Amstel Gold

Aw, and it nearly was Gold for Our Glorious Leader - he had his moment! Alas, he didn't quite win, as we all know now, but oh! so close!

Our Eurosport coverage was a bit sparse, we were well through the race before we joined it, and at the end it was cut off before we even got the final positions of more than the top 10, so I didn't actually know where Andy finished until about an hour ago.

So, how did the race look to me? Well, it started with Leelu screaming about the, er, substandard streaming. No, not in person, on Twitter... LLB and I were sitting waiting ready to watch, but we let the recording start and run for about 15 minutes so that once we start watching, we can fast forward through the adverts. I can thoroughly recommend replacing your outdated video recorders with Hard Disk Drive Recorders, by the way. We can even replay, pause, etc in the bit we are watching, while it continues to record it for us!

Anyway, we were wasting time to give it a head start, and LLB had Twitter up. "OOh!" I said, "can we see if Leelu is still up? I bet she's watching it." so we found her, and sure enough, there she was, complaining about the stream which was breaking up. So I quickly signed in just to give her a shock and tell her off about using bad language (no, I didn't really do that). And BY THE WAY MISS FEEDEE what's all this about the hunky young Lithuanian? I shall tell Andy of you......

Eurosport started by telling us why Rabobank were wearing slightly different jerseys in this race,and making a big thing out of the fact that they'd asked permission to do so, unlike Certain Other Teams (ie Radioshack) in the TdF last year. However, they didn't tell us what the "rose" thing was all about: we assumed it's another cancer charity of some kind. Nice jerseys, though: still sufficiently blue, white and orange to be recognisable.

Then suddenly it was oh dear, poor Katusha, having problem: uh? What problems? We paused our viewing to look it up on google! Oh, drugs again, this time it's the Biological Passports, five of them were seized. Good thing Rob Hayles wasn't commentating, he'd have something to say about that.

Note: Rob Hayles - ex Track and Road cyclist, now a commentator - had a horrible experience when his bio passport seemed to indicate an irregularity, back when they'd just been invented, and he was banned from participating in the Worlds. Then the UCI were told that track cyclists have a different training regime from road cyclists, so their bio passports are bound to show differences which are not irregularities, but are artifacts of the way in which they train and race. Once again, the UCI shoots itself in the foot. Rob was exonerated, but you can only imagine that it's left a mark.....

Back to Amstel Gold - Ryder Hesjedal appears to be texting. "On the rce, nce dy, lking fwrd to airprt"  perhaps? Oh, he's not texting, he's just trying to open a gel.

By the way, am I the only one who took several races to realise that Ryder was his first name? I kept hearing it as "rider Hesjedal" as opposed to "driver Hesjedal"  or "mechanic Hesjedal" perhaps. Do you know, there are times when I think I'm not as bright as I think I am....

And then OH NO! Tumbling Leopards! We were just saying that the peloton looked a bit nervous when oof! over they went, and there was Frankie right in the middle of it, one of the earliest to go down, although please note I am not suggesting that he was the one who caused it. However, he was almost definitely the one that Fabian ran into! And ooof, poor old Fabian went down hard. We replayed that bit several times, and it really did look as though Fabu went straight up the back of Frankie, as Frankie was just hitting the deck.

Oddly enough, in Cycling News, Frankie says that he was behind Fabu, and Fabu went down first. Well, as they were there, and we were only watching the rather limited images shown to us, then they must be right. But I must day, it looked as though Frankie took out Fabu.

Fabian took a moment to get back on his bike, he was wringing his wrist and looking pained: but then, as though made of rubber, Fabian bounced back on his bike and the two of them were off. At first we thought that Frankie was bringing Fabu back, but then Frankie's bike broke (drat) and Fabian went off like a rocket!

Even the commentators were saying "Good lord, look at him go!" and raving about his bike handling skills. And going "fffffffff!" (sharp intake of breath through small gap in teeth) as he screamed around the cars, around the corners, around more cars, between the motorbikes etc. It looked as though he was at least rocket-powered, but I understand from Fede's blog that his bike also turned out to be broken,  but he did manage to finish.

Meanwhile, Our Glorious Leader is in the leading group. He's at the front. Ooh!  He's looking back over his shoulder. Why, Andy, why? You all have radios, you know that Fabu and Frankie have had both crashes and mechanicals and aren't going to be there. I've noticed a couple of times this year that both Schlecks seem unable to ride at the front of a group without having their chins on their shoulders. As Rincewind said: "When running away from something, never waste time looking back over your shoulder: nothing you will see will make you run any faster, and you might just trip over something."

Ok, so there are sound tactical reasons for looking back in some situations, they just seem to be doing it a lot.

End of digression;

Andy at the front! Andy pulling away! No-one can go with him! Yay, Andy! Andy pulls it into a gap! Not a huge gap, but if he can just keep ahead until we reach the much-hyped Steep Bit At The End then he might be in with a chance. We all know he's not a sprinter, but he's pretty darned good at climbing, and the commentators have told us all the way through the race that it ends in a "nasty little kick". Go, Andy!

Jakob, meanwhile, is doing a textbook illustration of How To Play It When Your Teammate Has Made A Break.  He hung on, always near the front but not doing any pulling, but not letting himself get more than three or four away from the front. And every time anyone made a move, he was there on the wheel.  Thus he saves his own energy, but if anyone else tries, he can go with them and then there will be two of them in the lead group. And he did it perfectly, and when Gilbert made his move, Jakob went too.

As we all know, Andy didn't quite make it up the hill alone, Gilbert did it, and Simon Gerrans from Sky just squeezed Jakob into fourth place.

At that point Eurosport wound it all up, so I've had to go online to find that Andy came 11th, Little Fab 20th, Frankie 22nd,  Maxime 63rd and Fabu 64th.

So that was the Amstel Gold, then! Not a terribly exciting race, except for when Andy was leading for the last 5 kms or so. Lovely countryside.

Now, as we're a bit short of photos today (Firefox is crashing every time I try to search for an Image) I can show you some ideas for the Schleckland Flag which I will be waving at the Tour of Britain later in the year.

Figgy suggested using silhouettes of certain noses to form the outline of a country, so I found a kaleidoscope site which allowed me to upload my own pictures, then kaleidoscope them.

Here's the first effort:

OK, it's a bit scary, actually.

So I tried again, and I thought this one was a bit nicer, even though neither of them are really suitable for putting on a flag. But they were fun to do!