Jamie Lou (no idea if I spelled that correctly, that's what it sounded like in the interview) and heartfelt thanks to your Mummy for bravely allowing hubby to go on a road trip around France for the next three weeks!
So, on to business: Day one, ITT, just to get some gaps and some jerseys out there.
Talking of which, how odd to see Peter "more fun than a jammy dodger" Sagan (ah, Figgy, where are you now, you funny little creature?) in the black Bora kit, instead of his apparently permanent white Worlds hoops. What with that, and the hair suddenly made invisible (presumably some industrial strength hair bands under that helmet), he was only recognisable by his bow legged style. As usual, he went off like a train: love him or hate him, he's an incredible athlete. Pity he has such a whiney voice, though....
It was interesting to hear Ned Boulting ("How's that yellow Jumper, Ned?" *laughs*) (in-joke referring to his book "How I Won The Yellow Jumper" which LLB gave me for Christmas) confirm the consternation at the plethora of white jerseys, on the part of both commentators and officials: apparently Trek were dead miffed that they unveiled their new kit shortly after Sky had unveiled theirs - and the two are very nearly identical. Oops.
What did I say about having a Kit Officer? How long have I been saying it?
Interestingly, when I came back to this blog yesterday, after a gap of , ooh, about a year (look, I'm still getting over the loss of Andy Schleck, ok?!) I found that I'd left a blog entry as a draft, from last June, it started thus:
"How many times am I going to have to say this?
Cycling needs a single point of reference for kit design, where they can submit their draft colours, and be told how many other teams are already using that combination.
There need not be any names mentioned (is a new kit really that much of a "let's keep it secret" item?), and I would be perfectly happy to volunteer for the position: I would also be compelled to make a few comments on the kit design, although I would take care never to use a highlighter pen, as we all know that's how the Vini Fantini kit originated."
Clearly I don't have enough influence (cries of "Mr Cookson! Sir! Why aren't you reading my blog? I've been saying you could reduce accidents in the peloton by telling teams to supply a nine-man team but only 7 of them ride each day, with GC contestants having to ride every day, but domestiques being interchangeable etc for YEARS!!") so it's up to you, dear readers, to publicise this blog at every opportunity: link to it, follow it, tell your friends about it, tweet about it, please!
Anyway, back to le Tour: the weather was filthy, and not a particularly nice course either: highly technical, lots of evil sharp corners, some scarily narrow bits (that section with the yellow barriers made me flinch every time), all on town roads, and the rain made it as slippery as you want - at one point, Jumbo's George Bennett crashed, requiring a new bike, and the mechanic who pushed him off did a perfect Torville and Dean slide along the road in his wake.
It was interesting to see the tactics - some riders were clearly protecting themselves against a disastrous injury by tiptoeing tentatively round the greasy corners, while other, non-GC guys could fling themselves around with gay abandon, taking the chance of getting a bit of a lead while they could.
The lovely Jakob made it round safely in 70th position: he ended up just 54seconds down on GC and what's more to the point, he only lost 2 seconds to Fabio Ugly "Eddie the Mad Flat Mate" Aru. That's about as much as we can hope for, at this point.
Meanwhile, round the back of the Ass-t'na bus:
Jakob is on the phone.
LouLou: "Hello?"
Jakob: "Babe! "
LouLou: "Darling boy! "
Jakob: "You ok? "
LouLou: "We're both fine - how's the plan going? "
Jakob: "Really well, I let him get 2 seconds on me. "
LouLou: "Nice! Is he all smug and smirky? "
Jakob: "Yeah, huh! *laughs* He's trying to be all like 'oh, we'll support each other, we work really well together' but I know he plans to ditch me and steam off later on. "
LouLou: "Of course - but you won't let him, will you? "
Jakob: "Nope: the plan is On Track. "
LouLou: "Great stuff. Ellker doo mar? "
Jakob: "Yay... yar elker darr."
[that last bit is phonetic, as I don't speak Danish]
Talking about the course, I feel slightly guilty about Anyone But Valverde, as he is now rather spectacularly out of the race, having slidded off (as Sean Kelly says) into a barrier, breaking his kneecap and bashing his head quite hard as well. I was hoping he'd have an unspecified stomach upset: I didn't really want him to have a serious crash. But heyho, such is the power of Schleckland.
Of course, half the armchair commentators are now bleating about unsafe courses, but come on, it was raining, it was on town roads, it was a TT, of course people are going to crash. Remember every other single edition of the Tour, first week? Clear blue skies, flat boring stages, kaboom! a hand-grenade goes off in the peloton, tons of crashes, and we usually lose half a dozen riders in the first week. It's nothing new. The course was technical, but not dangerous: as the winner, Geraint Thomas of Sky, said "if you don't want to fall off, don't go so fast." And he got round the course faster than anyone else. If you watch any of the many videos of that TT, and in particular of Valverde's crash, you can see that he goes into that corner incredibly fast. At least he only fell because he misjudged his own speed: unlike certain other riders whose careers were cut short by falls which were caused by stupid spectators. Not to mention all the moto and car problems we've had recently. No, I won't accept any criticism of the course, it was purely down to the conditions and the will to win of the participants.
So, how did the White Block do? Surprisingly well, considering how many of them had to rip off the white jerseys and put on their normal team kits for the TT: despite this, they had 9 out of the top 10, if you count Quick-Step with their white shoulders. It looks as though this year's Tour is going to be all about the helmets!
As an aside, Tony Martin, the Dripping Cod, appeared in his white Worlds hoops, which is fine, but apparently he also holds the German National jersey for TT, which means that the German jersey is never going to be seen on tv, as the Worlds clearly trumps the Nationals. I think this is wrong: listen up, Mr Cookson, there needs to be two changes:
1) a new UCI rule saying that whoever wins a Worlds jersey should not be eligible to compete in their National for the same discipline in the same year: and:
2) move the dates so that the Worlds are held just a week or two before the Nationals, to make it easier to implement and enforce Rule 1).
Don't you agree?
It's a real shame that Tony Martin didn't actually win the TT - although I was thrilled to see Schleckland pet Vasil Kiryenka holding the top slot for so long - as it would have been a big boost to German cycling and, more to the point, German sponsorship. Oh well, if Tony couldn't win it, at least ...(*bites tongue to resist saying anyone but Valverde which would, frankly, be a bit tasteless at this point, as he's lying in a hospital with his kneecap in shreds awaiting surgery)...at least it was a British win, yay, G! Delighted to see him win it - I always love the man-hugs in lycra - with Froomey coming in a tactful 12 seconds down. Good to have no less than 40% of the top 10 slots occupied by Sky! *waves home-made Team Sky flag*
Have you ever noticed, by the way, how virtually all riders, no matter what their nationality, say "Yuh!" in a German accent, along with "For sure" instead of "certainly" in all of their interviews? G managed to say both of them in his pre-podium interview, despite being Welsh. The worst thing is that LLB and I have started saying it as well.
And finally, a note about change of allegiance: we recorded both the ITV4 coverage and the Eurosport coverage, in order to decide which one we would be following through the Tour this year. Alas, Eurosport have dragged Boring LeMond back in again, whose stuttering, stumbling, inarticulate burblings annoyed us so much last year. So we're abandoning them, and will be following ITV4 this year.
And what of today, Sunday? We're off to Liege for a bunch sprint, so there should be a hard day of the GC teams trying to stay on the front: I'm expecting Wanty ("Go, Bears!") to feature prominently in the break, and will be waving my flag for them. See you later!
Saturday, 1 July 2017
Tour de France 2017: Team Presentation
Yay, it's Tour Time!
Yesterday we had the Team Presentation, a somewhat sadistic ritual where every rider has to be presented to a small crowd in the town where the Tour is going to start that year: instead of resting and preparing for the ordeal to come, they have to put on their smiley faces, pedal their bikes onto a stage, answering inane questions from hyperactive hosts ("So tell me *glances at notes* Eduardo, what are your aims for the next three weeks?" Answer - we're here to try to win the bloody Tour you fool, what do you think?) then pedal off again. A whole wasted afternoon or evening, for a 30-second appearance. I often wonder what they think about it.
In past years, these Presentations have become increasingly lavish, with teams being delivered to the stage by small boats (hanging over the side throwing up), having had to cycle over a sandy beach (stopping for punctures along the way), being entertained on stage with cirque du soleil, or having to watch, mystified, as the curtain of water attempts to spell out their team names (diabolically clever but half the time it didn't actually work...).
This year we start in Dusseldorf, which should have been a fantastic celebration of the fact that Germany is finally getting back into pro cycling, having withdrawn from the scene in disgust in 2012 after a series of doping scandals.
However, they picked a location on the river - which all sounds very nice, but meant that the majority of the non-close-up coverage showed a very ordinary outdoor stage, the type they throw up in parks for amateur bands and fundraisers, with nothing behind it other than a few industrial buildings in the far distance. OK, not helped by the fact that it was a nasty grey day... but the setting was far from beautiful.
This time the riders were funnelled into the stage "along the Rhine" which again sounds nice, but of course the pathway was well below the parapet height, so we couldn't see the river at all.
To create some interest along the way, the organisers had set up a series of extremely cheap tableaux, consisting of people in costume standing on white boxes. These were supposed to represent the great and the good of Dusseldorf, apparently: some historical figures that we had never heard of, some dummies in red jumpers representing the pop group Kraftwerk, of whom we have indeed heard: a Japanese geisha ("why? why?") and some utterly bizarre cowgirls in black and white with frilly knickers, whose white box said Dusseldorf Karneval, and who valiantly strived to wave their arms and legs (and show off their frilly knickers) as each team rode by. Occasionally causing a bit of a distraction to the riders.
After this cheapest of the cheap entries, the riders swung up the ramp, and were greeted by the two hosts, one of which was the one and only Jensi! My, isn't he tall? I was slightly disappointed that he wasn't wearing a "Shut Up Legs!" tee-shirt, but maybe he didn't want to completely outshine the alleged presentation. Like most riders, he speaks several languages which came in very handy for a team presentation, and he was surprisingly deft with the whole thing, up to and including the time when he started to interview the wrong rider, and had to be directed half way down the line up to the correct person.
Looking back at 2017 so far, for a moment, the running joke has been that the peloton consists of the Black Team, the Red Team, the Blue Team and a few oddments. However, for le Tour, several of the teams have gone to a white kit, which is utterly confusing and perfectly pointless. Particularly when you consider that most of the National jerseys are white... and that there is a White Jersey to be won. Ho hum.
How many times, in these pages, have I said that there ought to be a Team Kit Officer who keeps details of all team kits, and has to be consulted when teams redesign or change? They would keep all details confidential, of course, but would be able to say, when approached by a team thinking of changing to, say, white, "of course you can change to white, but you should know that four teams have already decided to do so." which might allow teams to pick something different, before committing time and money to new kit.
However, the UCI seem to be ignoring my sensible suggestion, and have allowed a mass of white for this year's Tour, which should make the helicopter shots amusing.
So, who do we have in the Tour this year? Here's a quick run-through.
Giant Alpecin - sorry, Sunweb - are already mostly white, so they started the ball rolling at the presentation, followed by Fortuneo-Vital Concept ("shitsmall team") also in mostly white.
Bahrain-Merida stay in the Red Team: Wanty Group-Gobert (for whom I shall be rooting, yay! Go, Bears!) are in their usual dark blue, but are allocated to the Black Team for helicopter shot purposes. LLB and I like them in particular for their bright red bar tape, which makes them easy to pick out in moto shots, even when their kit looks so much like the other members of the Black Team.
Lotto Jumbo, who stupidly chose yellow and black as their team colours and have always been a bit too close to the Maillot Jaune, announced that in order to respect the leader's jersey, they have reversed their colours for the tour. So they now have black bodies, and yellow shoulders and arms.
But oh dear, have they never watched any tv footage?
When they approach, all you can see are those bright yellow shoulders
and arms. Oops.
Horribly close to them in colour, we have Deerect Enerdhjee, the ones with the Hula Hoops on their shoulders. Definitely in the Black Team.
Also in the Black Team are Bora Hansgrohe, apart from three of their team who are wearing white: Petter "more fun than a jammy dodger" Sagan in his Worlds hoops: his brother Whatshisname Sagan in his Nationals white, and Marcus Berkhaut in his own Nationals white.
Talking of Sagan, what is he thinking?
Peter, mate, this is not a good look!
It looks as though his mum combed his hair back into a ponytail at the nape of the neck, tied it in a rubber band, then hacked off everything below the band, leaving him with a bizarre longer-at-the-front girly bob.
O'rica Scott are, thankfully, still in dark blue, so they remain in the Black Team: Chaves (great-great-grandson of Quintana, who is 103 this year) made the most of his big cheesy grin on the stage, despite being about a foot shorter than the host.
UAE slightly buck the trend, as they are officially in white jerseys, but they have black shoulders, so I'm not quite sure whether to allocate them to the White Block, or to put them in the Black Team. Might have to wait and see on that one.
