Time waits for no one
Tag: Pretty Boy
Some showdown
Well, that was … unimpressive. Pretty Boy waits until 10km to go to “attack,” Super Spaniard rides his wheel to the line and gives him the stage win, all wrapped up with a pretty little bow on it, then it’s time for a hug. Ick. Bernard Hinault and Sean Kelly probably just threw up in their mouths a little bit.
Pretty Boy better find himself some snap if he ever wants to beat this dude. Trying to ride Alberto Contador off your wheel on a mountain stage is like trying to drop a tattoo.
Meanwhile, Radio Shackstrong has hired a criminal defense attorney and begun body-checking random pedestrians and manhandling photographers. Now that’s what I call some cycling action.
With your shield, or on it
This just in: Pretty Boy will attack Super Spaniard on the Col du Tourmalet.
Well, like, duh. That’s like calling a press conference to announce that Lennard Zinn is tall, or that Senate Repuglicans are assholes. Some things are self-evident.
I don’t have a dog in this fight. Still, tomorrow’s stage should be amusing. There’s talk of evil weather, which always enhances the pleasure of watching skinny leg-shavers scale and descend two Cat. 1 mountains before tackling the off-the-charts Tourmalet. And eight seconds is not much of a lead, unless you happen to be Greg LeMond gleefully watching The Professor ride into Paris.
I’ll be up and plugged in early on behalf of VeloNews.com, and here’s hoping they fed the server-farm hamsters well this evening. All you cube farmers put a lot of stress on their wheel when you pop round for the word on who’s doing what to whom, and sometimes they get cranky and bonk.
Whaddaya think? I’m guessing Saxo Bank and Astana bring the pain from the get-go, trying to croak as many people as possible over the Col de Marie-Blanque and Col du Soulor before the survivors eat each other alive on the Tourmalet. If it’s done right, it should make the Donner party look like a Napa Valley wine-tasting.
If it’s not — say, if everyone rides piano until the Tourmalet — then we’ll feel the pain common to fans of American football, who learn over and over again that the Super Bowl is almost always the worst fucking game of the season.
• Editor’s note: Incidentally, we’ll be tuning up for the stage this evening by watching “Lewis Black: Stark Raving Black.” He’s a big softy, like Your Humble Narrator, and always puts me in a good mood.
Fire on the mountain? Not hardly
Yawn. A cease-fire in the Pyrénées as Radio Shackstrong gets sixth out of a nine-man break.
“Is this fucking thing over yet?” asked one of my colleagues. “They should be paying us to watch this shit.”
“They are,” I reminded him.
“Not enough,” he replied.
After a rest day, then, it’s the big boy — stage 17 to the Col du Tourmalet, otherwise known as Schleckalecka’s Last Stand. Then it’s one for the sprinters, one for the time trialists and the interminable parade into Paris.
The wiseguys all seem to think that Pretty Boy needs a boatload of time on Super Spaniard going into that final time trial, but it beats me where the hell he’s going to find it. They seem evenly matched in the hills, and Saxo’s tow truck Jens Voigt laid it down at 70 kph again yesterday, enhancing his scab collection.
“Fortunately, I didn’t land on my face this time and I’m still alive,” he quipped. That there is a very hard individual, that Jens Voight fella. Dude probably broke the road when he went down.
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