Tag: Liege-Bastogne-Liege

My pal Vik called me this morning; ‘the racing at the Grenoble Four Day can’t be very good if you’re spending so much time taking pictures of boys on the trapeze!’ If I could get him down here it would be different. It’s not just a bike race; if he was here, eating the nice food, drinking champers with friends, with the race whizzing around him and the amazing shows, he'd see things in a new light.

The last time we spoke to 23 year-old Aussie, Luke Davison he was burning up the kermises back in the spring. But now that it’s winter he’s back on the track and just keeps on winning. He was third in the omnium at the Manchester World Cup to new Belgian track flyer and Gent Six Day winner, Jasper De Buyst but turned the tables in the recent Mexico World Cup, relegating De Buyst to third and taking the honours.

All of the tension has finally left the peloton as they’ve finally started the race. Haha!! Or more accurately, the early tension of anticipation has been replaced by the tension to gain time/hold place/maintain position/get in the break/follow the right wheel/avoid the crashes/etc etc etc! Fabian Cancellara did what he does so well.

It’s not often you see Direct Energie’s main man, Jean-René Bernaudeau in tears – unless someone spills something nasty on those John Wayne cowboy boots he always wears. But there were red, puffy and wet eyes for him yesterday as he hugged his big boy Lilian Calmejane at the Station Des Rousses high in the Jura mountains.

It was a very warm evening yesterday, and we wandered back round to the hotel last night after our dinner in the middle of a typical Pyrenean thunderstorm - huge bolts of lightning searing across the sky and claps of thunder which lingered and reverberated for what seemed like 20 seconds. In the space of 5 minutes, the roads were flooded. We went to sleep in our "pod" room to the sound of pouring rain, and woke up to the same - only worse. It wasn't a nice day to be outside, let alone reporting on, or riding, a bike race.

I raced the Trofeu Joaquim Agostinho this weekend past weekend. The Prologue was very tricky, very technical. I did my best and I was very pleased. I didn’t have any great expectation for it, which was a good thing as I missed quite a lot of my warm up, due to everyone going berserk when my team mate and Time Triallist Alejandro Marque broke a gear cable just minutes before he was due to race. I also haven’t touched the TT bike since February.