Ass-t'na are keeping their bright blue and thankfully, are now in black shorts, so they are moving away from the Pyjama Boys look. Annoyingly, the lovely Jakob is no longer Team Leader and GC hope, despite being in the form of his life: the utterly unlovely Fabio "Eddie the mad flat mate" Aru has been given the Tour leadership to make up for him missing the Giro due to injury. The official line is that they are co-leaders, but you just know that Aru is thinking "right, I'll let him help me all the way, then I'll push him over a barrier when no-one's looking, mwah ha ha". It's particularly annoying because Jakob has just re-signed with Ass-t'na for another two years, having made noises in the press earlier this year that he was thinking of changing teams. And to add insult to injury, Ugly Aru has not yet re-signed, as he's asking for an awful lot of money (Euros 3k, I read) and Vino is not entirely sure that he's worth it. But has still put him in le Tour. Oh well, let's hope that he, Aru, does a great job helping Jakob for the first couple of weeks, then contracts an unspecified stomach upset and has to leave. *sniggers*
Here's the lovely Jakob enjoying a giggle with former team-mate Jensi, and displaying a rather weird parting.
A parting, Jakob? Is this a new trend? What will it look like after having a helmet on it for five hours?
(Silly question: the answer, when dealing with Jakob, is invariably "it will look cool and stylish" no matter what he does!)
Actually I'm a bit worried that we might lose Jakob altogether this Tour, as his wife LouLou is due to give birth to their first baby: a month ago, Jakob said in an interview that it was due a week into the Tour, but they were hoping it would come early. I don't have any news as to whether it's arrived or not - anyone know?
We get an additional interview with Jakob a short while later, as Laura grabs him for a quick word. Amusingly, he refers to Chris Froome, defending champion, as "Froomey". *laughs*
So, back to the Presentation: Cannondale Drapac roll up, firmly in green, yay! and lead by Schleckland Pet, Pierre Rolland. Fingers crossed, Pierre! Next come Lotto Soudal lead by Gummy Bear Gruipel, and thankfully they are still in the Red Team.
Trek Segafredo - still smarting from the shame of having an EPO positive - roll up next, and have gone to mostly white jerseys. Right, stuff them into the White Block.
As a mildly interesting aside, our Eurosport coverage gave us the lovely Laura interviewing Ugly Aru at exactly the same moment that Trek took the stage, so we had to listen to him bleating on, while lip-reading the on-stage interview with Contador. It would appear that Eurosport think Contador is less important than Aru. Interesting...
Dimension Data are lead up by Mark Cavendish, recovering from glandular fever and not quite sure if he's going to be ready: they are mostly in the Black Team, apart from one infiltrator, Steve Cummings, who is in the white Nationals jersey. And, as he also won the TT at the Nationals, he will be in white every day! The big disappointment of this team is that Edvald Boassen-Hagen is, for the first time in many years, not in his super Nationals jersey which, like Belgium's one, is not a boring white jersey with coloured stripes on, but has the whole flag on it.
Cofidis are next, lead by Boo-hoo-hanni (with an incredibly stupid haircut), and all in red, so they stay in the Red Team, as are BMC
Then come Quick-Step, a long-standing member of the Blue Team, although I note that they have white shoulders - but I'm not sure if they just added them, or if I just hadn't noticed before...
The Dark Lords have abandoned the Red Team with their cheerful, high-visibility K on the back, and have gone to white jerseys. Another set for the White Block; check.
FDJ are an oddity, they are already half-blue, half white, so they get allocated to teams depending on which side the camera is. Except for the one in the Nationals jersey, he'll be in the White Team for most of the Tour.
Movistar are still in blue with the Wiggly Worm on it, but they get allocated to the Black Team as it's such a dark blue. Unfortunately they have brought along Valverde ("Anyone But Valverde") but there's always the chance of illness. Fingers crossed, eh? Quintana, oldest person in the race, is as impassive as ever: I wonder if he's had botox on that face? Trying to keep his looks, once he got past 80, perhaps?
AG2R (pronounced Aah-dhjee-duurs-air, as we all know) are already mostly white: Jensi interviews Roman Bardet and asks "So, you came second in the GC last year when you were only 12, what are you hoping for, now that you are a teenager?"
But they have an imposter - what's Philly Gilly doing in their team line up?
Oh wait, it's not him, it's someone else wearing the Belgian Nationals jersey, shock horror! He gets allocated to the Black Team, anyway.
Jensi managed to interview Jan Bakelandts without referring to his offensive remarks about podium girls and condoms, which must have been a bit of a strain.
Finally, Team Sky arrive: they have abandoned the Black Team and have gone to white jerseys with the blue stripe - now almost invisible - down the back. As they cycle along the approach, Christian Knees is pushing Froomey: to those of us who watch a lot of cycling, it does rather look as though Froomey is taking a natural break, but luckily he is just filming. They are followed by a bloke in black on a mountain bike: hmm, either a very keen spectator, or possibly some low-key security?
Sky, too, have a Nationals jersey, but it doesn't matter, as they whole team are in the White Block anyway.
Chris Froome speaks briefly about how pleased he is to be back, as defending champion, but he's clearly not going to win again this year: just look at the length of his hair! One eighth of an inch is just sooo non-aero, I'm surprised he was allowed to grow it so long. He won't be able to climb with all that lot swishing round his ankles!
And that was that - possibly the cheapest, dullest Team Presentation every done. Most of the riders were, disgracefully, on their mobile phones all the way through, including while on stage: either taking selfies, taking pics, or updating their status ("On Stage. LOL.") instead of paying attention and respect to the presentation. Could it get any worse? Yes, it does: a children's choir. Unmelodic, out of time, and then mercifully muted as Laura interviews Quintana.
Oh well, it's over now, and today we start real coverage - yay!
Yesterday we had the Team Presentation, a somewhat sadistic ritual where every rider has to be presented to a small crowd in the town where the Tour is going to start that year: instead of resting and preparing for the ordeal to come, they have to put on their smiley faces, pedal their bikes onto a stage, answering inane questions from hyperactive hosts ("So tell me *glances at notes* Eduardo, what are your aims for the next three weeks?" Answer - we're here to try to win the bloody Tour you fool, what do you think?) then pedal off again. A whole wasted afternoon or evening, for a 30-second appearance. I often wonder what they think about it.
In past years, these Presentations have become increasingly lavish, with teams being delivered to the stage by small boats (hanging over the side throwing up), having had to cycle over a sandy beach (stopping for punctures along the way), being entertained on stage with cirque du soleil, or having to watch, mystified, as the curtain of water attempts to spell out their team names (diabolically clever but half the time it didn't actually work...).
This year we start in Dusseldorf, which should have been a fantastic celebration of the fact that Germany is finally getting back into pro cycling, having withdrawn from the scene in disgust in 2012 after a series of doping scandals.
However, they picked a location on the river - which all sounds very nice, but meant that the majority of the non-close-up coverage showed a very ordinary outdoor stage, the type they throw up in parks for amateur bands and fundraisers, with nothing behind it other than a few industrial buildings in the far distance. OK, not helped by the fact that it was a nasty grey day... but the setting was far from beautiful.
This time the riders were funnelled into the stage "along the Rhine" which again sounds nice, but of course the pathway was well below the parapet height, so we couldn't see the river at all.
To create some interest along the way, the organisers had set up a series of extremely cheap tableaux, consisting of people in costume standing on white boxes. These were supposed to represent the great and the good of Dusseldorf, apparently: some historical figures that we had never heard of, some dummies in red jumpers representing the pop group Kraftwerk, of whom we have indeed heard: a Japanese geisha ("why? why?") and some utterly bizarre cowgirls in black and white with frilly knickers, whose white box said Dusseldorf Karneval, and who valiantly strived to wave their arms and legs (and show off their frilly knickers) as each team rode by. Occasionally causing a bit of a distraction to the riders.
After this cheapest of the cheap entries, the riders swung up the ramp, and were greeted by the two hosts, one of which was the one and only Jensi! My, isn't he tall? I was slightly disappointed that he wasn't wearing a "Shut Up Legs!" tee-shirt, but maybe he didn't want to completely outshine the alleged presentation. Like most riders, he speaks several languages which came in very handy for a team presentation, and he was surprisingly deft with the whole thing, up to and including the time when he started to interview the wrong rider, and had to be directed half way down the line up to the correct person.
Looking back at 2017 so far, for a moment, the running joke has been that the peloton consists of the Black Team, the Red Team, the Blue Team and a few oddments. However, for le Tour, several of the teams have gone to a white kit, which is utterly confusing and perfectly pointless. Particularly when you consider that most of the National jerseys are white... and that there is a White Jersey to be won. Ho hum.
How many times, in these pages, have I said that there ought to be a Team Kit Officer who keeps details of all team kits, and has to be consulted when teams redesign or change? They would keep all details confidential, of course, but would be able to say, when approached by a team thinking of changing to, say, white, "of course you can change to white, but you should know that four teams have already decided to do so." which might allow teams to pick something different, before committing time and money to new kit.
However, the UCI seem to be ignoring my sensible suggestion, and have allowed a mass of white for this year's Tour, which should make the helicopter shots amusing.
So, who do we have in the Tour this year? Here's a quick run-through.
Giant Alpecin - sorry, Sunweb - are already mostly white, so they started the ball rolling at the presentation, followed by Fortuneo-Vital Concept ("shitsmall team") also in mostly white.
Bahrain-Merida stay in the Red Team: Wanty Group-Gobert (for whom I shall be rooting, yay! Go, Bears!) are in their usual dark blue, but are allocated to the Black Team for helicopter shot purposes. LLB and I like them in particular for their bright red bar tape, which makes them easy to pick out in moto shots, even when their kit looks so much like the other members of the Black Team.
Lotto Jumbo, who stupidly chose yellow and black as their team colours and have always been a bit too close to the Maillot Jaune, announced that in order to respect the leader's jersey, they have reversed their colours for the tour. So they now have black bodies, and yellow shoulders and arms.
Also in the Black Team are Bora Hansgrohe, apart from three of their team who are wearing white: Petter "more fun than a jammy dodger" Sagan in his Worlds hoops: his brother Whatshisname Sagan in his Nationals white, and Marcus Berkhaut in his own Nationals white.
Talking of Sagan, what is he thinking?
It looks as though his mum combed his hair back into a ponytail at the nape of the neck, tied it in a rubber band, then hacked off everything below the band, leaving him with a bizarre longer-at-the-front girly bob.
O'rica Scott are, thankfully, still in dark blue, so they remain in the Black Team: Chaves (great-great-grandson of Quintana, who is 103 this year) made the most of his big cheesy grin on the stage, despite being about a foot shorter than the host.
UAE slightly buck the trend, as they are officially in white jerseys, but they have black shoulders, so I'm not quite sure whether to allocate them to the White Block, or to put them in the Black Team. Might have to wait and see on that one.
Ass-t'na are keeping their bright blue and thankfully, are now in black shorts, so they are moving away from the Pyjama Boys look. Annoyingly, the lovely Jakob is no longer Team Leader and GC hope, despite being in the form of his life: the utterly unlovely Fabio "Eddie the mad flat mate" Aru has been given the Tour leadership to make up for him missing the Giro due to injury. The official line is that they are co-leaders, but you just know that Aru is thinking "right, I'll let him help me all the way, then I'll push him over a barrier when no-one's looking, mwah ha ha". It's particularly annoying because Jakob has just re-signed with Ass-t'na for another two years, having made noises in the press earlier this year that he was thinking of changing teams. And to add insult to injury, Ugly Aru has not yet re-signed, as he's asking for an awful lot of money (Euros 3k, I read) and Vino is not entirely sure that he's worth it. But has still put him in le Tour. Oh well, let's hope that he, Aru, does a great job helping Jakob for the first couple of weeks, then contracts an unspecified stomach upset and has to leave. *sniggers*
A parting, Jakob? Is this a new trend? What will it look like after having a helmet on it for five hours?
(Silly question: the answer, when dealing with Jakob, is invariably "it will look cool and stylish" no matter what he does!)
Actually I'm a bit worried that we might lose Jakob altogether this Tour, as his wife LouLou is due to give birth to their first baby: a month ago, Jakob said in an interview that it was due a week into the Tour, but they were hoping it would come early. I don't have any news as to whether it's arrived or not - anyone know?
We get an additional interview with Jakob a short while later, as Laura grabs him for a quick word. Amusingly, he refers to Chris Froome, defending champion, as "Froomey". *laughs*
So, back to the Presentation: Cannondale Drapac roll up, firmly in green, yay! and lead by Schleckland Pet, Pierre Rolland. Fingers crossed, Pierre! Next come Lotto Soudal lead by Gummy Bear Gruipel, and thankfully they are still in the Red Team.
Trek Segafredo - still smarting from the shame of having an EPO positive - roll up next, and have gone to mostly white jerseys. Right, stuff them into the White Block.
