Tag: Tour de France

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.

Bertie gets booed

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments

Technology is not our friend. And neither is Super Spaniard, if your whizbang drivetrain happens to bite you in the ass while you’re sharing a mountain with him and he covets your pretty yellow shirt.

I don’t have a problem with Bertie latching onto Denis Menchov and Sammy Sanchez if they’re moving forward despite the yellow jersey’s mechanical. But Bertie was driving that train, and he knew exactly what he was doing when he lit it up from behind the spazzed-out Schleckalecka. He was thinking, “Here’s a cheap way to score myself a half-minute from this hill-climbing fool.”

They booed Bertie at the podium ceremony in Bagnères du Luchon, and I don’t have a problem with that, either.

I do have a problem with the friggin’ heat in these parts lately. We’ve been about 10 degrees hotter than normal lately, in the mid-90s, which sucks, frankly. I was sweating like a ditch-digger before I ever threw a leg over a top tube this morning, and on the climbs I was wearing my shades upside down in my helmet to keep the lenses salt-free, just like the big boys.

Jesus, it’s 84 inside the goddamn house. A refreshing glass of white wine is indicated. And I know just where I can find one.

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.

Uncorking the Vino’

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
Updating the DogSite from the back deck — and yes, that is a fan working away back there. I told you it was hot. ...
Updating the DogSite from the back deck — and yes, that is a fan working away back there. I told you it was hot. ...

Watching all these dudes riding their bikes across France kinda makes me want to get out there, too. But by the time I’m through with my labors for VeloNews.com, it’s hotter than the hubs of Hell and I tend to lose interest in anything other than cold beverages.

I used to work the site with a laptop at a table on the back deck, which at least got me outdoors in the cool of the morning, but the “advance” of technology has made this impossible. Now I need two 22-inch monitors so I can follow the stage via video and have quick and easy access to e-mail, instant messaging and about a jillion browser windows.

To tell the truth, I could use a third monitor, like my colleague Charles Pelkey, but I haven’t got enough desk for it. So sometimes I power up the MacBook and leave it sitting atop the drawing board next to the desk.

All this, mind you, so I can follow and chronicle a stage that pretty much sucked ass. About the last 10km of today’s 196km stage were interesting, thanks to Alexander Vinokourov. Whatever else you can say about him — and you can say plenty — the dude loves to bring the pain.

Now that he has a stage win under his belt, Vino’ has vowed once again to work for Super Spaniard. And the defending champ will need all the help he can get. The next four stages are some bad mamma-jammas, and his main tow truck Dani Navarro hit the deck today, as did Jesus Hernandez, who seems to be having an even worse Tour than Radio Shackstrong.

Renshaw gives lousy head

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments

The Big Hook came for HTC’s Mark Renshaw today. He head-butted Garmin’s Julian Dean — not once, not twice, but thrice as Dean tried to bring Tyler Farrar to the line in stage 11 — and then once Mark Cavendish had safely launched off his wheel, Renshaw took a quick peek over his shoulder, saw Farrar coming and tried to ride him into the barriers.

“Right, off you go,” said race officials. “Good,” says I. That was a mean, dangerous and totally unnecessary bit of aggro’ bullshit in a Tour that has already seen way too many dudes on the deck with broken bones.

Dean had it exactly right afterward, saying: “What we do is very dangerous and we don’t need behavior like that to make it even more dangerous.”