G R E A S E M O N K E Y

Club Nationals 2010

2010-07-29T21:46:00.002+12:00

Club Nationals 2010 from Benny Devcich on Vimeo.

The annual Club Nationals, held in the sunny Hawkes Bay. Bici Vida sent a small team down to race it. Alex Ray, Shem Roger, Mark Langlands, Taylor Gunman, and Colin Cornberg.
The race was 170km in distance. With both the Elite Open Men and the U23 Men racing at the same time.
Small breakaway after the second of six laps saw Shem sitting good for the remainder of the race. A bunch of three til the end, with the rest of the race not able to catch them. Shem was 2nd overall, and won the U23 title.

Benchmark Series #3

2010-07-29T21:20:00.002+12:00

Round #3 of the 2010 Benchmark Race Series. This round was from the very beautiful Hanmer Springs, to the coast stunning coast of Kaikoura. The race was fast and hard, an active team saw many casualties out the back of the race. A second place for Taylor and the Teams Prize for the day.

Pure Black Racing Team Launch.

2010-07-28T22:29:00.004+12:00

Looks like I am back in business with the blog, I have been working on quite a few project in the last six months. None more than Team Bici Vida. Tonight we had our Press launch for a new project 'Pure Black Racing'. And what do you know, my web address is published with the press release. Kind of works out fine, I needed a kick in the ass with my writing, time to refresh the blog, and time to start keeping you entertained with life behind the scenes of a Professional Cycling Team. But here is the news of the day. Keep posted, finally the blog is rolling again.

Here is what Pure Black announced tonight:

Pure Black Racing launched today, aiming to become New Zealand’s first international UCI ProTour road cycling team. Olympians, professional athletes, business figures, politicians and government agencies from around the country have shown strong support for the venture by attending the launch in Auckland.

Lead by America’s Cup yachtsman, Star Class World Champion and Olympian, Carl Williams, Pure Black Racing will compete in UCI’s US Continental Tour in 2011 with the ultimate aim of becoming a ProTour Team with entry to the Tour de France by 2015.

“The time is right for a New Zealand-based professional cycling team to compete at the highest level,” says Williams. “Cycling is the fastest growing sport in New Zealand and we have more cycling world champions than we have in any other sport. It’s a perfect time to establish what we hope will be an iconic Kiwi sports brand.”

“To prove yourself you have to compete against the best in the world,” says Williams. “That requires dedication, complete professionalism and a total team approach. We’re not in that position yet, but with the talent we have available, their commitment and the backing of a superb organisation, we know we can be.”

Williams caught the cycling bug while cross training for his America’s Cup campaigns and racing with a local club in Valencia. “In Europe team racing is where it’s at,” says Williams. “Regardless of level, riders race in teams. It’s a really big thing.

“My goal is to see Pure Black Racing competing in Europe against the world’s premiere cycling teams,” says Williams.

Team Pure Black Racing grew out of Team Bici Vida, a domestic high performance cycling team, which Williams launched on his return from Valencia. From day one Williams’ vision was to build a world-class international cycle team in New Zealand, establishing it as a fully professional sports organisation.

Bici Vida launched onto the New Zealand scene at the PowerNet Tour of New Zealand in November 2009. Starting with a core team of talented U23 riders, the team enjoyed exceptional success in New Zealand in its first year.

Achievements include Southland U23 classification winner, 1st and 2nd in the Hamilton Open, 1st in Taupo Street Race, 1st Taupo Avanti Classic, 1st Festival of Cycling Criterium, stage wins at Tour de Vineyards, U23 Road Champion, 1st SRAM Tour de Ranges, 1st The REV, wins at the BioSPORT City Criterium series and most recently 1st and 2nd in the four day BDO Twin Coast Cycle Challenge.

As the young Bici Vida team learned the benefits of making sacrifices for team success, their victories grew. Five of the Bici Vida team have crossed the line first this season alone. After the team’s success and watching New Zealand’s strong cycling showing during the Beijing Olympics, Williams knew the timing was perfect. “We just had a Kiwi take three podium finishes in the Tour de France. What better time to launch a New Zealand team to compete against the best in the world,” says Williams.

While Bici Vida’s success on the road came down to having the best people in the right places on the bikes, the team’s rapid and successful development came from having the right people off the bikes. Carl was joined by investor and entrepreneur, Greg Cross, as Business Director; former Executive Director at Owens Group, Rick Ellis, as Chairman; and cycling veteran Benny Devcich, as Director Sportif. That same team is now the driving force behind Pure Black Racing.

Greg affirms the team’s professionalism. “Carl’s relationships have enabled us to secure international gear sponsorships from Spanish cycling company Orbea and USA’s George Hincapie. Those relationships extend to the circuit: four of Bici Vida’s eight riders have been placed with the US continental team Rubicon-Orbea for the 2010 US season while we establish Team Pure Black Racing for the 2011 season.”

Benny ‘Wrenchman’ Devcich is a passionate and obsessive cyclist who has served with Batusi Racing, Flexpoint, T-Mobile, Highroad, HTC Columbia, Swedish National and New Zealand National teams. Benny’s international experience, his understanding of team dynamics and his uncompromising professionalism are all important factors in developing and balancing the team’s wealth of young talent.

“There is still a lot of work to do to get Pure Black Racing in the winner’s circle,” says Cross. “Ultimately, to be successful we need the support of not only the New Zealand people, but Kiwi businesses as well.
As an international team, we’re looking to partner with the New Zealand export community as we take a highly visible Kiwi team to the world.”

Announcements on sponsorship, team members and team kit will be made over the coming months. Pure Black Racing is set to debut at New Zealand’s Tour of Southland in November. More information about supporting, following or joining the team can be found at: www.bicivida.com, www.pureblackracing.com.

GP Brissago, Switzerland

2009-03-18T11:45:00.002+13:00

I might get a chance to write a report on the Brissago race in the next couple of days. But in the meantime here is a couple of videos for you to have a look at. Both of them are just a test with my new editing software. And now I think I have some sort of harness hooked up in the car for filming a little bit more stable. But in the meantime enjoy the simple edits.

GP Brissago from Benny Devcich on Vimeo.

With the new software from Apple, the effects and graphics are pretty cool. Here I was just messing around a bit, and the effects are going to come in to a few more vids in the future. But think I could get inspired, stay tuned.

Test reel from Benny Devcich on Vimeo.

Tour of Majorca

2009-03-17T11:49:00.004+13:00

With a little bit of time up our sleeve we managed to get a few of the riders away from the cold of the northern part of Europe to the sunny isle of Majorca (Ibiza is the island next door). This is an island off the coast of Spain, and it’s one of the those popular places that thousands of riders and many teams head to sooner or later when the winter in Europe gets too bad to ride. I had not been there before, but almost all of the riders I had ever met here were familiar with the island, so I was hanging out to ride around it. I had a road bike ready, and the weather was looking good on the island, a much better option than the 0’c, rain and snow we were getting in Holland at the time. First we had a small drive up to Denmark in the sleet and snow, to meet up with Susanne and Trine. Klas was dropping off a car that had to go back to Sweden, and we had another trip to make to our bike guys at Stevens, so it was a multi purpose trip. We flew from Copenhagen, but that’s after waiting for a few hours for the plane to get de-iced in Berlin, before it picked us up, I was look forward to getting some more sunshine, it had been a week since the seeing the sun Qatar, and my endless summer was looking like it was in jeopardy.

