Biased Blow-By-Blow - 2017 Giro d’Italia Stage 14

Introduction

What happens when a professional race announcer is in a bad mood, and doesn’t feel like biting his tongue and pretending that this or that rider, usually on Team Sky, isn’t totally lubed?  Answer:  he sucks it up and tries to say nice things.  Sometimes journalists use innuendo, e.g., “Froome has really injected some pace into this stage.”  But they’re professionals … they have to be nice, even to the obvious dopers, so you have to put up with a lot of BS.

I’m not professional, I’m not “responsible,” and I’m in a really bad mood this morning.  I’m sick, for one thing, and I’d still be asleep but my back hurt too much to stay in bed.  Then, when I was already very late in tuning in to the race, all my Internet feeds were dead.  Steephill.tv, my normal go-to listing of feeds, said, “No Unrestricted live English Eurosport links due to rights issues.”  Cyclingfans.com was equally useless.  Fortunately, my East Bay Velo Club teammate Mark Dawson had suggested, a couple weeks back, that I try Cycling Today and man, what a relief!  I couldn’t even get anything in Italian or French earlier, and this has the good English-speaking guys—not Phil and Paul, but Sean Kelly and that other guy (Carlton?) whose name I can (obviously) never remember.  So, huge shout-out to Mark today!

Alas, my PC sound was somehow not working, making me even more livid.  I even tried the Bluetooth headphones … no dice.  So for now, I’m cussing freely, watching the race on the crummy backup PC, on the slower network, while rebooting.

2017 Giro d’Italia Stage 14 – Castellania to Oropa

As I join the action, they have Juan Antonia Flecha doing a recon of the big climb at the end of the stage.  In the background they’re playing porno music.  (Not that I’ve ever seen a porno movie, by the way … it’s the music that other people always say sounds like porno music.)  The recon, of course, is worthless.  Flecha is an idiot.  He’s wearing a blank pink jersey, a little too small for him, and you know what, Juan?  There’s only one presentable pink jersey in existence, and you have to earn it.  “Here the climb gets steeper, which will make it harder for the riders,” he says.  Oh, is that how that works?

The peloton is just hitting the base of the climb.  I think it’s about 13km to go but my feed is so blurry, it’s hard to read the over-pixilated number.  Okay, I’ve got my good PC going here, this is better.  Vincenzo Nibali’s Bahrain-Merida teammates are getting him to the front.  He has a lot of work to do today, being pretty far down the GC.  In fact he’s in fifth, but a full 2:47 behind the leader and 24 seconds behind the guy we all think is actually going to win this Giro.  (What, you don’t know who that is?  Good, I’ve created suspense!)

This climb, the Cat 1 Oropa, features over 2,000 feet of gain.  That’s it’s full name:  Oropa.  Not the Passo Oropa, just Oropa, like Cher or Madonna.  This climb is kind of unique in that it includes some cobbled sections.  I haven’t seen that before.

Only 11 km to go.  Laurens ten Dam (Team Sunweb) is moving the front, supporting race leader Tom Dumoulin.  I raced against ten Dam once.  He nipped me at the line, atop Alpe d’Huez, by about an hour.

To fill you in on what you may have missed since my last dispatch, odds-on favorite Nairo Quintana (Movistar Team) took the race lead on the first big mountain stage, soloing and spanking the entire peloton.  Dumoulin took the pink jersey away from him in the first time trial, which was about 40km and suited him perfectly because he’s a great big burly man (by bike racer standards).  We’ve seen this before and the question is, can Dumoulin save on his car insurance?  You bet he can!  GOD it’s boring, the predictability of the things that need to be pointed out.  I’d never be a real journalist.

Some Movistar guy is setting tempo for Quintana.  Now it’s a full-on attack, Jose Rojas either leading out a teammate who isn’t Quintana, or being led out, I can’t tell and it doesn’t matter because just like that, it’s all back together.  I think that was less an attack than a pace that was so overly fast they accidentally dropped everybody.

Team Sky hasn’t been a factor in this Giro, after a big crash took down their GC guys.  But recently they made the news anyway; I saw some headline about “Will Team Sky wear their new white jerseys in Stage 14?!”   The answer, I can now say, is no.  My corollary is who gives a shit what those Sky dirtbags do?  

Speak of the devil!  Sky’s Diego Rosa has now broken away.  I’ve not heard of this guy before because I’m such an amateur, an armchair journalist with a failing blog.  It’s disgusting.

The climb still hasn’t truly begun.  I guess it starts in about a kilometer.  They’re saying Rosa only has six seconds, but he’s almost out of sight of the pack.  I guess this would make sense if they were going like 200 mph.  Anyway, six seconds isn’t much when you’re the kind of nobody that the chief editor of albertnet has never even heard of.

Okay, I found the Sky jersey article.  “Will Team Sky wear new white kit at Tour de France?  Rumors of special edition Castelli jersey surface.”  Criminy.  Front-page news, right at the top.  I wonder how much Castelli paid to generate that “news.”  Yeah, yeah, I know, I got it wrong initially, the white jerseys would be for the Tour, not the Giro.  I’m sorry, okay? Forgive me for thinking the latest news would be about the race that is actually in progress right now.  I guess this is just the first of many articles Cyclingnews will do over the next six weeks as they follow this all-important sartorial matter.

