Well … at least Mark Cavendish finally has his yellow jersey.
Category: Tour de France
Éirinn go Brách
Imagine my surprise. You can teach an old race new tricks.
After just one day of the same ol’, same ol’ — line up the choo-choo, hop aboard, let your boyos break everyone’s legs before you lop off their heads in the final 5km — the peloton finally muttered, collectively, “Fuck that shit,” and put the boots to Team Sky from the gun.
And an Irishman won the stage, which makes it so much sweeter. If there’s anything a Mick loves more than a free pint of the black, it’s a Limey on the deck where a bold lad can give him a bit of the auld shoe leather. A right proper hooley it was.
Sure, Zoom-Zoom Froome is still in yellow. But today is about the wearin’ of the green.
Two jerseys down …
The last couple of days at Le Shew Beeg have been, um, interesting, no?
First Cannondale lays waste to all the fast-twitch boyos and puts Peter Sagan in command of the points jersey. And then Sky croaks all the GC guys on the first mountain stage and goes one-two, stage and overall. Zoom-Zoom Froome even snatched up the polka-dot jersey for dessert.
Minibars in the Saint-Nazaire hotels will be in dire need of restocking on Monday’s rest day if Tintin and his mob tap that 55-gallon drum of whup-ass again tomorrow on a five-climb stage. And it goes without saying that the whispers have already begun.
“You have to ask them why they could not keep up,” said Richie Porte, Zoom-Zoom’s chief lieutenant. “Look at us all season, we are so consistent. This has happened all year. Look at Dauphiné and Paris-Nice. This is not really a massive surprise.”
No, it’s not. But maybe it should be. Here’s hoping we’re not in for a two-week victory lap that raises more questions than it answers.
Give me a break
Being a newsman of sorts (OK, you can stop laughing now) I like it when actual news occurs.
As Charles “Live Update Guy” Pelkey and I rambled through today’s coverage of stage 2 it seemed we were in for the classic Tour de France non-event: The Doomed Break Reeled In At the Very Last Minute.
Except it wasn’t. Not all of it. Jan Bakelants (RadioShack-Leopard) made a break from the break and hung on to win by a whisker, the last man standing from a late six-man escape. First Tour, first pro win. And it came with a nifty yellow jersey, too.
People who were supposed to win didn’t; people who were supposed to get the maillot jaune didn’t; and the only impediments to forward motion were gravity, eejits at roadside and a loose mutt who will probably never chase a guy on a bicycle again but came away with a fine tale to tell around the fire hydrant: “Jesus, Lassie, there were a couple hundred of the sonsabitches coming after me at 50 km/h! I ’bout shit my flea collar!”
Eventually all the Right People will take charge, of course. They almost always do. But in the meantime we seem to have an actual sporting-news story on our hands.
Extry, extry, read all about it. …
French tickler
Good Lord, where does the time go? It seems only yesterday that The Cyclist Who Shall Not Be Named was curled up in Soaprah’s expansive lap, singin’ the blues. And now here it is time for that race he was so fond of.
This isn’t just any old dash around Frogland, mind you. It’s the 100th Tour; the defending champion, Brave, Brave, Brave Sir Wiggo’, has bravely run away; and our old friend Andrew Hood says that while everyone has his eye on the final week, that first week could be a doozy.
So, naturally, Charles “Live Update Guy” Pelkey will be covering the bugger from stem to stern, starting at dark-thirty on Saturday morning. As usual, I’ll be playing Ed to his Johnny, which is to say I will be slouched on the couch, belching besotted witticisms such as, “Hey-yo!” and “You are correct, sir.”
So mark your calendars. And in comments, give us your picks for the final yellow jersey in Paris. Here, I’ll get the ball rolling. Now me, I think Zoom-Zoom Froome has peaked too early. …
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