VeloVeritas

Le Tour de France – Day 9: Stage 21, Etampes to Paris (0)

Salle de Presse, Meridien Hotel, Paris, 18.55 Sunday July 27th. We just watched Steegmans demonstrate how to sprint, he’s a much better sprinter than he is a time triallist [see yesterday's Pez piece].

Sastre won his, and CSC’s first Grand Tour without drama, there was the usual show boating-’Carlos with glass of champagne’, it says here on this script – and French riders grabbing TV time, so the sponsor’s VIP’s could enjoy their champagne more.

Le Tour de France – Day 8: Stage 20, Cerilly to Saint-Amand-Montrond (0)

The Salle de Presse, 17.30 Saturday 26th July and Carlos Sastre has just won the Tour de France, it won’t be official until tomorrow after the big show on the Champs Elysee, but it’s won.

Personally I’m happy with the result; at least Sastre took the race by the scruff of the neck on L’Alpe D’Huez, an ‘exploit.’ Evans strategy of following may have been dictated by the weakness of his team, but it would have been hard to be enthusiastic about him as a Tour winner.

Sastre is a good pro, who doesn’t have an over inflated opinion of himself, and I’m a fan of most things Spanish, so that’s cool.

Le Tour de France – Day 7: Stage 19, Roanne to Montlucon (0)

Bonjour 08.30 we’re just getting ready to roll. This is our second F1 hotel of the trip, Grenoble two nights ago and here, last night, basic but clean and the beds work fine – 33 euros for the two of us, so musn’t grumble.

It’s another beautiful day in France, more that can be said for St. Etienne, which seems to be re-inventing itself as a ‘Techno Town.’ The old part of town is fine though, we had an excellent pizza in a little restaurant last night.

It was great to sit down at a semi reasonable hour with a knife and fork and know we didn’t have a huge drive to put in after our meal.

Nearly read to roll, so wish me luck on my Kawasaki!…

Le Tour de France – Day 6: Stage 18, Bourg D’Oisans to Saint-Etienne (0)

Guten dag! We honoured Carlos yesterday, so we best pay tribute to Big Marcus today. It’s been a great Tour for Columbia – and it’s not over yet.

We had to be flexible today, the plot was to do a bike feature – the top GC riders plus points and mountains leaders – but the start at Bourg-D’Oisans was so tight for space, with team buses in the village streets that there was no room for the team trucks. These went directly to the hotels at the finish in St. Etienne, so it wasn’t the best day to bike skek.

Thinking on my feet, I decided to do an opinion piece on “has Sastre done enough to win?” it’s on Pez – give it a skek, for words of wisdom from, among others, Patrick Lefevre, Roger Legeay and Claudio Corti.

Le Tour de France – Day 5: Stage 17, Embrun to L’Alpe D’Huez (0)

Ola! Wee bit Spanish there in honour of Carlos, a great ride-one that puts him up with the legends. But?… Is it enough to win him the 2008 Tour de France? We’ll find out on Saturday, in the chrono; Cadel has to be the favourite though.

It’s 9.00 pm and we’re still in the Salle de Presse on L’Alpe, another long one, but they all are. We spent the night in Pra Loup, a word of advice, do not visit the Club du Soleil les Bergers hotel, it’s not the answer!

Le Tour de France – Day 4: Stage 16, Cuneo to Jausiers (0)

Ah! The glamour of the Tour, sat in the toilet of the hotel room, word processing at 06.30 am. I’m in here so as not to disturb Martin, who needs his sleep to get us up to l’Alpe D’Huez in a couple of hours.

The BlackBerry lost it’s ability to send emails last night, so instead of my usual tapping away on the tiny key pad, here I am on a full size job-albeit one that’s perched on the edge of the shower tray as I sit on the you-know-what. But let’s talk about yesterday-is that a song title?

Its glorious today (Tuesday) the Volvo aircon is off, the windows are open and I’m sure that my washing on the back parcel shelf must be dry by now.

