Tag: Cadel Evans

Hail with a side salad

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
Our maple isn't quite down to its last leaf, but there's plenty of bald patches up there and more storms in the forecast.
Our maple isn’t quite down to its last leaf, but there’s plenty of bald patches up there and more storms in the forecast.

Herself and I spent some quality time together this morning, cleaning up the wreckage from yesterday’s blitzkrieg hailstorm.

I had to get up on the roof to broom off some of the detached greenery (and clear the gutters while I was at it). And then we set about collecting the stuff on the ground. This was about the time I decided that owning two-fifths of the block was something of a giant pain in the ass, or more specifically, the lower back.

We filled one of those big rolling trash bins and another smaller can with salad and sticks before saying the hell with it and going back indoors for lunch, after which we lost interest more or less permanently, especially since it looks like another storm may be blowing in here directly.

In other news, poor Cuddles lost his pretty pink shirt in the Giro. He has one flat stage for liver-gnawing purposes, tomorrow, before the ground tilts upward and the shit gets serious. Should be fun to watch. Rigoberto Uran Ran Ran Ran Da Doo Ran Ran looked tougher ‘n’ whang leather out there today, and taking time back from him will be like trying to steal stupid from Louie Gohmert.

Punk-tures deflate stage 14

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments
The RadioShack-Nissan press wizard snapped this shot of one of the tacks pulled from a rider's tire.
The RadioShack-Nissan press wizard snapped this shot of one of the tacks pulled from a rider’s tire.

Just when you thought stage 14 of the 2012 Tour de France couldn’t get any worse, it did.

The Pyrénéan stage, with its two category-one climbs — which no less an authority than John Wilcockson had expected to provide “the best chance yet” for Cadel Evans, Vincenzo Nibali or Jurgen Van den Broucke to yank Bradley Wiggins out of his golden palanquin — turned into a nothing-burger of a training ride, with a break a quarter-hour up the road and the GC guys back in the bunch trading organic chamois-cream recipes. (Handy household hint: If you see Mark Cavendish at the front of the bunch on a climb, nobody is busting his balls. Except maybe Cavendish.)

That was bad enough for those of us trying to keep a live update, well, lively.

But then some fuckwit or fuckwits unknown decided it would be fun to salt the final climb with tacks.

Yes, tacks.

There were some 30 punctures, though whether that refers to tires or riders remains unclear. Evans had three flats of his own — the first left him standing atop the final summit with a teammate who also lacked a functional rear wheel, awaiting neutral service, AAA or the Better World Club, whichever would accept his Credit Lyonnais credit card.

Evans finally got going again, and maillot jaune Bradley Wiggins asked the bunch to ride piano until the defending champ got back on, though Europcar’s Pierre Rolland, Lotto-Belisol and Liquigas-Cannondale apparently missed the memo. Those rascals soon got sorted out, however, and that was that, although Rolland should consider himself out of the Miss Congeniality competition this year.

Robert Kiserlovski got the worst of it — Jani Brajkovic flatted after that last climb, Kiserlovski apparently swerved over to give him a wheel, Levi Leipheimer T-boned him, and Kiserlovski left the Tour with a busted collarbone.

Oh, yeah — there was some actual racing going on. Luis Leon Sanchez popped out of that break while green jersey Peter Sagan was having a nosh and rode solo to the stage win. Sagan had looked like the man of the hour until Sanchez caught him with his mouth full.

“Yes, I should have kept a better eye on him,” Sagan told Cyclingnews.” In the last few kilometers I needed to eat. I wasn’t expecting him to attack me at that point. He is experienced and I am not bitter about it. Even if I’d managed to stay with him I might not have won.”

Help! I need somebody. …

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments

Oh, cycling is a cruel sport. One wonders what Chris Froome and Tejay van Garderen might have been able to do today had they not been restricted to dragging around their respective team leaders, Bradley Wiggins and Cadel Evans?

Poor old Evans looked like he was trying to choke down a double-decker shit sandwich on the final climb while TVG appeared as fresh as a daisy. And Froomey shelled the yellow jersey while towing him past a group of stragglers and had to back off the gas lest Wiggo’ call him a nasty name at the team dinner this evening.

“Wankers & Cunts.” Hmm. That would be a great name for a XXX theater, eh?

Meanwhile, chapeau to Pierre Rolland. He was on the floor at one point after trying (and failing) to tripod around a hairpin corner, and he got up and won the damn’ stage. A fine performance for the home folks.

Boom, Schleckaleckalecka. …

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments

Another day, another detonation — that’s life at the 2010 Tour.

Yellow-jersey-for-a-day Cadel Evans went boom after breaking his left elbow in a crash on Sunday; he and management decided to keep it a secret, the team worked like draft horses for him, and it ended badly.

“We decided not to tell anybody because we didn’t want anybody hitting us on the first climb,” BMC team manager Jim Ochowicz told VeloNews. “We controlled the race and we were going to see what the outcome was … you saw the outcome.”

Indeed I did, and I felt badly for Evans, who really has done the world champion’s jersey proud this year only to get a steel-toed Sidi in the ’nads from Fate. And given the carnage thus far, I wonder whether Andy Schleck — the latest in a series of yellow jerseys — might be tempting fate by saying that the race has boiled down to a two-man race between him and Super Spaniard.

Don’t let your mouth write no checks your ass can’t cash, son. I don’t see no Champs-Elysees yet.

Meanwhile, speaking of mouths, asses and checks, it seems that Scott McLobbyist, the Repuglican candidate for governor of Colorado (The Slightly Less Grotesquely Fat Than the Rest of the States State), has been accused of lifting bits for his series of “Musings on Water” pieces from the works of Gregory J. Dobbs (no relation to Fred C. Dobbs), now a justice on the state Supreme Court.

According to The Denver Post, the Hasan Family Foundation paid McInnis $300,000 to do speaking engagements and “research and write a monthly article on water issues that can be distributed to media and organizations as well as be available on the Internet.”

Instead, McLobbyist took a gig at a law firm, jobbed the research out and now blames the researcher for the alleged plagiarism, which he says is “a non-issue.”

“Voters don’t really care about this issue,” he told a Denver TV station. “They care about jobs, getting back to work.”

I’ll bet they do. Hell, I’d like to find a job like that myself after three decades trying to draw some sustenance from the dusty, withered teat of journalism. Getting paid $300,000 for two years to steal someone else’s words when they’re just sitting there waiting for you in a corral? Sheeyit, that’s about as sporting as shooting puppies at the pound. My words are all free-range, and take some hunting down.