Wow, Rosa has quite a gap on the field.

Wait, I take it back.  I got distracted for a few seconds and suddenly it’s all back together, with Movistar’s Winner Anacona setting the pace on the front, with a pretty great poker-face.  I think most of these teams are using Botox now, so that their rivals can’t tell when they’re suffering.

Igor Anton (Team Dimension Data) attacks!  No Botox there, he really looks like he’s suffering.  And now—what a shame, he’s been caught.  Botox 1, Grimace 0.

Tejay Van Garderen (BMC Racing Team) cracks!  He’s cracked in most of the important stages of this Giro, it seems.  I think he even cracked on the way to sign-in yesterday.  At this point he’s kind of the Humpty-Dumpty of the race.  It’s a pity, I was hoping he’d have a great race.  He’s one of the only Americans.  Another is Peter Stetina, sitting in 31st, here to help his Trek-Segafredo team leader Bauke Mollema, who currently sits in third overall, just 15 seconds behind Quintana.

The French hopeful, Thibaut Pinot (FDJ), isn’t doing so well today.  Not only is he visibly struggling, but he just looks … blurry.

Adam Yates (Orica-Scott) attacks!  It makes a difference, too, as suddenly Mollema looks really bad!  And now Domenico Pozzovivo (AG2R La Mondiale) attacks!  It’s so cute, he’s just a tiny little guy with a teddy bear face!  He looks like a child!  He could be on a BMX bike!  And now Quintana goes after him and straight past him!  Quintana’s all, “Wake up, bitches!”  (I’m paraphrasing his body language here.)

Wow, the field is blown apart!  Ilnur Zakarin (Katush-Alpecin), still an outside GC contendor), tries to bridge up to Quintana, but nobody else even bothers!  Back in what’s left of the field, Dumoulin is leading the chase, his worthless team nowhere to be seen!  His shoulders are rocking but he can take this, just like he can (I assume) hold his booze, because he’s no little pocket climber, he’s a big Dutchman!

And now, with 3.5 km to go, my feed freezes!

While I refresh this feed (wish me luck!) I should point out that by Dutch standards, Dumoulin is only a little taller than average.  Why do I care?  Because I’m always tempted to think I’m too tall to be a bike racer, and it’s been ages since guys like Eddy Merckx and Miguel Indurain demonstrated otherwise.  So I always root for the bigger guys, unless of course they’re doping, and so far Dumoulin seems to deserve the benefit of the doubt.  (He has been happy to share power data, has been outspoken in criticizing Bradley Wiggins’ TUEs, and has an unblemished record so far.)

Okay, my feed is back.  Wow, Quintana is still really far ahead!

The road is suddenly going downhill (or is at least flat—video footage warps things a bit) which was not in the course profile (do you see a flat or downhill section in the schematic?) and I wonder if Quintana is as pissed about that as I am.  Not that I’m necessarily routing for Quintana, mind you, I just don’t need any more confusion today. 

Okay, the road is going uphill again, and in fact they’re saying the grade is 11%.

What the hell?  I’ve got dueling feeds now, a tenth of a kilometer apart, fighting for my oh-so-limited bandwidth!  Look, below is not two snapshots, but a snapshot of the pair of feeds.  What could be the point of having two at once?

Pinot and Mollema are both off the back.  That’s good news for everybody else, especially their siblings who are watching this coverage at home and only pretending to be bummed.  It would be such a drag to be the sibling of a World Tour racer.  They must be insufferably proud of themselves.

Dumoulin and those sucking his wheel are about to catch Quintana, and in the process of chasing have cracked Nibali!  He’s gotta be so bummed, as the defending champion.  He’s probably looking for a team car right now, to hang on to.

Wow!  Dumoulin attacks fricking Quintana!  On a climb!  He’s got such balls!  DAAAAAAMN!  That would be like one of my kids trying to eat a burrito faster than me!

It’s under 1km to go!  There’s a small group, comprising Dumoulin, Quintana, Mikel Landa (Team Sky), and Zakarin.  Dumoulin is leading this little group the whole time, consolidating his lead over Nibali and psychologically oppressing Quintana!

Zakarin attacks about 200 meters from the line!  But it’s a long 200 meters, being uphill and also cobbled!  What a cool final stretch!  And Zakarin has opened a good lead! 

But now Dumoulin is gaining on him!  He’s going for the pass!

Meanwhile, Quintana fricking cracks behind him!  Unbelievable!  And now it looks like Zakarin can’t respond!

Dumoulin takes the fricking win, for huge glory and panache, not to mention ten bonus seconds!

In the process of this glorious stage win, Dumoulin has taken serious time out of Nibali, Pinot, and Mollema!  What a badass! 