But we were soon on our way, and the week’s weather report in Majorca was looking great, fine weather and sun for the week. I was keen on a bit of riding, it had been a few weeks since my last ride, and so I was keen to stretch the old legs again. The riding was sweet, after a couple of days I took a day off the training, to be a tourist for the day, a good chance to get a good look around the place. The city was dripping with history, a very old Roman city was still in place (amongst some newer buildings) after all the centuries gone by, most of it still stands. The streets were fantastic to ride around, just wide enough for a small car to drive slowly down, the bike was perfect for a good reconnoitre, and for taking a few pics on of course. The towns Cathedral was pretty amazing, and with my addiction to churches (mostly the outsides) I was in heaven. This was a pretty impressive building to say the least, and the surrounding areas looked pretty original as well, with the small streets packed closely in to the Cathedral, it was a great day. As always, while looking for that ultimate shot, I stumbled on to a wicked old furniture workshop, it looked like it had been there for hundreds of years, unchanged to this day. I have seen a few of these similar looking workshops around my travels, I dream of the day when I find on old bike workshop that looks as old as this. With clutter and spares in every nook and cranny possible, with an old man in an old leather apron with his head down, concentrating on his work. If I don’t find one, maybe I can make one for myself to retire to, and people wandering by just like me, poking their cameras inside to capture a slice of life you don’t often see in this modern world anymore.

The riding was fantastic as well, with small country roads leading all over the place, there was something for everyone, and some great sights to see. I didn’t take my camera with me on the bike, except for one day (I was trying to save weight as there was some big climbs to contend with, I was not that fit yet), so you will just have to take my word for it. I did manage a video of a days ride around the very beautiful coast, but you will have to wait until I find some faster Internet before I post it up for your pleasure.

In the meantime have a look at a few shot of the city and surrounds HERE.

Found some, so have a look at a bumpy ride.

Tour of Majorca from Benny Devcich on Vimeo.

Or here if you have the right viewer for a higher quality view.

Teams Presentation

2009-03-05T05:08:00.009+13:00

With all the new clothes and the new bikes we had an official engagement to attend finally, our Teams Presentation. This is where we present the team and ourselves to the media and sponsors for the year. It’s kind of a drag, but an important part of any teams existence. It gives us a chance to take some press quality photos (we had hired professionals for this) of the girls and the team as a whole. These will be used for promotions, websites and assorted other uses throughout the season. It’s one of those times when a cyclist is really out of there comfort zone, having to look good standing still, feeling naked without a bike and helmet to hide themselves.

But I suppose there are some of the team that like to show their feminine side of their character for a change, and come out with full makeup and hair do’s, I hardly recognise some of them sometimes. Unfortunately Susanne was sick up in Sweden, so she had decided to stay at home, rather than infect all the rest of the team with her bugs. So we had the other nine riders to deal with for the day. But it all worked out well, after a bit of lounging around, waiting for the press to conduct interviews, and some talking with some of our favourite sponsors, the photos were all done. Now just the crowded room to deal with, as they called us one by one up on to the stage, for our introductions. I thought I had escaped the show by hiding near the front of the stage, taking a few photo’s of my own, but near the time I was due to go up, the events lady dragged my from my hiding place, into the limelight, for my 5 minutes on stage. But it was nice, as the crowd was silently stunned with such a fantastic looking team.

From the left, Trine, Loes M, Loes G, Saskia,Mirjam, Iris, Jacobien, Elisabeth and Anna (Susanne missing).

We looked good, new riding kits, two very clean shiny bikes, flanking the stage, what more could the media and public ask for. A good meal, with a team member on every table for added entertainment value, and it was getting late, a very long day for the girls. I had plenty of wheels and bikes to prepare in the coming days so we all looked to each-other to get out of there, our job was done for another year. I gathered the bikes and equipment up and made a dash for it, the girls were start to get a bit grumpy, so it was a good time to leave.

Some more phots HERE.

Het Nieuwsblad

2009-03-05T04:55:00.006+13:00

After spending a week putting the new machines together, it was finally time to give them a bit of a spin, and what a great test, with the first race of the European season, Het Nieuwsblad (renamed Het Volk). I have a lot faith in my own mechanical work, and I wouldn’t be human if I wasn’t a bit worried, with eight new bikes, being raced over some pretty shit roads. Also to top that, we had four or five sections of pretty bad cobblestones, some of them up to 3km long, and these are a real test for any machine, let alone a lightweight race bike. But I was feeling confident, I had checked the bikes over twice, and then a third time for good luck, I could relax in the car, knowing there was nothing more I could do. We had a bit of colour on the bike this season, so they were looking all new and pretty, lined up before the start. The new team clothing had arrived during the week as well, so the public would get their first look of our new colours for the season. We would be spending the day in the team car, trying to spot the girls in amongst the 150 riders or so in the peloton, at least the back of the uniform was simple, three bold colours, and dark shorts. It is always a bit of a challenge at the start of the season when most teams change their colours and riders, it can make for a bit of added confusion as to who is who, and which team are they riding for now, initially. But with in a couple of races, we have our eyes calibrated, and no one rider escapes our attention, unless of course they are getting dropped in the first half an hour, and we are trying not to look at the sorry faces, as they hurtle to the rear of the caravan.

The new bikes ready to race

The girls were happy with the new bikes and clothes, a few of the team had already given the bikes a test run earlier in the week, but more than half were riding a fresh bike. The eight girls (80% of the team) lined up before the race with the bikes and new uniforms for a few pics. They all looked pretty impressive, the bikes I mean, and the girls didn’t look too bad either, the race was about to start, so my work was about to slowdown for the day I hoped. I loaded the car, and attempted to turn the race radios on, but it was not happening. We had double-checked everything this week for our first Euro race, all except the radios, stupid I know, but they have never been a problem, until now. The two radios were just not working, so I checked all the fuses I could find (a modern car is unbelievable for the amount of electronics it has) in three different places in the car, but no luck. The radios were very important, first the race radio, so we can hear what is going on during the race, the action on the front, the rear, and everything in-between. Second, the rider’s radio, so we can talk to the girls and hear them when there are problems, and to direct them during the race. This was going to be difficult, with such bad road conditions, we would have to be very alert, and the girls would have to think a little bit more for themselves for the tactics if we were out of range. After a bit of messing around (my half hour of peace while the girls were warming up was lost, I am no auto electrician, that’s for sure), we could not get them going. Klas rushed to the organisation to borrow a race radio, and we would have to do with one of the small riders radio for our tactical directions.

What a fantastic lineup, new bikes, new riding kit.

The course was different than previous years, and this time we would be following the last 128 km of the men’s race, which would be raced in behind us, later on in the day. The race started, and before I could relax for the first time all morning, the first crash call came over the radio. Everyone from the team were safe, but it was a bad omen for the day, and before most of the girls were back in the bunch, crash number two for the day. One of our girls were down the radio said, a bit of stress, but Iris was down and up just as fast. But there was a real mess over the road with all the race cars scattered everywhere, too many club teams here today, they don’t have the experience like the UCI teams have. Iris had a bit of a nice gash on her calf, and some chainring punctures on her shin, but otherwise she and the bike were fine. Some really sharp corners, and a few more crashes later, Loes M got caught in another crash, she was not too good, a bit of a hit to the head and shoulder when she hit the road, so she battled on for a bit longer, then hitched a ride back to the finish with us. But just as she flipped the front seat back into position, and sat down, the borrowed race radios power lead got squashed underneath it, and severed our race info again. A bit of a cleanup and splicing on the wires and I was ready to plug it back in for some sound, but the shock must have shorted another fuse to the auxiliary power plug, so we were back to square one, I gave up, we would have to rely on the other cars for some race info now.

Loes M not looking too happy after her crash.