As a mildly interesting aside, our Eurosport coverage gave us the lovely Laura interviewing Ugly Aru at exactly the same moment that Trek took the stage, so we had to listen to him bleating on, while lip-reading the on-stage interview with Contador. It would appear that Eurosport think Contador is less important than Aru. Interesting...
Dimension Data are lead up by Mark Cavendish, recovering from glandular fever and not quite sure if he's going to be ready: they are mostly in the Black Team, apart from one infiltrator, Steve Cummings, who is in the white Nationals jersey. And, as he also won the TT at the Nationals, he will be in white every day! The big disappointment of this team is that Edvald Boassen-Hagen is, for the first time in many years, not in his super Nationals jersey which, like Belgium's one, is not a boring white jersey with coloured stripes on, but has the whole flag on it.
Cofidis are next, lead by Boo-hoo-hanni (with an incredibly stupid haircut), and all in red, so they stay in the Red Team, as are BMC
Then come Quick-Step, a long-standing member of the Blue Team, although I note that they have white shoulders - but I'm not sure if they just added them, or if I just hadn't noticed before...
The Dark Lords have abandoned the Red Team with their cheerful, high-visibility K on the back, and have gone to white jerseys. Another set for the White Block; check.
FDJ are an oddity, they are already half-blue, half white, so they get allocated to teams depending on which side the camera is. Except for the one in the Nationals jersey, he'll be in the White Team for most of the Tour.
Movistar are still in blue with the Wiggly Worm on it, but they get allocated to the Black Team as it's such a dark blue. Unfortunately they have brought along Valverde ("Anyone But Valverde") but there's always the chance of illness. Fingers crossed, eh? Quintana, oldest person in the race, is as impassive as ever: I wonder if he's had botox on that face? Trying to keep his looks, once he got past 80, perhaps?
AG2R (pronounced Aah-dhjee-duurs-air, as we all know) are already mostly white: Jensi interviews Roman Bardet and asks "So, you came second in the GC last year when you were only 12, what are you hoping for, now that you are a teenager?"
But they have an imposter - what's Philly Gilly doing in their team line up?
Jensi managed to interview Jan Bakelandts without referring to his offensive remarks about podium girls and condoms, which must have been a bit of a strain.
Finally, Team Sky arrive: they have abandoned the Black Team and have gone to white jerseys with the blue stripe - now almost invisible - down the back. As they cycle along the approach, Christian Knees is pushing Froomey: to those of us who watch a lot of cycling, it does rather look as though Froomey is taking a natural break, but luckily he is just filming. They are followed by a bloke in black on a mountain bike: hmm, either a very keen spectator, or possibly some low-key security?
Chris Froome speaks briefly about how pleased he is to be back, as defending champion, but he's clearly not going to win again this year: just look at the length of his hair! One eighth of an inch is just sooo non-aero, I'm surprised he was allowed to grow it so long. He won't be able to climb with all that lot swishing round his ankles!
And that was that - possibly the cheapest, dullest Team Presentation every done. Most of the riders were, disgracefully, on their mobile phones all the way through, including while on stage: either taking selfies, taking pics, or updating their status ("On Stage. LOL.") instead of paying attention and respect to the presentation. Could it get any worse? Yes, it does: a children's choir. Unmelodic, out of time, and then mercifully muted as Laura interviews Quintana.
Oh well, it's over now, and today we start real coverage - yay!
Sunday, 10 July 2016
i think my heart is just about back in the right place...
... after having been in my mouth for the last 18km of Stage Eight, watching Chris Froome scurrying down the hill like a demented black beetle, pedalling while sitting on the top tube ("ouch!") and taking what appeared to be insane risks on the corners.
I guess it was worth it, as he took the stage, took the extra 10 seconds, and took the yellow jersey - but my word, it was hard to watch!
Sean Kelly, on the commentary, actually said: "My god. The descent he's making here at the moment - I'm scared."
It seemed like the sort of risk to take if you have nothing to lose: but for such a high profile rider, already sitting high up in the GC to do it - whoooo hoooo! I loved his quote in the pre-podium sweaty-face interview: "it was fun!" Teammate G later said "He takes bigger risks than I do in training. I'm not surprised. He's a bit of a nutcase when it comes to that."
I think team boss Dave Brailsford nearly had a heart attack as well: when he greeted Chris en route to the face-mopping tent, there was a big man-hug, then Sir B turned away, possibly with a tiny tear in his eye. He doesn't seem like a man to get particularly emotional, but I thought he was maybe just a little bit overcome, at that point.
Meanwhile, bad news for Poor Pierre - he didn't actually fall, but a slow puncture lead to a tyre misfunction, bike out of control and a hard scrape along a wall. He lost 1:30, and most of the left-hand side of his shorts:
Ouch! That's got to hurt.
He later had stitches in his hand - much later, after being made to wait and go though doping control before being allowed back to the team bus for treatment - and says he has scratches "everywhere", so he's going to have a painful night.
But he remains upbeat, despite slipping down to 15th place in the GC.
Go, Pierre! A worthy Schleckland Pet!
There isn't any other news today, apart from a quick nod of respect to Cav, who always hates the Pyranees. and who had a long, hard day of it: he was pushed into contesting an early sprint point in order to prevent Saggy Sagan pinching the green jersey, and by the time they hit the first climb, he was already cooked. He and faithful Bernie Eisel spent most of the race all alone, 30 minutes behind everyone else, doing their own private TTT while calculating what the cut-off time was going to be in order not to use one watt more than they needed to.
Cav said:"It's just too hot for me, I'm from the Isle of Man. I have white skin and that, I can't deal with this heat. Especially this year as I haven't really been training in Italy, I've been training on the track so I haven't seen the sun. I just want to go and sit down.."
D'aaaw!
I guess it was worth it, as he took the stage, took the extra 10 seconds, and took the yellow jersey - but my word, it was hard to watch!
Sean Kelly, on the commentary, actually said: "My god. The descent he's making here at the moment - I'm scared."
It seemed like the sort of risk to take if you have nothing to lose: but for such a high profile rider, already sitting high up in the GC to do it - whoooo hoooo! I loved his quote in the pre-podium sweaty-face interview: "it was fun!" Teammate G later said "He takes bigger risks than I do in training. I'm not surprised. He's a bit of a nutcase when it comes to that."
I think team boss Dave Brailsford nearly had a heart attack as well: when he greeted Chris en route to the face-mopping tent, there was a big man-hug, then Sir B turned away, possibly with a tiny tear in his eye. He doesn't seem like a man to get particularly emotional, but I thought he was maybe just a little bit overcome, at that point.
Meanwhile, bad news for Poor Pierre - he didn't actually fall, but a slow puncture lead to a tyre misfunction, bike out of control and a hard scrape along a wall. He lost 1:30, and most of the left-hand side of his shorts:
He later had stitches in his hand - much later, after being made to wait and go though doping control before being allowed back to the team bus for treatment - and says he has scratches "everywhere", so he's going to have a painful night.
But he remains upbeat, despite slipping down to 15th place in the GC.
Go, Pierre! A worthy Schleckland Pet!
There isn't any other news today, apart from a quick nod of respect to Cav, who always hates the Pyranees. and who had a long, hard day of it: he was pushed into contesting an early sprint point in order to prevent Saggy Sagan pinching the green jersey, and by the time they hit the first climb, he was already cooked. He and faithful Bernie Eisel spent most of the race all alone, 30 minutes behind everyone else, doing their own private TTT while calculating what the cut-off time was going to be in order not to use one watt more than they needed to.
Cav said:"It's just too hot for me, I'm from the Isle of Man. I have white skin and that, I can't deal with this heat. Especially this year as I haven't really been training in Italy, I've been training on the track so I haven't seen the sun. I just want to go and sit down.."
D'aaaw!
Saturday, 9 July 2016
Holy Collapsing Arches, Batman!
Stage Seven of the Tour was exciting for many reasons: the break was huge, 29 riders, with all but two of the teams represented in it: Greg van Avermaet, in Yellow, already five minutes ahead of everyone else, was in the break - IN THE BREAK!!! - and the peloton still let them go: Steve Cummings made a fantastic lone attack and won the stage for Dimension Data; and the Flamme Rouge collapsed.
What a ridiculous thing to happen - apparently a spectator innocently killed the inflatable arch, by accidentally pulling out the cable connecting the generator to the pump. "It caught on his belt" a witness said.
Psssssssss! down goes the arch, just as Adam Yates, having leapt off the chasing group and looking like a dead cert for the White Jersey, came up to it. It slaughtered him, and ate his bike, leaving him hobbling around on the course with blood dripping off his chin, while the marshalls frantically tried to hold up the soggy sausages of the arch, allowing riders to duck under it and forcing the moto passengers to limbo themselves backwards in order to get clear.
Here's Frankie, trying to push the wobbly sausage out of his way...
And here's Alex Howes being eaten by it.
What a shambles!
ASO said that they have emergency back-up plans in place for this sort of problem, but there just wasn't time to get it up and running before the unfortunate Adam Yates and then the chasing bunch ran whee-splat right up against it.
Other news from this stage includes a lovely row in Stinkoff: apparently, back in Stage Five, Roman Kreuziger failed to wait for Bertie, despite being told to do so four times. Whoops! Unusually, Mr Stinkoff did not rip him publicly limb from limb, but made this very reasoned and calm statement:
"I've not seen the situation to be honest," he said in relation to the moment Kreuziger rode away from Contador. "I tried to check on Youtube but not found it. I can't see that situation with Roman and Alberto but my observation is that once dropped on the final climb there's not much a teammate can do. If it's two or three climbs to go and in the wind then it's different but again I've not seen the situation."
I'm impressed, this is not what I expect from him. Perhaps his PR manager has slipped some sedatives in his lemonade?
So moving swiftly away from the unlovely Mr Stinkoff, how are we doing so far?
Pierre Rolland, Schleckland pet, came in with the main bunch nearly 4 mins down on Stevo, and is sitting at 9th in the GC on the same time as Froome, Dan Martin (and his teeth), Onion Barguil and Quintana, which is nice company to be in.
The lovely Jakob continues his low-key race, 36mins down in 93rd place: Frankie is in 41st position, only 13mins down, while his doppelganger, Brice Feillu, is 27mins down in 66th place.
Tibbles didn't have a good day, and is now 27th, 9 mins down, but Nibbles is feeling better, came in all alone in 4th, and has risen to 39th overall, 13mins down. He was given the award for Combatative rider, so he got to stand on the podium, but he barely managed to smile.
We're all set for another hilly day today, with the full 198 riders due to start, which is pretty amazing in itself - despite some bad crashes, and some quite serious injuries, we haven't lost a single rider yet. Long may it last!
What a ridiculous thing to happen - apparently a spectator innocently killed the inflatable arch, by accidentally pulling out the cable connecting the generator to the pump. "It caught on his belt" a witness said.
Psssssssss! down goes the arch, just as Adam Yates, having leapt off the chasing group and looking like a dead cert for the White Jersey, came up to it. It slaughtered him, and ate his bike, leaving him hobbling around on the course with blood dripping off his chin, while the marshalls frantically tried to hold up the soggy sausages of the arch, allowing riders to duck under it and forcing the moto passengers to limbo themselves backwards in order to get clear.
What a shambles!
ASO said that they have emergency back-up plans in place for this sort of problem, but there just wasn't time to get it up and running before the unfortunate Adam Yates and then the chasing bunch ran whee-splat right up against it.
Other news from this stage includes a lovely row in Stinkoff: apparently, back in Stage Five, Roman Kreuziger failed to wait for Bertie, despite being told to do so four times. Whoops! Unusually, Mr Stinkoff did not rip him publicly limb from limb, but made this very reasoned and calm statement:
"I've not seen the situation to be honest," he said in relation to the moment Kreuziger rode away from Contador. "I tried to check on Youtube but not found it. I can't see that situation with Roman and Alberto but my observation is that once dropped on the final climb there's not much a teammate can do. If it's two or three climbs to go and in the wind then it's different but again I've not seen the situation."
I'm impressed, this is not what I expect from him. Perhaps his PR manager has slipped some sedatives in his lemonade?
So moving swiftly away from the unlovely Mr Stinkoff, how are we doing so far?
Pierre Rolland, Schleckland pet, came in with the main bunch nearly 4 mins down on Stevo, and is sitting at 9th in the GC on the same time as Froome, Dan Martin (and his teeth), Onion Barguil and Quintana, which is nice company to be in.
The lovely Jakob continues his low-key race, 36mins down in 93rd place: Frankie is in 41st position, only 13mins down, while his doppelganger, Brice Feillu, is 27mins down in 66th place.
Tibbles didn't have a good day, and is now 27th, 9 mins down, but Nibbles is feeling better, came in all alone in 4th, and has risen to 39th overall, 13mins down. He was given the award for Combatative rider, so he got to stand on the podium, but he barely managed to smile.