Now that is how you handle a climbing stage when your Achilles heel is that you “can’t climb!”  Of course the brutal final week is still ahead, but you know what?  This is the kind of performance that turns a guy from a damn good rider into a hero.  Cadel Evans did this on the Strade Bianche in the 2010 Giro, and Floyd Landis created the optical illusion of doing it on Stage 17 of the 2006 Tour de France.

Mikel Landa has taken third on the stage, 9 seconds out of first.  Dumoulin’s sprint was so fast, he took 3 seconds out of Zakarin.  Remarkably, though Quintana looked to be in contact at the beginning of the sprint, Dumoulin took 14 seconds out of him by the end!

Pinot comes in fourth, a full 35 seconds down, looking mighty oxygen-deprived.

Wow, just like that, my feed stopped!  They want me to click on the ads.  They’re holding my feed hostage for two minutes.  You know what, I’m fine with that.  At least they waited until the race was over.  That’s pretty classy by streaming-video standards.

It’s been eight minutes since Dumoulin won, and the clean riders are starting to trickle over the finish line.  Okay, sorry, cheap shot.  For the record, I’m not casting aspersions on any of the top finishers today.  Yes, Dumoulin’s performance is eyebrow-raising, but then this wasn’t that long a climb, wasn’t that steep, gave him a flat-to-downhill section to catch up on, and anyway Quintana probably isn’t in peak form yet since he has Tour de France ambitions.

Here’s are the stage results and the general classification:

Look how fresh and composed Dumoulin looks post-race, as he warms down on a trainer.  Even his hair looks good, and he’s not even sponsored by Alpecin caffeinated shampoo anymore!  I’m just so thrilled to see a non-goblin, fairly non-emaciated rider winning, who doesn’t look like that weird lizard-man creature in The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings or whatever book that was that I obviously never read.

Dumoulin aces the post-race interview by not complaining about any fans and implicating their countrymen in the process.  (Yeah, the bar has been set pretty low, hasn’t it?)  “You dream about it, about hitting back,” he says.  “I was quite relaxed, but I couldn’t follow the first attack by Quintana so I had to do my own pace.”  Then at the end he was just trying to mark Zakarin, he says, until he heard Quintana was gapped, so then he found something extra.  I’m paraphrasing because this guy talks too fast for me to keep up.  Not that he actually talks fast, but there’s not the normal number of “ums” and “ahs” that I normally can count on with riders from other parts of Europe who aren’t fluent in English.

Up on the podium, Dumoulin shows that, unlike most winners of mountain stages, he can easily lift the giant champagne bottle.  Surely that needless upper body muscle will cost him dearly during the final week of this Giro.

My wife has actually come over to see what’s going on.  This is almost unheard of.  “I heard you cackling,” she said.  I explain about the non-goblin thing.  “Let me see,” she says.  I show her the warm-down photo.  “Oh, yeah, he’s good looking!” she says.  This is also unprecedented.  (The last time she said anything of the kind was when she met Edvald Boasson-Hagen, like ten years ago.) 

My wife continues, “Look at that hairline—he could be a movie star!”  Ouch.  It’s not like the hairline is what women generally look at, as far as I know.  I thought they looked at, like, abs.  You don’t often hear the word “hairline” thrown around at all (not that I read Entertainment Weekly or Us).  Was this a subtle dig at my receding hairline, which might more properly be called a “fleeing hairline”?  My father-in-law had an incredible hairline, an Errol Flynn hairline.  Damn it, maybe I should try Alpecin.

They’re interviewing Quintana.  “Zakarin was really strong,” he says, “but right now most of the riders are in about the same time.”  I guess he’s pretending not to notice Dumoulin’s big win.  Kind of like my family’s cat growing up, who got so old he wouldn’t even defend his turf against other cats.  An enemy cat would come right in the house, and our cat would turn his entire body around and sit down, facing away, to make sure we all knew he just didn’t see the other cat.

“He’s got the cuddling toy, he’s got the flowers, he’s got the jersey!” says the Eurosport announcer.  I love it!  It’s like poetry!  I’m going to make that sentence a meme within my household.  We’ll use it every time somebody pulls off something really impressive.  Like, my kid will get into a good college, and as she waves the acceptance letter over her head triumphantly, I’ll say, “She’s got the cuddling toy, she’s got the flowers, she’s got the jersey!”  Please support your unpaid blogger by helping to widely promote this excellent new expression.

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Biased Blow-By-Blow - 2015 Tour de France Stage 9 TTT

Introduction

What do you suppose goes through the minds of race announcers, that they’re not allowed to say? Maybe things like, “That guy’s obviously coked to the gills,” or “So-and-o looks like a damn clown.”  Sure, announcers hint at stuff:  “Froome has injected some, uh, life into this race,” or “Not the most elegant rider, surely, but he gets the job done.”  And why can’t they be perfectly candid?  Because they’re professionals.  I, on the other hand, am not.  So I’ll say it how it is, or at least how it looks to me.  And if I’m a little on the cynical side, can you blame me?

I know you think team time trials are boring, so I’m going to work really hard as I go along to make this as entertaining as possible.  And you should read anyway, because this is an important Tour stage.  The Tour hasn’t had so little time trialing since 1933, and this year’s only individual TT already happened, without breaking up the GC all that much.

