Tag: Giro d’Italia

Here’s mud in your eye

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments

Saturday’s stage of the Giro d’Italia looked like a cyclo-cross designed by the Batley Townswomen’s Guild with an assist from Timothy Leary and the Marquis de Sade. Angelo Zomegnan must have a deep-pockets coin-laundry sponsor. And I bet the mechanics were cursing late into the night as they washed, lubed and repaired mud-caked machinery, guzzling vino rosso.

Today brings stage 1 of the Amgen Tour of California. No prologue this year — instead we have a road stage from Nevada City to Sacramento. The VeloNews mob is all over California, seeing as Texus Maximus is there (eyeballs! eyeballs! eyeballs!) while the Giro makes do with Charles Pelkey and Andrew Hood. Something seems awry there, but what do I know? I am merely a lowly scribe, and a part-timer at that.

But I know which race I’d rather be watching it. And I’m watching it right now, with Italian commentary.

• Late update: Whew, that was one long day in the barrel. Thanks to all the VeloNews.com live-update followers who didn’t call me a retard (I had my critics, and justifiably). In my own defense, I will say only that stage 1 of the 2010 Amgen Tour of California was not exactly the most exciting bike race I’ve ever watched, except for that bell lap, when a whole bunch of guys decided to fall over en masse. Tom Boonen looked like he’d been run through an industrial meat grinder afterward. Cav’ won after J.J. Haedo went into slow-mo a few meters short of the line. Imagine my surprise.

Alberi rosa

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments
Looks kind of like Italy. Or not.
Looks kind of like Italy. Or not.

I managed to find a little pink on my ride yesterday, in the late Ed Burke’s old neighborhood next to Palmer Park.

It was a typical May day in Bibleburg — start the ride wearing two long-sleeve jerseys, leg warmers, wool socks, long-fingered gloves and a tuque, finish wishing you’d left all that winter crap at home. And this was a 90-minute ride, mind you. More of the same today, with temps in the mid-40s, 76 percent humidity and more rain in the forecast.

Meanwhile, big props to Aussie Matt Lloyd (Omega Pharma-Lotto), who soloed to victory in today’s Giro stage after shelling break-mate Rubens Bertogliati (Androni). And chapeau to Tyler Farrar (Garmin-Transitions), who scored the red jersey.

I lent a hand to the live coverage over at VeloNews.com today,  but the real heavy lifting commences tomorrow. After a full shift in the VeloBarrel on Saturday it’s full-tilt boogie starting Sunday, when we have the Amgen Tour of California and the Giro running concurrently. I won’t have a day off until a week from Tuesday. Good times.

Banzai! Banzai! Ba … oh, merde

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments
Twenty roses do tend to fill up a small living room.
Twenty roses do tend to fill up a small living room.

Yukiya Arashiro nearly pulled off a stage win today for his Bbox Bouygues Telecom squad. He started the day’s break — a break that, astoundingly, made it all the way to the line, thanks in large part to his hard work in the final kilometers — and what thanks did he get? The poor sod saw Quick Step’s Jérôme Pineau and Cofidis’ Julien Fouchard zip past him at the line. How does one say “Ce me fait chier!” in Japanese?

While we’re discussing things that suck, it snowed here briefly this morning. Naturally, the furnace went on the blink in solidarity. We’re starting to suspect our Honeywell programmable thermostat, which is about more one cold spring morning away from getting the old Han Solo treatment from me and my S&W .357 Magnum. Probably take out one of the neighbors in the process. The old hand cannon packs quite a wallop.

The chill must have been good for the roses I bought Herself yesterday, though. Just like sitting in the cooler at Platte Floral, except for the big white cat with the foliage fetish who keeps rubbing up against them.

And now for the rumors behind the news

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
Miss Mia Sopaipilla is fed up with being trapped in the cheap cardboard box of text-based live updates. She wants her streaming, and she wants it now!
Miss Mia Sopaipilla is fed up with being trapped in the cheap cardboard box of text-based live updates. She wants her streaming, and she wants it now!

Lots of interesting chatter in comments about the coverage of bicycle racing in the Age of the Internets. I’ve been at it for about 20 years now, and the changes I’ve seen have not all been for the better, any more than they have been in the mainstream media.

We in the press were late to realize how easily we could be bypassed. Think of the media as this great stone edifice, an imposing castle standing athwart the road from News to Youse. None shall pass — not without paying tribute, anyway.

Well, Al Gore and his pals done went and built a bypass — the high-speed Infobahn — and now sleepy Journalism Lane gets about as much paying traffic as the frontage road alongside I-25, formerly known as Highway 85-87, if I recall correctly.

The organizers of the Giro are giving their video away — I’ve been watching the race on the Gazzetta dello Sport website. The Amgen Tour of California folks were doing the same thing last year. In neither case did I have to install any extra bits of this and that to make it happen. Other events, like the spring classics, can be had via pirate video — sites like cyclingfans.com hunt down high-quality streams like fly fishermen on meth.

Nobody invites me to the strategy sessions at Competitor Group Inc. HQ in San Diego, for obvious reasons. But if they did, I’d ask whether we’re trying to secure the rights to stream video from the grand tours. And if we’re not, then how come?

Sure, it has to be expensive, if it can be had at all, especially when those millions of eyeballs start a-buggin’ and the server farm commences to smokin’. And yeah, there are still plenty of cube dwellers who will settle for a text-based live update (easier to hide from the boss, don’t you know). Charles does a great job with the VN live, especially when it comes to promptly answering questions from the tuned-in tifosi. Me, I’m more of a color guy, especially if that color is blue.

But a text-based live update, no matter how well it’s done, seems so … last millennium.

I’m guessing most cycling fans want to watch the actual race, preferably augmented by some informed commentary. The CGI boss-fella is Peter Englehart — the Outdoor Life Network honch’ who was responsible for OLN’s acquisition and production of the Tour de France — so who knows? We may yet see some action on that front.

If not, things are gonna get awfully dark around the ol’ castle.

Vino’ rosé

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments

Well, Alexander Vinokourov keeps saying he’s back, and it seems that Count Vino’ ain’t just a-woofin’. He has the maglia rosa after three stages of the Giro, and poor Christian Vande Velde has another busted bone and some trainer time to look forward to.

I had to run the live update for a while today over at VeloNews.com in addition to writing the day’s stage report, and if the live was a tad spastic it’s because I do this almost, um, never. Happily, European correspondent Andrew Hood chipped in to supply some actual information to offset my ignorance.

Cuddles Evans is a mite pissed off after losing the jersey today, and who can blame him? He told Agence France Presse that he was doing just fine until the wind started up “and coming round a corner all the Sky team were on the ground. The rest of the guys fell on top of them.”

Now that’s what I call a tough day at the office.