A few more crashes later, and the race was getting near to the end, there was a breakaway of about 26 riders, and we had four of our team in there. But we could do nothing, the speed was high, and our attacks were not successful at all. The race came into the finish chute for sprint, the girls went for it, but not being the sprinting type, we did not manage to beat the winner, Susanne DeGoede from Nurenburger. It was not a bad day after all that drama, (it was at least warm 13’c, and no rain) the girls performed pretty well so early in the season. Some nice riding from all the team, and some great efforts from the younger riders, a couple of crashes with the team in, and only one puncture (thanks to a nice big pothole), a few scratches on the new shifters, and no other damage for the day. The radios we won’t mention again for a while I hope. We were pretty lucky looking around at the damage and punctures that other teams suffered during the race. I kind of had to laugh when three members of one team crashed into each other at the back of the peloton. The three of them in the middle of the road, trying to get their bikes apart, crying and looking ahead to the disappearing bunch, oh well, maybe they should be concentrating a bit more next time.

And look HERE for a few more pics of the day.

New Seasons Bikes

2009-02-21T21:32:00.004+13:00

With the sunshine of Qatar gone for another year, we headed back to the cold weather of Holland. Winter was still there, it had not gone anywhere, but we had a bit of work to do, so at least I would be busy and warm for a few days. The bikes were ready for delivery, or more importantly, ready for us to pick up. Stevens Bike Company was in the north of Germany, in the city of Hamburg only about 600km away. We decided it would be quicker to pick everything up at once, rather than waiting around for delivery. As well as the bikes, there was a stack of new wheels for the season as well. Normally we use Bontrager wheels in the season, but this year there is a bit of a change of wheel sponsor. Stevens has stepped in, with a custom built wheel, very nice in three sizes. We still have a lot of good Bontrager wheels still in house, so a combination of the both will be used for the various races.

The van half loaded with 20 bikes, doesn't look like much, but it's a big van

We hit the road early for the trip to Hamburg, with the weather on our side, it was going to be an easy trip. We encountered a little snow half way up, but we still arrived just on lunchtime. After waiting for the warehouse staff to finish their own lunch, we organised the pile of bikes and equipment into the van. We were perfectly on time to pick up the last wheel being built in front of us. It looked like the old guy had been doing it for years, and it was nice to see him run a tensionometer over every spoke before he gave us the last wheel to pack away. Now a small drive home, and then we could start to build our new machines for the year. Not too far from Hamburg, there seemed to be a bit of a block on the autobahn. After moving less than a kilometre in an hour, we were herded off the highway, on to a very small road. Seems there was a problem further down the road, so thousands of cars and trucks were just sent off on their own devices, thank god for the GPS. But it didn’t help too much, within a half hour, we thought we had found an on-ramp, but it was blocked as well. We then had a great idea to head cross-country, to miss all the traffic, this was our first fatal mistake. With in a few minutes, we were heading down some very small country roads, every time we thought we were back on track, there was another bridge or road closed for repair. It was killing us as the highway was in full view the whole time, but as yet the van could not jump the barriers onto the highway. Finally after three hours, we found our way onto the right road, and were off again. It was a long day, but we had the bikes, the group-sets, wheels etc, so it was not all bad. Now to unpack everything, and start the mission of building the new bikes, it was exciting, even though it can be a drag sometimes.

A small part of the Steven's warehouse

The next day, we organised all the new equipment into the ‘service course’, and started organising the build. Building bikes is not really the hard bit, getting all the setups right for every rider, can get a bit tricky first up. But I had managed to decipher and measure all the setups for most of the girls, so the building began. We only had a few days before we were leaving Holland for the warmer climate of the island of Majorca, a larger than I thought island, off the coast of Spain. Near the island of Ibiza, very popular for cyclists wanting to escape the cold winter of Europe. So finishing nine of the teams bikes was the plan, two days later they were done. It’s always nice building the bikes at the start of the season, at least they will be done properly, and up to my very high standard. It’s always nice to have them built of course, but now I know the inside and out of every bike we will race, it’s a good feeling. I forgot to take any pictures of the new bikes, so you will have to wait till I get back to base for a look at them.

Facing off the Stems with Klas's 'Top Secret' tool. Designed to make sure the stem is providing the perfect pressure on the headset bearings. Crooked stems are half the problem with bearing failures. And when you see how much material comes off one side of the stem, you tend to agree pretty quick. More on this tool later.

Next race for the team is the ‘Omloop Het Nieuwsblad’ on 28.02.2009. Renamed ‘Omloop Het Volk’ (a newspaper ‘The People’ sponsored the race for years, now it’s sold, thus the name change). Normally the start of the racing in Europe, and signifies the real start to the season. The race starts Gent in Belgium, so it’s nice and close to get to. I just hope the weather gets a bit better before we race.

Short Qatar Flick

2009-02-16T12:57:00.004+13:00

Trine loaded my video the other day, have a look. Only one days racing, as I forgot to charge my video camera amongst other things.

Or have a look here for a higher quality version of the same thing.

Tour of Qatar- Race review

2009-02-16T12:28:00.002+13:00

After a bit of a drive we arrived at the airport in Frankfurt for the flight to Doha, the biggest city of Qatar. We had a team of six riders, and staff of three, so the pile of bikes and luggage was pretty massive, we were expecting a bit of a fight to get it all on the plane, let alone for free. We only had eight bikes, five spare sets of wheels, massage table, nine very large personal bags, tools and work-stand, radio gear, 100 bidons, massage, nutrition and hydration products, so you can imagine the pile. At least we were on time, if not a bit early, which always helps. We were pretty well looked after at the desk, with a personal check-in lady organising everything for us effortlessly. A quick estimate of the weight (we under estimated by about 40%, just in case we had to pay the excess ourselves), and all was sorted very quickly. We found out later that Qatar Airlines had sponsored the flights and luggage, lucky for us, they had a special container for the bikes, so at least they would be a bit safer. Two other teams were on the flight, Columbia and Nurenburger, so we didn’t feel so bad, as they had just as much equipment as us, if not a bit more.

So before I could watch four movies in a row, we had landed, midnight in Doha, now the fun really started. After sitting in the passport control line for what seemed like the best part of an hour, one of the riders finally got to an officer. We were all watching in anticipation as none of us had, or wanted to pay for an entry Visa (about 25 Euro). It was all too much for the system, riders had blocked every counter, none of them having any luck getting through. Well it was all too much for the passport control, so they herded all the teams into and area and told us to wait, while they tried to sort out the problem. After another half an hour or so, we started asking the important one what the story was, it was getting late, and the riders needed to sleep, he looked at us with confusion. He asked what we were doing sitting over where we were told to sit, and then in a moment, he waved us through. After gathering up all the teams bikes and bags, we packed it all on some open bed trucks, hoping nothing would fall off the side, en-route to the Hotel. An hour later we made it to the hotel and got a bit of a impromptu tour of the city as well. But we still had not seen the truck with our luggage yet, so no relaxing for me yet. The girls checked in, and I waited, and waited, and waited, 2 am rolled around, still waiting, I had visions of the truck stopping somewhere, and few bikes and bags being offloaded in the night. After a while, one of the teams went and had a look at the bike tent (still up from the men’s tour, and ready for us for the race), and what do you know, the two trucks were sitting and waiting for an hour for us there. We unloaded the bikes, delivered the bags to the team, and finally hit the bed. The hotel was a dream, the Ritz-Carlton, next door to the ‘Pearl of Qatar’, we had a nice room on the 21st floor, looking through the central atrium, to the foyer below, put the shits up me. Think it was a bit of jet lag playing with my head, the balcony outside was just as creepy, I hung onto the rail as if the building was swaying in the wind. A short sleep later, I was ready for action.

The girls on the front, causing a bit of a stretched bunch.

