I missed delivering the daily dose of snark yesterday due to a combination of deadlines, writer’s block and insomnia; sorry ’bout that. So I’ll just say that the Astana boys really screwed the pooch, and if I were Alberto Contador I would give my time-trial bike a good going-over for sidewall cuts, severed cables and wired lumps of Semtex before climbing into the start house this morning.
Today we heard that big George Hincapie may have cracked a collarbone in a crash yesterday but is racing anyway (chapeau); Texus Maximus may be riding for Radio Shack next year (please fire the surly bitch at Bibleburg’s 8th Street location); and Cuddles Evans is still displaying signs of a serious short-circuit under the helmet, pissing away more time in the early going of the ITT. And now it appears to be raining, which could turn the GC war into the Battle of Jutland. More as it develops.
• Note to Phil and Paul: Shut the fuck up about Lance Lance Lance Lance Lance Lance, please. Jesus.
• Alberto Indurain: Contador slays all in the time trial.
• Killer dope, man: And oh, yeah, Danilo Di Luca tripped the Dope-O-Meter® for EPO CERA during the Giro d’Italia. He’s innocent, naturally.
Busy, busy, busy. It was amusing watching Saxo Bank try to croak the Astana boys today, especially when the apparently shelled Texus Maximus went rocketing up the hill as if he just couldn’t wait for another dope test.
But seeing poor Jens Voigt hit the deck at speed took a lot of the fun out of the workday. An “inherently dangerous sport,” as the USA Cycling release puts it, and sometimes a guy doesn’t just leap up, remount and ride on with his bloody ass hanging out of his shredded shorts. Here’s hoping the big German heals well and quickly.
All the cube farmers following the stage on VeloNews.com slowed the site to a crawl, so loading stories and photos afterward has been like trying to push volleyballs through a garden hose using a pipe cleaner.
Still, it beats getting a brain scan in the Grenoble hospital while nurses buff the gravel out of your face with a wire brush.
Frank McCourt, author of “Angela’s Ashes,” dies at 78 of metastatic melanoma. Ah, but what a book he left us with. As The New York Timesrecalls:
“When I look back on my childhood, I wonder how I survived at all,” the book’s second paragraph begins in a famous passage. “It was, of course, a miserable childhood: The happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.
“People everywhere brag and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty; the shiftless loquacious alcoholic father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying schoolmasters; the English and all the terrible things they did to us for 800 long years.”
The book had an inauspicious beginning. He took a stab at it while studying at New York University, but didn’t hit his stride until after he retired from teaching. Again, from the NYT:
“After 20 pages of standard omniscient author, I wrote something that I thought was just a note to myself, about sitting on a seesaw in a playground, and I found my voice, the voice of a child,” he told The Providence Journal in 1997. “That was it. It carried me through to the end of the book.”
McCourt, who certainly had every reason to lack a sense of humor, said it was exactly that which keeps the Irish going.
“I think there’s something about the Irish experience — that we had to have a sense of humor or die,” Mr. McCourt once told an interviewer. “That’s what kept us going — a sense of absurdity, rather than humor.”
Sure works for me. May you be in heaven a half hour before the devil knows you’re dead, Francis McCourt. Tell Harold Joseph O’Grady of County Clare to buy yous a pint on Patrick Declan O’Grady so.
In keeping with our new Tour tradition, we're drinking a Spanish red this evening in honor of El Pistolero.
‘Berto Contador laid a patch about 6km long en route to Verbiers today, leaving everyone — including Texas Maximus — choking on the burning rubber.
The old fella looked like he’d thrown a rod by the time he finally crossed the finish line, more than a minute and a half later, and no wonder. Chasing that skinny Spaniard uphill, a guy must feel like Wile E. Coyote galloping after the Roadrunner. Meep meep — ka-pweeeeeng! Cue the eyeballs hitting the asphalt, ka-plunk.
Saxo Bank had a hand in Big Tex’s undoing, and they claim to have more of the same waiting for Super Spaniard, but they’ll have to catch him first. One dude unlikely to stand in their way is Cuddles Evans, who apparently had the legs of Olive Oyl on stage 15.
He was still better than Tex, though, which must leave Old No. 7 yearning for a cold Shiner Bock and a hot blonde. Tex was huffin’ and puffin’ at the back of the bus, getting a good strong whiff of Andreas Klöden’s farts — that is, until Klöden dropped him too.
In honor of the pissing match between Columbia-HTC and Garmin-Slipstream, we have abandoned traditional Tour practice here at Chez Chien (which is to drink only French wine) and quaff an American rosé, from Walla Walla, Washington.
The Tour of the Living Dead rolled on toward the Alps today, and I’ll be damned if I have any idea what the hell was going on. So many stories, so little time. Tell you what, though — these guys can’t be too tuckered out, ’cause a bunch of ’em were anaerobically jacking their foaming jaws post-stage.
Columbia-HTC’s George Hincapie got into an early break and just missed taking the yellow by five seconds; depending upon whom you read, he was screwed out of it by either Ag2r, Astana or Garmin-Slipstream. Teammate Mark Cavendish, meanwhile, got relegated for slamming the door on green jersey Thor Hushovd (Cervélo) in the bunch sprint.
Hinc’ initially blamed Astana for chasing before stalking into the team bus and refusing to speak to the press. But Big Tex and Johan Bruyneel say they wanted Hincapie in yellow so that Columbia would have to defend against the Schleck brothers, Cuddles Evans, et al., in the Alps. The team was on the front, yes, but merely riding tempo with the goal of getting Tex’s former chief lieutenant into the maillot jaune with two minutes to spare. So much for Tex’s policy against granting gifts in the Tour.
Tex and Bruyneel, along with a very irate Columbia honch’ Bob Stapleton, blame Garmin for spoiling Hincapie’s party, though Tex adds that Ag2r shares some of the blame for saying it would not defend Rinaldo Nocentini’s overall lead, then abruptly starting to ride as though their shorts were on fire.
Garmin’s Jonathan Vaughters, meanwhile, says it looked to him as though his boys were merely rotating through at the front of the peloton, trying to protect the GC positions of Bradley Wiggins and Christian Vande Velde. I like JV, but I’m not buying that one. I was watching TV, too, and that didn’t look anything like a casual rotation to me. The argyle boys were drilling it, along with Ag2r, and I don’t imagine director Matt White will have a whole lot of pals in the peloton going forward.
The Cavendish-Hushovd deal was an easier call. Cav’ simply tried to ride Hushovd into the barriers on a slight bend. Case closed. And now he’s gonna have a tougher time getting that green jersey back from the big Norwegian. Cav’ may win the points, but I bet Hushovd wins the fight in the parking lot afterward.
Tomorrow brings the 207km stage from Pontarlier to Verbier, with four Category 3s, one Cat. 2 and the Cat. 1 climb to the finish. Think that might get the big dogs to stop their monotonous barking and finally jump off that comfy porch? VeloNews editor at large John Wilcockson predicts that Nocentini will finally lose that yellow jersey — but he’s not expecting much in the way of an early challenge to the nut-lock Astana has on the GC.
Ho hum. Paging Bernard Hinault … Monsieur Hinault, to the yellow courtesy phone, please. . . .
• Late update:VeloNews Euro’ correspondent Andrew Hood advises via Twitter: “ChaseGate continues to churn; circus outside Garmin bus tomorrow; by 5 p.m. tomorrow, all will be forgotten. AC-LA duel is real story.”
• Even Later Update: The NYT gives Garmin-Slipstream a little positive press with a slideshow on how (and what) the team eats.
Mad Blog Media 