Biased Blow-By-Blow - 2017 Giro d'Italia Stage 2

Introduction

Professional journalists can’t afford to burn any bridges by calling out a doper, an unstylish rider, or somebody who’s being a dick. They also have a responsibility to the public to provide fair, balanced reporting.  I have no bridges and no responsibility.  So read on for a totally biased blow-by-blow of Stage 2 of the Giro.

2017 Giro d’Italia Stage 2 – Olbia to Tortoli

As I join the action there are about 50 miles to go, with a breakaway of nobodies about three minutes ahead.  Today’s stage features three climbs and a bunch of other little lumps.  The last climb of the day, the Genna Silana, is a category 2, which gains about 2,900 feet and tops out at about 3,300 feet elevation.  But then there’s another 30 miles of descending,  so unless the breakaway blah, blah, blah, who cares.

The really interesting thing about this race is the return of Cadel Evans.  I guess retirement just didn’t sit well with him, so he’s back.  Now, he knows he’s long in the tooth and doesn’t want to tarnish his impressive reputation with poor riding, so he’s riding under the pseudonym Caleb Ewan.  Look, “Caleb,” you’re not fooling anybody.  But I do admire such pluck.  Far better to put in a mediocre ride in a great race than to be a greeter at Walmart.

Okay, readers, I’ll make you a deal:  if the breakaway’s gap goes back up during this climb, I’ll tell you who they are.  Other than that, it’s like temp workers at an office:  better not to learn their names, it just makes it sadder when they have to go.

So, to catch you up on the Giro so far, we’ve had two riders busted for doping already—actually, it was the night before the opening stage.  They were Stefano Pirazzi and Nicola Ruffoni of the Bardiani CSF team, popped for human growth hormone.  I’m naming theme here to help shame them.  Now, you may not have heard of this team.  They’re just a continental team racing here on a wildcard invitation, much like Danilo De Luca’s Vini Fantini team in 2013.  The difference with his doping that year (which earned him a lifetime ban) is that he should have known better, being a seasoned veteran.  With these continental teams, the riders are still learning the ropes and thus much more likely to screw up and test positive.  You get a guy like Team Sky’s Chris Froome, he’s a consummate professional.  He would never get caught.  So it’s kind of a Catch-22 for these up-and-coming riders on the little teams; they need to dope less, to stay out of trouble, and yet they need to beat these World Tour riders if they want to make the big time.  I imagine it’s kind of like being a new hire at Chucky Cheese: if you want to have the kind of energy you need to run birthday parties all day long, you’re going to need meth … and yet, if you haven’t gotten in good with the shift supervisor, he’s not going to look the other way.

It’s about 45 miles to go.  The breakaway is down to 1:26.  Here’s a fascinating historical tidbit, courtesy of Eurosport:  Jacques Anquetil won his first Giro stage in 1999, despite having died in 1987!  It’s certainly the case that ghosts have an amazing power-to-weight ratio.

So, who’s  riding this Giro?  We’ve got defending champion Vincenzo Nibali (Bahrain-Merida); Domenico Pozzovivi (AG2R La Mondiale); Tejay van Garderen (BMC Racing); current maglia rosa Lukas Pöstlberger (Bora-Hansgrohe); Thibaut Pinot (FDJ); Nairo Quintana (Movistar); the ghost of Jacques Anquetil (albertnet-Carmex); Tom Dumoulin (Sunweb); Bauke Mollema (Trek-Segafrado); Peter Stetina (Trek-Segafredo); Pierre Roland (Cannondale Drapac); Joe Dombrowski (Cannondale Drapac); Alex Howes (Cannondale Drapac); and of course Cadel Evans, aka Caleb Ewan (Orica-Scott).

Okay, I just saw some footage of Evans/Ewan, and either he’s had some cosmetic surgery or I’m actually mistaken about this comeback thing.  Cut me some slack, it’s hard to keep up with my spotty Internet connection and these hit-or-miss free video feeds.

So here’s a brief recap of yesterday’s opening stage.  Pöstlberger was supposed to lead out a teammate at the sprint finish, but accidentally gapped the peloton and decided to solo.  And he actually pulled it off!  How is this possible?  I think it’s the badass umlaut in his name!

The breakaway, comprising five very thin nobodies in ugly uniforms, is on the category 2 Genna Silana.  They have about 39 miles to go, about 10 of them uphill.

So this is weird.  Manuele Boaro (Bahrain-Merida) had a problem with his rear derailleur, which was making his chain sag and flop around, so he took a spare bike from the team car.  But instead of just climbing on and riding off, he took the front wheel off his first bike and put it on the spare.  Why on earth would he do that?  Sentimental attachment to his front wheel?  Some kind of electronic gizmo attached to the wheel?  You can tell the pace is low or he wouldn’t take the time for a wheel swap.

In a shocking upset this season, the upstart team CCC Sprandi Polkowice was awarded the UCI official Ugliest Uniform award, toppling Team Sky who had been expected to dominate this category for years to come.

The breakaway is about 2/3 of the way up the climb and the guys are starting to attack one another.  This is a bit silly, because although their lead has gone up to 1:36, they’re going to need to work together on the descent to fend off the peloton.  I’m guessing that they were attacking Lukasz Owsian, the CCC rider, because they’re sick of looking at his orange outfit.  And sure enough, he’s dropped.  It’s a shame:  if he were able to get the pink jersey, or the KOM jersey, there would be one fewer hideous orange jersey in the race.

They keep showing Boaro, chasing the peloton after his mechanical.  Why?  I mean, who cares?  Either he makes it back on or he doesn’t.  He is irrelevant.  So is Owsian, who has now been caught by the peloton.  Good.  He deserves it for pairing that hideous team kit with orange shoes.  Surely he could have begged off, said he lost the team-issue shoes and could only find these basic black ones, and doesn’t want to switch out his shoes during a 3-week stage race.

The breakaway, now just four riders, has crested the Genna Silana but their gap is down to 36 seconds.  I guess without Owsian there to kindle their ire, they’ve just lost their passion for breaking away.

The peloton is totally loafing, riding gutter-to-gutter on the only big climb of the day.  It’ll come down to a sprint finish, with Andre Greipel (Lotto Soudal) a real favorite if and only if he can get comfortable on his bike.  He did a bike swap earlier, then was fussing with his shoe, and I really wonder what his problem is.

It’s now just three guys off the front.  One of the guys, Daniel Teklehaimanot (Dimension Data), is from Eritrea.  And he’s going for the KOM sprint!  I guess they weren’t at the summit after all!  And finally I understand what they were up to with that obviously doomed effort.  I guess I’m pretty rusty at watching bike races and making sense of them.

As you can see, I’m also pretty rusty at getting decent photos.  In my defense, Teklehaimanot was going really fast so the video camera was probably having trouble focusing.  Also, I fall behind on my reporting every time I have to type “Teklehaimanot.”

Anyway, the point I was going to make about Teklehaimanot, before he suddenly made that sweet attack for the KOM points, is that he’s one of the only, if not the only, black rider in this Giro.  I have just learned that he is only the third black Giro rider in history.  I don’t know why there aren’t more black road racers.  I’m quite sure Teklehaimanot will be the first black rider to wear the KOM jersey in the Giro.  (He is, in fact, the only black rider to ever wear the Tour de France KOM jersey.)

