And now for some light relief, LLB and I managed to watch Tour of California stage 5 and 6: the time trial wasn't particularly fascinating other than watching Mad Bad Dave Zabriskie (for whom I have a bit of a soft spot) thundering round the ITT course at about 500 mph.
Personally I didn't think that Andy was really pushing hard - did anyone else get that feeling? He didn't particularly look as though he was struggling, he just wasn't pushing on that much.
Mind you, phoning home while time trialling is maybe not the best way to win:
"Coug? Coug? Are you there? Why aren't you here?" (Just kidding. I know he's probably phoning Nim to make pj arrangements, or possibly reminding Jakob to order the pizza.)
And yes, I know that wasn't really part of ToC, it was the Mercedes presentation.
How about this one, below: what do we think he's saying here?
"Now look, this is supposed to be a serious cycle race and you're only a GUURRRRLL!"
PS look at that upper lip, he really is trying to grow a caterpillar, isn't he? (Cries of "Oh Noes!" from all the lolcats in the audience)
This is the Leopard Trek Senior Division inspecting their road rash:
Is it me, or has Our Glorious Leader - below - just about outgrown this bike?
And finally, Andy Schleck having trouble dealing with a toffee:
Glad to see the rear Tuftage making a welcome return!
Where was I? Oh yes, Tour of California. The Mount Baldy stage was pretty exciting (Gnasher, I looked for you but didn't see you..) except for the bit towards the very end where OGL lost a bit of steam, allowing the commentators to make rude remarks about him not being in very good form etc etc. He's training guys, he's training!
One thing I noticed - Ryder Hesjedal (as opposed to Mechanic Hesjedal and Sponsor Hesjedal) from Garmin Cervelo appeared to wearing a Leopard Trek helmet. Anyone else notice that? Sadly, I can't find any pics of it...
...but here's a "taken from the TV hence the terrible quality" pic of Johan Van Summeren ("Yay! We like him!") also known as Garmin Two, (see Loupe earlier) from the final stage, and look!
What is it, JVS, with you and those blue sleeve bands?
Don't you like them?
Do you just want to be different? (No need, my dear, we can easily spot you in the peloton on account of you being about a foot lankier than everyone else....)
There must be someone out there who knows him, or has a friend who works for the team - can anyone find out?
Well, we've finally finished watching the ToC, it got a lot better towards the end, and I'm beginning to see that the US might have a winner on their hands. I know that they want to make the ToC into a big UCI Tour, I think I read somewhere that they'd like to get it big enough to be considered in the same sentence as the TdF and I can see that happening, some day. Exciting stuff.
Now we're onto the Crit Dauphine, we're going to be getting some spotty coverage of that over the next week, but not of all the stages, so hopefully next week I might have some semi-intelligent comments to make on that race.
In the meantime, I have to say how nice it is to have seen Ned Boulting and Matt Rendell in the flesh: they're the guys who do the Real Peloton, and they make a good presenting team, Much better than Phil Liggett and whoever the other one was, who seemed a) not to be able to see the on-screen graphics, as they never seemed to know which rider we were looking at: b) unable to hear each other, as they would repeat what the other one had just said, but in slightly different phrases, and: c) to have been given a list of sponsor names and places of interest, and were compelled to mention one of them every 2.5 minutes. It was all quite strange to listen to!
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