We're all set for another hilly day today, with the full 198 riders due to start, which is pretty amazing in itself - despite some bad crashes, and some quite serious injuries, we haven't lost a single rider yet. Long may it last!
Wednesday, 6 July 2016
And we're off to the mountains!
Stage 5 today, first day in the mountains, unusually early in a Tour: generally, we don't hit the mountains until the second week, thus allowing lots of crashes in the nervous first week, on those boring long flat stages that are the bane of the commentators.
Well honestly, how would you like to waffle on, live, for 5 hours while nothing, nothing, happens? I know that a lot of people criticise Carlton Kirby, Rob Hatch et al but I think they do an amazing job. One year, we had a problem with the sound and all we got was pictures, so LLB and I tried to do our own commentary.
We were funny for about five minutes, then we were less funny and just talking, and after ten minutes we were both exhausted, with the effort of trying to get out the name of the rider as they came on the screen - it's not as easy as it looks, you know.
So, no long boring stage today - mountains! And an uphill finish! And I have to work all day, so I won't be able to watch it, booo!
Well honestly, how would you like to waffle on, live, for 5 hours while nothing, nothing, happens? I know that a lot of people criticise Carlton Kirby, Rob Hatch et al but I think they do an amazing job. One year, we had a problem with the sound and all we got was pictures, so LLB and I tried to do our own commentary.
We were funny for about five minutes, then we were less funny and just talking, and after ten minutes we were both exhausted, with the effort of trying to get out the name of the rider as they came on the screen - it's not as easy as it looks, you know.
So, no long boring stage today - mountains! And an uphill finish! And I have to work all day, so I won't be able to watch it, booo!
Tuesday, 5 July 2016
Jakob's dangling - but that's ok
Many of us Schlecklanders are watching the lovely Jakob with slightly worried expressions, as he is now over 6 minutes down, for no apparent reason.
Is he injured? Did he crash? Is he being bullied by Eddie the Mad Flatmat Aru, on the grounds that he, Jakob, should be supporting Aru instead of Nibbles?
It might be none of the above - it's quite possibly just team tactics. If Jakob is several minutes off the GC, then he will be allowed to get away in breaks, and this has several advantages for Ass-t'na:
1) It gets the name on tv, as the break always get coverage and even a team as big as Ass-t'na need sponsor time.
2) It puts a rider way, way up the road so that if Nibbles and/or Mad Eddie make a break, Jakob is there to drop back and help them with it.
3) This one is not relevant at this point, but by having someone in a break, a team with a jersey can use them to mop up any points along the way, which might prevent another team from stealing a jersey off them.
and of course, best option from our point of view,
4) If the peloton just doodle along, well hey! Jakob is such a strong rider that whatever break he is in, there is a real chance that he could nip off the front of the break and take a sneaky stage win, which would be fab for all concerned.
I have fingers crossed that it's team tactics and not crashes!
Stage three seems to have been one big yawn - apparently Tom "Desperate Dan" Dumoulin was caught pretending to yawn to a camera bike, and they certainly took the stage much slower than planned. I often wonder what sort of problems this causes for all the little villages along the route:
"Maman, esker vous allow moi to cross le rue yet?"
"Non, mon petit, le race is n'est pas ici, vous must remain in le maison for un petite while longer"
"Mias, Maman, je has been waiting ici for troi heures et trente cinq minutes, je suis bored!"
And what about all the pavement cafes, itching to set out the tables again? You do sometimes wonder what the organisers are up to, putting in such long stages: I guess it's all part of the stamina/wear you down aspect of le Tour. Luckily, I was at work all day so I didn't have to sit through it!
Is he injured? Did he crash? Is he being bullied by Eddie the Mad Flatmat Aru, on the grounds that he, Jakob, should be supporting Aru instead of Nibbles?
It might be none of the above - it's quite possibly just team tactics. If Jakob is several minutes off the GC, then he will be allowed to get away in breaks, and this has several advantages for Ass-t'na:
1) It gets the name on tv, as the break always get coverage and even a team as big as Ass-t'na need sponsor time.
2) It puts a rider way, way up the road so that if Nibbles and/or Mad Eddie make a break, Jakob is there to drop back and help them with it.
3) This one is not relevant at this point, but by having someone in a break, a team with a jersey can use them to mop up any points along the way, which might prevent another team from stealing a jersey off them.
and of course, best option from our point of view,
4) If the peloton just doodle along, well hey! Jakob is such a strong rider that whatever break he is in, there is a real chance that he could nip off the front of the break and take a sneaky stage win, which would be fab for all concerned.
I have fingers crossed that it's team tactics and not crashes!
Stage three seems to have been one big yawn - apparently Tom "Desperate Dan" Dumoulin was caught pretending to yawn to a camera bike, and they certainly took the stage much slower than planned. I often wonder what sort of problems this causes for all the little villages along the route:
"Maman, esker vous allow moi to cross le rue yet?"
"Non, mon petit, le race is n'est pas ici, vous must remain in le maison for un petite while longer"
"Mias, Maman, je has been waiting ici for troi heures et trente cinq minutes, je suis bored!"
And what about all the pavement cafes, itching to set out the tables again? You do sometimes wonder what the organisers are up to, putting in such long stages: I guess it's all part of the stamina/wear you down aspect of le Tour. Luckily, I was at work all day so I didn't have to sit through it!
Monday, 4 July 2016
Sexism is finally dead!
Good to know that we finally have true sexual equality:
Here's the unlovely Mr Stinkoff, with a hastily-made tee to celebrate Scruffy Sagan taking the yellow jersey.
Look at the tiny waist on him... the cartoon Sagan, not Stinkoff... isn't it good to know that blokes have to be airbrushed, re-shaped, slimmed to an unrealistic point and forced to live up to an unattainable body shape, too?
(Note: this post is a JOKE, a JOKE, okay?)
Here's the unlovely Mr Stinkoff, with a hastily-made tee to celebrate Scruffy Sagan taking the yellow jersey.
Look at the tiny waist on him... the cartoon Sagan, not Stinkoff... isn't it good to know that blokes have to be airbrushed, re-shaped, slimmed to an unrealistic point and forced to live up to an unattainable body shape, too?
(Note: this post is a JOKE, a JOKE, okay?)
Stage Two:
We're really enjoying this first weekend of le Tour, with long hours of coverage of the first two stages. Today we are presented with filthy horrible weather and warnings from Carlton and Sean that the last few km are dangerously narrow, slippy, congested with road furniture, reverse camber and all sorts of horrible things. Nice to have something to look forward to, eh?
Thrill of the day is to see Cav in yellow, for the first time in his career, and beaming from ear to ear, with yellow helmet and matching bar tape. In his pre-race interview with the lovely Lowra - who we now know to have two eyes after all - he modestly admitted that he was unlikely to keep the jersey, so he was enjoying it while he had it, and was pleased to be wearing it, in respect for the charity... well done Marky, always good value for your sponsor!
No sooner had our coverage settled down, but we had one of those odd little inserts - JuanTo's picks of the riders to watch today. In an appalling piece of bad timing, just as he started speaking there was a massive crash, which we could see on the small inset screen, but not clearly enough to work out who was involved.
"Get off the screen, Juan!" we screamed at the tv, as we could see - well, was that Contador having to wait for another bike? Lampre all over the road, BMC looking for bikes, even Sky in trouble, but we couldn't see who, or how badly, and it was maddening the way that poor JuanTo unknowing continued burbling on, as we shrieked in frustration. Oddly, it was about another 30kms until we finally got a replay of the crash and some details of what happened: Bertie definitely had to have a new bike but didn't seemed to have any new road rash or bruises to add to the ones he carried from yesterday.
With 82k to go, the original break of four were still plugging merrily away, with a nice big gap of around 5 minutes, and hooray for Bora Aragorn, they managed to get two riders in the break. Cunning plan, eh - lots of tv coverage, for a team that (with due respect) is not really able to compete for a stage win. Presumably they also want to cunningly mop up any KOM points on the way, so that Paul Voss can keep it: or at the very least, to prevent anyone else taking the jersey off him.
One thing about le Tour which is disappointing for me personally, is the lack of inflatabubbles. Remember them, from the Tour of Poland? They used to just come in a sort of light-bulb shape, so they were known (in Schleckland, at least) as inflatabubbles: but now there are inflata-tee-shirts, inflata-arches, inflata-clocks, inflata-candles and various other shapes. The Giro had a really good selection of them (I did try to find out how much they cost, in case I could get one of my own, but for some reason if you search for inflatabubbles you don't get much useful information) and one in particular caught my eye: it was promoting Selle Italia, which turned out to be an Italian bike manufacturer. It had a matching camper-van, and I began to wonder how much fun it would be, to be the person who was tasked with moving the Selle Italia inflatabubble around.
I mean, just think about it - a three week holiday in a beautiful new campervan: each day you drive to a new part of Italy, and quite possibly the company do the research ang give you a list of locations. If not, you might have to spend some time working out the best place to set it up: LLB and I thought that the "best" slots, by the sprint points, kom points, plus the 5km and 1km markers for each of those, would be auctioned off to the highest bidders, and indeed many of the arches (both banners and inflata-arches) had a matching inflatable, so presumably if you pay to have your name on a banner or on the hoardings, then you get first dibs on putting up your co-ordinating inflatable there.
So the Selle Italia inflatabubble team would have to find a place where they were most likely to have tv coverage: potential accident spots, long slow curves, narrow pinch points, and anywhere within the frame of a famous landmark. Having blown it up and tied it down, all you have to do is sit around enjoying the sunshine, wave to the Tour caravan as it goes past, wave to the race, then as soon as they are safely past, you deflate your inflatabubble, pack it away. and drive off to the next location on your list. If it rains, you can sit inside the campervan and put the kettle on: if it's hot you can sit outside and enjoy a cold drink from the fridge. There's no hassle about finding hotels, as you have your own bed with you!
And, best of all, you get paid! Either the person who does it is a Selle Italia employee, in which case you're already being paid, or (more likely) you are hired in for the occasion, in which case you get an all expenses paid three-week holiday, and get to see the Tour every day! Fab! How can I sign up?
I'm thinking about campervans at this moment, in case you are wondering, because the peloton has just gone through a roundabout with a vast number of campervans parked on the verges all the way around it, and I asked LLB why there should be so many of them, in what appears to be the middle of nowhere. He suggested that, by parking on a roundabout, you gave yourself a quick exit to drive out sideways and get ahead of the race, which sounds perfectly sensible to me.
Obviously the Selle Italia inflatabubble team won't be in the Tour, but I was hoping that I would find another promotional inflatabubble to covet: alas, there don't seem to be any. Shame.
Getting back to the race, we're down to less than 50k to go and a five minute gap, which normally means that someone from the break would win the stage: however, this would mean that they would also take the yellow jersey: and we somehow think that Dimension Data would not be keen to lose the maillot jaune to someone like Fortuneo, or Bora Aragorn!
Lotto are presumably leading the team competition, as they have turned out in horrible yellow helmets: I know it's "allowed", but really, urgh, nasty shade of yellow and it causes quite a lot of spectator confusion, as we can't work out where Cav is.
Special Award of Heartbreak Of The Day has to go to the Trek guy in the original break - Yasper Styvesant - who was finally caught within 1k of the line, which is always heartbreaking, but worst of all, no-one noticed that the time break indicator was showing us the gap between him and Cav, not the gap between him and the chasing group, so we all thought he had a minute in hand and was actually going to win the stage. I can only hope that his DS, on the headset, was better informed.
In the end, as you all know now, Scruffy Sagan won the final sprint and took not just the stage, but the yellow jersey as well: and the hilarious part about that was the way he gamely sprinted to beat Allaphillipe, but totally failed to celebrate the win, crossing the line with a glum face. He said afterwards that he thought there were still two guys ahead of him, and that he was only sprinting for 3rd place!
Thrill of the day is to see Cav in yellow, for the first time in his career, and beaming from ear to ear, with yellow helmet and matching bar tape. In his pre-race interview with the lovely Lowra - who we now know to have two eyes after all - he modestly admitted that he was unlikely to keep the jersey, so he was enjoying it while he had it, and was pleased to be wearing it, in respect for the charity... well done Marky, always good value for your sponsor!
No sooner had our coverage settled down, but we had one of those odd little inserts - JuanTo's picks of the riders to watch today. In an appalling piece of bad timing, just as he started speaking there was a massive crash, which we could see on the small inset screen, but not clearly enough to work out who was involved.
"Get off the screen, Juan!" we screamed at the tv, as we could see - well, was that Contador having to wait for another bike? Lampre all over the road, BMC looking for bikes, even Sky in trouble, but we couldn't see who, or how badly, and it was maddening the way that poor JuanTo unknowing continued burbling on, as we shrieked in frustration. Oddly, it was about another 30kms until we finally got a replay of the crash and some details of what happened: Bertie definitely had to have a new bike but didn't seemed to have any new road rash or bruises to add to the ones he carried from yesterday.