Wow, Eurosport just showed a top-5 highlight reel of “friction in the sprints,” which was pretty exciting.  Mark Renshaw’s famous head-butting was only #4.  The top three involved pushing and shoving that caused big crashes, and of course my wife happened to walk by at that moment.  (I guess it’s actually no coincidence because I was saying things like “holy shit!”)  Anyway, I’m torn.  On the one hand, it’s very rare for her to show any interest in this sport (she doesn’t even know what brand of bike I ride), but on the other hand I don’t need her seeing any more reminders that cycling is dangerous.

That paragraph you just read?  I know it has nothing to do with this Giro stage, but I have to keep writing or I’ll fall asleep at my desk.  This stage is so boring because the riders are loafing so badly.  Steephill.tv predicted that they’d finish at 8:14 a.m., which is in three minutes.  They would have to average 440 mph for the rest of this stage to finish on time.  I resent the riders for this, because my wife wants to go on a hike today and I’m holding up the show.  I just did some calculations and at this rate the average speed for this stage will be under 21 mph.  That’s pretty far off the highest average speed for a Giro, which was 24 mph, way back in 1983, long before EPO.  So these guys really have no excuse.

I just mentioned this average speed statistic to my wife, who said, “Maybe they’re clean!”  I was waiting for that expertly timed comic beat before she started laughing, but she didn’t.  I think she might have been serious.  As I said, she really doesn’t follow this sport.  So I’ve been trying to figure out a more plausible theory, and I think it’s that these racers are so young.  That is, they’re Millennials, and thus soft.  Perhaps they all got trophies in kiddie soccer just for participating.  It’s disgusting.  I remember when my older daughter got her first trophy:  she was like five, in soccer.  She was the most undistinguished soccer player you could imagine, just strolling along twenty feet behind the action.  She didn’t kick the ball a single time, all season, and then at the end she got a trophy.  Instead of being slightly embarrassed, she was on cloud nine about it.  She asked me, “How old were you when you got your first trophy, Daddy?”  I told her, “I was 15, but I had to earn it.  I had to win the race to get that trophy.  Nobody else got a trophy.  That’s just how it worked.  So don’t get too excited about getting a trophy for just showing up.”  If you think it’s harsh for a parent to un-praise his child like that, consider the alternative:  a bunch of whiny little bitches in Lycra averaging under 21 mph in a grand tour stage.

Okay.  I take that all back.  The pros are bigger badasses than I ever was, they don't whine, and if anything riding slow in an early Giro stage is old-school, not Millennial.  And my kid has come a long way since that participation trophy.  Click here for details (scroll to the very bottom).

Meanwhile, the scenery in this race is beautiful.  The riders just snaked through a narrow little road in a tiny town.  It wasn’t very dangerous though, because the riders are going so slow and all the spectators gave up and headed home long ago.  It’s about nine miles to go and still downhill.  It’s downhill with a tailwind so they’re finally starting to go pretty fast.

You know, maybe race leader Pöstlberger, nervous about his Bora-Hansgrohe team’s ability to defend the jersey, got his soigneur to slip roofies into the water cooler at the hotel.  Do you think WADA tests for Rohypnol?  I just checked.  They don’t test for it.  So this sluggish pace is finally explained!

If I seem excessively bitter about this slow pace, it’s because I’m using a 4G LTE cellular Internet connection, and the later it gets in the morning, the more people in my community are awake, and the more bandwidth congestion there is, so my Internet feed is slowing down and my screen keeps freezing.  I really should spring for cable, but I refuse to support Comcast or whatever name they’re hiding behind now.

It’s 7 km to go and some Katusha rider has had a flat tire.  They’re showing him trying to chase back on which means he must be a GC rider, because otherwise who would care if he caught back on?  I mean, it’s not like you could with the stage after such a chase.  It’s Ilnur Zakarin, who is indeed a GC hopeful (or perhaps a GC hopeless if his team can’t pace him back up). 

Now it’s 5km to go and the peloton is still gutter-to-gutter, nobody wanting to go hard on the front.  And my feed has stopped completely.  Dammit!

Okay, 2.6km to go and the peloton has finally lined out.  Still, in the back half of the pack the riders aren’t even in the drops.  Zakarin looks like he’s going to be able to latch onto the back, amazingly enough.  I guess the tailwind helped. 

So, it’ll be hard for me to follow this sprint because every single rider in the peloton is on a different team than last year, and half the teams have different sponsors, and most of the costumes have changed.  Okay, a rider is out of the saddle, the first time that’s happened since that KOM sprint!

“Lots of different riders in here,” the Eurosport announcers says helpfully.  Now my screen has gone black.  Do I dare hit Refresh?  Okay, my feed is back but the race is over.  I literally missed the finish, after watching this damn race for more than 2½ hours.  Maybe they’ll show a replay and I can pretend I’m still watching live.  What a travesty. 

Okay here it is!  They’re sprinting!  Somebody gets a mechanical!  Terrible timing!  And here comes Greipel up the side!  He’s a great big burly man and I think he’ll get the win!

Was that convincing?  Did it seem like it was really unfolding before my eyes?  Naw, didn’t think so.  Oh well.  What a boring stage.  Their final, official average speed was just 22.5 mph, despite having a fricking tailwind.  (Obviously my earlier calculation was pretty far off … I hadn’t accounted for the last 30 miles being downhill.)

Anyway, Greipel will take over the race lead.  I don’t even get to see the podium ceremony because the race ran over its projected time for so long, and my Internet feed has switched to soccer.  And you know what?  I’m suddenly aware of how ungrateful I’ve been … no matter how slow these bike racers go, it’ll never be as boring to watch as soccer.

--~--~--~--~--~--~--~---~--

For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Biased Blow-By-Blow, Giro d’Italia 2014, Stage 20

Introduction

If you tried to come up with a good reason to watch the final mountain stage of this year’s Giro d’Italia and came up empty (since the final top five on the GC is all but set in stone), but are vaguely curious about what went down, you’ve come to the right place.  Especially if you’re tired of mainstream journalism with its standards of decency—that is, the tact that overrides the natural human instinct to say really cynical things and hurl damaging accusations that of course are generally true.  What follows is a heavily biased blow-by-blow of the epic Monte Zoncolan stage, which separates the men from the boys and the doped from the clean.

Biased Blow-By-Blow – Giro d’Italia Stage 20

As I join the coverage, Sean Kelly and his fellow Eurosport commentator are talking about gearing.  Kelly says, “Yes.  I think compact is, uh, the thing for this final climb.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see riders making bike changes before the Zoncolan.”  Why wouldn’t they just do the whole race with a compact crank?  Because of the shame, of course.  Even riders who are almost five hours behind in the GC still have some pride.

The non-Kelly Eurosport announcer just compared the Monte Zoncolan to the “Angrilu” in the Vuelta a Espana.  I’m impressed that he’s so knowledgeable about other grand tours, but he pronounced it wrong.  It’s “Angliru,” which is of course much harder to say.  Kelly gets it right, though as usual he sounds like his mouth is full of marbles (but in that charming Irish way).