Le Tour de France – Day 3: Rest Day (0)

Ciao! It was gone midnight when we hit the hay, last night.

There was no thought of food, just sleep, it seemed to take an age to get off the mountain at Pratto and get to our digs at Racconigi – maybe it was just because we were so tired.

Breakfast was chronic, stale bread, no cheese, no ham and everything else in polythene wrappers.

First mission of the day was to meet Stuey O’Grady at the CSC press conference. He’s a buddy of Martin’s pal, Pete Jacques.

Le Tour de France – Day 2: Stage 15, Embrun to Prato Nevoso (0)

Follow the road until further instructed… Hurray, the satnav is working again!

Ahh ! pardon, bonjour mes amis en Ecosse, bienvenu à le 15eme etape de la Tour de France avec l’equipe VeloVeritas.

Kilometre 52, four kilometres from the summit of the Col d’Agnel and Jean-Paul Loris of ASO leaps into the road ahead of us. Despite the fact that we’ve passed hundreds of police and officials, he’s spotted that our stickers are the wrong colour.

We plead, beg, bargain; “Non! You stop, here!”

Craig MacLean-Where to go from here? (1)

Nine golds and two silvers. That’s what Team GB took away from the Manchester World Track Championships, back in April. A repeat performance in Beijing is entirely possible. How does British Cycling do it ?

One of the reasons is that their selection criteria is ruthless; past glory counts for nothing. The 2000 Olympic kilometre champion, Jason Queally was interviewed in ‘The Guardian’ newspaper recently and spoke of his shock and disappointment at not making the cut, despite riding faster in the team sprint than he’s ever done before – but it wasn’t fast enough for the selectors.

Another GB stalwart – with nine world championship medals, not to mention Olympic and Commonwealth Games precious metals – but who will not be on the plane to Beijing either, is our very own Craig Maclean.

Le Tour de France РDay 1: Stage 14, N̨mes to Digne-Les-Bains (0)

Digne-les-Bains, Saturday afternoon, 38 degrees and U2 are telling us it’s a “Beautiful Day” – that Bono, he knows everything.

We were supposed to meet up with American reader, John Larsen in Forcalquier, watch the race and sample the local fare with a BBQ, however Jet2.com kept us sat on the tar at Turnhouse for an hour before take off, scuppering our chances of catching the race.

And John forgot about the local fare too – c’est la vie!

Jocky Allen (0)

Life is strange, sometimes.

Yesterday I was talking to a friend of mine, we got round to talking about cycling, and with a far away look in his eyes, he reminisced about his first bike; “my maw pushed the boat out and bought me this beautiful red racer, it had white wall tyres and white transfers on the tubes – JB Allen.”

This morning, Gregor rang to tell me that ‘Jocky’ had died.

Al Hamilton – The View from Spain (0)

Eufemiano Fuentes, Jesús Manzano, Operación Puerto, Alejandro Valverde, Alberto Contador… and now Manuel Beltran. All Spanish, all hot topics – but what’s the buzz in España?

We turned to VeloVeritas Iberian correspondent Al Hamilton for the low down, and asked him some questions on just what the current Spanish perspective is.

Bikes of Le Tour (0)

Bicycles, we love them! With the Tour well underway, we thought it would be interesting to take a first look at some of the bikes being used by the teams making the news.

When we join the race next week we will of course be bringing you more bike-geek articles!

An Incredible Day (0)

It was completely surreal.

It was the 26th of July last year, and we were in Lourdes, sitting in a neon-lit, scruffy, greasy-spoon café at 1:00 in the morning. Our pizzas were cooking in the oven, but we weren’t really that hungry anymore. We had travelled to the summit and back down again today, both literally and metaphorically; we’d had a wonderful day working on Stage 16 of the Tour de France which took the race to the ski station, 5,600 feet high, at Gourette-Col d’Aubisque in the Pryenees, and it had been turned completely on its head.