Oh, poor Andy!

Awww, poor Andy, he must be feeling so low.. news today that he's had to pull out of the last-but-one stage of Tirreno-Adriatico.

As always, it's too early to know exactly what the reason was: the report, above, seems to indicate that it wasn't a physical problem, for which we are eternally grateful.

However, Andy's own team spokesman said:

"...we believe the problem is more than physical"  

and the report goes on to talk about psychological problems.

In the same report it mentions casually that:

"... team director Dirk Demol said that Schleck had a lot of fear while riding in the peloton and needed to get his courage back"

As usual, this may have lost something in the translation, but it does sound somewhat harsh, don't you think?

I am hoping that this is not going to be another session of Schleck-bashing from his own team, and I really do feel that RadioShack have been extremely unsupportive, especially those who talk to the press.

On the one hand, of course I don't want them to lie and say that he has a stomach upset: but on the other hand, I do feel that publicising any sort of confidence issue is only going to make it worse. Now everyone will know that he has "a lot of fear" when in the peloton, and I can imagine some other riders taking advantage of that information.

It doesn't help that we haven't seen any photos of a happy Andy lately - other than the new website kit team photos, that is: perhaps it is time they dug out Roland Miny and sent him round to Andy's flat to get some new photos of Andy relaxing with TinkerJil, playing with Leea, laughing and joking with his brother, etc, to show the cycling world that he is not to be written off.

I even saw one report -I didn't bother to read it, as it was obviously highly speculative - that was suggesting that 2010 was Andy's peak, and it was all over now. Huh! I think not!  *waves Schlecklander flag indignantly*

Once again, poor Andy, I feel so sorry for him *reaches out a very long arm all the way to Lux and pets Andy* having to go through all this, with everyone looking.  Let's hope for better news, soon, eh?