There’s a huge breakaway over five minutes ahead of the pink jersey group.  Actually, it almost looks like the GC group is smaller than the break.  They’re heading up the Sella Razzo, which is Italian for “saddle of the weasel-y mafia guy.”  As a group of riders crests this one (an intermediate chase group, I think) a guy is handing up pink newspapers to shove under their jerseys for warmth.  That’s kind of cool.  This is as close to the pink jersey as most of these guys are going to get in their careers.

Pierre Rolland (Team Europcar) has attacked, and only Rafal Majka (Tinkoff-Saxo) and Domenica Pozzovivo (AG2R La Mondiale) are able to follow.  I think I see Fabio Aru (Astana Pro Team) in there.  Hard to tell how far back the other GC guys are, because my so-called streaming video is more like a slide show today ... a slide show being given by a blowhard who yaks on for five minutes about each photo, kind of like I’m doing now.

I got up extra early today to watch the final descent before the Zoncolan.  That’s because it’s probably the only kind of terrain that could give race leader Nairo Quintana (Movistar Team) any trouble.  Not that he’s a bad descender or anything, but the laws of physics wouldn’t be in his favor.  (Look at Taylor Phinney’s stage win in that recent Tour of California stage.)

So, Nairo is a pretty cool name for a bike racer.  It makes me think of a Roman emperor or something.  I’m less stoked about the name Fabio (i.e., the first name of Aru).  Fabio of course sounds like the male hero of a thick romance novel.

Speaking of names, whenever my friends and I chat about Rigoberto Uran, we add another Uran to the end.  It’s up to like four Urans now; sort of a last-name-inflation.  This is because his full name is Rigoberto Uran Uran.  The second Uran is his mother’s family name, so kind of a coincidence there.  Perhaps over in Colombia “Uran” is as common as “Smith” or “Jones” here (though in reality, I only know one Smith family and no Jones).

The leader right now, at this moment, is the American Brent Bookwalter.  He’s a pretty big guy, perfect for this descent but not so perfect for a climb like the Zoncolan.  Case in point:  he lost almost nine minutes in the uphill time trial yesterday.

It’s been awhile since my first 2014 Giro d’Italia blow-by-blow report.  That was a good day in the Giro, because my favorite rider, Cadel Evans, took the pink jersey.  Well, a lot has changed since then, and yet nothing ever changes.  Evans’ bad days are as predictable as, say, Alejandro Valverde’s doping.  (No, Valverde isn’t in this Giro ... he’s never ridden the Giro, and probably never will because the Italian authorities were the first to sanction him for his doping by not letting him race within their borders, which ruled out the Tour de France one year due to a side trip it made into Italy.  So he’s probably pretty bitter about that.)

So anyway, Evans is only in 7th, because on several key days he looked all too human, as opposed to “not normal” which is the more common profile of a grand tour winner.  Evans hasn’t had a spectacularly bad day, like Pantani used to have, but more like a general slowdown, which—being the normal human response to racing day after day for three weeks—was kind of refreshing, and yet disappointing, to watch.

“Tired?  Depressed?  Missing your usual vim?  Ask your doctor if Zoncolan is right for you.” 

The GC group is obviously taking this descent pretty carefully.  Their gap to the leaders has gone from five minutes to about 6½.  Seems like a good opportunity for a rider like Aru who isn’t so tiny as the Colombian climbers.  I wonder if Aru can descend?  Height isn’t everything when you’re as bone-thin as he is.  I just typed his name into Google and the first search it suggested was “fabio aru height weight.”  Looks like he’s 5’11” but only 135 pounds ... so, like five pounds heavier than Quintana.  So I guess I can see why he’s not attacking on the downhill.  But Pierre Rolland, sitting in fourth?  By cyclist standards he’s a Goliath at 6 feet tall, 157 pounds.  He’s just one step from the podium and he can climb pretty well.  Shouldn’t he attack on the downhill?  I don’t know.  The Zoncolan is pretty long, and the top three steps of the podium are all especially thin guys.  And Rolland is surely pretty tired.  Still, the lead is up to 7:22, so the GC group is totally loafing.  Must be frustrating for a guy like Wilco Kelderman (Belkin Pro Cycling), 6 feet tall (though only 141 pounds), who needs only four seconds to move from 8th to 7th overall.  (Trivia question:  what is Wilco Kelderman’s brother’s name?  Answer:  Roger.  No it’s not.)

Time gap is up to 7:32.  I guess the leaders are pretty confident that the Zoncolan will sort everything out.  The highest GC rider in the break is Franco Pellizotti (Androni Giocattoli), who’s sitting in 14th but over half an hour down!  This Giro has had so many monster climbs, the gaps between riders are pretty huge.

Okay, the leaders are on the base of the Zoncolan now.  They have less than 9km to go, but at an average grade of like 10% and pitches over 20%.  So it’s going to take awhile.

Some spectator is holding out a sheet of paper, the Euro equivalent of 8½x11, with something written on it in ball-point.  I’d be really impressed if a racer could make anything out.

So before things heat up on the big climb, I guess I should get our uncomfortable discussion out of the way.  Is Quintana doping?  Well, it’s too early in his career to start casting aspersions, and it must be said that this Giro totally suits a pocket climber like him.  So I’m going to be really nice and not hurl an accusation at him despite his amazing feats in these mountains.

Wow, two of Quintana’s Movistar teammates have attacked at the base of the Zoncolan!  That’s really, really odd.  I mean, what could they have to gain from this?  It’s bizarre.  Quintana has wisely let them go.  What an astonishingly silly thing to do.  The only thing that could keep Quintana from winning the GC is totally blowing up today, which probably won’t happen if the pace is steady.  So what were his guys doing?  Okay, they’ve slowed up and now everything is back together.  I haven’t seen such a display since the base of Alpe d’Huez in the 2003 Tour de France, when two of Lance’s US Postal domestiques did the same thing.  But in that case it made sense because Jan Ullrich was in difficulty and Lance had precious little time on him.  Yes, Lance’s boys went too hard and almost dropped him, like we (well, I) just saw here, but that’s just because they were so lubed they didn’t feel a thing.

Maybe that’s what happened just now with Movistar.  I think of them as one of the dopiest teams in the sport.  Remember, this was the team that started out as Reynolds (which produced Delgado, a proven doper) and Indurain (never popped for dope, but clearly Not Normal), whose dominance lasted through the Banesto years.  When the team had morphed into Caisse d’Epargne it featured the very suspicious Oscar Pereiro, who tested positive during the 2006 Tour, but for asthma medication he somehow later proved was okay, and also for an improbably banned acne medication that just made everybody giggle.  And then Landis later said that Pereiro had casually mentioned his own doping to Landis, under the omertà of the day, and I believe that, whether or not anybody else does.  But of course it’s been in its current Movistar incarnation that we’ve seen this team’s most obvious doper, that being Valverde.  Does a crooked team mean all the riders are crooked?  Not really.  So I can’t accuse Quintana of doping, but at the same time I cannot help having a visceral response to the lime green M on his chest.

Oh man.  Speaking of dopers, Michael Rogers (Tinkoff-Saxo) is riding really well at the front of the breakaway (despite being a large time trialist, not a small climber) while his apparently clean countryman, Cadel Evans, is already on the ropes in the back of the GC group.  