I’m missing a Mount Diablo ride with my pals for this, BTW.  One of them really egged me on, e-mailing me last night to say, “Dana, thanks for writing the TTT preview!  Now that you fulfilled your blogging obligations to your mom, you can meet us....”  He has an impressively firm grip on how elite my blog readership is.  Today you can see how I did with the predictions I made, about the outcome of this race and its affect on the GC battle....

2015 Tour de France Stage 9:  Vannes – Plumelec TTT

As I join the action, FDJ is hammering along and the Eurosport announcer (I never learn their names, as it’s too sad when they leave, which at least they tend to do before getting too old to think straight) has just said, “So-and-so is out with a broken neck.  It’s actually broken in two places, and he’s lucky to have escaped serious injury.”  WTF??!! Is this guy joking?  Who jokes about a broken neck?  Or does he somehow consider this minor?

And just like that, we’re on to some ads.  I’m joining the action late here, so I hope I haven’t missed any important teams.  I had a bit of a glitch this morning because my Internet connection is down.  Fortunately, all bloggers have dueling Internet connections.  It’s just part of the value we bring you readers, for free.

Here’s my favorite current ad.  ANNOUNCER:  “Marcel Kittel, do you use this shampoo because Alpecin is your new team sponsor now?” KITTEL:  “No not at all, I just like the feeling of thick hair.”  I’ve seen this ad several times this week and I still can’t believe I’m hearing it right. I mean, I’ll grant that it’s theoretically possible to absorb caffeine through your scalp.  Dumb idea, but okay, possible.  But “the feeling of thick hair”?  Look, nameless ad agency, hair doesn’t have nerves, and if it did, it’d be one nerve ending per shaft ... how could you sense thickness? 

The Lotto Soudal team has started their TTT.  As I mentioned in my preview yesterday, these Lotto guys are (by bike racer standards) simply huge, with the highest numbers I saw for height, weight, and body mass index.  If this TTT were, say, 3K in length, I’d pick them as favorites.

Sean Kelly, the evergreen Eurosport announcer, says that these teams warm up for 40 km before a race like this.  Man, that’s a lot.

IAM Cycling is on the line.  I don’t know what product or service IAM produces, so I just consider this the “dog food team.”  I could look it up, but I’m too busy.

Lotto Soudal looks pretty cohesive.  All their guys have great position on the bike, which is more than I can say about some GC contenders (okay, one GC contender, and I won’t bag on him by giving his name, though his initials are CF and he’s on Sky).

Poor Orica GreenEdge.  They won the last long Tour TTT, two years ago, but they have only six riders left in this crash-ridden Tour, and they obviously went in to this one with the sole goal of making the time cut (kind of like choosing a class in junior high because you heard it was an easy “C”).  Orica GreenEdge look like they’re on a training ride.  Check it out, one guy didn’t even fasten his helmet strap!

Weird.  I’ve restored my better Internet connection and refreshed, and now the announcer is a woman!  I’ve never encountered that before.   Maybe she watched “In A World...” and got inspired.  She’s interviewing some dude with an Irish accent, Brian Smith.  I can’t tell his role because my video is too grainy.

Ah, we’re back to the main announcers.  I guess they had a special guest star asking the questions (since all that requires is a script and a good voice, and she had both, and I miss her already).

Lampre Merida finish their ride, in around 33 minutes.  I was slurping coffee and missed exactly what Kelly mumbled about their result, but I think these guys are now leading.

Another ad!  There’s this highlights reel of all the sports that Eurosport carries, and the announcers just about pissing themselves with excitement (e.g., “He didn’t just break his world record, he absolutely SHATTERED it!!!”) and then, incongruously, they show a snippet of same-sex diving, with the announcer totally quiet.  What?  You haven’t heard of same-sex diving?  Maybe that’s not the official name.  Synchronized diving?  Yeah, that’s probably it.

Bora-Aragon has launched their offensive.  Okay, I know that’s a bombastic way to say “started their TTT,” but there are a lot of teams here and I don’t want you to think this was a computer-generated sports story.  (That’s a thing now, believe it or not.)  I promise I won’t use the word “gallop” at any point during this blow-by-blow.

IAM Cycling is going really fast, getting the best intermediate split.  And now Trek Factory Racing is on the start ramp.  The camera pans across them and man, one of their dudes is really small.  It’s almost comical.  They should have arranged them in order from tallest to shortest like at a wedding, to look less jarring.  And lose the bridesmaid dresses, guys!  Poor Trek.  Earlier in the Tour they lost their best guy, Fabian Cancellara, who was the first of two race leaders to crash out this year.  Unlike Orica GreenEdge, these guys can’t afford to loaf, because they have a GC rider, Bauke Mollema, to support.

Team Europcar doesn’t look fast at all.  They’re bunched up like a peloton instead of strung out in a line.  Thomas Voeckler is attacking!  He just never learns.  Remember when everybody used to love him?  You can thank Lance Armstrong for that.  I know, Lance lied, he cheated, he was a dick, but at least he gave the French their underdog for awhile there.  Look for the silver linings, people.