With 82k to go, the original break of four were still plugging merrily away, with a nice big gap of around 5 minutes, and hooray for Bora Aragorn, they managed to get two riders in the break. Cunning plan, eh - lots of tv coverage, for a team that (with due respect) is not really able to compete for a stage win. Presumably they also want to cunningly mop up any KOM points on the way, so that Paul Voss can keep it: or at the very least, to prevent anyone else taking the jersey off him.
One thing about le Tour which is disappointing for me personally, is the lack of inflatabubbles. Remember them, from the Tour of Poland? They used to just come in a sort of light-bulb shape, so they were known (in Schleckland, at least) as inflatabubbles: but now there are inflata-tee-shirts, inflata-arches, inflata-clocks, inflata-candles and various other shapes. The Giro had a really good selection of them (I did try to find out how much they cost, in case I could get one of my own, but for some reason if you search for inflatabubbles you don't get much useful information) and one in particular caught my eye: it was promoting Selle Italia, which turned out to be an Italian bike manufacturer. It had a matching camper-van, and I began to wonder how much fun it would be, to be the person who was tasked with moving the Selle Italia inflatabubble around.
I mean, just think about it - a three week holiday in a beautiful new campervan: each day you drive to a new part of Italy, and quite possibly the company do the research ang give you a list of locations. If not, you might have to spend some time working out the best place to set it up: LLB and I thought that the "best" slots, by the sprint points, kom points, plus the 5km and 1km markers for each of those, would be auctioned off to the highest bidders, and indeed many of the arches (both banners and inflata-arches) had a matching inflatable, so presumably if you pay to have your name on a banner or on the hoardings, then you get first dibs on putting up your co-ordinating inflatable there.
So the Selle Italia inflatabubble team would have to find a place where they were most likely to have tv coverage: potential accident spots, long slow curves, narrow pinch points, and anywhere within the frame of a famous landmark. Having blown it up and tied it down, all you have to do is sit around enjoying the sunshine, wave to the Tour caravan as it goes past, wave to the race, then as soon as they are safely past, you deflate your inflatabubble, pack it away. and drive off to the next location on your list. If it rains, you can sit inside the campervan and put the kettle on: if it's hot you can sit outside and enjoy a cold drink from the fridge. There's no hassle about finding hotels, as you have your own bed with you!
And, best of all, you get paid! Either the person who does it is a Selle Italia employee, in which case you're already being paid, or (more likely) you are hired in for the occasion, in which case you get an all expenses paid three-week holiday, and get to see the Tour every day! Fab! How can I sign up?
I'm thinking about campervans at this moment, in case you are wondering, because the peloton has just gone through a roundabout with a vast number of campervans parked on the verges all the way around it, and I asked LLB why there should be so many of them, in what appears to be the middle of nowhere. He suggested that, by parking on a roundabout, you gave yourself a quick exit to drive out sideways and get ahead of the race, which sounds perfectly sensible to me.
Obviously the Selle Italia inflatabubble team won't be in the Tour, but I was hoping that I would find another promotional inflatabubble to covet: alas, there don't seem to be any. Shame.
Getting back to the race, we're down to less than 50k to go and a five minute gap, which normally means that someone from the break would win the stage: however, this would mean that they would also take the yellow jersey: and we somehow think that Dimension Data would not be keen to lose the maillot jaune to someone like Fortuneo, or Bora Aragorn!
Lotto are presumably leading the team competition, as they have turned out in horrible yellow helmets: I know it's "allowed", but really, urgh, nasty shade of yellow and it causes quite a lot of spectator confusion, as we can't work out where Cav is.
Special Award of Heartbreak Of The Day has to go to the Trek guy in the original break - Yasper Styvesant - who was finally caught within 1k of the line, which is always heartbreaking, but worst of all, no-one noticed that the time break indicator was showing us the gap between him and Cav, not the gap between him and the chasing group, so we all thought he had a minute in hand and was actually going to win the stage. I can only hope that his DS, on the headset, was better informed.
In the end, as you all know now, Scruffy Sagan won the final sprint and took not just the stage, but the yellow jersey as well: and the hilarious part about that was the way he gamely sprinted to beat Allaphillipe, but totally failed to celebrate the win, crossing the line with a glum face. He said afterwards that he thought there were still two guys ahead of him, and that he was only sprinting for 3rd place!
Sunday, 3 July 2016
Stage One: - Grenade launcher at the ready.
Despite terrible forecasts of wind, hail, rain, snow and frogs, the day started in nice sunshine - some clouds, but not much.
It also started rather unexpectedly with a tiny, fast breakaway consisting of two Bora Aragorn riders and an IAM rider, which was quickly whittled down, by correct application of the "two against one" tactic, to one Bora Aragorn rider (Paul Voss) way out front. He then picked up the two single KOM points that were on offer for the day, and therefore will take the polka dot jersey, if it just makes it to the end of the race. Not a bad tactic, and a great way to start the race: with a jersey, they will be able to enjoy lots of publicity today, and a nice easy ride tomorrow.
We always expect the first week to be nervous, twitchy, and full of crashes, and today was set to be particularly bad, with sidewinds forecast: but when it came to it, it wasn't really that bad. Possibly because the general speed was quite low: with the small break out the front, the rest of the peloton seemed to relax.
We even saw a very narrow shave for Frankie: one of the other riders kindly told him that he had a plastic bag wrapped round his rear mech (I think that is the correct technical term) and he had to get a sticky mechanic to lean perilously out of the car window and pull it off, while Sean drew in his breath sharply between his teeth and reminded us all how dangerous this was, and how it was a good way to lose a finger or two.
So, the happy gentle riding continued in a happy manner until about 90k to go and the feed zone, whereupon the pace suddenly rose, and instead of a nice neat bunch, it turned into a single line, and a feeling of impending doom.
Sure enough, within 20k, an unseen drone launched a tripwire and a couple of guys slidded out (Sean's phrase) even though they were doing it all correctly, ie keeping at the front out of trouble. The worst hit was Contador, who left quite a lot of his jersey on the road and took a significant tow from the medical car while they frantically attempted to get a bandage to stick to the jersey. He also had to change his shoes, which is always fun to watch.
Apart from that little burst of excitement, it was almost the dullest day of racing every seen: as LLB said, if you were wanting to introduce someone to the joys of watching pro cycling, this would have been exactly the wrong stage to show them! It was lovely of Eurosport to give us the whole day, and we always enjoy watching "the whole day" to see how the early breaks develop, to see the domestiques doing their bit, to see who does what early on: but honestly, as an introduction to the sport *insert that annoying wack-wack noise to indicate a dismal failure* ... not so good.
At least there was some good field art to look at: the best one was probably the one with farmers leading cows (cries of "Les vaches du Tour!" from the sofa) around to be the wheels, where one of the animals refused to co-operate and headed off in the wrong direction, prompting LLB to say that it was "not playing bull".
Note for non-native English speakers: the phrase is "not playing ball" to indicate that someone is not joining in properly. End of Note.
Getting back to the race, after about 10k of the slowest-looking 57km/hr sprint lead-out ever seen, there was a classic sprint finish, a classic double crash into barriers on one side and into each other on the other side, and Cav did a fantastic sprint , clearly faster than Scruffy - er, Sagan, faster than Greipel and Kittel, and took not only the stage - his 27th Tour stage win, by the way - but his first ever yellow jersey.
So well done, Cav!
As mentioned yesterday, he's such good value for the sponsors - even when pink in the face and almost in tears with emotion, he still manages to name check the sponsor, the charity, to mention bikes for kids in Africa, to mention his respect for the race, and so on.
A note of amusement from the catch-up with the lovely Ashley (I'm developing a mild asexual crush on him) and the equally lovely Juan Antonio Flecha, to see that JuanTo had presumably spilled something down his shirt and had to buy a new one, as you can see the original folds and creases in his abnormally crisp white shirt. *snorts through nose*.
It also started rather unexpectedly with a tiny, fast breakaway consisting of two Bora Aragorn riders and an IAM rider, which was quickly whittled down, by correct application of the "two against one" tactic, to one Bora Aragorn rider (Paul Voss) way out front. He then picked up the two single KOM points that were on offer for the day, and therefore will take the polka dot jersey, if it just makes it to the end of the race. Not a bad tactic, and a great way to start the race: with a jersey, they will be able to enjoy lots of publicity today, and a nice easy ride tomorrow.
We always expect the first week to be nervous, twitchy, and full of crashes, and today was set to be particularly bad, with sidewinds forecast: but when it came to it, it wasn't really that bad. Possibly because the general speed was quite low: with the small break out the front, the rest of the peloton seemed to relax.
We even saw a very narrow shave for Frankie: one of the other riders kindly told him that he had a plastic bag wrapped round his rear mech (I think that is the correct technical term) and he had to get a sticky mechanic to lean perilously out of the car window and pull it off, while Sean drew in his breath sharply between his teeth and reminded us all how dangerous this was, and how it was a good way to lose a finger or two.
So, the happy gentle riding continued in a happy manner until about 90k to go and the feed zone, whereupon the pace suddenly rose, and instead of a nice neat bunch, it turned into a single line, and a feeling of impending doom.
Sure enough, within 20k, an unseen drone launched a tripwire and a couple of guys slidded out (Sean's phrase) even though they were doing it all correctly, ie keeping at the front out of trouble. The worst hit was Contador, who left quite a lot of his jersey on the road and took a significant tow from the medical car while they frantically attempted to get a bandage to stick to the jersey. He also had to change his shoes, which is always fun to watch.
Apart from that little burst of excitement, it was almost the dullest day of racing every seen: as LLB said, if you were wanting to introduce someone to the joys of watching pro cycling, this would have been exactly the wrong stage to show them! It was lovely of Eurosport to give us the whole day, and we always enjoy watching "the whole day" to see how the early breaks develop, to see the domestiques doing their bit, to see who does what early on: but honestly, as an introduction to the sport *insert that annoying wack-wack noise to indicate a dismal failure* ... not so good.
At least there was some good field art to look at: the best one was probably the one with farmers leading cows (cries of "Les vaches du Tour!" from the sofa) around to be the wheels, where one of the animals refused to co-operate and headed off in the wrong direction, prompting LLB to say that it was "not playing bull".
Note for non-native English speakers: the phrase is "not playing ball" to indicate that someone is not joining in properly. End of Note.
Getting back to the race, after about 10k of the slowest-looking 57km/hr sprint lead-out ever seen, there was a classic sprint finish, a classic double crash into barriers on one side and into each other on the other side, and Cav did a fantastic sprint , clearly faster than Scruffy - er, Sagan, faster than Greipel and Kittel, and took not only the stage - his 27th Tour stage win, by the way - but his first ever yellow jersey.
So well done, Cav!
As mentioned yesterday, he's such good value for the sponsors - even when pink in the face and almost in tears with emotion, he still manages to name check the sponsor, the charity, to mention bikes for kids in Africa, to mention his respect for the race, and so on.
A note of amusement from the catch-up with the lovely Ashley (I'm developing a mild asexual crush on him) and the equally lovely Juan Antonio Flecha, to see that JuanTo had presumably spilled something down his shirt and had to buy a new one, as you can see the original folds and creases in his abnormally crisp white shirt. *snorts through nose*.
Saturday, 2 July 2016
Tour de France presentation
It seems as though every year, the TdF organisers have to find a more ridiculous way to bus in the teams for the big Depart. This year, because of the commemoration of 100 years since the Somme, they chose a WW1 theme, with teams forced to perch precariously in rickety old vintage vehicles, each one with a group of randomly-decorated walkers in front of it, although none of them was waving a red flag.
(Note for young people: when cars were first invented they were very slow, and drivers were forced to have a bloke with a red flag walk in front of them to warn pedestrians of the oncoming mechanical monster. How things have changed.)
This meant that the tv coverage was, well, spotty to say the least: the host broadcaster did their best to show us each team arriving on stage and being introduced, but they were often hopscotched by the lovely Lowra (well, that's how we pronounce it) interviewing random riders, so we frequently missed a bit: and they would intercut each presentation with shots of them trundling up towards the stage area, even though they were clearly already on the stage, which gave the whole thing a weird time-warp effect. Or maybe that was the intention?
Direct Energie (did I say Bora Aragon originally? Oops!) started the presentation by putting up two strong contenders for Worst Hairdo:
Brian Coquard looks as though he was aiming for the Kittel rootlift but instead did a Woody Woodpecker - or do I mean Roadrunner? Tweetie Pie? I'm sure there was a yellow bird-like cartoon once with a sticky-up quasi-quiff, and it looked just like this.
Sylvan Chavanel, on the other hand - what on earth's going on there? It looks like a wig! Possibly, a wig that's been put on back to front!!
Bora Aragon (well, that's how everyone says it) trundled up in their camo truck (nearly didn't see them arrive, ha! ha!) taking selfies all the way.
