Catalunya - Stages 1-3

Catalunya!

Stage one: the commentators are burbling on about how this is a good race for seeing how the stage-racers' form is shaping up. We'll take their word for that.

As an aside - and look, I've barely started the post and already I'm digressing! - David Harmon commented that Sky were fielding a team of 6 riders instead of 8, as they didn't have enough riders to make up a full team. He pointed out that sometimes in the ProTeam calendar you get three events occurring at once, and taking into account sickness, injury etc, it's not always possible to make up a full squad for every race.  This does rather make me wonder how on earth the mystical "breakaway league" would be expected to work, if they are seriously wanting to stuff an extra 10 races into the calendar. Oh well, more of that some other time.

Eurosport started our footage at 18kms to go, with Albasini of GreenEdge ("Yay for GreenEdge!") making a very nice descent: he was zooming off with some style. At one point he rounded a bend to the right, with a sheer drop to the left, and as I looked at the arnco barrier I was picturing Frankie at the Tour of Switzerland, and was just thinking how glad I was that he wasn't in this race. Then LLB said "Hope Frankie's not in this race as that barrier looks very inviting!"  Ha, great minds think alike.

Brian Smith, the other commentator, said something like "RadioShack don't have a sprinter [technically this is correct] , they are here looking after the legs of Andy Schleck and Jakob Fuglsang."  Passing over his pronunciation of Jakob's name as Foogle-Slang, I did wonder what my loyal Schlecklanders would make of the concept of looking after Andy's legs. Or Jakob's legs. I wonder what gentle images passed through your minds on hearing those words...

Anyway, moving swiftly on: Albasini scooted on home, yay for GreenEdge and I can just imagine Leelu bouncing up and down with excitement *rushes over to Twitter to see if Leelu is around: oh, disappointed face, she went to bed 9hrs ago. Wake up, Leelu!*

But there seemed to me to be total confusion at the finish line - the mass of riders gently ground to a halt, and sat around chatting, swapping drinks bottles, waving to fans etc. I was sure that they hadn't actually crossed the finish line, which was a bit worrying. "And the final race times for everyone below 10th position: 45 minutes longer than the leaders."

Stage Two:  it starts and finishes in Girona (muted chorus of air guitar and "My Girona") (instead of "My Sharona", that is) which apparently is THE place for pro cyclists to live and train now. We are forced to listed to David Harmon listing all the places that used to be where pro-cyclist lived, going back years, and year, and years... eventually we join the race with 40kms to go, just about to start the first of the two climbs before the finish.

"Tomorrow will be decisive" they say, "although snow has been forecast." LLB is sniggering. Under torture, he reveals that he's already seen the results on the internet:  the stage apparently did not proceed without problems, which included fog, snow, hypothermia, and half the peloton dropping out before the finish. This is what comes of actively not reading the cycling news in order to keep the footage fresh. Memo to self: as it's not possible to watch it live (LLB kindly records it for me and we watch it together whenever we get time) then I might have to accept knowing what the outcome is.  Actually, that's not a problem - we still have some stages of the Tour last year that we haven't watched, and they are still interesting. No really, we didn't manage to keep up with all the coverage we managed to record, and we thought it would be useful to have some cycling footage to watch over the winter when there was nothing new available. It worked quite well, except that we found the Giro even more boring to watch knowing that Conti won it (sort of) than it was to watch it merely thinking that Conti was going to win it. 

TJ - no, not TinkerJil, TJ Van Garderen - leaps off the front, to a chorus of "Bumfluff!" from LLB and I. Incidentally, I have often wondered what the TJ stands for, assuming it was Tom Junior or something similar, but I've just seen an interview where it is spelled Teejay, as though it's an actual name. If anyone knows for sure, do please tell me. Otherwise, he will simply be Bumfluff.

Aha, at this point we happen to know that Valverde had a problem, but the commentators seem to be unaware of it. Much sniggering on the sofa. They tell us that Valverde is trying to get back to the peloton, but he only has Quintano, the Colombian with him. (Yes, Pahola, ColOMbia, I got it right that time!)

But wait, wasn't Quintano the rider from team Colombia who crashed into the wall during the Milan-SanRemo? LLB and I look at each other in confusion. Well, I've had time to do the research, and would you believe that it was Carlos Quintero of the Colombia-Coldeportes team who crashed - but thankfully he is now at home recovering from a broken collarbone and an injured head, and is quoted as saying that he saw pictures of his fall on YooToob and was shocked by them. Movistar have a rider called Niaro Quintana, who is Colombian. Good thing they're not on the same team, eh?!

Leaving aside the Colombia confusion, at last our commentators have been informed that Valverde had a tumble, and there is much laughing that Omega are now drilling for home. Payback!