Astana is on the road.  They had a great TTT in the Dauphiné.  They also looked unbelievably good in the Giro.  I really mean “unbelievably,” as in I don’t believe it.  They reminded me of US Postal.  On final climbs Astana would have like four guys in a lead group of ten or fewer.  Oddly, though, they kept attacking their GC rider, Fabian Aru.  Since we’re into another ad (which is also unbelievable) I’ll take a moment to describe Astana’s latest optimization efforts.  Their tactics were so sloppy in the Giro, not only confounding Aru but surely demoralizing him, they’ve decided to tweak their world-class doping program yet again.  You read that right:  doping for the mind.  Their directeur sportif, Giuseppe Martinelli, was apparently having trouble concentrating and is now on Adderall.  Not to be outdone, the team’s general manager, Alexandre Vinokourov, always an impulsive type (but hailing from the good old days when hunches and gut feelings hadn’t yet been totally obliterated by race radios), is testing a new drug, LogiContin.  And both of them are also experimenting with Alpecin-SC, a new caffeinated leave-in conditioner.

IAM Cycling has the best time at the second intermediate check, by a larger margin than before.  They look pretty awesome, if you can ignore the visors built into their helmets.  They’re not the kind of visor that sticks out to form an awning, but more like what welders use.  Is there a name for that?  Speaking of which, I was out riding up the Huis Categorie Mount Diablo with my teenage daughter last weekend, and there was a woman up there with one of these dorky TT helmets (and aero bars).  She instinctively started giving my daughter advice, as though her old man obviously couldn’t.  I like that about riding with my kid.  Nobody ever gives me advice.

Oh dear.  Astana’s mental doping is clearly not working!  Their TTT line has completely disintegrated!  They’ve lost like four guys on this first climb and are trying to regroup.  Only two riders have made it back up.  One of the two who can’t reconnect is gesticulating wildly to the guy behind him.  And now he swats himself on the butt!  It’s so sad ... I almost can’t bear to watch.

IAM Cycling now has the best time, ten seconds faster than Lampre-Merida.  We’ll see how long that lasts.

Team LottoNL-Jumbo is on the road, and so far so good.  The “J” in “Jumbo” is that special Dutch kind, so it’s pronounced “Gumbo.”  No it isn’t.  Just seeing if you’re awake.  Of course it’s actually “Yumbo.” 

Okay, I’m back.  Watching Astana’s troubles had a serious impact on me—as in, my bowels thought it was race day for me.  You might find this TTT boring, but that’s my fault.  This can be a very exciting event for anybody who’s had to suffer through a crucial TTT himself and can relate.  I think this is very likely the most painful event in cycling.  Why?  Well, first off, TTTs tend to be pretty short, so the effort is far more intense than with the patient pacing you need for a really long mountain stage.  Yes, the individual time trial is often of similar length, but if you loaf in an ITT, you don’t screw over your team.  In a TTT, you have to be awesome the whole time or you blatantly ruin everything for your comrades.  It’s kind of like ballet, where if a dancer breaks her ankle during a performance she has to keep right on dancing.  (If you think it’s silly to hold ballet dancers up as the ideal, think again:  they have the highest pain threshold ofanybody.)  I’ve always sucked at ITTs because I knew there was no real consequence of failing to ride hard enough.  I was lazy.  But in TTTs I was driven by the fear of shame, and dug deeper than in any other event. 

Think about it:  if you’re in a hill climb and get too miserable, you can back off and watch the others ride away from you and feel like you’re giving them a gift!  “I suck, so you get to win ... enjoy it.”  But imagine being in the collegiate national championship TTT as one of the favorites, and failing to deliver.  Forever after you wouldn’t be able to look at your teammates for fear they’re thinking, “We could have won if you didn’t screw it up!”  I found myself in that position in 1990, and was so miserable during that TTT, I seriously fantasized about killing myself.  I thought, if I ride full-speed into that post, will I die?  That would end the pain and I wouldn’t have to face my pals!  It was too risky, though ... what if I lived?  So I pushed on.  Yesterday I was boring my wife with this story, when suddenly she became interested. “Wow, you’re moved by this!” she said.  “Are you crying?”  I wasn’t, but I was very close.  And this was 25 years later.  TTTs are a bitch.

Oh my god.  Astana is down to five riders.  They’re in the final kilometer.  They really don’t look good.  They look really deflated, I mean physically.  Their fifth guy is so fried he’s on the wrong side of the road, not even getting a draft.  That’s surely the sign of mental collapse.  Sometimes that’s okay, though, as it means you left absolutely everything on the road.  If you finish too fast, that can mean you didn’t exhaust yourself properly. 

And how about that!  Astana has managed somehow to take the lead.  Of course, the best teams are still to come, but still, I guess they couldn’t have gone that slowly.  Poor Nibali.  His Tour isn’t going well, and I’m sure he hoped to validate his victory last year so people wouldn’t just say, “Yeah, you won, but Contador, Quintana, and Froome weren’t there.”