Quintana looks totally unflappable near the front of this GC group, even as it begins to disintegrate.  Quintana has looked unflappable throughout this Giro, despite starting poorly and losing a lot of time in the first time trial.  Speaking of time trials, it’s curious to note that Quintana won the time trial yesterday quite handily despite mostly breathing through his nose.  (He’s doing the same thing today:  at any given time his mouth is closed, often forming a Mona Lisa smile.)  But the second place finisher in yesterday’s time trial, Fabio Aru, must have detached his jaw like a snake or something because when he came over the line (with an amazingly fast time) you could have stuffed several tennis balls in that mouth, it was gaping open so far.

So, setting aside the questionable doping tradition of his Movistar team, do I have any issue with Quintana?  Well, I cannot write about this race without excoriating Quintana for the very tall bright-pink latex-shiny booties he wore in the TT yesterday.  Who does he think he is, Elton John?  Those booties were disgraceful and Quintana should have been sanctioned by the race organizers.  I’d already been slightly annoyed by the amount of pink he’s been wearing—pink helmet, sunglasses, gloves, shorts, I even heard a rumor (or did I start it?) that he’s wearing a pink condom under there.

Speaking of garish colors, last remaining guy in the breakaway with Rogers, wearing lime green, is Francesco Bongiorno (Bardiani-CSF).  You don’t need to speak Italian to know his name means “Good day,” which is kind of odd.  If my last name were “Good day” I’d expect to raise a lot of eyebrows, but I guess the Italians can pull that off.

Another look at the GC group, and Simon Geschke (Giant-Shimano) is on the front again.  I can’t figure out why he’s doing so much work ... it’s not for a teammate because this team’s highest-placed rider, Georg Preidler, is in 29th, over an hour down on the GC.  Anyway, Geschke is rocking a full beard.  Not a goatee like Pantani had, but a full, thick, Grizzly Adams beard.  This seems to be a trend in the peloton.  I think Laurens Ten Dam started it, and Ryder Hesjedal now wears a beard, as do Bradley Wiggins and Thomas De Gendt.  The first time I saw a full beard on a “cyclist” it was that fat Russian guy in “American Flyers.”  (They had to give him a beard because the director obviously didn’t think a red jersey with a hammer and sickle insignia would be enough to signal to the American audience that this was an evil Russian.)

Wow, Bongiorno has attacked Rogers!  Go, man, go!  Rogers doesn’t even look troubled—he instantly neutralizes the move with no difficulty.  I really wonder what drugs are coursing through his veins.  I mean, this guy is 6’1” and 163 pounds, and he’s just cruising up this 15% grade like it’s nothing.  This during the third week of a very mountainous Giro, no less.  I guess when Rogers left Team Sky he took a couple cards from their Rolodex, or at least a few duffel bags of their secret sauce.

It’s only 3 km to go for the leaders, with almost 5½ minutes to the exceedingly elite GC “group.”  It’s not really a group, though ... it has shattered.  It’s just a handful of guys now, Quintana flanked by a teammate.  Pozzovivo is gapped behind with Rolland, Aru, and Majka.

Oh no, Bongiorno is not having any luck.  It looks like he threw his chain!  That happened to Ryder Hesjedal (Garmin-Sharp) yesterday in the TT, and to some other guy toward the end of a flat stage of this Giro.  What’s up with these team mechanics?  Surely such problems can be avoided.  A spectator tries to give Bongiorno a push, but knocks him sideways and he has to unclip from one of his pedals.  I’m not sure exactly how all that played out just now—it happened so fast—but the upshot is that Rogers now has a gap.

I’m really bummed because now Rogers may be headed for a solo victory.  What a mockery of fair play.  He’s defying the laws of physics.  In addition to his size, he’s also 34 years old, which is a bit old for these brute-force non-wily moves.  And yet here he is, motoring along like he’s Christopher Froome or something.  He’s got 2.2 km to go.  If anything he’s extending his lead over Bongiorno, who is visibly struggling despite being 23 years old, 5’7”, and 130 pounds.

“Not to take anything away from Mick Rogers,” says the Eurosport commentator, “but he’s so lubed it’s not even funny.”  No, that’s not how he ended that sentence, though I had my hopes up.  He actually said, “... but to have Bongiorno disrupted by a fan is a great shame.”

Speaking of great shame, Rogers has only 1 km to go.  Remember when he was a time trial specialist?  He was supposed to be the next big thing, except he never really got the results, until he joined Team Sky and suddenly became this great climber who could sit on the front of the group pace-setting on a big mountain while normal small climbers got spat out the back.  It was a career renaissance of sorts, the likes of which I haven’t seen since Steve Austin (as in, the Six Million Dollar Man, not the “wrestler,” though cycling is starting to have a lot in common with professional wrestling).

Franco Pellizotti has passed Bongiorno.

Here comes Rogers.  He’s got the win.  His victory salute is pretty awkward.  He’s not really used to this; it’s only his second grand tour stage win (the earlier one being a week or so ago).  Back when he was a credible time trialist, he didn’t get to do victory salutes when he won.  Perhaps he should have practiced them.  He has had plenty of time, being so old and all.  How often do you see a rider hitting his best-ever form at age 34?  That’s almost like a gymnast getting his or her first Olympic gold at age 20, or a mathematician making his or her greatest discovery at age 95.

The remains of the breakaway are trailing in one by one.  They really look spent.  You can tell how steep it is by how slow they’re going, which wasn’t the case with Rogers, who I can only hope will test positive like Danilo Di Luca did last year after his series of unrealistic feats of strength.

Uran is putting the hurt on Quintana, not for any obvious reason other than to show that he, Uran, is still a strong cyclist who can be taken seriously.  I think that’s pretty cool.  Perhaps Uran is taking the lead so he can use his mullet to mock Quintana.  (I shouldn’t talk, my mullet was even worse, but I was only 18!)  Now Quintana has taken the lead and is sprinting for the line, again for no obvious reason than simple instinct.  They’re over the line and barely rolling anymore.

Aru comes over the line now, his tongue hanging out like a dog’s.  I hope it doesn’t get in his wheel.

We get a high helicopter shot and man, there’s so much snow up there.  The climb really is a monster.

Here comes Evans in the final kilometer.  He’s out of the saddle as usual, slightly overgeared because shifting down would crush out any morale he has left.  The camera switches to the finish line where Kelderman comes across, and it looks like he’ll get the handful of seconds he needs to move into seventh over Evans.

Evans crosses the line.  He looks like he’s about to cry—but then, he almost always looks like that, even when he’s on the podium. 

Rogers is being interviewed.  “It’s really worth it, it’s amazing,” he says.  Is he talking about Bjarne Riis’s “coaching,” or is he talking about “training in the winter,” the revolutionary practice pioneered by Froome that he’s obviously adopted?  Or is he warming up for a second career hawking pharmaceuticals?

There’s the official GC, and Evans has sunk to eighth.  Probably he won’t care that much ... to have made the podium last year, and to have won the fricking Tour de Fricking France a few years back, I doubt he can get that excited about just being top-ten.

Well, that’s it for this Giro.  I’m feeling pretty gutted by the stage result today, I have to admit.  I think the highlight was pondering the number of beards in the peloton.  I think I’m going to skip the Tour de France altogether unless I can further develop my appreciation for side-shows.  Perhaps a survey of the growing variety of wacky spectators running alongside the racers?