And yes, Michelle, they did indeed submit their usual entry for the competition: Shane Archbold and his mullet, yay!
We can only assume that he likes to have long flowing hair over his neck, but can't bear the heat of having all that mop under his helmet, so he cuts the top short and leaves the back long. It's sort of like the opposite of a pudding-bowl haircut: instead of cutting off everything outside the pudding-bowl, he cuts off everything inside it.
At least he doesn't tie in back in a "bad ponytail", so things could be worse!
Lotto Jumbo were led out by Wilco Kendermann, and luckily no-one made any jokes about the British wartime slang. Pity they don't have a rider called Roger, really. They could line him up in front of Wilco, followed by Oveur and possibly someone called Out and there you have it.
Next up were Cannondale, now rebranded as Cannondale-Drapac, phew, thank
the lord for extra sponsors: their team leader is of course Schleckland
Pet Pierre Rolland, but I had a bit of a shock when they went up on the
podium, as I realised that I had never actually seen his face before.
Well, I mean, I've only ever seen him with his helmet and sunglasses on, and apparently this is what he looks like without them (slightly scary).
Oh well, at least LLB can't accuse me of picking him as a pet because he is "cute", eh?
Next up were Trek, and you have to feel a bit sorry for whoever their team leader is, because everyone wanted to talk to Fabs.
He was as delightfully incoherent as usual, charming to the last, and
playing down his retirement in favour of paying respect to le Tour.
We don't, of course, include Fabs in the Worst Hairdo competition, because he doesn't "do" his hair, it just naturally goes like that.
How Sagan must grind his teeth in envy....
IAM took the stage, and for some unfathomable reason they decided to embarrass the youngest member of the peloton, someone who appeared to be called Sandra Enger by forcing/letting him do some dance moves on the stage: it didn't quite work, mostly as the live band were producing light jazz. Still, if your team is about to fold and you are a complete unknown, there are worse things to do than draw attention to yourself by dancing at the Grand Depart. He will forever now be "oh, you're the one who did that weird dance thing at le Tour, aren't you?", which is better than sinking without trace.
Lampre got a bit of a raw deal, just a quick chat with Rui Costa then another with the apparently 12 year old Louis Minkies, before they were hustled off the stage in favour of Dimension Data and Cav.
Cav, true to form, managed to look charming (with his Bambi eyelashes and thank-god-he-had-them-straightened perfect teeth) and belligerent (with the top-heavy wartime haircut with sides shaved shorter than his stubble) at the same time, but proved his enduring value to sponsors by managing to mention the sponsor name, the charity name, and what the charity does, ie bicycles for children in Africa, all in the space of a brief interview.
He repeated this feat when Lowra interviewed him shortly afterwards too: he may be a bit of a rough diamond, and a challenge to many interviewers, by my goodness, he is good value. My favourite quote still has to be that one where the rather dim interviewer - who had clearly never seen him race - asked a really dumb question about "do you always try to win, in a sprint finish?" to which Cav replied, with a dirty look, "Of course I always try to win, it's not a f**king hobby, you know."
Fortuneo, one of the shitsmall teams, appear to have Frankie riding for them:
The caption said it was Brice Feillu, but don't you think it looks a little like Frankie?
And, they appear to have made a bit of a gaffe with their kit design, as they appear to be wearing fishnet stockings:
I was expecting them to break into the can-can at any moment.
Luckily, they didn't, they just rode calmly off the stage, making way for O'Rica and another squeaky speaker, Simon Gerrans, followed by the non-team of Cofidis who, without Boohoohanni *snorts through nose* don't have a snowball's chance of doing anything in this Tour. I suspect that we will either not see them for the entire Tour, or - if they have any sense - they will be in every single break from the moment the racing starts.
Next up *scary chord* the Dark Lords, who are taking the principle of "uncluttered kit" to an extreme, as they now appear to have no sponsors at all apart from the breakfast cereal, Special K.
Another red kit appeared, this time Lotto Soudal, and the terminal embarassment of Gummy Bear Greipel in his German national jersey, which prompted whistles and cat-calls from the audience, who have spent the last two hours or more being whipped into a pro-French frenzy by the WW1 memorabilia and the heavily biaised French presenter. Oh dear. Luckily, he was not actually torn limb from limb and hung up on the town clock along with the dummy and the parachute, but it was a close thing.
Ettixx-Quickstep bounded on the stage to defuse the situation: it was slightly unfortunate that their team leader, Marcel Kittel, is also German, and he does rather embody the blond-hair blue-eyes looks-like-a-Greek God sort of German ideal. However, he exuded charm, plus he has that wonderful root lift, so the host let him live, and elbowed him out of the way to have a word with rising star Julien Alaphillipe, thus cunningly bypassing the other German star of the team, Tony Martin, and another possible GC contender, Dan Martin who, along with his teeth, was completely ignored.
Then there was an unexplained musical interlude - presumably one of the vintage trucks had broken down and they were trying to wrestle a museum-quality WW1 stocking off of one of the period-costumed walkers in order to fix it - before Ass-t'na made it to the stage.
Ass-t'na, the pyjama boys, were lead on stage by Fabio "Eddy the Mad Flatmate" Aru, leading contender for Ugliest Smile in the Peloton. Nibali stood next to him, barely able to look at him, and totally unable to smile. The hyperthyroid over-enthusiastic host did his best, he had a chat with Aru then pushed him over to make a space so he could talk to Nibbles, which he did in English, which was probably a subtle dig at Aru not being able to do so.
This almost made Nibbles smile... and he was quite jovial in his reply, right up to the moment when he couldn't think of the word, and his face darkened like thunder as he lost his thread. He turned to the lovely Jakob, and quite clearly hissed to him in Italian "what's the word for xxx?" and Jakob, that well known English/French/Italian/everything-speaking Dane, slipped him the next phrase. Phew, storm averted.
Our commentators, Carlton Kirby and Sean Kelly, were happily burbling on about the rivalry between Aru and Nibbles, and the tension thereof, which was a very funny counterpoint to the thundery faces on the podium.
Ahh Djhee Duurs Air appear to have sent along a squad of 12-year olds - is it me, or are cyclists getting younger? - led by Romain Bardet who is very nearly a Schleckland pet, until he turns sideways to reveal a racing keel of a nose.
Giant Alpecin appear in their Tour kit, which is now white with black stripes. They have sent a really strong team, with Tom "Desperate Dan" Domoulin towering and glowering, Warren "Onion" Barghee looking surprisingly cute, Wolfman Ten Damme and various others. Unfortunately, their kit designer must be working with Fortuneo, and their stockings-and-suspenders were even more blatant:
I'm afraid this is definitely a can-can moment. Lookit!
Their interviews included John "Bad Boy" Degenkolb, looking less like a WW2 spiv than usual, thank heavens: and I am still undecided as to whether I like him or not. You might remember that he was promoted to Pet status, then demoted: now, after that dreadful accident, he's worked so hard to get fit, that I feel he ought to be promoted again. We shall observe his behaviour, perhaps, before deciding.
Next up were BMC and of course they are also having team leader issues, but in their case Richie Porte bounced up on the stage and squeaked happily about the joys of co-leadership: the mean-minded host, probably still sweating from the narrow escape of fisticuffs from the pyjama boys, actually asked him about the rivalry between him and Teej - incidentally, anyone know what Mr Van Garderen's first name is? Presumably he is Mr T Van Garderen, and TJ is "T Junior"? I remember watching "Rosanne" for years, and accepting that yanks give their kids weird names, because the little boy was apparently called Deej. It must have been several seasons before I realised that it was a contraction of Dee Jay, which in turn was short for Dan Junior. I know, I know: we didn't have the internet in those days, and I never saw it written down anywhere...
Anyway, good old Ritchie just gave one of those megawatt grins while burbling happily about what fun it was going to be.
FDJ have sent a chirpy team, lead by Tibbles, who looks like a bit of a ruffian but is somehow irresistible at the same time. They were all clearly thrilled to be there, which made a bit of a change from the other teams, many of whom were looking positiviely miserable. Maybe it was the weather.
Then we had an extended interlude for Stinkoff: blimey, what a performance. Sagan appeared with a wild mass of hair, and his usual "I'm a mass murderer and somewhat ashamed of it" hangdog expression, complete with whiney nasal voice, and we learned that he is equally nasal in Italian. For some unknown reason, the host gave him the microphone and told him to introduce his team, which started with him almost bypassing team leader Contador altogether, pretending he didn't know the names of the others - at least, we hope he was pretending - and then introducing Tossato as "Tosser". He clearly doesn't know that in English, to call someone a "tosser" is a significant insult. The only funny bit was Sagan's use of the word "...nice..." after describing a team-mate's achievements.
The host finally managed to grab the microphone back, and scolded Sagan for not doing a proper build-up for his introductions, saying "this is how you should have done it.." then giving Contador a huge, massive, introduction, probably because Conti was standing there with his nose so far out of joint that the others might not have been able to get past him to leave the stage.
Unfortunately, the way the audio had been set up meant that for us tv viewers, we heard a hugely loud build-up from the host, an elongated "COOONNNNNTTAAAADOOOOOOOOOR!!!!" and then a mere murmur of "... yay...." from the crowd. Presumably, you had to be there.
Next up were Movistar, the Wiggly Worms, and they appeared to have Harry Potter on their team:
Let's hope he can work some magic, huh?
Presumably his youthful energy is there to counterbalance the 82-year-old Quintana, who seems to be going very strongly for such an old man.
Finally, last team up, Team Sky hit the stage, and Chris Froome bravely responds to the host in French, thus endearing himself to the gathered crowds.
Not so much G, bless him, who is so laid back that he hasn't even bothered to prepare his answers: he can't remember how long his own team has been going "Err, it's been like, err, wot, seven years now is it? Six? Seven? Wotever, not long..." and then he can't remember how many times his own team have won the Tour: "Well, 's like, four times, innit? Four? Free? Four?"
Hilarious!
Only three other items of interest: firstly, the lovely Lowra - who usually only does the Giro and la Vuelta - appears to be doing interviews for Eurosport at the Tour this year, which will be nice, as LLB and I can overdub her interviews with our own versions, in which she is usually inviting riders to meet her for paella, and they are refusing her with various degrees of politeness. For the first time, she turns to face the camera. My god! She's pretty! I've only ever seen her profile before, so it's quite a shock to find out that she does actually have two eyes.
(Oh, I'm talking about Laura Meseguer, of course)
Secondly, the presentation ended with liddle kiddies on stage holding up the flags of the nations; which was lovely, but would have been a bit classier if they had ironed the flags, as they were clearly just taken out of a box ten minutes beforehand.
And finally, what was going on with the graphics on the backdrop?
Is it me, or are those money boxes?
Is this the latest way to raise sponsorship or funding - make cyclist-shaped money boxes and go along the crowd asking for small change?
Actually, they might have something there...!
Well, there you have it, my round up of the presentation - did I miss anyone out?
(Note for young people: when cars were first invented they were very slow, and drivers were forced to have a bloke with a red flag walk in front of them to warn pedestrians of the oncoming mechanical monster. How things have changed.)
This meant that the tv coverage was, well, spotty to say the least: the host broadcaster did their best to show us each team arriving on stage and being introduced, but they were often hopscotched by the lovely Lowra (well, that's how we pronounce it) interviewing random riders, so we frequently missed a bit: and they would intercut each presentation with shots of them trundling up towards the stage area, even though they were clearly already on the stage, which gave the whole thing a weird time-warp effect. Or maybe that was the intention?
Direct Energie (did I say Bora Aragon originally? Oops!) started the presentation by putting up two strong contenders for Worst Hairdo:
Sylvan Chavanel, on the other hand - what on earth's going on there? It looks like a wig! Possibly, a wig that's been put on back to front!!
Bora Aragon (well, that's how everyone says it) trundled up in their camo truck (nearly didn't see them arrive, ha! ha!) taking selfies all the way.
We can only assume that he likes to have long flowing hair over his neck, but can't bear the heat of having all that mop under his helmet, so he cuts the top short and leaves the back long. It's sort of like the opposite of a pudding-bowl haircut: instead of cutting off everything outside the pudding-bowl, he cuts off everything inside it.
At least he doesn't tie in back in a "bad ponytail", so things could be worse!
Lotto Jumbo were led out by Wilco Kendermann, and luckily no-one made any jokes about the British wartime slang. Pity they don't have a rider called Roger, really. They could line him up in front of Wilco, followed by Oveur and possibly someone called Out and there you have it.
Well, I mean, I've only ever seen him with his helmet and sunglasses on, and apparently this is what he looks like without them (slightly scary).
Oh well, at least LLB can't accuse me of picking him as a pet because he is "cute", eh?
Next up were Trek, and you have to feel a bit sorry for whoever their team leader is, because everyone wanted to talk to Fabs.
We don't, of course, include Fabs in the Worst Hairdo competition, because he doesn't "do" his hair, it just naturally goes like that.
