“A week is a long time in politics,” said Harold Wilson – even longer at the wheel of a Transit; still, I’m sure that my column in L’Equipe isn’t far away, now.
Lombardia was great, I love that race, and Milan – San Remo too; do yourself a favour, go and see them – you’ll thank me.
However, all is not well up in the land of mountains and lakes.
Milano is apparently mightily pee-ed off by the ‘strike’ in the Giro, when the riders went on a go slow because of the ‘dangerous circuit’ – but the organisers couldn’t help but notice that despite the ‘dangers,’ the peloton raced the last few laps, for the stage win.
Can you explain why those laps were safer, chaps?
Anyway, as a consequence, the Tour of Lombardy is now ‘the Lombardia’ there’s no Giro stage in Milan and Milan – San Remo might well be ‘the San Remo’ next year – let’s hope they sort it out.
* * *
Dan’s Tweets
Dan Fleeman gave us a nice bit of gossip when we met him over there – apparently, ‘a well known cycling magazine’ hasn’t paid him much attention this year and has resorted to writing pieces about him from his ‘tweeting.’
Dan therefore decided to set a trap and tweeted that he was only racing to keep him fit as part of his training to be an astronaut.
The magazine didn’t bite, but several weeks later, a French journo approached Dan and asked; “how iz zee astronaut training going?”
And word is that some French cycling web forums were buzzing with Dan’s intentions of becoming a cosmonaut.
Moral – don’t believe everything you tweet!
* * *
The Scottish Hill Climb Champs
I was sorry I missed the hill climb; it’s a tough choice, Lombardy or the Lomonds, I gave it a lot of thought – three seconds!
Apparently Sandy Gilchrist was on Purrinden, to see if his course record would survive; and, of course, it did.
This got me to thinking about Sandy’s hill climb bike.
Normally, Sandy’s bikes were nice, if you’re a cycle shop owner and sane, they have to be.
North East builder, Colin Laing used to build him Columbus tubed, feature cut lugged gems.
But his hill climb bike was different – an anonymous powder blue track iron, which he must have shunted at some time because it did have a distinct ‘hump’ in the down and top tubes – but it didn’t stop him winning the championship on it, year in, year out.
* * *
Dan’s the Man
Talking about hill climbs and Dan Fleeman, leads me nicely into his win in the British.
The result just goes to show what we knew already, that continental pros are on a different plane altogether.
Race duration was less that three-and-a-half minutes; Dan won by quarter-of-a-minute – that says it all, really.
There’s videos on YouTube; give them a watch, but you don’t see much of Dan – he’s going too quickly!
I’m chuffed for him, his first year in the big league hasn’t been the luckiest; but he closed it with good rides in Piedmont and Lombardy – and a British championship is a British championship.
He was really pumped up for the race, here’s a text I got from him on the race morning; “I’m going to charge up the hill like braveheart!“
Then, a little later; “You may take my place on Cervélo but you will never take my freedom!” – you’re right, he’s a bit crazy – but in a nice way.
* * *
Just one more t’ing, sir
‘Garmin is one of three teams interested in Contador and, if he goes to Garmin, it seems likely that Wiggins would be allowed to move to Sky,’ said “the Guardian” in the week – VeloVeritas told you that weeks ago!
Ciao.
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