A few hours to unpack the bikes, and the girls were ready for a nice training ride. The team for the race was Susanne, Mirjam, Loes G, Loes M, Trine and Iris, the best team we could muster for this early in the season, but pretty strong all the same. Training was pretty boring, 3 corners, then a nice straight road 40 km out, and 40 km back, not a corner or camel in sight. The bikes made it without any damage, we had all of the gang riding on last seasons bikes, just in case they wrecked them. The new bikes we were picking up when we arrived home, so you have to wait for a close look at them later. The race started the next morning, so I race tuned and prepped the bikes, wheels and cars, a few hours work, little bit of tyre pumping, and I was ready to roll. It was nice looking around the tent at the other mechanics still working as I walked out fully organised, experience is a great trait for races like these. Being organised before you leave, can save a lot of time, especially when sleep is at a premium.

The warm and dry weather, was a welcome change from the snow and ice of Holland. I had only a few days or so of this, but it was enough, a week in the sun was just what I needed (I had two weeks of winter, that was enough). Temperatures were sweet, at about 25’c, and all the bikes and riders were loaded, ready for the small transfer to the start. The ‘Museum of Arabian Art’ was our start point, a fantastic looking building and surrounds, holding some of the countries most precious art and artefacts. The setting was unreal, with the half built city in the foreground, and old Asian junks floating close by, giving us the impression Qatar has come a long way, very quickly. But we had a race to start, so I donned my mechanics cap for the first race of the season, and looked busy. A 94 km stage, six corners, with two straights of about 40km long each, simple to remember for the riders. We had a special plan for the day, attack from the 14km mark, so the girls were really motivated for some early fireworks. And by the looks at the 20km mark, no one was expecting us to attack. We had been practicing a bit of team time-trailing the day before, and it seemed to have worked out perfect. The bunch split badly, with a small group of about 12 riders out the front, we had half of the team in there. The bunch put the hammer down for the chase, they had been caught out by our attack, and the race was on. About the time we turned at about the 60 km mark, the gap was about a minute, not much, but the damage was done. Half of the peloton was at 8 mins, and the chasing group of about 20 was about to join the leaders. A small group of 30 made it to a sprint finish, with Giorgia Bronzini (Italian National Team) taking the win, Mirjam was in 5th, loes about 8th and Susanne in 10th. Not bad for stage one, three in top ten, four in main group, with the bunch distanced sitting on about 14 mins behind.

A bit of rehydration after stage No.1

Most of the teams were suffering many punctures after stage 1, the tent had a nice smell of fresh glue, we seemed to be lucky, with not a single flat so far. But that was all to change. Stage 2 started a bit out of town at the Oryx Farm, but we could not spot a single one, it was good to know that there was some wildlife that could live here, besides a few camels, and plenty of sand and rocks. The girls were in good shape, with their two hours on the front yesterday not really bothering them too much. They were ready for more action, most of the other teams were ready though, with a stage of 110 km, and a total of four corners, it was going to be fun. We had planned to attack the bunch again, no one else was going to, so we had to try and make the day a little bit interesting. The Men’s race a few days before had enormous amounts of wind, we seemed to have a bit of a lull for our race. We needed the wind to cause some damage, but nothing was happening today, but we had to give pain either way. And pain we gave, the team performed well, hoping to smash the bunch again, soon they would be submissive and would not fight back. But just as things were looking good, with 5 of the team in a small breakaway, the first puncture happened. Loes M was our first customer of the day, with a quick fix, she was back in the bunch. Then it was Trine’s turn, and then Mirjam in the front group (neutral service looked after her), our plan was failing with all the punctures going on. Then it was Susanne’s turn, 4 in total for the day, funnily enough three flats in the front wheels, one rear (normally the other way around). The plan was over for us, but at least the other teams were suffering as much as us, punctures everywhere, with the roads state, you could not escape it, rocks and holes are not easy to navigate around sitting in a big bunch. Eventually there was a small breakaway of two riders, Eva Lutz and Veronica Adreasson, they had a couple of minutes up on the bunch. They were both on 14 mins behind, so no one was really chasing them. Lutz sprinted for the win, Veronica second, and the funny thing was Rochelle Gilmore, sprinting the bunch home, thinking she had won giving a full victory salute for third place. Apparently her team had not told her there were two girls out the front, opps.

The water carriers are very important in the desert, what would we do without them.

Stage three was our last chance, Mir was still in 5th, Loes G in 8th and Susanne in 12th, so we were still looking ok in the GC. Our start area for the day, was the ‘Camel Racing Track’, everyone was looking forward to that. We had seen the odd camel along the way, but this was a good photo opportunity, and great to see the most popular sport in the country, up close. It was cool as we arrived, groups of camels and their handlers everywhere. Small bunches of race ready camels, cruising the course, it was pretty amazing to see, with the music blaring out on the loud speakers, it was surreal. I think the jockeys (if that’s what you call them) were just as surprised to see a bunch of lycra clad Women, as we were to see a bunch of locals, training and racing camels. It was a funny situation, right up to the point when one of the girls (she shall remain nameless this time) noticed she had left her shoes at the hotel. With a 45km drive back to the hotel, this was not an option. A panicked scout around the other teams, and we managed to find a spare pair of shoes, a couple of sizes too small, but she kept quiet, they would fit, no matter what. The race was under way, and again we tried a few things, but the wind was even slower than the previous days, so we just kept awake, and took any opportunity we could. We raced, the bunch split as usual near the end, Bronzini won the last stage, Kristen Wild took overall honours, and we managed to hold on to the team’s classification. Not too bad, as all the team was coming out of a cold winter. A quick bit of bike, and equipment packing and we were ready to fly. A few hours in the hotel waiting for our flights, and then we were out of there. Four days, three stages, five punctures, one crash, and six nice trophies later, we were content for the first race of the season.

Finally a corner, we get to see some of the race today.

And if you have not seen the photo pages look further, Stage #1, Stage #2, Stage #3

Qatar Stage 1

2009-02-09T06:13:00.004+13:00

The second bunch coming through the last km's

Just loaded a few pics of Stage #1, have a look here.

Car number 7, and we still saw nothing. Story to come.

The girls were pretty happy with their effort for the day.

Cross Worlds Pics posted

2009-02-08T07:50:00.003+13:00

Check out a few of the pics from the weekend. I was kind of working, so all of them are from the pits, nothing too exciting, but might be something new for you. Check em out here.

And when it finally loads, a small video. But looks like shit when it's all compressed, so will try somewhere new to post it. It's a shame really as it is filmed in full HD and looks wicked on the computer.

Ok try this one, once I have figured out how to host it properly, medium or large size to view, here Looks a lot better now.

Qatar is a pretty crazy place, not really the place to ride a bike, but maybe the race will be better. Long, straight boring roads, but at least we got air-conditioning in the car. But more later, racing starts in the morning, so should get some rest.

The long road forward, 40km one way.

Sure this building has been photographed many times, but not with our team in it, that's for sure.

Start Your engines

2009-02-07T01:17:00.001+13:00

The road season is about to start, and I have just been looking over the program with Klas. It is looking pretty nice, with all my favourite races featured, and a few of my not so favourite ones as well. There are a couple of my most disliked races missing from the list, and when I saw that, I was completely over the moon. So it looks like a busy season again, with the odd breaks to recharge the batteries and reorganise things a little. We are currently sitting in Frankfurt airport awaiting our flights to the ‘Qatar Women’s Tour’, held for the first time this year. The Men’s tour is about to finish on Friday and a couple of days later we start the three day tour with the girls. Everyone is excited about a new country to race in, and we might even have a bit of a chance to have a look around the place as well.

While we were packing and organising all the bikes and equipment this week, we managed to catch a little bit of the Men’s tour on TV. They were right, a city in the middle of the desert, with long highways plonked right on top of the sand. Normally we get a technical race manual with every road, turn and obstacle we will come across. Sometimes the stage information can lead to three or four pages of info, this of course we can relay to the riders during the race if needed. We were having a good laugh checking out the race book for the coming week. The longest stage had about 6 lines of information, with stretches of road that are straight for 30km or more before we turn. Lets hope we don’t fall asleep in the car during the race, we may have to make our own fireworks on the road to keep it interesting for the day.

