Tag: Mark Cavendish

Apocalypse now

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments

There ain’t nothing like that first week of the Tour, boys and girls. And this has been a particularly bad first few days, what with various other chores coinciding with my need to work five days a week for three weeks at VeloNews.com.

After 20 years of cracking lame cycling gags I occasionally find myself with a nasty case of writer’s block, and wouldn’t you know it? This was one of those times. And me with deadlines at Bicycle Retailer & Industry News (two columns and a “Shop Talk” cartoon strip) and VeloNews (editorial cartoon).

Never get out of the fuckin' boat!
Never get out of the fuckin' boat!

I pushed the envelope so far it turned inside out, creating a wormhole that took me to an alternate universe containing a Patrick O’Grady who was still about half funny. Happily, when I showed up my dopplegänger was asleep under his drawing board with an empty bottle of tonsil polish in one limp paw (some things transcend time and space), so I appropriated his work and returned to my own universe just in time to beat my deadlines.

But is this my universe? Lance Armstrong is not winning the Tour — far from it, he sits in 18th place, 2:30 behind Fabian Cancellara, and is getting heckled by spectators calling him “dopehead” and “cheat.” And Mark Cavendish is getting his ass handed to him in the sprints. The renowned sprinter Andy Schleck has more points than Cav’, f’chrissakes.

Shit. I should’ve listened to Chef. “Never get out of the boat.” Not even to beat a deadline.

Rubber side down, boys

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments

Well, sheeyit. I didn’t get out for that bike ride after all. Family commitments, shopping and what have you. I did ride the Vespa for a while, which counts as exercise only because I was fighting a fairly insane wind. And earlier in the day I did twitch and cringe a few times as three crashes marred the final 3km in stage one of the Tour de France. That’s aerobic, right?

I’ve not seen an authoritative account of who did what to whom, but one theory has it that in the first significant pileup Cervélo’s Jeremy Hunt took out Rabobank’s Oscar Freire in a turn, and that HTC’s Mark Cavendish bit the bag as well. There was a Glasgow kiss being delivered there, but as I was watching via the Innertubes with bad eyeballs I couldn’t tell who was pitching and who was catching. To some, it looked like Cav’ was the guilty party.

The second asphalt inspection was a beaut’ that clogged the road from curb to curb. I think everyone went down in that one except for Phil and Paul.

Still, my favorite was the final crash in which Garmin’s Tyler Farrar found himself trying to catch Lampre’s Alessandro Petacchi with Lloyd Mondory’s bike stuffed into his rear wheel. What looked like a minor annoyance to him probably would’ve sent you or me to the hospital, or the morgue. Fine job of keeping the side up there, Hoss.