Biased Blow-By-Blow - Giro d’Italia 2014, Stage 8

Introduction

The 2014 Giro d’Italia might be the most exciting grand tour of the year.  Clearly the Tour de France is going to be boring again, and you never know about the Vuelta a España.  Last year’s Giro winner, Vicenzo Nibali, is skipping this year’s Giro, kidding himself that he can top the über-doper, Christopher Froome, in the Tour.  Meanwhile, the BMC Racing Team kicked its most celebrated rider, Cadel Evans, down to the Giro, having become fed up with his tendency to lose the Tour de France.  So we’ve got Evans—a rider who very well may be clean—going up against last year’s second-place finisher, the uncannily strong Rigoberto Uran (then riding for the uncannily, suspiciously invincible Team Sky, now on Omega-Pharma-Quick Step), and Nairo Alexander Quintana Rojas, winner of the Young Rider classification in last year’s Tour de France, riding for the perennially lubed Movistar Team.

As you’ve gathered from that previous paragraph, I do not adhere to any standard of journalistic integrity in my race reports.  I figure if the racers can play fast and loose with Truth, why can’t I?  Besides, you’re probably tired of race commentators biting their tongues.  So in this report I’ll be calling a spade a spade, or sometimes “a filthy doping spade.”

Biased Blow-By-Blow – Giro d’Italia Stage 8

As I tune in to the coverage (via postcard-size Internet feed), I can’t tell what’s happening and am hanging on the announcer’s every word.  “The way he’s waving, it almost looks like a bird!” the announcer says delightedly.  I have no idea what he’s talking about until they show the super-slo-mo of a guy in the breakaway waving away the camera bike.  I can’t decide who’s sillier:  the racer with his flowery, effete waving, or the announcer with his bizarre simile.

So at the front of the race are three guys I’ve never heard of, attacking each other about 3K from the summit of a brutal climb, the Category 1 Cipo di Carpegna.  Going for KOM points.  It’s 38K to go with a gap of a few minutes, so they probably won’t stay away to the finish.

Okay, after a brief interlude I’m back.  You know, watching racers on climbs like this really moves me.  Not in any sentimental way, but it affects my bodily functions.  So strong is my empathy with these guys, watching them on a brutal climb makes me have to go to the bathroom.  As in, #2.  That’s when it’s great when there’s a breakaway, because their split time back to the peloton tells me how much time I have to take care of my business before the GC riders hit the climb.  I don’t want to miss any of the really important action but I also don’t want to soil myself.

One of the Eurosport announcers (I can’t keep track of their names because they always seem to change around, except Sean Kelly), just said, “I’m sorry to repeat the cliché, but it has to be said:  you can’t win the Giro on this stage, but you can lose it.”  This is somewhat remarkable because it’s the same thing said by another commentator, Christian Vande Velde, announcing the Tour of California.  Not just the “can’t win but can lose” bit, but also the apology for repeating a cliché.  I think this is an important step forward.  At least some of these clichés have now been recognized (though there are many others).  Surely there’s another way to put it that’s a bit fresher.  For example, “The final winner won’t be decided today, but the number of hopefuls will be whittled down.”

The leaders are over the climb.  It’s about 30K to go.  The peloton is about two minutes back.  One guy, Julian Arredondo of Trek Factory Racing, has distanced the rest of the break, with Perrig Quemeneur (Team Europcar) and Stefano Pirazzi (Bardiani-CSF) struggling behind him.  I know what you’re thinking:  I just made those names up.  Well, “Perrig” does sound like something I made out of an unhelpful tray of Scrabble tiles, and “Pirazzi” is absurdly generic, but those are real rider names.

Pierre Rolland (Team Europcar) has attacked the peloton.  I remember him riding so well for his teammate Thomas Voeckler in a recent Tour de France stage that he ended up beating him.  I thought that was pretty great because for various reasons, I think Voeckler is a tool.

The peloton has passed over the summit of the Carpegna, and now Cadel Evans has attacked!  He’s been really good in this Giro so far, picking up handfuls of seconds wherever he can.  Being a good descender may be a help here because this is a pretty technical descent.

The non-Kelly announcer (or are there more than one of them?) just called this “the Tour d’Italia.”  That’s a new one.  Dude, pick a language and go with it.

So that looked like the hardest climb, on paper, of the day—but of course the final climb will be harder because it’s a mountaintop finish so nobody will be holding anything back.  The final climb, coming up soon, is the Eremo Madonna del Faggio, the name of which would make any NASCAR fan giggle if he were watching this, which I guarantee he isn’t, unless the batteries in his remote control have died and he has no choice.

So how hard is a Category 1 climb?  They can be pretty brutal.  For the Faggio to be a Cat 1 means it must be insanely steep, because it’s pretty short.  It comes right after the Category 2 Villaggio del Lago.  If Category 2 doesn’t sound bad, consider that the Col du Télégraphe in the Tour de France is only a Cat 2, and it’s plenty brutal enough.

While I have some time, before the GC contenders start climbing again, I’m going to fill you in on a strong bias that I will have throughout this Giro:  I’m really gunning for Cadel Evans.

Wait, what’s “gunning for” mean?  I thought everybody knew it meant “rooting for,” but I was embarrassed to discover this isn’t universally understood.  My embarrassment came at a Coors Classic reunion party in 2011, shortly after Evans won that year’s Tour, and I was chatting with BMC Team manager Jim Ochowicz.  I told Ochowicz I’d been gunning for Evans in the Tour, and he got really riled up.  “Why!?” he snapped.  I explained what I meant by “gunning for,” but this didn’t compeletely dispel the awkwardness.  Maybe Ochowicz thought I was just backpedaling.

So anyway, yeah, I hope Evans wins.  Why?  Well, in my book he’s the only credible Tour de France winner since, well, since Greg LeMond, actually.  Everybody else since then looked totally lubed.  Can I back this up with any facts, in the short time I have until the GC boys hit this next climb?

Suffice to say, if you look at the Tour winners’ rate of vertical gain on big climbs—that is, the data showing how fast these guys have been going—Evans had the worst numbers since, like, LeMond.  Evans was a fair bit slower than Contador had been, and Andy Schleck, and Lance, and all the rest.  The logic goes like this:  if we know Contador was doping, and Contador was setting a Lance-like pace on these climbs, and Schleck could keep up with him, than Schleck was doping.  Meanwhile, if Contador’s times were similar to Lance’s, which were similar to Pantani’s, than Contador’s positive test wasn’t tainted beef from Spain.

Evans won a Tour in which Contador was fried from riding the Giro (which he rode because he wasn’t sure he’d be riding the Tour due to his pending doping case), and Andy Schleck had already started his descent into psychological incompetence, perhaps spooked by his brother’s positive test.  (Maybe he’d been scared straight.)  Team Sky’s Bradley Wiggins, meanwhile, had crashed out. The 2011 Tour was a rare opportunity for a clean rider to win, and Evans did it (after falling short several times before and since).  Plus, Evans so often looks like he’s suffering, unlike, say, all of Team Sky’s riders, who never do.

No, of course I’m not sure Evans is clean.  But he loses so often—despite his form being fairly consistent, his tactical acumen being great, his bike handling superb, and his psyche very tough—that he really does seem possibly human (vs. the dope-fueled superhuman mutants he’s usually up against).  Either I take this leap of faith in him, or lose interest in grand tours altogether.