AG2R La Mondiale is on the road.  They look kind of climber-y to me.  Not so good for TTTs.

Eurosport is interviewing Michele Scarpone, who has so little hair left, he could make a bottle of Alpecin last for like a year.  He should use their special Espresso version.  He says nothing of any interest, predictably enough.  I’d quote him if he said something like, “Yes, I visited Dr. Ferrari, but not for drugs, or even for training advice.  You see, we’re lovers.”  Actually, let’s pretend he did say that.

Tinkoff-Saxo is down the start ramp and hammering along.  This is one of the really important teams, because a) their GC guy, Alberto Contador, is obviously a favorite, and b) if they have an outstanding ride today, they could put Peter Sagan in the yellow jersey, which would be amazing because he’d then be holding the green, white, and yellow jerseys simultaneously. 

Movistar is having a good ride and some have tapped them as favorites for this TTT.  Naturally their motivation is super high, with GC favorite Nairo Quintana in their ranks.  They look pretty good out there, if you can get past their boring uniforms.

Oh dear!  The Movistar line has broken!  You know, I’m going to blame the radios for this.  After all, the directeur sportif can’t give a continuous patter about whether everybody is together, and so many riders have forgotten how to use their spidey-sense to know what’s going on.

BMC are on the start ramp!  No pressure, guys.  Man, I hope they light it up out there.  An American in yellow, without all the asterisks of doping, would be fricking awesome.  I wouldn’t expect him to hold it for too long, if he got it, but how awesome would it be to bring home a stuffed lion for your kid?

Movistar has the fastest intermediate split, notwithstanding their troubles a bit ago.  But they’ve taken the lead over from a team with only five guys left ... their placing may yet tumble.

Now Eurosport is interviewing Juan Antonio Flecha about the weather.  “The wind is blowing, as wind often does, and though it was blowing also earlier today, it may not be blowing is much as it was, though it could be blowing harder now, and there was wind when Astana was riding, like there is now, and wind can be a factor in a TTT when a team can be slowed by wind, unless it’s a tailwind, which would tend to blow you forward and actually speed you along.  Also, I myself am a windbag, and I’ve been breaking wind this entire time, by which I mean I have been releasing gas from my anus.”  Flecha’s chatter is the verbal equivalent of a college kid using a really big font and wide margins to make the five-page minimum with his essay.  Might I recommend a Bora kitchen ventilation system for this fellow?  I’m reminded repeatedly during this coverage of how well Bora handles “vapors that smell bad.”  They’re insulting your cooking!  Great ad copy, that.

Okay, they’re showing Sky now, and Froome with his ugly helmet.  The commentator is going on about how Froome’s handlebars were created using a 3D printer.  I know, this dude’s just making shit up, right?  Froomie’s helmet is of a piece with the rest of his ghastly gaunt ungainly look.  It completes the insect look.

BMC has the fastest intermediate split, but only by two seconds over Movistar.  I’m not sure that heralds an awesome ride but of course it’s hard to predict these things.

Saxo-Tinkoff isn’t looking all that tight.

But then neither is BMC, actually.  Couple gaps there between riders.  I guess you can’t tell from this photo, but one rider is sitting on the back, unable to move up through the line.  At least he’s communicating well to the others about it.

See that thingy sticking out from the last dude’s saddle?  That’s a GPS device, to make all the split times more precise.  Every racer has one for every stage, just to further remove guesswork from the armchair generals’ over-precise operations.  It’s also how they can put up that little speedometer graphic you see in the photo there.  I’d like to see the big data from Stage 4, when Tony Martin overcame a mechanical problem and soloed to victory on his teammate’s bike.

Team BMC has the fastest split now with Sky through the first intermediate check, but it’s by a fraction of a second! 

Weird ... Tinkoff-Saxo has only seven guys in their group.  I thought they had nine going in ... maybe not, or maybe they accidently shelled a couple dudes.

I have to say, Sky looks pretty good.  All nicely lined out, no gaps, and totally aero.

BMC is at the second intermediate point and now leads Movistar by 3 seconds.  That’s not a ton, considering Movistar isn’t the team they’re most worried about.  I’m thinking mainly about a yellow jersey for Tejay, of course; even a 30-second deficit wouldn’t hurt Sky too much since Froomie, when he’s properly lubed (i.e., on any day of the season), can take that kind of time in just a few kilometers on the right mountain ... and there are so many brutal mountains ahead.

Tinkoff-Saxo are looking okay, other than their uniforms, which are so bizarre ... they’re made to look like they’re spattered with mud, evidently.  I just don’t get that.

Uh oh ... BMC is somehow down to six riders.  Maybe it’s according to plan; maybe they’ve figured out that certain guys will slow them down on the climbs or something.

Sky are through the second intermediate check, and they’ve got the virtual lead by one second over BMC!

Tinkoff-Saxo are over the line and have lost about 25 seconds for Contador.  Not great, but not a complete disaster.  The bigger issue for Contador is if he tired himself out too much in the Giro.  I’m surprised he even raced it, frankly.

