VeloVeritas

Solid Kick-off (0)

Finally we’re underway! And what a start it’s been.

Time trial days are always long periods of surprising quietness (and the quiet is always a surprise) punctuated by flurries of furious activity. As team mechanic-cum-philosopher Kris Withington (NZ’s finest mechanic) says, “it’s either full gas work or full gas wait.”

One More Sleep! (0)

We are at the end of Day -1, which is the point where the whole team just want things to start already.

Admittedly I’ve been in that mood since Tuesday afternoon when I headed out from the team Service Course in Girona. Now everyone else has joined me in night-before-Christmas-as-a-seven-year-old land.

Are we ready yet? Are we ready yet? Can we start yet? (0)

Two days out from the start of the Tour. The whole team has arrived at the hotel, and the Show is about to begin! It’s very exciting, but not much is really going on.

It’s sort of like when the starter calls “set” in a track & field sprint: heaps of stuff about to happen, but nothing doing just yet. Yes I once sprinted. Yes, in this instance “sprinted” is a very loosely applied verb.

This is the first full day of the road show. We have a good whack of people here: 19 staff will be on the road for the full three weeks.

Le Tour de France 2010 Presentation (0)

“It’s cycling Jim, but not as we know it!” The presentation of the Tour de France route is something we used to read about in the mags and not really think twice about. We’d see the route in the Comic and have a blether about it, but maybe not think too much about it until Tour time.

Now, there’s a fleet of satellite TV vehicles outside the Palais de Congres and the event is beamed ‘live and direct’ around the globe.