Several of my pals don’t like Evans because he seems to whine a lot.  Some of that is just his high-pitched voice.  Look, guys, with so many dopers in the peloton, we can’t afford to be too choosy about a rider’s freaking voice.  What, they gotta be D.J.-caliber now?  Should the guy who does movie preview voice-overs be recruited to the pro peloton?  And yes, it’s true that Evans has complained a lot after bike races, but so do my biking pals, after and during (hell, even before) training rides, and about a lot more trivial matters than you see in a three-week tour.

But then there’s the matter of Liongate.  This is the incident in which some journalist or spectator tried to take away Evans’ lion—the stuffed lion a Tour de France leader is awarded.  Evans angrily slapped the guy's hand away.  Given Evans’ reputation for whining, I guess this struck many as a comical instance of childishness, like he really loved the stuffed lion.

(Rolland has overhauled Pirazzi, by the way.  They’re over the Villaggio.  Rolland is 1:15 behind Arredondo, with the peloton at 2:40.)

Getting back to Evans, I respect his defense of the lion.  He probably promised a niece or nephew or godson that he’d win a lion for him.  His wife probably said, “Don’t you come back here without one of those lions!”  I know I’ve bent over backwards to get swag for my kids—swag nowhere nearly as rare and cool as a Tour de France stuffed lion.

Pirazzi is going backward.  Poor guy.  Oh well, at least we’ve heard his name now.  He’s only 27; I’m sure we’ll see more from him as his career goes on.

Remarkably, Julian Arredondo, finishing the penultimate climb, is only 8K from the finish and still has two minutes.  He’s got the KOM jersey in the bag, and might just hold on for the stage win.

The peloton is strung out in a line even though they’re not on a very steep section.  They must be hammering.

Pierre Rolland is about 1:10 back from Arredondo.  His form is a bit jerky—not nearly as smooth as that of Wiggins, whom I’ve been watching in the Tour of California, and who I’m pretty sure is actually a robot.

Speaking of “not normal” performers, Michele Scarponi (Astana Pro Team) must have screwed up his pharma, because he’s way off the back today.  So we don’t have to worry about seeing him succeed here at the expense of riders who possibly deserve a fair, fighting chance.

Now Pirazzi crosses the summit, looking pretty fried and bobbing quite a bit.

Now Rolland is only 52 seconds behind Arredondo.  That’s what happens when the guy you’ve been chasing is descending while you’re still climbing.  This gap will shrink even more once Arredondo hits the Faggio (i.e., when Rolland is still descending), but that too will be an illusion.

I know nothing about Arredondo except that he’s Colombian and his name is kind of hard to type.  If he ends up replacing Andy Schleck as the Trek GC guy, maybe I’ll set up a macro or give him a nickname, to spare my hands.

Rolland is now only 37 seconds behind Arredondo and they’re both on the final climb.  This could be a real nail-biter, for those who bite their nails, which is a really disgusting habit and they should quit.  Find another nervous-energy tic, like drumming your fingers on the table, or drumming them on a keyboard like I am.

It’s 5K to go and Arredondo looks pretty beat.  He’s really straining.  Behind him, Rolland also looks pretty bad, his shoulders still rocking and his legs not quite turning over his gear.  To downshift might do more damage psychologically than struggling in too big a gear.  Man, how refreshing to see actual, visible suffering after seeing Wiggo spinning the pedals like his drivetrain was a desk fan plugged into a wall socket.  Someone needs to inflate that dude’s tires with water or something.

Arredondo is really grimacing.  He just spat, and it wasn’t blood, but I wouldn’t have been surprised.  Rolland is now 30 seconds back with 3.9K to go. 

Arredondo is now making a grimace that looks a lot like “the white man’s overbite”—the expression white men make while dancing.  That can’t be good.  He’s really, really suffering and he just shot a look over his shoulder.  I wish he could see how bad Rolland looks—that would buck him up a bit.

Back in the peloton, some BMC rider is hammering on the front.  Too big to be Evans, though I think I see Evans on the big dude’s wheel.

Oh man, 3.4K and Rolland is only 17 seconds behind Arredondo.  But Rolland looks so, so awful!  His butt is bouncing a bit on his saddle.  His legs look so jerky, like the longer, higher-compression pistons of a high-torque engine used for hauling big loads.  (Note to fellow race announcers:  you see how elegantly I avoided the cliché of calling him a “big diesel”?)

An ad for Bet 365 is obscuring my view but it looks like BMC is well placed at the front of the peloton.

Rolland has caught Arredondo!  Rolland still looks awful, his bike visibly wobbling even though he’s in the saddle.  Arredondo is sitting on his wheel.  Arredondo’s expression is that of a boarding school kid being paddled.  I’d say the peloton is within a minute of this leading duo.

Ivan Basso (Cannondale) is near the front of the peloton, right on Evans’ wheel.  Either he’s been training in the winter like Christopher Froome, or he’s back on the lube after a number of very lean years.

Oh my, the peloton is only 24 seconds back.  Who says “oh my” anymore?  I think these British announcers are influencing me.  Whoah, Arredondo just blew sky-high!

This peloton is too large.  They need to step it up to better entertain me.  Don’t they know I’m trying to write a really exciting report?  What’s wrong with these people?

Rolland is hanging on very impressively.  With 1.2K to go he’s holding the gap at 19 seconds.

Some Astana guy just attacked.  He was quickly caught so I don’t have to bother learning his name.  Looks like Evans himself is right on the front.  He’ll be in pink today because the current race leader, Michael Matthews (Orica-GreedEdge), is off the back.

It looks like Rolland is going to hang on!  He’s 450 meters from the finish.  The peloton is in sight!  But man, it’s a very steep finish stretch.  Danny Moreno (Katusha) is going after him—and he’s got him!  But the pack is right there, too.  It’s amazing!  The deck of cards has been scattered, like at the end of “Alice in Wonderland”!  I can’t tell who’s coming up on Moreno, it’s some Lampre guy, Fellici or something. 

Man, it’s all over and I never got that guy’s name!  The Lampre dude passed Moreno just before the line.  But it wasn’t even Moreno, it was some other guy who was shot from the front of the exploding peloton like a bit of shrapnel!  Total chaos and I’m just not quick enough to have made any sense of it.

Okay, the winner is Diego Ulissi, snatching the victory away from Trek’s Roberto Kiserlovski who came out of nowhere in that finale.

Wilco Kelderman (Belkin) materialized out of thin air for third.

Cadel Evans has got the pink jersey because Matthews was dropped today, as had been predicted.  Evans was just interviewed but it wasn’t that interesting.  He didn’t whine or anything, and there was no stuffed animal to clutch.  He did have a towel around his shoulders ... I wonder if the haters will mock him for that.

I love these super-slo-mos.  Here’s Ulissi giving Kiserlovski “the look” in the final meters of the race, as if to say, “Too late, bub, I got this!”

The announcer is saying this is Evans’ first pink jersey since 2002.  That’s simply not true.  He wore it briefly in 2010.  The bar is set pretty low for accuracy in covering this sport; just look at how many guys said Lance Armstrong was the first cyclist to appear on the Wheaties box, when that honor actually went to Doug Smith many years before.

