Tag: Tour de France

Boom, Schleckaleckalecka. …

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments

Another day, another detonation — that’s life at the 2010 Tour.

Yellow-jersey-for-a-day Cadel Evans went boom after breaking his left elbow in a crash on Sunday; he and management decided to keep it a secret, the team worked like draft horses for him, and it ended badly.

“We decided not to tell anybody because we didn’t want anybody hitting us on the first climb,” BMC team manager Jim Ochowicz told VeloNews. “We controlled the race and we were going to see what the outcome was … you saw the outcome.”

Indeed I did, and I felt badly for Evans, who really has done the world champion’s jersey proud this year only to get a steel-toed Sidi in the ’nads from Fate. And given the carnage thus far, I wonder whether Andy Schleck — the latest in a series of yellow jerseys — might be tempting fate by saying that the race has boiled down to a two-man race between him and Super Spaniard.

Don’t let your mouth write no checks your ass can’t cash, son. I don’t see no Champs-Elysees yet.

Meanwhile, speaking of mouths, asses and checks, it seems that Scott McLobbyist, the Repuglican candidate for governor of Colorado (The Slightly Less Grotesquely Fat Than the Rest of the States State), has been accused of lifting bits for his series of “Musings on Water” pieces from the works of Gregory J. Dobbs (no relation to Fred C. Dobbs), now a justice on the state Supreme Court.

According to The Denver Post, the Hasan Family Foundation paid McInnis $300,000 to do speaking engagements and “research and write a monthly article on water issues that can be distributed to media and organizations as well as be available on the Internet.”

Instead, McLobbyist took a gig at a law firm, jobbed the research out and now blames the researcher for the alleged plagiarism, which he says is “a non-issue.”

“Voters don’t really care about this issue,” he told a Denver TV station. “They care about jobs, getting back to work.”

I’ll bet they do. Hell, I’d like to find a job like that myself after three decades trying to draw some sustenance from the dusty, withered teat of journalism. Getting paid $300,000 for two years to steal someone else’s words when they’re just sitting there waiting for you in a corral? Sheeyit, that’s about as sporting as shooting puppies at the pound. My words are all free-range, and take some hunting down.

Big Tex meets his Alamo

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 21 Comments

The Big Wheel has turned, as it will, and this time it ran over The Boss.

Big Tex decked it in stage eight when he clipped a pedal and rolled his front tire, and after a couple of Euskaltels spazzed out in front of him, forcing him to skid to a stop and unclip, (who teaches these E-E dickweeds how to ride, anyway?), you could see it in his face as he stood there for a moment, hands on hips.

“Fuck this shit.”

Johan Bruyneel said his man “effectively threw in the towel” after he realized a hip injury left him incapable of cranking out the watts to get back among the big boys. Texus Maximus almost looked relieved for a while once he’d made his decision, but when he finally crossed the finish line nearly 12 minutes down he looked pissed.

“It’s sad to see, but that’s sport,” said Bruyneel. And so it is. Now Phil ’n’ Paul will have to learn a name other than Lance Armstrong, and the chamois-sniffers will have to learn to appreciate a different bouquet.

Going up

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

The big dogs all stayed on the porch today as Quick Step’s Sylvain Chavenal took the yellow jersey back from Fabian Cancellara in stage seven of the Tour.

Texus Maximus predicts a selection tomorrow, and all the wiseguys are picking Super Spaniard for the stage win, as stage eight has about a bazillion miles of up in it.

French wine is the rule here come Tour time — but naturally, we have a Spanish red in reserve just in case you-know-who opens up a 10-gallon-can of whup-ass.
French wine is the rule here come Tour time — but naturally, we have a Spanish red in reserve just in case you-know-who opens up a 10-gallon-can of whup-ass.

Regardless of who wins, this should be a fun one to watch, if you spare yourself the hours of tedium leading up to the final climb, to the ski station at Avoriaz, a Category 1 13.6km slog that averages 6 percent.

If you enjoy parking yourself in front of the TV (or the laptop) on a lovely Sunday morning, however, look for the contenders to have their goons beat on the pretenders on the Cat. 1 Col de la Ramaz (14km at an average grade of just under 7 percent). That should thin the herd to a manageable size.

I don’t have a dog in this fight, but I wouldn’t mind seeing Cadel Evans do well. The BMC man has done the rainbow jersey proud this year, and I’m kinda developing a soft spot for the little weirdo.

During the Tour we drink French wine at Chez Dog — actually, we almost always drink French wine here, and last night was no exception. I usually start with a glass of white, this time a 2009 Coteaux du Languedoc from Picpoul de Pinet. A rosé is indicated next; last night it was a 2009 Coteaux d’Aix-en-Provence from Bieler Père et Fils, in part because it was on sale and in part because I like it.

The finale, since I was grilling a flatiron steak, was a red — a 2007 Côtes du Rhône from André Goichot, which was also on sale and thus in my price range. It has to be a really special occasion for me to drop more than $15 on a bottle of wine.

Tonight we have more Languedoc chillin’ in the ’fridge alongside a 2009 Rosé de Pressée from Tariquet. The red is Lou Bar Rou, a 2007 from Ventoux (a climb not in this year’s Tour). And just because I’m a lazy sonofabitch, I’m gonna reheat last night’s leftovers for dinner.

Red meat, red wine, red eyeballs — that’s the Tour de France, doggy style.

And now for something completely different

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 2 Comments

Ho, hum. Another break, another chase, another catch, another sprint. Cha-ching. Pay the little man with the big mouth and even bigger legs, please.

The same ol’, same ol’, will not apply beyond Sunday, however. The Tour is headed for the Alps, and while the conventional wisdom is that the race will not be won there, it certainly may be lost there.

VeloNews editor at large John Wilcockson, who has covered some eleventy-seven Tours, has tagged Big Tex as the man to watch, writing, “Everyone here is saying that the Texan is looking much stronger than last year. …”

As for Tex his own bad self, he says coyly, “I would look for more animation in my tactics.”

Well, yeah. If I were 50 seconds behind Alberto Contador going into the mountains I’d want to pump it up a notch or two or three. Maybe have Janez Brajkovic park himself on El Pistolero’s wheel and chatter away breezily in Slovenian. “Jebo te bog! Zdaj se boš pa še opravičeval!” (“God will fuck you! Now you’ll really be sorry!”)

Of course, eventually you have to catch and pass those two 20-something hill-climbing sonsabitches. But that’s another story, one yet to be written.

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.