Het Volk... Friday, the evening before the race, as we sat in the Viadukt, our fave local bar in Ghent, we caught sight of our pilot friend who flies Belgian Air Force C130s around the world whilst in an advanced state of enebriation. He was flying to Kabul on the morrow; but tonight in the Viadukt he couldn't bite his thumb.
Looking for a nice meal in Lourdes with great service? That's too bad, you'll struggle to find it! We were lucky to come across the only half-civil waiter in the town after landing in the third restaurant of the night, after being variously ignored by staff and stared at at by local idiots in the first two places we tried. Today's plan: head up to the start at Cugnaux and get a Village Depart breakfast, then drive on race route until the famous climb of the Tourmalet, where we pitched up around 3km from the top.
I wish I could get tomorrow’s Gazzetta, tomorrow – but it’ll be Saturday, at best. It was the first major shoot out, today, to Cortina d'Ampezzo. It’s over for Kreuziger and difficult for Tiralongo – a bad day for Astana. Uran continues to impress – perhaps he’ll get let off ‘train’ duties for Cav, tomorrow?
Every year, VeloVeritas catches up with the CTT National Hill Climb Champion, this year the man who best defied gravity was 31 years-old Tom Bell who rides in the colours of his own coaching concern, High North Performance.
The first big mountain stage of the Tour has exposed the form of the riders who have intentions of finishing on the podium in the race. The best five in the race to date have been Wiggins, Evans, Nibali, Froome and Van Den Broeck (VDB). Bizarrely, Chris Froome is probably the best in the race right now: he completely cracked Cadel Evans AND (briefly) dropped his own team leader.
After a year at DFL, 23 year-old Scottish professional Alex Coutts from Gorebridge, has renewed old sponsorship links with Flemish bike concern, Flanders. We caught-up with him recently at mentor John Anderson's Edinburgh shop, the Bicycleworks. Coutts was just back from a training trip to Spain and is already looking like he is ready for action.
We first spoke to Harry Tanfield a couple of years ago having seen him ride well in the Gordon Arms time trial – most recently we spoke to him after he won the David Campbell Memorial road race in Fife back in the spring of 2016. So when we opened this week’s ‘Cycling Weekly’ and there he was spread across two pages as the UK’s number one rated Elite rider we thought we best ‘have a word’...