Most of the top UCI teams, and a few national teams will be racing there, so it should be nice to catch up with all the riders and staff again. It’s always a bit difficult for the first month of the season, it’s when we see all the transfers and changes the teams have made end of season. Half of them you hardly recognise in their new team kits, and you have to be really on to it in the car and on the radios when attacks are happening. By the time you have worked out who is attacking, it could be far too late, but it certainly makes it for an interesting race. Our new seasons bikes are ready for delivery and assembly, so we will be racing on last seasons bikes for this race only. It always is good to fly with old bikes, saves the airlines wrecking our new ones. When we arrive back we have a bit of a mission to build and setup 20 new race bikes. But it will give us something to do before the next race starts. We will be riding Stevens Bikes again this season, and as always, all the riders love the feel of them. As for me I love them as well, German engineering at it’s best. As for the colour, who knows, that’s part of the surprise for the season. I will be fitting the new 2009 Dura-ace groups to the lot of them, and I think we even have a couple of new electronic sets to play with in a month or so as well.

Ok, think I hear our flight being called, next stop Qatar.

International Race Program 2009 Team Flexpoint

08.02.2009 10.02.2009 Ladies Tour of Qatar QAT 2.2
28.02.2009 28.02.2009 Omloop Het Volk / Circuit Het Volk BEL 1.2

07.03.2009 07.03.2009 Gran Premio Brissag - Lago maggiore SUI 1.2
21.03.2009 21.03.2009 Costa Etrusca-Gran Premio - Riparbella-Montescudaio ITA 1.2
22.03.2009 22.03.2009 Trofeo Costa Etrusca-Memorial-GP - Santa Luce-Castellina ITA 1.2
29.03.2009 29.03.2009 Trofeo Alfredo Binda - Comune di Cittiglio ITA CDM

05.04.2009 05.04.2009 Ronde van Vlaanderen / Tour des Flandres BEL CDM
06.04.2009 06.04.2009 Grand Prix de Dottignies BEL 1.2
10.04.2009 10.04.2009 Drentse 8 van Dwingeloo NED 1.1
11.04.2009 11.04.2009 Novilon Eurocup Ronde van Drenthe NED 1.1
13.04.2009 13.04.2009 Unive Ronde van Drenthe NED CDM
18.04.2009 18.04.2009 Ronde van Gelderland NED 1.2
22.04.2009 22.04.2009 La Flèche Wallonne Féminine BEL CDM
25.04.2009 25.04.2009 Omloop van Borsele WE NED 1.2
26.04.2009 26.04.2009 GP Stad Roeselare BEL 1.2
30.04.2009 03.05.2009 Gracia - Orlova CZE 2.2

01.05.2009 01.05.2009 Grand Prix Elsy Jacobs LUX 1.1
09.05.2009 09.05.2009 Omloop Door Middag-Humsterland WE NED 1.2
10.05.2009 10.05.2009 Berner-Rundfahrt / Tour de Berne SUI CDM
15.05.2009 24.05.2009 Tour de l'Aude Cycliste Féminin FRA 2.1

07.06.2009 07.06.2009 Therme kasseienomloop NED 1.2
09.06.2009 09.06.2009 Durango-Durango Emakumeen Saria ESP 1.2
11.06.2009 14.06.2009 Iurreta-Emakumeen Bira ESP 2.1
18.06.2009 20.06.2009 Rabo Ster Zeeuwsche Eilanden NED 2.2

01.07.2009 01.07.2009 U23 European Championship TT WU BEL CC
03.07.2009 12.07.2009 Giro d'Italia Internazionale Femminile ITA 2.1
04.07.2009 04.07.2009 U23 European Championship WU BEL CC
21.07.2009 26.07.2009 International Thüringen Rundfahrt GER 2.1
31.07.2009 31.07.2009 Open de Suède Vargarda TTT SWE CDM

02.08.2009 02.08.2009 Sparkassen Giro GER 1.1
02.08.2009 02.08.2009 Open de Suède Vargarda SWE CDM
08.08.2009 16.08.2009 La Route de France FRA 2.1
09.08.2009 09.08.2009 Holland Hills Classic NED 1.2
22.08.2009 22.08.2009 GP de Plouay-Bretagne FRA CDM
29.08.2009 29.08.2009 Multidigitaal.nl - Blauwe Stad TTT NED 1.2

01.09.2009 06.09.2009 Holland Ladies Tour NED 2.2
08.09.2009 12.09.2009 Tour Cycliste Féminin International Ardèche FRA 2.2
13.09.2009 13.09.2009 Rund um die Nürnberger Altstadt GER CDM
23.09.2009 23.09.2009 Championnats du Monde / UCI TT World Championships SUI CM
26.09.2009 26.09.2009 Championnats du Monde / UCI RR World Championships SUI CM

18.10.2009 18.10.2009 Chrono des Nations TT FRA 1.1

CycloCross Worlds

2009-02-06T01:54:00.003+13:00

Within a few days of arriving in the Netherlands my body was slowly adapting to the cold, with the maximum protest of course. Coming from a tropical island in the middle of the pacific, right smack in the middle of summer, I knew what to expect heading north, though I had tried not to think of it. Normally I am not this early to a European winter, so I was at least mentally prepared, and I had enough warm clothing with me. I was to arrive just in time for the ‘World Cyclo-Cross Championships’, being held in Holland a few days after I landed. A week after that, we were to be heading to the sun again, for the start of the road season in Qatar, so warm weather was not to far away. We had a couple of the team racing in the Women’s Elite race, racing for Holland, Jean-Paul’s son was also racing in the U23, so I had a little bit of work on the bikes leading up to this.

Cyclo-Cross for me is almost the perfect cycle sport, except the fact they race it here in the middle of winter. The bikes are essentially a road bike, with a few mountainbike modifications, stronger frames, fat tyres, canti brakes, smaller chainrings and mountainbike pedals. The bikes are pretty sweet, and they are all quite different designs between manufacturers, and some trick custom parts. The races are very short in comparison to the road racing, 45 mins for the Women, and one hour for the elite men. There is a pit area, which the riders pass through twice every lap, and the laps are generally about 5-7 mins long, so we see the riders quite a few times every race. Each rider has three bikes, one they race and swap out when they crash or get when they are covered in mud and crap. This we then quickly wash and check over, (if needed), either fixing or just having it ready for the next half a lap. The third is a spare spare bike, just in case things are really bad. And always a couple of extra sets of wheels, for the inevitable punctures. The tyres are all hand made tubulars, 32-34mm wide, and are run at real low pressures 25-28 psi (1.7-2 bar). Each course has a combination of mud, grass, road, running sections, and some steep bits, so you can choose whether you ride or run them.

Welcome to the Netherlands

I helped to organise the bikes before the race, one bike the riders had to train on the course a few days leading up to the event, the others we would bring on the day (so the national federation mechanics couldn’t mess too much with them). Saturday saw the juniors racing early in the morning, it gave us a chance to walk the course and have a look at some of the more technical bits. The wind was up, and the temperature was a fresh -2’C, but it felt about -10 out in the pit area, at least the sun was up, and it fooled your body that it was warmer. I had most of my warm clothes on, and I was still freezing, as long as we kept moving it was no problem. The juniors raced, then a couple of hours later the U23 started, I got to hang in the pits, it’s where most of the mechanics were, so I felt at home. Jean-Paul’s son was racing next, he was Junior World Champ a couple of years ago, so was a hot favourite for the race. They had 50 mins racing to do, and all I could think of was to stay warm, and soon we would be out of the cold wind. The boys started with a hiss and a roar, and soon there was a good lead by one of the Dutch riders. Unfortunately it was not JP’s son, he was struggling a bit with his breathing (he crashed a few days earlier and hurt his ribs a bit). We stayed on duty till the race was done, at least it was a Dutch guy that won, the crowd was going wild as he was a local kid. Then straight into the van and on with the heater, I was going to have to dress up tomorrow for the elite races, I could not handle another day like this, frostbite of my entire body was high on my mind.

