Tag: Schleckalecka

Fire on the mountain? Not hardly

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments

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.

Shall we dance?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments

Another ho-hum stage in Le Tour. At one point on the final climb, Super Spaniard and Schleckalecka were practically track-standing, doing an Alphonse-and-Gaston number. I thought that at any moment they might actually leap off their bikes and dance the tango. It must be fun for the Astana boys to tow Contador all over France to watch him play footsie with Schleck in the mountains and wait for that final time trial, when he won’t need any help to kick that skinny Luxembourger’s ass.

Big props to Carlos Sastre for trying to relive 2003. Also to Christophe Riblon for continuing the fine French performance in their national tour by winning the stage. Likewise to Denis Menchov and Sammy Sanchez for ripping their legs off in a battle for what seems certain to be the third step on the podium, just below the dancing masters.

But the Mad Dog propeller beanie is most definitely not lifted to either Contador or Schleck. Not yet. One of these guys has to show some panache or I’m buying a set of golf clubs.