How Sagan must grind his teeth in envy....
IAM took the stage, and for some unfathomable reason they decided to embarrass the youngest member of the peloton, someone who appeared to be called Sandra Enger by forcing/letting him do some dance moves on the stage: it didn't quite work, mostly as the live band were producing light jazz. Still, if your team is about to fold and you are a complete unknown, there are worse things to do than draw attention to yourself by dancing at the Grand Depart. He will forever now be "oh, you're the one who did that weird dance thing at le Tour, aren't you?", which is better than sinking without trace.
Lampre got a bit of a raw deal, just a quick chat with Rui Costa then another with the apparently 12 year old Louis Minkies, before they were hustled off the stage in favour of Dimension Data and Cav.
Cav, true to form, managed to look charming (with his Bambi eyelashes and thank-god-he-had-them-straightened perfect teeth) and belligerent (with the top-heavy wartime haircut with sides shaved shorter than his stubble) at the same time, but proved his enduring value to sponsors by managing to mention the sponsor name, the charity name, and what the charity does, ie bicycles for children in Africa, all in the space of a brief interview.
He repeated this feat when Lowra interviewed him shortly afterwards too: he may be a bit of a rough diamond, and a challenge to many interviewers, by my goodness, he is good value. My favourite quote still has to be that one where the rather dim interviewer - who had clearly never seen him race - asked a really dumb question about "do you always try to win, in a sprint finish?" to which Cav replied, with a dirty look, "Of course I always try to win, it's not a f**king hobby, you know."
Fortuneo, one of the shitsmall teams, appear to have Frankie riding for them:
The caption said it was Brice Feillu, but don't you think it looks a little like Frankie?
And, they appear to have made a bit of a gaffe with their kit design, as they appear to be wearing fishnet stockings:
I was expecting them to break into the can-can at any moment.
Luckily, they didn't, they just rode calmly off the stage, making way for O'Rica and another squeaky speaker, Simon Gerrans, followed by the non-team of Cofidis who, without Boohoohanni *snorts through nose* don't have a snowball's chance of doing anything in this Tour. I suspect that we will either not see them for the entire Tour, or - if they have any sense - they will be in every single break from the moment the racing starts.
Next up *scary chord* the Dark Lords, who are taking the principle of "uncluttered kit" to an extreme, as they now appear to have no sponsors at all apart from the breakfast cereal, Special K.
Another red kit appeared, this time Lotto Soudal, and the terminal embarassment of Gummy Bear Greipel in his German national jersey, which prompted whistles and cat-calls from the audience, who have spent the last two hours or more being whipped into a pro-French frenzy by the WW1 memorabilia and the heavily biaised French presenter. Oh dear. Luckily, he was not actually torn limb from limb and hung up on the town clock along with the dummy and the parachute, but it was a close thing.
Ettixx-Quickstep bounded on the stage to defuse the situation: it was slightly unfortunate that their team leader, Marcel Kittel, is also German, and he does rather embody the blond-hair blue-eyes looks-like-a-Greek God sort of German ideal. However, he exuded charm, plus he has that wonderful root lift, so the host let him live, and elbowed him out of the way to have a word with rising star Julien Alaphillipe, thus cunningly bypassing the other German star of the team, Tony Martin, and another possible GC contender, Dan Martin who, along with his teeth, was completely ignored.
Then there was an unexplained musical interlude - presumably one of the vintage trucks had broken down and they were trying to wrestle a museum-quality WW1 stocking off of one of the period-costumed walkers in order to fix it - before Ass-t'na made it to the stage.
Ass-t'na, the pyjama boys, were lead on stage by Fabio "Eddy the Mad Flatmate" Aru, leading contender for Ugliest Smile in the Peloton. Nibali stood next to him, barely able to look at him, and totally unable to smile. The hyperthyroid over-enthusiastic host did his best, he had a chat with Aru then pushed him over to make a space so he could talk to Nibbles, which he did in English, which was probably a subtle dig at Aru not being able to do so.
This almost made Nibbles smile... and he was quite jovial in his reply, right up to the moment when he couldn't think of the word, and his face darkened like thunder as he lost his thread. He turned to the lovely Jakob, and quite clearly hissed to him in Italian "what's the word for xxx?" and Jakob, that well known English/French/Italian/everything-speaking Dane, slipped him the next phrase. Phew, storm averted.
Our commentators, Carlton Kirby and Sean Kelly, were happily burbling on about the rivalry between Aru and Nibbles, and the tension thereof, which was a very funny counterpoint to the thundery faces on the podium.
Ahh Djhee Duurs Air appear to have sent along a squad of 12-year olds - is it me, or are cyclists getting younger? - led by Romain Bardet who is very nearly a Schleckland pet, until he turns sideways to reveal a racing keel of a nose.
Giant Alpecin appear in their Tour kit, which is now white with black stripes. They have sent a really strong team, with Tom "Desperate Dan" Domoulin towering and glowering, Warren "Onion" Barghee looking surprisingly cute, Wolfman Ten Damme and various others. Unfortunately, their kit designer must be working with Fortuneo, and their stockings-and-suspenders were even more blatant:
I'm afraid this is definitely a can-can moment. Lookit!
Their interviews included John "Bad Boy" Degenkolb, looking less like a WW2 spiv than usual, thank heavens: and I am still undecided as to whether I like him or not. You might remember that he was promoted to Pet status, then demoted: now, after that dreadful accident, he's worked so hard to get fit, that I feel he ought to be promoted again. We shall observe his behaviour, perhaps, before deciding.
Next up were BMC and of course they are also having team leader issues, but in their case Richie Porte bounced up on the stage and squeaked happily about the joys of co-leadership: the mean-minded host, probably still sweating from the narrow escape of fisticuffs from the pyjama boys, actually asked him about the rivalry between him and Teej - incidentally, anyone know what Mr Van Garderen's first name is? Presumably he is Mr T Van Garderen, and TJ is "T Junior"? I remember watching "Rosanne" for years, and accepting that yanks give their kids weird names, because the little boy was apparently called Deej. It must have been several seasons before I realised that it was a contraction of Dee Jay, which in turn was short for Dan Junior. I know, I know: we didn't have the internet in those days, and I never saw it written down anywhere...
Anyway, good old Ritchie just gave one of those megawatt grins while burbling happily about what fun it was going to be.
FDJ have sent a chirpy team, lead by Tibbles, who looks like a bit of a ruffian but is somehow irresistible at the same time. They were all clearly thrilled to be there, which made a bit of a change from the other teams, many of whom were looking positiviely miserable. Maybe it was the weather.
Then we had an extended interlude for Stinkoff: blimey, what a performance. Sagan appeared with a wild mass of hair, and his usual "I'm a mass murderer and somewhat ashamed of it" hangdog expression, complete with whiney nasal voice, and we learned that he is equally nasal in Italian. For some unknown reason, the host gave him the microphone and told him to introduce his team, which started with him almost bypassing team leader Contador altogether, pretending he didn't know the names of the others - at least, we hope he was pretending - and then introducing Tossato as "Tosser". He clearly doesn't know that in English, to call someone a "tosser" is a significant insult. The only funny bit was Sagan's use of the word "...nice..." after describing a team-mate's achievements.
The host finally managed to grab the microphone back, and scolded Sagan for not doing a proper build-up for his introductions, saying "this is how you should have done it.." then giving Contador a huge, massive, introduction, probably because Conti was standing there with his nose so far out of joint that the others might not have been able to get past him to leave the stage.
Unfortunately, the way the audio had been set up meant that for us tv viewers, we heard a hugely loud build-up from the host, an elongated "COOONNNNNTTAAAADOOOOOOOOOR!!!!" and then a mere murmur of "... yay...." from the crowd. Presumably, you had to be there.
Next up were Movistar, the Wiggly Worms, and they appeared to have Harry Potter on their team:
Presumably his youthful energy is there to counterbalance the 82-year-old Quintana, who seems to be going very strongly for such an old man.
Finally, last team up, Team Sky hit the stage, and Chris Froome bravely responds to the host in French, thus endearing himself to the gathered crowds.
Not so much G, bless him, who is so laid back that he hasn't even bothered to prepare his answers: he can't remember how long his own team has been going "Err, it's been like, err, wot, seven years now is it? Six? Seven? Wotever, not long..." and then he can't remember how many times his own team have won the Tour: "Well, 's like, four times, innit? Four? Free? Four?"
Hilarious!
Only three other items of interest: firstly, the lovely Lowra - who usually only does the Giro and la Vuelta - appears to be doing interviews for Eurosport at the Tour this year, which will be nice, as LLB and I can overdub her interviews with our own versions, in which she is usually inviting riders to meet her for paella, and they are refusing her with various degrees of politeness. For the first time, she turns to face the camera. My god! She's pretty! I've only ever seen her profile before, so it's quite a shock to find out that she does actually have two eyes.
(Oh, I'm talking about Laura Meseguer, of course)
Secondly, the presentation ended with liddle kiddies on stage holding up the flags of the nations; which was lovely, but would have been a bit classier if they had ironed the flags, as they were clearly just taken out of a box ten minutes beforehand.
And finally, what was going on with the graphics on the backdrop?
Is this the latest way to raise sponsorship or funding - make cyclist-shaped money boxes and go along the crowd asking for small change?
Actually, they might have something there...!
Well, there you have it, my round up of the presentation - did I miss anyone out?
Friday, 1 July 2016
Boohoohani out of le Tour - shame, shame
OK, those are crocodile tears: my, I did laugh at reading that Boohoohani had been in a punch-up, and had broken his hand on someone else's teeth!
Apparently he and a couple of teammates were staying in a hotel during the French National road race, and some other guests were being a bit rowdy. At 4am, mindful that he would have to get up early in the morning, Boohoohani and his brother went along the corridor to complain, only to get into a fisticuff fight with three drunken guests.
Oops!
Despite being a former boxer, Boohoohani fractured his hand and needed four stitches, so the next day he was in no fit state to race, and had to withdraw.
Shame, shame.
It gets worse: apparently he's now out of le Tour, because the hospital did not do a terribly good job: the later news report said "We don't know if the stitches were badly applied or if the wound was badly cleaned but it's a significant infection, which has forced him to stay in hospital for two days and receive treatment for several more,"
Good thing this didn't happen in America, Cofidis would be suing the hospital! Luckily for the hospital, it was in France, and luckily for Cofidis, there was just time to slide in a replacement rider, so Nico Edet will be feeling the pressure as, frankly, the Cofidis team is not exactly an A team. They have had the decency to give us all a giggle by sending along Geoffrey Soupe, whose amusing surname is such a ludicrous contrast to his extremely un-French first name.
Meanwhile, here in Schleckland, we have some extremely serious news, in the loss of another Schleckland Pet: Johan Van Summeren has had to retire from the sport due to ill health: he's had a recurring heart problem for most of this year, and he has finally had to announce that he's retiring.
*glum face*
I shall miss him terribly in the pro peleton: not only the tallest rider, at 6'7" (be still my beating heart) but he seemed to be a genuinely nice guy, with a strange habit of tucking up his sleeves, as though his arms weren't long enough already? At least he will always live on in Shleckland, not least for being immortalised in the famous Loupe episode:
16.15 CET At last, the peloton are getting organised, Garmin are at the front and are pulling well.
"Garmin Base to Garmin Car, tell Garmin 2 to stop rolling his sleeves up. Over."
"Garmin Car to Garmin Base, he always does it. Over."
"Garmin Base to Garmin Car, well we don't like it, it spoils the look. Over."
"Garmin Car to Garmin Base, well I've told him, and told him, but he always does it. Over."
"Garmin Base to Garmin Car, well tell him again. Over."
"Garmin Car to Garmin Base, tell him yourself. Over."
"Garmin Base to Garmin Car, don't give me that, get on to him and TELL HIM. Out.
16.20 CET There's something happening at the front of the peloton, one of the Garmin riders appears to be having an argument with his team mates, and is now sitting up. The rest of the Garmin team are losing their cohesion, and several of them are pulling at their sleeves. HTC are moving up towards the front of the peloton.
"HTC Car to HTC 1, get up the front with the others, would you? Over"
"HTC 1 to HTC Car, why bother, it's a shitsmall race. Over"
"HTC Car to HTC 1, shut up and pedal. Out."
Yes, now it's all over, I can reveal that "Garmin 2" was of course JVS, and here's a quick montage of some of his moments:
Best of luck JVS and Jasmine, for future health and happiness.
Apparently he and a couple of teammates were staying in a hotel during the French National road race, and some other guests were being a bit rowdy. At 4am, mindful that he would have to get up early in the morning, Boohoohani and his brother went along the corridor to complain, only to get into a fisticuff fight with three drunken guests.
Oops!
Despite being a former boxer, Boohoohani fractured his hand and needed four stitches, so the next day he was in no fit state to race, and had to withdraw.
Shame, shame.