Commentators must be so grateful for Twitter: they are "too professional" to make comments about individual riders and situations, but they can use Twitter comments as a "front" for saying anything they like.  "Ooh, we're getting a lot of comments on Twitter that Valverde deserves everything he's getting after his team accelerated during Milan-SanRemo" and so on. Or, even funnier, "John Smith [made-up name] asks on Twitter wasn't Valverde done for drugs? Well, yes, he served a 2-year ban....." etc. It's a way for them to drag up these points without being seen to be critical of the riders.

The end of the stage is immensely confusing for everyone, as our TV footage suddenly contains no graphics, so we - and the commentators, poor souls - have no idea who is leading, who is following, what the time gaps are, or how much further there is to go. We don't even get close-ups, just helicopter shots, so the commentators are left bravely making guesses as to who is in the picture.

At this point, with all the stress of having to commentate with no information, Brian Smith, bless him, refers to Leopard Trek coming to the front. Ha! Ha! Much laughing on the sofa. (It's the next village over from Much Sniggering on the Sofa. We have strange naming conventions in the UK.) They are reduced to just guessing who is in the lead, and appeal for any viewers with 55" tvs and HD to please tell them which banner we have just gone under - is it 4km to go? Or 3? Or 5? They are completely lost.

Suddenly we are watching a sprint finish, and it's Albasini again! Leelu, we imagine, can hardly contain herself at this point. Our Lad Bradley Wiggins did a cracking lead-out for Rigoberto Uran (face like a crumpled puppy, adorably ugly!) so Sky get someone in the top 10, yay!

Valverde drones in 2'09" later, har har har,  dragging a huge group with him. And he gets no sympathy at all.

Stage 3: well, we had already heard on the cycling news that there was a problem with snow, so we weren't expecting much in the way of footage, but LLB and I eagerly started the recording to see what we had.

Oh. It appears to be Ski Sunday. Errr, no, that's a finish line, it's snowing a blizzard and there is snow at least a foot deep everywhere. We hear the voice of David Harmon telling us that the stage has had to be cut short due to the truly terrible weather, and that there have been large numbers of abandons, unsurprisingly. He also comments that they have no idea how they are going to get the TV equipment down off the mountain top, which could make for an interesting Stage 4. Apparently the commisaires are discussing how to handle the problem: Harmon says that they, the commentators, don't know who won, who is leading the GC, or anything, so on Eurosport this afternoon we will instead be going live to the women's curling....

It's an odd thought that the 73 fans of women's curling would have been leaping about with joy at the prospect of getting two solid hours of curling to watch, instead of a 10-minute highlight. Unless of course they didn't know about it, and hadn't turned their TVs on two hours early.. gosh, just think how furious they would be when they found out that there had been over 2 hours of their favourite minority sport, and they had missed it! *laughs unsympathetically*  (honestly, there are times when I think I'm not a very nice person, sorry everyone.)  I was going to put in a picture of it to liven up this entry, but honestly, it's not very interesting. Even thought they try to make the ice less boring by putting pictures underneath it. The only good thing about curling is working out that competitors have one shoe that slides on the ice, and one shoe that grips: and then working out who is Left footed, as it were, and who is Right footed. Yes, it really is that dull.

So, apparently Stage 3 was a complete disaster, and instead of calling it off altogether, as soon as it was apparent that it was going to be dreadful, the organisers forced the teams to race through hellish weather, suffering falls and hypothermia, then when half the race had withdrawn, they magnanimously shortened the stage by 55kms or so: AND THEN just to add insult to injury, the next day they announced that the GC would not be affected by stage 3, and that anyone who Did Not Finish would be allowed to start stage 4 if they wanted to. Apparently "not many" took them up on this kind offer. Probably still in hot baths, worrying about frostbite.

I can't even begin to imagine how cross and upset those riders who finished must be: to have struggled through all that, and then to not make any time out of it - that's cruelty.

And from our point of view, Andy was one of those who withdrew,  but was not able to start on Stage 4, so he's out of it: as is poor Jakob, who broke his wrist and has been sent to Switzerland for an operation on it, but who is then going to have to get back on the rollers and apparently is going to be riding in a cast for a while - our brave boy! He's really bogged off, by the sound of it, as he was hoping to be a contender in the Giro. Jakob, we all have our fingers crossed for you. Not least because presumably, with a wrist-bone broken, you can't cross your own fingers for a while.

And yes, it was that darn scaphoid bone again, the same one that Jensi broke. I imagine that wrists and collarbones are going to be the most frequently-broken bones - it's natural to put an arm out to stop yourself hitting the ground, and apparently it's the concussive shock running back up the arm that breaks the collarbone. I guess Jakob could be saying to himself that he's lucky he "only" broke his wrist-bone, and not his collarbone.

*wraps large fluffy blankets around Jakob and Andy for comfort*

Hopefully I'll get to watch stages 4 onwards over the weekend. But I'm reminded that last year, Eurosport showed us stage 5 three times, and didn't show stage 6 at all, so we'll have to see what happens.