Katie Compton giving everything on the first few laps

Sunday was a beautiful day, at least the sun was up anyway, this time I was prepared for the cold. Three layers of merino wool, then my jeans, three pairs socks and some warm boots. Five layers on my torso, finished with a nice warm jacket and to top it off, three warm woollen hats. Now I felt like the Michelin man, but at least I was almost comfortable in the wind. The sun was no longer around, and it looked like rain in the distance, but it was far too cold to rain, it was probably just going to be huge chunks of ice, falling from the sky instead. At least my three hats would protect my head from getting cracked. The course was starting to fill up with fans, mostly Belgium’s as the border was less than 10km away, there was beer and cross racing, the perfect day out for them. The crowd was expected to be about 50,000 strong, so it was going to be very loud later on for the Men’s elite race. At least they were there early for the Women, it gave a sense of equality in cycling for a change.

50m before the finish, on the big screen

Mirjam and Saskia were warming up (if that was possible, but worth a try I suppose), when we arrived with the bikes. After a bit, we headed to the pits with the spare bikes and wheels and waited for the first pass of the bunch. Right from the starting gun USA rider Katie Compton (US champ) put the hammer down, Hunka Kufanagel (GER) and Marianne Vos (NED) put up an instant chase. Mirjam was a few seconds behind, driving the second chase bunch. Thing pretty much stayed the same for a while, with Katie giving everything on the front, the two behind were still chasing hard, with Vos sitting on the wheel of Hunka as usual. Mirjam had broken out of the larger chase bunch, and was about 10 seconds from the two. I thought she may have bridged across, but just as the two in front of her caught up to Katie, they seemed to work even faster together, making the gap back to Mirjam a little larger. Mirjam dropped back into the pursuivants group, and the three in front just seemed to stay just out of reach. Nothing changed for the rest of the race, oh and Saskia crashed out on the first corner of the first lap. I was looking after her spares for her, so my job was made redundant, just as soon as it started, as she didn’t even make it into the pits. Katie was just hanging on to Hunka and Vos, and the three of them made it easily to the finish. Marianne Vos out sprinted the two, winning her Cross Worlds stripes, for the second time, Hunka taking second place, and Katie taking out third place. Mirjam finished a respectful 8th, and Saskia finished pulling the stones out of her arm, about the same time. We gathered up all our stuff and headed home, the Elite Men we starting in a couple of hours, so we decided to rush home and watch it on TV. At least it was warm, we had hot soup in hand and could see the whole race without fighting for position with the 10 deep crowd.

Some more pics to come once I load them.

Welcome Back

2009-01-30T22:24:00.006+13:00

It feels like months since I last sat down to write, and from the dates on this blog, it has been. So without pleading and asking for your apologies for been such a slack ass. I will use a technique I have used many times, and I will just forget about any promises of stories I have made. With amends being made up in the future with some entertaining reading, wicked photo’s, some bike stuff, with a bit of racing thrown in. Getting to spend some quality holiday time in my own country was a welcome break from previous off seasons. Normally I work the busy summer season at home (when all the rest of the team are riding in snow and cold in Europe), and what a summer we normally get. After less than six weeks at home last season, I promised myself a bit more time relaxing and riding. This time around, I was successful, and only managed to work the bare minimum of a few weeks here and there. The riding was great, but more on this later, along with a few more cool local races, some wicked workshops, and a few other stories, if time and energy levels allow, (there are those promises again, oops).

For those that have not caught up with me since last season, there is a lot of catching up to do. The big change is a new team for me, or rather, a new position, on an old team. After spending a year with High Road/Columbia, things changed for me near the end of the season. When I originally signed for the team, it was under the T-Mobile flag, I was supposed to be working mainly for the Women’s team, with the odd race for the Men’s team to fill my time up. It was a good thing at the time, and a good chance to move into the Men’s side of the sport (which was always the plan). But within a few weeks of signing, the T-Mobile sponsors were out, part of the never-ending German sponsors pulling all their money from cycling. When the team decided to continue under the management company ‘Highroad’, I finally got the call that things were going ahead, and I did have a job (only a month later, with not a message in-between). The season started with a hiss and a roar, with enough work to keep me well out of trouble. With some early wins with both the Men and the Women’s racing, it was looking good for the year. Being one for working for the winning team, I was right in my element.

And George, my favourite modern day rider. It was pretty cool working for guys like this, makes the job all worth while.

The season was pretty busy, seemed they really wanted to get their monies worth out of me. The riders were happy with my work, and by the sounds of things, they were happy to get a little bit more care and attention spent on their bikes than they had been getting (the stories were rife, and embarrassing to listen to). After working on bikes for years, I still tend to get excited by them, I especially like the problems that they can throw at you on a regular basis. Kind of makes things interesting late in the night, or a minute or two before a race is about to start. Bikes are easy, you fix them, fix them well, and they work, it’s not rocket science (but close in terms of technical knowledge needed). But for many race mechanics, they tend to get one or two parts of that equation wrong. I thought I might have to lift my game a little when working with the men, but within a few weeks, I was very disillusioned with the some-what low level of wrenching going on every where. This was supposed to be the pinnacle of my profession, and all around me I was surrounded with mediocrity and a lack of passion in the job. Some of the mechanics thought they ran the team, and some of them thought they were more important than some of the riders whose bikes they were working on. It just didn’t make sense to me, and the more the season got going, the more the problems just seemed to unfold.

Rabon, Adam and Mark hanging out during the 'Giro'. Guys like these are always a pleasure to work for. Makes the long days, feel like they can go on forever.

The more I looked around in and around my own team, and the teams around us sharing the hotel car parks, there was a traditional, standard way of doing things. This may not have been the most efficient, or the best for the bikes. But why change, it was easy to keep it the same, things seemed to work most of the time, and more importantly, no one really cared (except the riders of course). A change was no good when it was the ‘way’ for the last 20 years, especially when it may increase the mechanics workload by 5%. The riders and the bikes were the only ones suffering, and amazingly enough, some of the staff just couldn’t give a shit. There were few of them that cared, but it was only three out of eight, which is not a good ratio in my eyes (blind, leading the blind, comes to mind). The few good mechanics (who shall remain nameless, but you should know who you are), were all very good, efficient, professional, and there for the riders, not for themselves. As for the others, I wouldn’t let them work on my own bike, let alone a top Pro’s machine. Things have changed with technology and materials used in modern bikes, time to up skill by now, I would have thought. And it’s not a rot that was just with us, looking around some of the other teams, they had the same problems, seems they all went to the same school, and all failed together. Think of them as the Belgium bike Mafia, (there was also the French and Italian bike mafia as well), they all look after each others inabilities and failings, watching out for each others asses. If the level of skill is low, that’s the standard they are happy with. They have no real interest in bettering themselves, or perhaps learning about a new product or two. If there were problems during a race, they would all pass the buck, with no one mechanic claiming any responsibility. Generally making up some sort of excuse as to why the problem arose, instead of being a man, and putting their hand up and admitting that they didn’t check or fix it in the first place. All of us are then tarred with the same brush, and all the riders look at us with the same discontent when problems arrive. Especially when the same problem has not been fixed after they asked specifically for it to be. This was the hard part of the job, especially when I was not even near the tools or that particular bike on the day.

