Phew, what a Tour it’s been, absolutely brilliant, JV rocking it like I didn’t imagine he could, Pogi taking it on the chin and being quite stoic about it, and WVA, words escape me to describe what I’m seeing.
A friend of mine said ‘WVA, please be clean,’ I guess he was referring to his shorts?
Anyway, the coverage this year has IMO been the best yet, particularly those shots of the riders heading up through the throngs of rabid fans. Talk about mob mentality, they all seem off their heads.
If there’s one thing I can promise you, it’s that you’ll never see me off my head on meth hysterically waving a Union Jack up and down two inches from a rider’s face. That’s largely because I don’t like the Union Jack. Now, if I was from Bretagne, maybe. They do have one heck of a flag…
‘Gwilherm! What colours are you after on this flag? The usual? Bit of blue maybe, some red?’
‘Black, Morvan… White and black, man. We’re gonna scare the crap out of enemies on the battlefield…’.
And with this amazing footage there must come media motorbikes, and it was one of those that caused Jack Bauer of Bike Exchange to crash yesterday. He was none too pleased about it either, and if you can lip read, or not, because it was that obvious what he said, then you’ll know he’ll have had to put a euro or two in the team swear jar after the stage.
In an interview after the race, Bauer said he ‘chose’ to hit the car because “it’s softer compared to either a road or a building”!
With the Team UAE Emirates car also slowing in front and the media moto deciding they wanted into the meagre gap left to get by, Bauer had no chance to avoid a crash – and it was his second of the Tour.
“I hit the Shimano car a couple of days ago and I know how soft the panels of a car are compared to either a road or a building. That’s actually not a joke.
“The back light exploded, the back panel of the car took a bit of damage, too. You are always right on the limit of being either on your bike, on the road or in the back of a car. Normally things work out well; the drivers and other bike riders are good and things flow.”
But not this time! The driver of the motorcycle and the journalist on board were immediately thrown out of the Tour. Which seems a bit harsh, but, that’s bike racing I guess.
