![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Stage Two: Bastia to Ajaccio, 97 miles/156km
Second day of the Tour, I'm totally into it, and my computer has died. Great. This is gonna be fun as hell.
Anyway, a few quick notes about yesterday as we start. First of all, more about the bus: apparently, the heavy, electronic gantry that goes across the finish line (containing the clock, for one) is lowered about three hours before the end of the race, after most of the cavalcade of cars and team buses has gone through. The Orica-GreenEdge team bus, however, decided at the last minute to go to the hotel, and changed its route. To go across the line. After the gantry had been lowered. Ooops. So they'll be without AC for a few days, and the team was fined. There was a shot through the windscreen yesterday of the bus of the driver in the trapped bus, holding his face in his hands in despair, poor bastard. But all will be well.
As for that crash, it seems to have been caused by sprinter Andre Greipel. He was trying to get through a very narrow gap-- too narrow, really. He touched the handlebars of rider Tony Martin, who went down crushingly hard, and thus began the huge pileup that destroyed the peloton and the hopes of the sprinters. Greipel himself didn't go down, but just a few minutes later, was stopped dead by a broken rear derailleur. Some are calling that karma.
As for Martin, taken away in a stretcher after the conclusion of the stage, amongst his many injuries are a bruised lung. I don't even know how one could be upright with a bruised lung, but the man is back on the bike, and back in the peloton. Asked by a teammate if he was going to ride today, he apparently said, "Of course I'm going to ride. I'm German."
Four-man breakaway today as we leave Bastia for a very mountainous stage. Once again, the man from Holland, Lars Boom, is in that quartet. I have to wonder, somehow, if he has something to prove. Turns out his team, Belkin, is The Team Formerly Known As Blanco, which is itself the former much-beloved Dutch team Rabobank. THAT team was left in the lurch last year after the turmoil of all the doping scandals caused Rabobank to pull its sponsorship. So Belkin definitely has a statement to make: they can be the winning team they were before, and they can do it clean. (Not that there was that much scandal with the Rabobank team specifically before-- it was more the sport as a whole that soured Rabobank on its sponsorship.) It seems the CEO of Belkin is in Corsica today to watch the race. I'd imagine he likes what he sees. And someone else is happy with Boom-- the motorcycle camera closes in on his forearm to show a big old lipstick kiss on his skin. Someone certainly kissed it better.
On we go into the mountains, and the breakaway is inevitably caught. The new man out in front is yet another rider with something to prove for his team: Pierre Rolland of Europcar, a team whose sponsorship is up for renewal next year. Rolland is chased by an AG2R rider and one I can't see, but it doesn't matter. The two are caught before long, leaving Rolland out front alone again, taking the curving descent off the mountain in mind-bending speed.
Of course, one man alone rarely a successful breakaway makes, and Rolland, former White Jersey and Tour stage winner, eventually sits up, having made his point admirably. However, who's not with the peloton? The sprinters. There's a group about six and a half minutes off the back, and in that group we find Mark Cavendish. He's not a climber, though he's better at it now than he was in his first few years at the Tour, long ago, when he would leave the race after the first week of flat sprinters' stages, before the mountains began. I can imagine that yesterday's fiasco must be bitter for him: the first year since 1936 we start with a sprinter's stage, the first time in his lifetime he could have won yellow, and it turns into a clusterfuck. He tweeted a very good point sometime after it happened: if the stage was nullified for time for everyone, why wasn't it also nullified for points? He's not a shy wallflower-- I'm sure he'll bring this up again til he gets a good answer.
There are, of course, many smaller breakaway attempts, but here we are, 3.9 miles from the end, after yet another climb, and the front of the peloton is back together. Well, except for six men a few seconds up-- one of them being Sylvain Chavanel, who seems to be giving himself a birthday present of a try for a stage win.
By the way? Another fucking dog in the road. Little white Jack Russell. Jesus Christ, people. Thank fuck it ran off the opposite side just as the peloton bore down on it, its frantic owner on the other side. DO NOT TAKE DOGS TO THE RACE. I swear.
2km to go. The six have an eight second advantage, but it's closing. A RadioShack rider, young Belgian Jan Bakelants, tries to stave off the catch, but he's alone as the rest of the six don't go with him-- they're now battling each other, and are caught.
Can he do it? He's only been pro since 2009, could this be his first major win? Yes! Fists in the air, cheering, he's alone! Holding his head in disbelief, he sits up, overwhelmed. Not only that, but with the time bonus for the stage win, he has also taken the yellow jersey of race leader.
It's a wonderful thing to see his obvious emotion in the post-race interviews. It's always great to see the new young riders making names for themselves, and the sport renewing itself race by race. It's always a new race, no matter how many times it's held.
