There’s no telling what you’ll see when you walk up those stairs; you’d expect to see Elia Viviani or Teun Mulder on the rollers on their road bikes or Shane Perkins on his track bike on the rollers — but a juggler?
The views over to the Alps were stunning this morning, the city is ringed on all sides by mountains.
It was an up and down kind of day, the bakers was open again after their Monday off and I bought those lovely baguettes campagne, a friend of Franco’s brought in some delicious almond croissants — they were gone before I could photograph them, but there were cakes too.
And Franco’s partner in the race, Alex Aeschbach gave me a wee present, ‘6 Daagsen Statistieken 2010’ a book as sad as it sounds — packed with Six Day stats; I almost cried with gratitude.
But there was bad news too; Jo Do the German mechanic had to go to hospital with a burst appendix.
One of the mechanics duties is to chain all the bikes up at night — no mechanic means no key for the padlock and no training for Jens-Erik until we tracked down the key from Jo Do’s lady.
And Franco has a lung infection — that’s going to make win number six tough; Danny and Leon are in the cabin next door, they can sense weakness like a shark senses blood in the water.
Kris must have been working me too hard last night, I missed the parade of previous winners, there’s a photo in the ‘Speed Gazette’ newspaper which the race organisers produce each day.
One haircut I recognised was that of Philippe Tarantini who ‘won’ here in 1991 — ask Stephen Roche about that one.
Roche was leading with Tony Doyle; Tarantini and Jean-Claude Colotti were a lap down but with better points and attacked late in the last chase.
They didn’t make the junction until after the lap last had been completed — but if you were the judges, who would you want to win, an Irish millionaire or a lad from just up the road at La Tronche?
Patrick Sercu arrived tonight — its pay day tomorrow — and told us that we can’t park the camper inside the big garage beside the track at Gent — it’s going to be chilly walking to the shower block.
I had a good look at the hardware this afternoon; one thing about Danny Stam is that he and his partners always have nice bikes.
Alex Aeschbach rides a carbon BMC; you love them or hate them.
Carbon again for Jens-Erik’s Principia — a lovely tool, very rigid but; ‘too rigid for the road’ says Dirk the mechanic.
The Belgians stick with good old aluminium on their white Merckx track machines.
The Focus is a handsome looking machine too.
Nicest bike?
Maybe Elia Viviani’s Cannondale Slice (which is their TT frame with track ends) takes the prize?
On the subject of Elia; along with Six partner Angelo Ciccone and sprinter Kevin Sireau, he took the absolute track record for the flying three laps tonight with 34.958 — that’s 630 metres.
One thing they have wrong at Grenoble is the ‘Balustrade sprint’ where the field rides high on the barrier and give it hands off, ‘Superman’ stuff for the benefit of the crowd.
At Copenhagen they pump out Dario G’s ‘Sunchyme’ and it’s brilliant — here the ‘B’ jazz band pumps out dire jazz.
Anyway, writing this on Tuesday afternoon, we’ve started to pack, they boy’s have got their contract money and there’s just that 180 lap chase to go.
I’ll be there — I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.
Result
Points Race
1 Angelo Ciccone / Elia Viviani (Ita) 10 pts
2 Tim Mertens / Kenny de Ketele (Bel) 8
