Postby JV911 » Fri May 21, 2010 11:45 am
Double Figures
May 18, 2010
We’re now deep into the Giro, Day 10 in fact, and the cracks are starting to show! Firstly, there was a horrific incident of five of the team’s staff getting on the wrong side of some VERY raw, yet delicious steak, which fortunately didn’t lead to a team-wide outbreak of GIT problems. Thank goodness for Universal Precautions!
Secondly (and as ever, less importantly) the riders are now in the hurt basket pretty much permanently. The racing to date has been through pretty horrific conditions, both weather-wise, and racecourse-wise. Yesterday was a particularly good example of both issues – the boys were riding through a rain squall of significant size, and then found themselves having to ride through standing water all the way up to their pedals. Some called a small river, although I would have called it a creek myself. The boys tend to exagerrate at times! Southern Italy: road drainage and planning are minor details.
We’ve been bopping away with some solid, although not brilliant results, but hopefully today will see a bunch sprint, and hopefully Tyler will be the man at the front of said sprint. True, a lot of “hopefullys†but not unreasonable ones!
The other key event of the race since the last message – Cadel Evans winning one of the most epic stages of Giro history with the coolest tactic of all: ride them all off your wheel! All of the boys crossed the line absolutely caked in mud (it was a race over clay roads for 17 of the final 20km), freezing cold, exhausted, and all saying they were happy they had finished it so they could say they were in the race THAT day. Pretty cool. Dave Millar dragged himself up to third overall on that day too.
We’ve got 16km to go today, so that’ll be all he wrote.
GO TY!
United Nations of Awesome
May 19, 2010
Boombah! Or, as we like to pretend that the Italians say, Opahhh!
So the last post I put through (earlier today) was 16km from the finish, and included a series of “hopefullys†all of which came to pass, meaning we won today! A great result for the team, and a super performance by the team.
We knew that the finish was a little tricky, so got as much info back to the big bosses on the road as we could, meaning that the boys could plan their attack well. With big drives from Aussie wunderkind, and loose cannon, Jack Bobridge for large parts of the early stage to help control the break, we then had Canadian hard man Svein Tuft not only assist Jack in controlling things, but also driving the race so hard that it was too fast for people to make decisive moves.
Then came the icing on the cake: Murilo Fischer, Brazil’s finest export since Giselle Bundchen, took the pace to the next level, so even indecisive moves became impossible, and gave our final three bullets a good platform to do their work. David Millar then drove the race for well over a kilometre at warp speed (that’s over 60kph without an engine, on the flat for those who don’t understand the technical parlance) through a couple of decidedly dicey chicanes and corners (kudos to the recon crew!) (Love a self-congratulatory back pat)
And then came the cherry on the icing on the cake! Julian Dean, cult hero for the third of the New Zealand population who live in the UK, who account for the mystery “other third†of the whole Kiwi population (there are equal numbers of New Zealanders in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs (particularly Bondi), Europe and New Zealand for those who don’t know) hit out for home up the hill, into the wind and around a tight corner. He was preparing things for our token bloodnut, the American sprinter and genuinely good bloke Tyler, but was doing such a good job that he left the whole field behind. With 200m to go, it looked like Jules was half a chance of pinching the win himself. Tyler certainly thought so, because he was looking around so much I had to treat his neck this evening for whiplash (not really). Eventually it became obvious that Jules wasn’t quite going to make the line without being caught, so Tyler powered ahead to take the win, with an Italian second, and Jules third.
So there you have it: an Aussie, a Canuck, a Brazilian, a Pom and a Kiwi all combined brilliantly so an American could beat an Italian! Complete gold.
The next stage is a ludicrous 270-odd kilometres, and is particularly lumpy. After the previous heroics, we’ll see what our boys can muster. Hopefully Irishman Dan Martin can get himself in a break and do some damage. We shall see.