That's 100 times, in case you forgot.
Second day of the Tour, I'm totally into it, and my computer has died. Great. This is gonna be fun as hell.
Anyway, a few quick notes about yesterday as we start. First of all, more about the bus: apparently, the heavy, electronic gantry that goes across the finish line (containing the clock, for one) is lowered about three hours before the end of the race, after most of the cavalcade of cars and team buses has gone through. The Orica-GreenEdge team bus, however, decided at the last minute to go to the hotel, and changed its route. To go across the line. After the gantry had been lowered. Ooops. So they'll be without AC for a few days, and the team was fined. There was a shot through the windscreen yesterday of the bus of the driver in the trapped bus, holding his face in his hands in despair, poor bastard. But all will be well.
As for that crash, it seems to have been caused by sprinter Andre Greipel. He was trying to get through a very narrow gap-- too narrow, really. He touched the handlebars of rider Tony Martin, who went down crushingly hard, and thus began the huge pileup that destroyed the peloton and the hopes of the sprinters. Greipel himself didn't go down, but just a few minutes later, was stopped dead by a broken rear derailleur. Some are calling that karma.
As for Martin, taken away in a stretcher after the conclusion of the stage, amongst his many injuries are a bruised lung. I don't even know how one could be upright with a bruised lung, but the man is back on the bike, and back in the peloton. Asked by a teammate if he was going to ride today, he apparently said, "Of course I'm going to ride. I'm German."
Four-man breakaway today as we leave Bastia for a very mountainous stage. Once again, the man from Holland, Lars Boom, is in that quartet. I have to wonder, somehow, if he has something to prove. Turns out his team, Belkin, is The Team Formerly Known As Blanco, which is itself the former much-beloved Dutch team Rabobank. THAT team was left in the lurch last year after the turmoil of all the doping scandals caused Rabobank to pull its sponsorship. So Belkin definitely has a statement to make: they can be the winning team they were before, and they can do it clean. (Not that there was that much scandal with the Rabobank team specifically before-- it was more the sport as a whole that soured Rabobank on its sponsorship.) It seems the CEO of Belkin is in Corsica today to watch the race. I'd imagine he likes what he sees. And someone else is happy with Boom-- the motorcycle camera closes in on his forearm to show a big old lipstick kiss on his skin. Someone certainly kissed it better.
On we go into the mountains, and the breakaway is inevitably caught. The new man out in front is yet another rider with something to prove for his team: Pierre Rolland of Europcar, a team whose sponsorship is up for renewal next year. Rolland is chased by an AG2R rider and one I can't see, but it doesn't matter. The two are caught before long, leaving Rolland out front alone again, taking the curving descent off the mountain in mind-bending speed.
Of course, one man alone rarely a successful breakaway makes, and Rolland, former White Jersey and Tour stage winner, eventually sits up, having made his point admirably. However, who's not with the peloton? The sprinters. There's a group about six and a half minutes off the back, and in that group we find Mark Cavendish. He's not a climber, though he's better at it now than he was in his first few years at the Tour, long ago, when he would leave the race after the first week of flat sprinters' stages, before the mountains began. I can imagine that yesterday's fiasco must be bitter for him: the first year since 1936 we start with a sprinter's stage, the first time in his lifetime he could have won yellow, and it turns into a clusterfuck. He tweeted a very good point sometime after it happened: if the stage was nullified for time for everyone, why wasn't it also nullified for points? He's not a shy wallflower-- I'm sure he'll bring this up again til he gets a good answer.
There are, of course, many smaller breakaway attempts, but here we are, 3.9 miles from the end, after yet another climb, and the front of the peloton is back together. Well, except for six men a few seconds up-- one of them being Sylvain Chavanel, who seems to be giving himself a birthday present of a try for a stage win.
By the way? Another fucking dog in the road. Little white Jack Russell. Jesus Christ, people. Thank fuck it ran off the opposite side just as the peloton bore down on it, its frantic owner on the other side. DO NOT TAKE DOGS TO THE RACE. I swear.
2km to go. The six have an eight second advantage, but it's closing. A RadioShack rider, young Belgian Jan Bakelants, tries to stave off the catch, but he's alone as the rest of the six don't go with him-- they're now battling each other, and are caught.
Can he do it? He's only been pro since 2009, could this be his first major win? Yes! Fists in the air, cheering, he's alone! Holding his head in disbelief, he sits up, overwhelmed. Not only that, but with the time bonus for the stage win, he has also taken the yellow jersey of race leader.
It's a wonderful thing to see his obvious emotion in the post-race interviews. It's always great to see the new young riders making names for themselves, and the sport renewing itself race by race. It's always a new race, no matter how many times it's held.
That's 100 times, in case you forgot.