'GreenEDGE will be on a high' we said of their chances in the TTT – and they exploited it in the best way possible. There’s a lot of luck involved in professional cycling and it was Sky and QuickStep’s turn for that particular lady to desert them, this time around.
Hood junior had already clued me in on the stage winner by text (there's about 400 metres of road, just outside the beach airport where you can receive a text); Simon Gerrans (GreenEdge & Australia) the former Aussie champion is a cool guy - when he won Milan-Sanremo I tried to ring him for a quote but went to ansaphone.
Jan Bakelants today, but they couldn't resist it; "Tour de Farce" trumpets the headline in the Sunday Times. I'm not really a Times man, my dad wouldn't have approved. But I wanted to see what David Walsh had to say about Stage One.
It was Kittel today. My son asked me today what the chances of Cav taking the win and the yellow jersey were; "95%" said I, confidently. But it’s that other 5% which makes it a bike race.
The bulk of the stage was a ‘paint drying’ job with the early break – which went in remarkably fuss free fashion - of Jerome Cousin (Europcar), Juan José Lobato (Euskaltel-Euskadi), Lars Boom (Belkin), Juan Antonio Flecha (Vacansoleil-DCM) and Cyril Lemoine (Sojasun) sitting up in the huff because they couldn’t get the gap; then the peloton doing the same to give the escapees some space and incentive to get back on the case.
Steve Cummings has finally landed a stage race win, the Tour of the Mediterranean – he won the stage 3b time trial to go top on GC then hung on to his lead on the nasty slopes of Mont Faron to beat AG2R hard man, Jean-Christophe Peraud to the overall honours. We spoke to him a day or two after his triumph.
On Stage Eight to Albacete, once the break got caught with around 20 miles to go it looked like standard sprinter stage fare – Giant, Lampre, F de J and GreenEDGE would control it for their sprinters, with Nacer Bouhanni prominent.
Year in, year out during the 70's, Guildford man Gerry Butterfill returned to the cycling Heartland of Flanders to pit himself against the very best in the world.
The Jason MacInyre Memorial Trophy stays on Dooleys Cycles' Arthur Doyle's mantlepiece for another year, after he edged the win this morning in the "10 Champs" by a single second from teammate Iain Grant, with Gavin Shirley in 13th place backing them up for the Team prize in a time which we think is a new Scottish Competition Team Record by four seconds.
Hump Day & Humdrum. As the physio on team Garmin-Transitions, all I can say is this is a dangerous sport. All things considered, 3rd place for Tyler yesterday was a fantastic effort by the whole team, with Dave Zabriskie helping to control the break for most of the day.
The alarm went at 08.00 and I hobbled out of bed. The shower room was occupied so it was the full wash in the sink routine-hope nobody filmed it. It has to be the most unfriendly breakfast room in the world - nobody speaks so it was quick bowl of muesli and out the door. World Road Championships 2006...