Man, it looks like the coverage is over.  For some reason, Eurosport doesn’t allot any time for the podium celebrations anymore.  It’s a shame, because while I don’t want to go on record as saying I approve of the barbaric practice of having pretty women kissing the winners, I will admit that, due to irrepressible characteristics of my brain stem, I do enjoy watching the ceremony.  It can be pretty funny, like if the winner is some tiny Colombian and the podium girls have to stoop way down, or if the winner is a tall and gangly Dutchman and has to work very hard not to accidentally elbow one of the podium girls in the face. 

After an endless series of ads, after which I hoped maybe they’d return to Giro coverage, Eurosport has gone into a top-10 “Obstacles on the Road” countdown, showing massive crashes caused by—wow, here’s one with a cow!  I’m not joking!  Now there’s that T-Mobile guy piling into a spectator during his final run for a Tour stage—I remember that.  And now some spectator getting nailed on a descent at like 40 or more.  Man, this is grisly!  I know I should be posting my Giro report to my blog, but I can’t help watching!  Another guy just hit something furry—a badger?  Oh, man, a low road sign on a median and this dude flips over it at like 30.  And there’s Hoogerland getting run into a barbed wire fence by a pace car.  We’re down to number one.  Ah, yes, a final sprint in a Tour stage and a sprinter has his head down and piles into a referee.  Geez, after all that my pulse is racing.  These Eurosport broadcasters—they’re crazy!  Maybe somebody complained about podium girls and this was their idea of a joke.  (“Is this civilized enough for you?!”)  Anyway, it’s 8:26 a.m. and I am TOTALLY WIRED.  I hope you’ve enjoyed this Giro stage coverage.

Biased Blow-by-Blow - Tour de France Stage 8

NOTE:  This post is rated R for mild strong language, drug references, and excessive bitterness.

Introduction

As I’ve blogged before, there’s a benefit to bike race coverage that doesn’t try to be unbiased or fair.  Sports fans have their favorites and so should commentators.  And it can be necessary to call a spade a spade on the basis of it looking, sounding, and smelling like a spade, even if the highest standards of journalistic integrity would require some kind of proof that it’s a spade.  So here is my  totally biased report.

Biased blow-by-blow – Tour de France Stage 8

What’s-his-face, Declan, just said, “Guess-ink, or Jess-ink, depending on how you pronounce his name.”  Uh, dude?  There’s usually a single right way.  As a journalist you’re supposed to simply find out what that is.

Anyway, Robert Gesink attacks from the peloton.  He’s going after the breakaway of three.  I don’t know who’s in it because my feed just froze.

David Millar is going off the back.  Not sure if you’d remember this, but there was a time he was touted as a future Tour GC contenda.  Oh well.  I think it’s enough that he can win the odd stage.

The riders are all climbing the Col de Pailhères, by the way.  It’s an HC climb.  I heard one of the announcers the other day describing the categorization system as being based on an old car a journalist had.  If he could make it over a climb in 4th gear, it was a category 4.  If he had to downshift to third, it was a cat 3, and so forth.  If his old car couldn’t make it over at all, it was HC.  Not sure if there’s any truth to this, and I’d like to know what that car was, but it’s kind of amusing.

Thomas Voeckler is heading off after Gesink.  “You might call him ‘the housewife’s favorite’ but he’s bored with that,” Declan declares.  I’m not sure I like the visual on that ... hair curlers meet single-digit body fat.  Blech.

Pierre Rolland, the Europcar leader, is dropped.  It didn’t take Voeckler very long to take advantage.  I guess he had a deal already cut with the management:  “If Rolland sucks in the mountains, I don’t have to wait.”

The countryside is absolutely gorgeous.  Perfect weather, green everywhere.  We armchair tourists can appreciate it in a way the racers probably can’t.  I remember a journalist asking a Coors Classic rider if he enjoyed the weird scenery on the “Tour of the Moon” stage; the guy replied, “What scenery?”

Sky is lined out on the front.  It’s only a matter of time before Froome, and then Porte, accidentally drop everybody due to the staggering amounts of lube coursing through their systems.  It’s kind of like how a drunk can wander out into a blizzard and never feel a thing.

Race leader Daryl Impey is getting dropped.  Where’s your Orica-Green Edge van now, Impey?  (Okay, maybe that was uncalled for.)

Nairo Quintana (Movistar) has effortlessly bridged up to Voeckler, like a piranha chasing down a goldfish.

Now Voeckler looks like a goldfish whose tail section has been bitten off.  He’s going backwards.  The way his mouth is gaping, he really does look fishlike.  Now he’s absorbed by the group.

Quintana is really moving.  He’s making it look easy.

Sylvain Chavanel is falling off the back of the peloton.

Christophe Riblon (AG2R) is the leader of the race, out front alone.  It looks like Quintana has dropped Gesink as he chases Riblon. 

Declan is describing the expensive road surface that doesn’t melt in the heat.  “Being expensive is perhaps why it’s so narrow.”  This guy would be fun to have at a dinner party, I think, but I can’t help but wish Sean Kelly would assert himself a bit more and talk about, say, bike racing.

Quintana has caught Riblon and now they’re working together.  They’ve got 39 seconds on the peloton.

Now Quintana has dropped Riblon.  Riblon’s shoulders are rocking and I’m sure he knows that the fun and games are over.

Can Quintana hang on for 32K more?

Pierre Rolland has not only made it back to the peloton, but has now attacked it.  I’ll bet he has some choice words for Voeckler at dinner.

Gesink is now dropped from the peloton.  Declan has just called him “Hay-sink,”  so he’s now used three different pronunciations, covering all the bases.

It’s a little sad that Sky still has at least four guys at the front.  There was a time when only one, maybe two domestiques could drop a perennial Tour favorite like Gesink.  Vasil Kiryienka is sitting on the front blasting away like it was nothing.  Kiry-who?  Exactly my point.

Sportlemon.tv has crapped out completely.  Curses!  I’m trying Hahabar.com.  Wish me luck.

No luck.  Stopstream.tv, can you help?  Well, I can see some footage, but it’s in French.

Quintana has just over a minute.  He’s looking really, really strong.

There’s some snow up here.  I think this stage reaches the highest point of this year’s Tour.

The French announcer is either talking about the course, or somebody’s heart.

Alberto Contador’s Saxo Bank team also has several domestiques in this increasing select lead group.

Tejay van Garderen has been dropped from the peloton!  Cadel Evans is still holding tough.  This group only has like 20 guys now.

I don’t like this French commentary at all.  Those guys have a different word for everything.  (Yes, I stole that joke from Steve Martin.) 

Okay, Hahabar has finally come through and I’m back to my native tongue.

Wow, Quintana is into the fenced-off section near the summit of the climb.  He’s still looking very good, though his lead is still only a minute.  He’ll have to descend like a maniac to hold off the group and still have an advantage at the base of the final climb.  It’s a category 1.

Rolland got second over the top for some KOM points.  It is interesting to note that his teammate, Voeckler, did not.  I’ve read that Voeckler isn’t very popular in the peloton, and his behavior today surely won’t help.

Quintana’s lead is down to 54 seconds as Sky continue pressing on behind at the head of the peloton.  There are 26 riders there and maybe a few will catch back on so they can get shelled again on the final climb.