The Women racing in my beautiful (bit dry at the time) country in the 'Tour of Wellington'

Nearing the end of the season, my contract was coming up for renewal. The people who had to make the decisions were becoming very hard to make contact with. Which was kind of funny, as they seemed to reply within a minute of any mail, up to then. When all the staff were getting the good news about their jobs for the coming season, I still could not get any answers from those making the decisions. Maybe my mouth got me into trouble again, it wouldn’t be the first time that happened, it’s hard to keep quiet when there are problems staring me in the eye. I should also not question the work of the head mechanic, he may have something to do with my contract renewal. I should not talk about the lack of quality or low standard of mechanical work to the riders, even if they are constantly on to me about it. They talk enough about them in the bunch, I was just confirming their beliefs. I should not have any opinions about the way the work is done, even if it is against everything I have ever learnt in 20 years of wrenching. I should not check another mechanics work in front of them, even if the problem was potentially dangerous, staring them in the face, and very easily fixed. I should not go back to the truck after dinner to sort out a problem bike (when the rider has asked me specifically to have a quick look), I should just forget about it, and plead ignorance when the bike has a problem, just like the rest of them.

The boys lined up for the team Timetrail at the Giro, my favourite race of all time.

Finally I got an answer, but, not the one I was after (but by now, the one I was expecting), nor from the person who was supposed to give it to me. Seems the top man, (not Bob by the way) did not have the balls to tell me personally, even to the point of making himself scarce, when he knew I was wanting an answer on my future. Our earlier discussions seemed to go well, but something had changed. The riders were all happy with me, seems they enjoyed my work, my skill, attention to detail and my devotion to the bikes and the job. All the Directors were happy with my work, I got on well with them all, we do spend some long days alone in the car, so that’s a must. They all seemed to be completely in the dark as to why I was going, even though at first they had been told I was leaving of my own accord (which was really strange). And to top it off, the mechanics were devastated I was going, seems they had no problems with my work either, and enjoyed working with me. So with the riders happy, the Directors happy, and all the other staff happy, it all ended rather strange. Maybe one day I might find the real answers, but at this stage, your guess is as good as mine. A couple of people will know, lets hope they get to tell me in person one day, I would love to know.

Some wicked scenery in the 'Tour of Ireland'. Over the Conner's Pass, and it was a successful race for the team again.

So on with life, and not being one for sitting around getting distraught with my situation, I moved on pretty quickly. I had a few offers to look through, and the one that seemed to work out the best for me was a position back in my old team ‘Flexpoint’. Back with the women, and back to living in the Netherlands again. Jean-Paul, the team owner/director is moving to work with the ‘Cervelo Test Team’ as director for the men’s team. So Klas (the Swedish guy) is taking over the management of the team, and I will be helping him manage, direct, and wrench as usual. Should be a nice change for me, with some serious racing, some good fun, and of course it’s great to be back with most of the girls I have worked with before. The men’s peloton can wait, now I know how easy the work was, and with all the politics, I have no real interest except watching them at this stage. I did get to work on some of my favourite all time races with the men, and I worked for some of my favourite modern day heroes. I worked for the most successful teams, both the Men and the Women’s team ended up being No.1 out of all the teams they raced against. I also worked for some of the Worlds best riders, now they can wait a bit to get me back again. I have no regrets with the quality of work I did all year, and I certainly gave 150% as per normal for my riders. I still have plenty of respect in my skills, so really it’s no problem for me getting work. I just can’t wait to start racing again.

World Championships, Varese - coming soon

2008-09-24T09:25:00.001+12:00

Tour of Ireland #2

2008-09-21T04:53:00.004+12:00

With three wins, from three stages, things could not get any better at this stage. The fact that the hills were starting on stage four, our lead was soon to be over for sure. Mark and the whole team knew he would be loosing the jersey going into the stage, but the team was pretty upbeat all the same. He was not going to try to defend it in the mountains, but we sure would like to try to pass it on to someone else in the team. As we started the stage, the team was feeling good about not having to defend the lead so hard, I think the last few days protecting the lead has started to take there toll. With not so many top teams here, besides I suppose Garmin, everyone was looking to us all week so far for controlling the race, and it cost a lot of energy from the boys. Today would be a bit easier on the road for the team, but they still had a job to do. There were numerous attacks off the front as was expected, but there was a few other teams fighting for a bit of the action for a change. A few small groups got off the front, but not for long, before they were pulled back in to the bunch. Garmin looked pretty active, and with Kiwi, Julian Dean sitting in second, 20’ back, and in some good climbing form, he was expected to take the jersey today. With 50km to go, we hit the Conor Pass, the deciding climb of the day. Garmin as expected, with Millar and Backstead put the hammer down, with Dean protected, they attempted to smash the bunch to bits. I was busy with the camera, as there were some wicked shots of the riders heading over the pass, it was not to be missed.

Heading over the Coner Pass, not so steep, but long and beautiful.

Smash it to bits they did, Millar did a fine job on the front, dropping almost all the bunch, including Cavendish, by about halfway up. There was a real mess trying to understand what had happened, and, as usual the race radio was not helping us figure out the damage. We could see three small groups of about 20 riders each, but as we were so far back we could not see who was in there. The boys were no help either, as they were scattered over the whole mess and radio contact was difficult. But soon enough at about 30km to go we finally figured out what was happening in the race. A small lead group, powered by Garmin, with the virtual leader, Julian Dean, and two of us in there, with Michael Barry, and Marco Pinotti. So all was good, both of the guys we needed in the front group were there, the others were taking it easy in the second and third bunches. The front bunch put the hammer down, as they tried to make as much damage to the GC as they could. What Garmin didn’t figure out was the fact that Dean was not in the lead, and Russell Downing, from the small local Pinarello team, had picked up a few bonuses en-route to the finish. And with a win for the stage, he moved into the top of the GC and the Yellow Jersey. Shame for their poor maths, as I was kind of hoping that Dean (0.02’ behind on the finish line) would get a bit of a boost to his season with a leaders jersey for a day or so. Our plan had worked well enough, we had a couple in the running with Barry and Pinotti, the team had had a bit of a breather for the day. Cav rolled in about 8” back with most of the bunch, and the bikes worked perfectly all day, with no crashes, nice.

The last stage was going to be interesting, we had a secret plan, and the right players to implement it. The stage was heading through some pretty nice parts of the country, Killarney through to Cork, so I was looking forward to it. Most of the week we had been having a bit of a long transfer before the stage started, which meant early starts for the mechanics and other staff. They gave us a bit of a break on the last day, only a 5km roll to the start for the boys. The truck had left for the last hotel, where I would be leaving for the mainland later on that day, so I had a bit of relax at the start for a change. Without the jersey, most of the press generally leave you alone, that’s as long as you don’t have a Cavendish on the team. They were still trying to get interviews from him, and without the bus (unfortunately it didn’t start today), he could not hide from them. The crowd at the start was the biggest I had seen all week, and the atmosphere was pretty exciting, I think I was more excited about finishing the race, not it starting, I always have to be different.

That was a pretty big hole in the road, looks like it's been there a while.

We hit the road, and as you could imagine, the attacks started about 1km into the race. Rabon, who was looking petty tired the last two days, had a miraculous recovery, and managed to make it into the first good break to be let go. He was with three others, and the best one was 10” on GC. Team Pinarello were pretty nervous as you could imagine, instead of letting the break go to about 8” mins or something, they started chasing at about 3”, a bad move. The riders at the front just put the speed on, and Pinarello kept on chasing, using up most of their riders for no reason. Leave the break out the front for a while, let them take the win and then at least they keep the jersey, kind of ‘Tactics 101’. But they couldn’t hear me from the back of the car, and things were getting interesting at the front. Franki’s group had dropped two of the riders out of the break, now he was with one other only. The bunch got close, and with 25km to go, we sent Michael Barry out on the attack. With Barry sitting only 18’ to the lead, Pinarello panicked, and chased hard for 15km, catching him just as we hit the 10km to go. The 4 laps of hills, that they had at the end of the stage were very nasty, very steep short climbs, some hairy descents with nasty corners on them. The roads were packed with fans, which only made them look steeper when you turned the corner. Things were starting to get interesting as we saw almost all of the Pinarello team getting dropped, and most of the chasing bunch. Franki was very relaxed at the front, with about 2” up his sleeve, he was concentrating on making his fellow escapee hurt, just as much as he was.