3 Wim Stroetinga / Jeff Vermeulen (Ned) 8
4 Jens-Erik Madsen / Marc Hester (Den) 8
5 Jiri Hochmann / Milan Kadlec (Cze) 8
6 Mickaël Jeannin / Morgan Kneisky (Fra) 7
7 Danny Stam / Leon Van Bon (Ned) 6
8 Kevin Fouache / Jules Pijourlet (Fra) 6
9 Alexander Aeschbach / Franco Marvulli (Swi) 4
10 François Lamiraud / Florent Ivars (Fra) 1
11 Pierre-Luc Perichon / Sebastien Ivars (Fra)
Madison
1 Jens-Erik Madsen / Marc Hester (Den) 20 pts
2 Danny Stam / Leon Van Bon (Ned) 12
At 1 Lap
3 Alexander Aeschbach / Franco Marvulli (Swi) 10
4 Tim Mertens / Kenny de Ketele (Bel) 8
5 Mickaël Jeannin / Morgan Kneisky (Fra) 6
6 Angelo Ciccone / Elia Viviani (Ita) 4
7 Wim Stroetinga / Jeff Vermeulen (Ned)
8 Jiri Hochmann / Milan Kadlec (Cze)
At 2 Laps
9 François Lamiraud / Florent Ivars (Fra)
10 Pierre-Luc Perichon / Sebastien Ivars (Fra)
At 3 Laps
11 Kevin Fouache / Jules Pijourlet (Fra)
Team Time Trial
1 Angelo Ciccone / Elia Viviani (Ita) 0:00:34.958
2 Tim Mertens / Kenny de Ketele (Bel) 0:00:35.884
3 Wim Stroetinga / Jeff Vermeulen (Ned) 0:00:36.260
4 Jens-Erik Madsen / Marc Hester (Den) 0:00:36.268
5 Jiri Hochmann / Milan Kadlec (Cze) 0:00:36.927
6 Mickaël Jeannin / Morgan Kneisky (Fra) 0:00:37.419
7 François Lamiraud / Florent Ivars (Fra) 0:00:38.415
Elimination Race – red numbers
1 Pierre-Luc Perichon (Fra) 10 pts
2 François Lamiraud (Fra) 6
3 Kevin Fouache (Fra) 5
4 Mickaël Jeannin (Fra) 4
5 Tim Mertens (Bel) 3
6 Jiri Hochmann (Cze) 2
7 Alexander Aeschbach (Swi)
8 Angelo Ciccone (Ita)
9 Wim Stroetinga (Ned)
10 Danny Stam (Ned)
11 Jens-Erik Madsen (Den)
Elimination Race – black numbers
1 Elia Viviani (Ita) 10 pts
2 Milan Kadlec (Cze) 6
3 Franco Marvulli (Swi) 5
4 Leon Van Bon (Ned) 4
5 Jeff Vermeulen (Ned) 3
6 Florent Ivars (Fra) 2
7 Jules Pijourlet (Fra)
8 Sebastien Ivars (Fra)
9 Morgan Kneisky (Fra)
10 Marc Hester (Den)
11 Kenny de Ketele (Bel)
Scratch Race
1 Tim Mertens / Kenny de Ketele (Bel) 20 pts
2 Jens-Erik Madsen / Marc Hester (Den) 12
3 Alexander Aeschbach / Franco Marvulli (Swi) 10
4 Angelo Ciccone / Elia Viviani (Ita) 8
5 Jiri Hochmann / Milan Kadlec (Cze) 6
6 Mickaël Jeannin / Morgan Kneisky (Fra) 4
7 Wim Stroetinga / Jeff Vermeulen (Ned)
8 Pierre-Luc Perichon / Sebastien Ivars (Fra)
9 Danny Stam / Leon Van Bon (Ned)
10 Kevin Fouache / Jules Pijourlet (Fra)
11 François Lamiraud / Florent Ivars (Fra)
Elimination Race
1 Tim Mertens / Kenny de Ketele (Bel) 20 pts
2 Jens-Erik Madsen / Marc Hester (Den) 12
3 Alexander Aeschbach / Franco Marvulli (Swi) 10
4 Angelo Ciccone / Elia Viviani (Ita) 8
5 Jiri Hochmann / Milan Kadlec (Cze) 6
6 Mickaël Jeannin / Morgan Kneisky (Fra) 4
7 Wim Stroetinga / Jeff Vermeulen (Ned)
8 Pierre-Luc Perichon / Sebastien Ivars (Fra)
9 Danny Stam / Leon Van Bon (Ned)
10 Kevin Fouache / Jules Pijourlet (Fra)
11 François Lamiraud / Florent Ivars (Fra)
Overall standings after night 5
1 Angelo Ciccone / Elia Viviani (Ita) 254 pts
2 Jens-Erik Madsen / Marc Hester (Den) 254
3 Alexander Aeschbach / Franco Marvulli (Swi) 247
4 Danny Stam / Leon Van Bon (Ned) 246
At 1 Lap
5 Tim Mertens / Kenny de Ketele (Bel) 259
At 2 Laps
6 Jiri Hochmann / Milan Kadlec (Cze) 172
At 3 Laps
7 Mickaël Jeannin / Morgan Kneisky (Fra) 167
At 7 Laps
8 Wim Stroetinga / Jeff Vermeulen (Ned) 127
At 13 Laps
9 Pierre-Luc Perichon / Sebastien Ivars (Fra) 50
At 16 Laps
10 Kevin Fouache / Jules Pijourlet (Fra) 63
At 19 Laps
11 François Lamiraud / Florent Ivars (Fra) 61