BMC has gapped their sixth rider!  Okay, he’s back up ... they’re going so fast, the slipstream must be really long.  They’re on the penultimate climb and riding cohesively.  But what’s this?  They’re actually down to five guys, and Sky down to six.  I think it’s because we’re 8 days into this race that teams are breaking up so much.  A TTT earlier in the Tour probably wouldn’t feature so many breakdowns.

BMC are now on the finishing climb and they’re clearly suffering.  Out of the saddle now, going for the line!  They’re trembling all over, so the camera can’t properly focus on them.  (No they aren’t.)

They’ve got the fastest provisional time, but I have a feeling Sky could win this.  No yellow for Tejay in any case, as I pessimistically predicted.  You never know, though ... maybe Sky will fall apart, like they did in the Dauphiné.

Sky has 1 km to go.  They’ve got two minutes to get to the finish, which might be tricky only because of the finishing climb.  Geraint Thomas is hammering on the front and has been for a fair bit now.  Now Froome takes it up.  Nicolas Roche is dying on the back of the line.  They’re having to regroup a bit here and Roche is back on.  Froome is out of the saddle, looking like Ichabod Crane.

Check it out!  BMC has managed to win this thing!  Sky got second, by one second!  Both teams beat Tinkoff-Saxo, also as I predicted.  Also, Tejay has moved from third into second on the GC, also as I predicted.  As it turns out, all of my predictions were spot-on.  How do you like that, Mom?

Biased Blow-by-Blow - Tour de France Stage 12

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.

At the end of my last post I declared that I was done with watching the Tour de France.  But I actually got some protests from by biking pals, mainly to the effect of “Don’t stop writing—watch the Tour so we won’t have to!”  So in that spirit, I tuned in to today’s coverage of a flat sprinters’ stage.

Biased blow-by-blow – Tour de France Stage 12

As I join there’s 20K to go, with a breakaway of four 36 seconds ahead of the peloton.  In other words, I’ve missed nothing.  Juan Antonio Flecha is in this break, but do you really care?  The gap is now down to 28 seconds in the time I took typing that.  And I’m a pretty fast typist.

It’s nice how with cycling you can join late and still get the gist of the race.  In contrast, consider your average American ball game.  The sports fan tunes in an hour or more ahead of time, even more if it’s a big game.  He watches an endless pre-game show, during which he consumes probably most of the 2,000 calories that the federal government recommends for the whole day. Why didn’t I say his/her?  Because women don’t watch ball sports.  Not really.  Some of them fake it, to try to please their boyfriends, but it’s a charade.  Do women watch bike racing?  I have no idea.  They sure aren’t watching it just because the race leader is hunky or something.

Every time Sean Kelly fields a question from his Eurosport co-commentator, he starts his response with “Yes.”  Now, Declan is no fool—he would never ask a simple yes/no question because then the entire response would be that one word.  But he’ll say, “Belkin has become the kind of team we’re always seeing on the front, why would you say that is?”  Kelly replies, “Yes ... the pace is very high and they’re making sure they keep their riders out of trouble.”  As a racer, Kelly was famously quiet—the only rider known to answer questions with a head nod during a radio interview.  I’m now picturing him, in his early days as a commentator, on the couch working with a therapist who helpfully suggests, “You can always say ‘yes.’  That should get things started.”

There’s not much to report about this race.  It’s a simple, straight, wide, flat course on a nice sunny day.  The breakaway is mostly over, with just one guy still up the road, getting free publicity, getting his five minutes on TV simply because the camera is obliged to cover any breakaways, no matter how doomed.  Have you ever seen a speed-walking race?  It’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen.  I think they used to have it in the Olympics even.  There are strict rules preventing you from going faster—that is, to make sure you’re still technically walking.  I always fantasized about getting really good at it, just to make the Olympic team, and then on the big day I’d let myself fall behind a bit and then break into a full run, easily blowing past everybody and making a mockery of the entire event.  And you know what that would remind all you cycling fans of?  Yes.  Chris Froome mocking the sport of cycling with his synchronized-doping team and his little training island and his double helping of secret sauce.

This is a great stage to watch because I’m pretty sure a born climber who dopes can only fake it in time trials.  So I don’t see Froome soloing today.  I don’t think I could handle that again.  (Yes, I skipped the time trial stage entirely.)

You know, Flecha is taking the gap back up again.  It’s at 22 seconds now. He’s got his wrists draped over the tops of the bars, hands wrapped backward around the brake levers.  I think he got this idea from watching somebody on the Stairmaster at the gym, instinctively adopting the most efficient position, which on the Stairmaster means paddling her legs uselessly over the steps while supporting her weight on her wrists.

It’s 7K to go and the peloton is hovering just behind Flecha, maybe 10 seconds, toying him like a cat with a snake.  I suppose something crazy could happen and he could ... never mind, he’s caught.

Saxo-Tinkoff is massing at the front “to keep Contador out of trouble.”  Well guess what, Alberto ... you’re already in trouble.  The detente has been disrupted, the power has shifted, and Sky has the bomb.