It gets worse: apparently he's now out of le Tour, because the hospital did not do a terribly good job: the later news report said "We don't know if the stitches were badly applied or if the wound was badly cleaned but it's a significant infection, which has forced him to stay in hospital for two days and receive treatment for several more,"
Good thing this didn't happen in America, Cofidis would be suing the hospital! Luckily for the hospital, it was in France, and luckily for Cofidis, there was just time to slide in a replacement rider, so Nico Edet will be feeling the pressure as, frankly, the Cofidis team is not exactly an A team. They have had the decency to give us all a giggle by sending along Geoffrey Soupe, whose amusing surname is such a ludicrous contrast to his extremely un-French first name.
Meanwhile, here in Schleckland, we have some extremely serious news, in the loss of another Schleckland Pet: Johan Van Summeren has had to retire from the sport due to ill health: he's had a recurring heart problem for most of this year, and he has finally had to announce that he's retiring.
*glum face*
I shall miss him terribly in the pro peleton: not only the tallest rider, at 6'7" (be still my beating heart) but he seemed to be a genuinely nice guy, with a strange habit of tucking up his sleeves, as though his arms weren't long enough already? At least he will always live on in Shleckland, not least for being immortalised in the famous Loupe episode:
16.15 CET At last, the peloton are getting organised, Garmin are at the front and are pulling well.
"Garmin Base to Garmin Car, tell Garmin 2 to stop rolling his sleeves up. Over."
"Garmin Car to Garmin Base, he always does it. Over."
"Garmin Base to Garmin Car, well we don't like it, it spoils the look. Over."
"Garmin Car to Garmin Base, well I've told him, and told him, but he always does it. Over."
"Garmin Base to Garmin Car, well tell him again. Over."
"Garmin Car to Garmin Base, tell him yourself. Over."
"Garmin Base to Garmin Car, don't give me that, get on to him and TELL HIM. Out.
16.20 CET There's something happening at the front of the peloton, one of the Garmin riders appears to be having an argument with his team mates, and is now sitting up. The rest of the Garmin team are losing their cohesion, and several of them are pulling at their sleeves. HTC are moving up towards the front of the peloton.
"HTC Car to HTC 1, get up the front with the others, would you? Over"
"HTC 1 to HTC Car, why bother, it's a shitsmall race. Over"
"HTC Car to HTC 1, shut up and pedal. Out."
Yes, now it's all over, I can reveal that "Garmin 2" was of course JVS, and here's a quick montage of some of his moments:
Best of luck JVS and Jasmine, for future health and happiness.
Wednesday, 29 June 2016
Two days to Le Tour!
Hi Schlecklanders! *waves enthusiastically*
Time has passed, broken hearts are healing, and it's time for men in lycra, moans about motos, and les vaches du Tour - not to mention bus-stop-spotting and Schleckland Pets.
More of all those in due course.
For now, it's two days to go: we have the team presentations tomorrow (not that I will be watching them as I will be working, but heyho, we all have a cross to bear), nothing much on Friday, and then on Saturday, at long last, the first stage.
We start at Mont-Saint-Michel → Utah Beach, which seemed like an awfully long first stage, with a big wet bit in the middle, until I realised that Utah Beach was not, in fact, a beach in Utah, USA, but was actually just across the peninsula from Mont-Saint-Michel. Phew. I wouldn't want to have been diverted into watching Triathlon - with all due respect to everyone who does it, I just can't come to terms with men riding bikes in swimsuits.
Yes, I know that a pair of lycra bibshorts are a very short step away from being a swimsuit, yes I know you can swim in bibshorts, and yes, I know that I am frequently heard referring to our tough guys "riding bikes at perilous speeds with no padding and while wearing what is basically a swimsuit" but it's not ACTUALLY a swimsuit, and somehow men riding bikes in swimsuits looks, well, slightly indecent.
OK, I admit it, I'm a little weird. *shrugs in gallic fashion*
So, leaving that aside, two days to le Tour! I shall make a big effort to come on here and comment every day, so I hope you'll drop in, read it, leave a comment, start a debate, ask questions, all the usual stuff, which I will respond to, encourage, answer, or ignore, depending on whether or not I know the answer. I'll also be on Twitter from time to time, depending on how busy I am: I'm @SchlecklanderCG there, so do come along and say hello.
In the meantime, a strange thing happened while LLB and I were watching some shitsmall race or other a couple of months back:
Apologies for the fuzzy camera-phone pic of tv, but what do I see there? It's the Leopard logo!
And yes, sure enough, it turned out to be the Lux based Leopard Pro Cycling, a continental level (ie third tier) feeder team. Remember them being set up, when Leopard-Trek folded? We made all those jokes at the time about them taking a dozen boxes of Leopard kit and the big old team bus, and getting some more miles out of them. Well, it appears that's exactly what they did, and they are still going, so hooray for Leopard Pro Cycling!
In another shitsmall race, or it might have been the same one (hang on while I check the photo details - yes, it was the same race, they were taken at the same time) I also nearly had a bump of the heart, when I saw what appeared to be the old beloved Leopard kit: but it turned out to be One Pro Cycling, whose kit is spookily reminiscent of the old black-white-and-pale-blue kit.
And would you believe it, they are a British team! They are Pro Conti, and they have - be still my beating heart - the lovely Yanto Barker riding for them, and he is definitely a Pet. I thought he'd retired from pro cycling, that's why he was commentating a couple of years back, but apparently he's back on a Pro Conti team, much to my delight.
I did consider joining the fan club of One Pro Cycling: in the UK, money is so tight that they have to try to lure people into micro-sponsorship, by becoming a member of the fan club. It costs a hundred quid to join, and you get a nice pack, including an actual cycling jersey. That's no more than I donated to MTN Qhebeka last year... and it's quite a good cause, to support British cycling, although not quite as good as sponsoring bikes for Africa. But if I joined, I'd have to wear the jersey. Hmmm, me in lycra? I think not...
They do have a Junior membership pack for £20, for which you get a t-shirt and a bottle and a pack of rider cards. I was very tempted to take up that membership - there is a slight chance I might wear the tee, whereas there is no chance at all that I will ever wear the jersey, quite apart from the fact that I would probably have to ask for XXXXL in order to even go round me!
Time has passed, broken hearts are healing, and it's time for men in lycra, moans about motos, and les vaches du Tour - not to mention bus-stop-spotting and Schleckland Pets.
More of all those in due course.
For now, it's two days to go: we have the team presentations tomorrow (not that I will be watching them as I will be working, but heyho, we all have a cross to bear), nothing much on Friday, and then on Saturday, at long last, the first stage.
We start at Mont-Saint-Michel → Utah Beach, which seemed like an awfully long first stage, with a big wet bit in the middle, until I realised that Utah Beach was not, in fact, a beach in Utah, USA, but was actually just across the peninsula from Mont-Saint-Michel. Phew. I wouldn't want to have been diverted into watching Triathlon - with all due respect to everyone who does it, I just can't come to terms with men riding bikes in swimsuits.
Yes, I know that a pair of lycra bibshorts are a very short step away from being a swimsuit, yes I know you can swim in bibshorts, and yes, I know that I am frequently heard referring to our tough guys "riding bikes at perilous speeds with no padding and while wearing what is basically a swimsuit" but it's not ACTUALLY a swimsuit, and somehow men riding bikes in swimsuits looks, well, slightly indecent.
OK, I admit it, I'm a little weird. *shrugs in gallic fashion*
So, leaving that aside, two days to le Tour! I shall make a big effort to come on here and comment every day, so I hope you'll drop in, read it, leave a comment, start a debate, ask questions, all the usual stuff, which I will respond to, encourage, answer, or ignore, depending on whether or not I know the answer. I'll also be on Twitter from time to time, depending on how busy I am: I'm @SchlecklanderCG there, so do come along and say hello.
In the meantime, a strange thing happened while LLB and I were watching some shitsmall race or other a couple of months back:
And yes, sure enough, it turned out to be the Lux based Leopard Pro Cycling, a continental level (ie third tier) feeder team. Remember them being set up, when Leopard-Trek folded? We made all those jokes at the time about them taking a dozen boxes of Leopard kit and the big old team bus, and getting some more miles out of them. Well, it appears that's exactly what they did, and they are still going, so hooray for Leopard Pro Cycling!
And would you believe it, they are a British team! They are Pro Conti, and they have - be still my beating heart - the lovely Yanto Barker riding for them, and he is definitely a Pet. I thought he'd retired from pro cycling, that's why he was commentating a couple of years back, but apparently he's back on a Pro Conti team, much to my delight.
I did consider joining the fan club of One Pro Cycling: in the UK, money is so tight that they have to try to lure people into micro-sponsorship, by becoming a member of the fan club. It costs a hundred quid to join, and you get a nice pack, including an actual cycling jersey. That's no more than I donated to MTN Qhebeka last year... and it's quite a good cause, to support British cycling, although not quite as good as sponsoring bikes for Africa. But if I joined, I'd have to wear the jersey. Hmmm, me in lycra? I think not...
They do have a Junior membership pack for £20, for which you get a t-shirt and a bottle and a pack of rider cards. I was very tempted to take up that membership - there is a slight chance I might wear the tee, whereas there is no chance at all that I will ever wear the jersey, quite apart from the fact that I would probably have to ask for XXXXL in order to even go round me!
Monday, 14 March 2016
Paris-Nice 2016 - yay for Tim Wellens!
Phew, what a mad exciting end to a race!
To be honest, most of Paris-Nice had been, well, a bit underwhelming: long flat stages, just the occasional bit of cross-winds to liven them up: cancellation of one stage altogether due to snow (and we didn't even get any coverage of the bit they did race, as it was - obviously - at the beginning, before coverage began), and the much-hyped dirt track sections were rather short.
Also, no reflection on the race, but our Eurosport coverage was badly organised: despite showing catch-up editions later in the day, ie edited, they over-ran their time slots and on two days we therefore missed the final few kms, which was absolutely maddening.
For Stage 6, our coverage cut out with 5.3kms to go!! We had to wind up a pc, go to Steephill TV (thank god for Steephill!) and watch a video of the end in two instalments - which confused us a bit, I can tell you! "Funny, this part of hill looks familiar?" commented LLB. "Haven't we just seen this bit?" I replied, and then we noticed the km counter had gone back to 5km. Oops.
The end of this stage was about as exciting as you could wish for, with G (Geraint Thomas of Sky) stuffing it to Contador but being pipped at the post by the unlovely unrepentent doping Dark Lord. But at least he took the lead.
Then, yesterday, we accidentally missed the live coverage owing to a slight scheduling oversight, and had to wait until the evening to catch up with it. We only got the last 36k or so, but we were grateful to Eurosport for that much: even if the coverage did start with the news that Sky had made a boo-boo, and Stinkoff were in the second group with a big climb approaching, while the entire Sky team were a minute and a half behind them.
Poor old Nico Roche was on the front for about a hundred years AGAIN, having done all this yesterday, no doubt he was pondering the inequities of deja vu, if he was able to have any coherent thoughts at all... and what about Swifty? Ben Swift, well known sprinter, not only zooming up the hills with the best of them (quite literally) but taking turns on the front! Amazing stuff.
Talking of amazing stuff, a minor diversion - no surprise to regular readers - for a mention of Deer-eckt Enn-air-ghee's Antoine Duchesne, who lead the break in stage 6 for hour after hour, from 20km out, thundering on all alone, before finally being caught at the base of the final hill. What a great effort! I was impressed.
Then on Sunday, he did it all again! That is a world-tour performance, to repeat it the very next day, so he's been elevated to Schleckland Pet, and let's hope that he finds the success that often happens to my Pets!
So, back to Stage 7, and G proved time and again that he is worthy of the position of team leader: he didn't lose his cool, he didn't panic, he most certainly did not give up, but he pedalled on strongly and calmly, the team were fantastic, with a very special nod to Henao who threw aside all his own aspirations and stayed with G during a very dark period, where G was struggling up the final hill with Contador not even in sight.
There was even one strange moment when apparently Henao took the wrong turning on the descent, so G had to just go to the front and get on with it all alone, until Henao could get back to him! Would have loved to have seen that....
LLB and I were jumping up and down on the sofa for the last 7k or so, counting the seconds on our fingers, cursing Richie Porte every time he took a turn on the front ("save yourself, Richie, so you can out-sprint him at the line and take away the 10 second bonus!") and trying to work out how many seconds G would have in hand: he started with a 15 second lead over Contador, there are 10, 6 and 4 bonus seconds on the line, and Richie Porte won it last year and would therefore do his utmost to win again...
As it turned out, the wonderful, wonderful Tim Wellens beat Conti to the line, taking the 10 seconds, reducing Conti's gain to 6 seconds and thus reducing G's lead to 9 seconds: which meant that G had to come in less than 8 seconds behind Conti in order to take the race.
And he did it! With a 4-second margin! Yay, go G! Stuff it to Contador!
This absolutely made up for the rest of the race being a bit dull!!
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!!
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!
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