Declan is talking about the road surface again.  The other day he was talking about tectonic plates.  I think he originally wanted to be a geologist but nobody was hiring.  Perhaps his career counselor said, “Well, you’re a masterful bullshitter; how about bike race commentator?”

Nicholas Roche (Saxo-Tinkoff), who was dropped on the climb, just blew by Thibaut Pinot (FDJ) on the descent.

Pinot is losing more and more ground to the peloton; why is the cameraman documenting this?  Just to shame him later?

Pierre Rolland continues to hammer as he chases down Quintana.  He’s only 43 seconds behind him now.

Sean Kelly, seeming to read my mind, explains that the camera is following Pinot because he’s a top French GC favorite.  Isn’t that sweet, how the French still pretend one of their own could place high in the overall?  A guy named after a wine, no less?  Speaking of French riders, I don’t know why Rolland doesn’t get more respect (from his teammate and from the commentators).  He’s certainly riding like a favorite today.

Rolland is only 25 seconds back.  It’s the pack that’s 40 back.

Hahamon.com is laughing at me now.  Fortunately I left the French feed open in another window so I can still see something.  If y’all want to chip in and buy me some real coverage I wouldn’t complain...

I have three separate so-called English-language feeds now and they’re all in French.  And the audio feeds are syncopated, so it sounds like six Frenchman calmly arguing over one another.

OK, I’ve got English but it’s Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen.  If they mess up and use the word “Armstrong” to describe the action, I’m switching back to French.

You know, I’ve been watching for over an hour and I haven’t seen a single non-Sky rider in the top three places of the peloton.  They’re like a bunch of robots or something.

The riders have reached the final climb.  This is about six miles long so the 21-second gap really isn’t much.

Wow, Tejay has lost three minutes on the peloton.  Maybe he’s still recovering from racing up Mount Diablo in his Tour of California bid back in May.

Evans is getting dropped!  So is Rolland, and Talansky, and Dan Martin!  They’ve been dropped by the Big Pharma reps on Sky!  At this rate, Sky will end up with all three spots on the final podium in Paris.

Michael Rogers is dropped.  Not sure who else Contador has left to help him.

Richie Porte  has dropped the hammer and the lead group is down to five riders.  It’s Porte, Froome, Contador, Valverde (Movistar) and Kreuziger (Saxo Bank) as Quintana is caught.

Froome has attacked.  His mouth isn’t even open.  He just looked back, casually, like “Is everybody dead yet?”  It’s really boring to watch Froome attack because probably just about anybody you could grab off the street could do this if given as much lube as Froome is on.

Porte and Quintana are together.  Kreuziger is pacing Contador.  Evans is back with Andy Schleck.

Froome is so thin he looks like the victim of some wasting disease.  I can barely stand to look at him.  He’s ghoulish and he’s ruining our sport.

Schleck and Rolland have dropped Evans.  Wait, that’s not Schleck.  Dang it, Phil!

This isn’t even any fun to watch.  It’s like Lance all over again, except I’m not so naive now and cannot mistake an illusion for real sport.

All my feeds are frozen but it’s barely worth getting them going again.  You know what?  Froome can gargle my balls.

Contador looks pretty clean this year.  Perhaps he fears a lifetime ban.  I wonder if he’ll change his mind when he sees Froome getting his yellow jersey in a little bit here.  Hell, I’d gladly give him some of my blood.  At least Contador made it look realistic back when he was lubing-to-win.

Froome is in the final kilometer.  The crowd is cheering politely but I’m sure they’re not particularly excited.  You know what this reminds me of?  Bambi Meets Godzilla.

Froome heads for the line.  Oh, look, here comes Richie Porte soloing in for second!  Just like in the Criterium International!  What an amazing coincidence!

Here comes Valverde, so we’ve hit the doping trifecta.

Contador loses 1:45.  But of course the race was really won before the Tour even started, on the little island of Tenerife.

Talansky and Dan Martin come in about 2:35 back.

Schleck loses 3:34 today.  Evans loses 4:13. 

Holland’s Laurens Ten Dam (Belkin Procycling), is in 5th in the GC.  Very, very impressive.  Oddly, the leader board has him as a Belgian.  This guy doesn’t get nearly the respect he deserves, perhaps due to his facial hair.  Somehow, he hasn’t captured the hipster look with his beard.

They’re showing a replay of Froome’s victory salute.  Phil Liggett says of Froome, “He’s not the prettiest of bike riders, but he is the most effective.”  He must have bitten his tongue to keep from adding, “At doping.”

Perhaps you saw that Froome, in a pre-Tour interview, said, “My results aren’t going to be stripped.”  Thou doth protest too much!  You’re supposed to wait until you’re accused before you start lying!

Froome is being interviewed.  “This is the first real GC day, so to come out in first and second, this is a dream come true for us.... That’s such a good way to start the mountains for us.”  Such insight!  You know, it’s genius like this that enables a pair of riders, almost unheard of as recently as two years ago, to walk away from the best bike racers in the world in pretty much every stage race they do.

Looks like Tejay is going to lose about 12 minutes.  Of course, nothing matters now because the entire sport has been blown up again.  Or perhaps I was just being foolish when I thought it might be cleaning up.

Wow, as Chris Froome steps onto the podium, one of the podium girls sucker-punches him in the kidneys!  It’s a dream come true!  Okay, I confess that despair has driven me into fantasy.  Actually, you know what a real dream come true would be?  If the doping controls actually worked.  It’s a disgrace that Bernard Hinault has to pretend to be happy for Froome right now, and actually shake his hand, when this is all so obviously a sham.

Another group of really outstanding, and very likely clean, athletes crosses the line over 17 minutes down.

Chris Froome is on the podium for the third time today, this time for the KOM jersey.  His calves are smaller than mine.  You know what I’d like?  I’d like to take Froome on in a good old fashioned fistfight.  All his EPO, extra blood, and whatever the hell else he’s on wouldn’t do much for him there.

Quintana gets the white jersey of best young rider.  If I’m not mistaken, he takes it over from Peter Sagan, who is still out on the course.  By the way, the green and white bodysuits of these podium girls are ridiculous, but they’re by far the best-looking podium girls we’ve seen today.

Voeckler finally drools in, well over 20 minutes down.  The housewives will soon be reading “Fifty Shades of Off-The-Back,” just as soon as I’m done writing it.

They’re interviewing some white-haired Frenchman.  I think I can translate:  “It really didn’t matter what anybody tried to do in this race ... tactics were out the window ... the only thing to note about this race is that Sky is absolutely coked to the gills, a bunch of goddamned pin-cushions.  It’s just too bad that Froome looks like such a douchebag, because there’s no syringe for that.”  (Full disclosure:  it’s been over two decades since I studied French and I’m not sure I’ve translated this perfectly.)

Both my remaining video feeds have turned into odd displays of grey and black vertical bars, which is a big improvement over yet another replay of Froome’s victory salute.  It’s so absurd for somebody to look really excited about “winning” when he and his teammate go one-two yet again, just like all season and throughout last year’s Tour.  I’m pretty sure this will be my last Tour de France blow-by-blow ... I’m going to go find something else to watch, something more honorable, like cockfighting or pro wrestling.  Thanks for tuning in, and I’m sorry I haven’t had something better to report.