5K to go and Declan is talking about “pure, undiluted” sprinters.  Is “undiluted” a doping reference?  As a bike club pal pointed out recently, Paul Sherwen was commentating on the time trial the other day and said, “You have to dose your efforts....”

An Orica-Greenedge guy at the very front of the peloton just stacked in a fairly gentle curve.  It was crazy, his front tire just washed right out.  I’d like to find out what brand of tire he’s using and ban that company for life.

Sylvain Chavanel (Omega-Pharma) is on the front, easy to see with his orange bike.

“Argos-Shimano are going to inject the hyper-pace!” Declan says.  Where did Eurosport get this guy?

Whoah, another pileup.  Man, it’s just an amazing tangle of bikes and limbs.  That’s got to hurt.  What a mess.

Greipel has lost his lead-out men.  It’s Omega-Pharma and Argos-Shimano on the front.  Froome is only about ten spots back—maybe he feels just that good today, to go for another stage win?  And next year he’ll try kick-boxing?

It’s less than 1K to go!  Everybody looks really tired, bigger gaps than usual opening up in this field sprint, but they’re still flying.

Oh no!  My feed is blocked!

“That was amazing!” Declan yells.  I’ll have to take his word for it.

Okay, here’s the replay.  It looks like Kittel edged Cavendish at the line with his bike throw.  Kittel does a unique victory salute, an underhanded sweeping motion, that looks like a little kid flinging water in the tub to make a big mess for his parents.

I really wish I got to watch that sprint.  I mean, I bothered to show up half an hour in advance, all to see this final handful of seconds, and instead I just got a pop-up ad. 

Wow.  Just saw another replay of the sprint, from above.  There’s no doubt about it, Kittel overpowered Cavendish.  I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that before ... sure, Cav has failed to win, but usually because his lead-out got screwed up or something, not due to simply being less fast.  This time Cav had a straight shot for the line and was well ahead, but Kittel just came around him.  I’d never even heard of Kittel before this Tour and now he’s won three stages.

By the way, the racers came in about twenty minutes ahead of schedule today.  I can’t believe they were all too busy to text me and let me know.  I could have missed the finish!  Oh, wait ... I did miss the finish.

Kittel is being interviewed:  “I had to go on his wheel to went for my sprint and I started my sprint then.  It was close.”  It’s tempting to take shots at Kittel’s English, but actually I would make no more sense, even in my native tongue, after an exertion like that.  He continues, “I would like to dedicate the team to ... to decicate to my team this win.  I really love my team.”  Awwwwww.

Now the Lotto manager is being interviewed:  “Greipel was behind him and he stayed still, so it’s over.  I don’t talk to a time for anybody....  It’s difficult but we are have our own train, and it’s over for us.”  This time I am really, really tempted to take shots at his English, but then again, I couldn’t handle an interview in a foreign language, not even in French though I studied it for years.

My wife comes over just in time to see a replay of the big crash.  “They look so vulnerable, on the ground,” she says wistfully, no doubt thinking back to my big crash.  Perhaps this isn’t the greatest timing for her to take a peek at the race.  Why couldn’t she see Kittel’s victory salute, so replete with childlike glee?  Now it’s an interview with Michal Kwiatkowski (Omega-Pharma), I have no idea why, and Erin expresses her utter disgust at his thinness in such graphic terms she’s forbidden me to quote her.  “If you looked like that...” she continues, with the edge in her voice that keeps me in the ice cream.

Roland gets another polka-dot climber’s jersey.  He has matching shorts, white with red polka-dots, and looks absolutely idiotic.  He reminds me of that weird doglike thing in “Put Me In The Zoo!” (remember that book?).

So, I’ve heard it said that a real pocket-climber can be distinguished by the size of his wrists.  Try this:  touch the tip of your index finger to the tip of your thumb.  The circle that makes will easily wrap around the ankle of a pocket-climber.  Is Froome a true pocket-climber?  Well, looking at him on the podium just now I realized I could easily wrap my thumb and index finger around his calf.  Can pocket-climbers excel at time trials?  Sure, if they’re coked to the gills on the sweet PEDs!  Just look at Tyler Hamilton, Alberto Contador, and Levi Leipheimer....

Froome is being interviewed.  He is blinking continuously.  I wouldn’t think anything of this if he weren’t one of the great liars in sport right now, already giving performances that are Amstrongian in their boldness (though nowhere near as realistic).  I’m not going to quote anything Froome has said because it was utterly dull and without substance.

One of my blow-by-blow readers (my mom, to be precise) has sent in a comment:  “Kittel sure looks like an übermensch. I feel sorry for Cavendish.”  I replied, “Cav has 24 Tour de France stage wins, and over 100 career wins, and he’s still pretty young, so we shouldn’t feel too bad for him. Maybe this new competition (from Kittel and also Sagan) will be the shot in the arm he needs.”  Right after hitting Enter I became aware of my unintentional—or was it merely subconscious?—pun.  Actually, I distrust sprinters less than GC riders.  It’s one of the reasons I bothered to watch today’s race at all.