The boys lining up for the last stage, Cav in green, Berni looking at us, and Michael.

Just as the bunch closed in on Barry, they thought they had it all under control, we sent out Pinotti (also on 18’) on attack, directly. And it seemed to work, the leader Downing was chasing Marco down by himself, and even then you could see he had nothing much left. A few others were helping to chase down Pinotti as well, with Dean having great interest, he was working hard. But Marco was too strong for them, and before we knew it, he was up over a minute on the chasing bunch. Franki in the front was at 4km to go, and just attacked his buddy with a vengeance, stormed off into the distance, and before he was a km away, almost had 30’s on the guy. He cruised to the finish, a nice win for him, second one for the year, and fourth for the team this week. The chase was on for Pinotti, being the current Italian TT champ, and master of the TT, he powered away from the bunch and finished about 35’ in front of the leader, taking the GC win and the tour for the week. Nice work.

What a nasty little climb, looks not as bad as it was.

So the week was not so bad, 4 out of 5 stage wins and the GC for three days on Cavendish’s back and the final with Marco. No mechanicals except the odd puncture, a few crashes (could have been a lot more if the last stage was wet). Now for the mission home, with a quick drive up to Dublin where the truck was sitting, to pack a few bike for the few Olympic riders, and I was on the way to the ferry from Dublin to Wales. A quick drive to Dover, in the south of England, and I was waiting again for a ferry back to Europe. I had a three hour wait, or so I thought, as I sat down to a nice relaxing meal and strong coffee. I tried to get an earlier boat, but as usual, it was impossible. As I took my first bite of my meal, I saw the line of trucks I was parked in, starting to move forward. Shit, I left my meal, grabbing a handful of something I could carry, and ran to the truck, “yep your ready to sail, get moving” the guy was saying. I was happy to be sailing early, but they should get the information to the front desk, my meal was looking so good just before I was interrupted.

If you have not seen them, there a few pics here and over here.

Eurobike #2

2008-09-11T03:46:00.003+12:00

And if you have not seen them, the last three sets of pics from Eurobike have been loaded. Album #3 and album #4 and the last one, album #5 are ready for some perving. Enjoy, and now back to trying to start on the second part of the Tour of Ireland.

Eurobike #1

2008-09-06T19:41:00.002+12:00

I will get back to the second and final part of Tour of Ireland soon. So in the meantime, I just started loading a few pics of two days at Eurobike for you to check out. More fruity bikes, incredible bling, and some complete crap coming, also some descriptions when I can find the time.
First gallery here and the second will be over here.

Tour of Ireland #1

2008-09-04T01:18:00.003+12:00

The drive to Ireland was going to be a mission, so we had a bit of a change of plan, to try and miss arriving around London during rush hour. But like all good plans, they sound good on paper, but are sometimes hard to extrapolate in the real world. But we wouldn’t know that yet, as we left for the first leg of the journey. We made our way to the bottom of Belgium to stay with some friends of my second mechanic for the week, this was close to the ferry where we would leave France for England. A good sleep, and early start, and we were heading to Calais, for the first ferry of the trip. We were nice and early for the boat, but a half an hour getting hassled at England’s passport control, saw our head-start slipping away. I don’t get trouble anywhere in the world really with my passport, but my man on the border decided that I was a risk to mother England, and he had to ask a million questions before he passed me through. There are quite a few stamps in my current passport, but he was concerned about the number of Aussie stamps I had. I had to restrain myself as he questioned me again and again over my travels for the year, was he jelous? But sooner or later we were waiting in line, for the first long wait of the day. Seems like there was plenty of bookings, so we missed the early boat and had to wait for the one we were booked on. Finally a few hours later, we were underway. We landed in England for the third leg, with a drive to though to Holyhead in Wales, for the second ferry of the day. But this was the next day really, as we were booked on the 3am boat. Another 4 hours waiting, so I watched a movie on the laptop, Steph slept (lucky for him) in the kitchen of the truck on one of the massage tables for a few hours till we boarded.

The White Cliffs of Dover, about to land in England. Can you see the truck?

A couple of hours and we landed in Ireland, at the ungodly hour of 5.45am in Dublin. Most of the riders were arriving later in the day, so we had a plan of a few hours sleep, then some work later on in the afternoon. All I could think of by now was a shower and a nice bed to sleep in, it was going to be great. But like the rest of our plans for the trip, things were not getting any better. Seems the rooms were still full, and they had to clear out the people in them, and clean them. The rooms might be ready at 11am, shit, more delays. We set the truck up, and the two mechanics and two soigneurs, were walking around like zombies now. Having trouble thinking, and walking around not quite focusing on what we were doing, it was hilarious, at least I was feeling as bad as the others. Just hope we get a bit of sleep before we work on the bikes today, the race started the next morning, so we had to be on to it. We had seven riders, but four of the bikes were arriving on the same ferry the next day with the bus driver. He had a bit more travelling than us, as he was coming from the race in France, so we had an hour of so in the morning to sort them, so things were getting tighter all the time. The rooms came available, and just in the nick of time, I hit the bed, managed to shut my eyes and relax for 3 hours, sleep was not possible, but I tried it anyway. We had work to do, seven spare bikes, three race bikes, and a whole load of wheels to sort out. Everything needed to be ready before we crashed out for the night, as time would be at a premium on race morning.

Some of the wicked countryside, the clouds were thick and the air damp, classic Ireland weather. Stage 1

I slept like a rock, one of those sleeps where you wake up just where you fell, not a single turn or movement the whole night. 5.30am came around sooner than I hoped, but the bikes would be arriving at 6am, so we had no time to spare. Bart, the bus driver arrived on time, and we could sympathise with his weariness, as he almost dove the same route as us the day before. We cleaned and checked and prepared the last four bikes, just in time to head to the first stage of the tour. Right in the middle of Dublin, only 12km drive, but it was going to take about an hour, according to the locals. The traffic was as bad as we thought, but we arrived on time, and managed to park outside a nice café, just what I needed, a serious caffeine hit. The team was feeling good, and there was plenty to catch up on with the boys, some of them I had not seen for a few months, and one, Michael Barry I had not even meet before. But we had a race on, and I needed to police the bikes a little, the locals were just a bit too friendly with them. The race started, and luckily there was 16km neutral start, as the city was full with traffic and small roads. Think they had not told most of the town, as there were some pretty angry punters around, shaking their fists in the air as we cruised past, welcome to Ireland I thought to myself.

A nice vista heading down to yet another lake, stage 2

As the race start was given, the attacks were on, starting with every small team that was entered in the race, and you don’t blame them really. A small group of four were away in the first hour, getting about 7 mins away from the pack, but it was not to be. We started hunting them down, and with help from no other teams, we ended up doing it all ourselves. Having the world’s best sprinter on your team, does not inspire other teams to chase down the break for a bunch sprint. So we chased them down all ourselves, and Mark sprinted and won, second place going to the Kiwi, Julian Dean, and we were in the yellow jersey for the second stage. Stage two was much like stage one, with multiple teams attacking right from the gun, it was going to be a tough day for the boys, but they like it that way. After countering many attacks, some of the groups very dangerous, one rider got away, the current Swedish TT champ. He got a maximum of 7 mins away, and the team kept control on the front all day. Then it was time to chase again, a flat finish, so another chance with Cavendish for the win, so we went for it. We manage to get him easily, as he was slowing down severely in the last 10 km. Just as we hit about 8km to go, there was a massive pileup, there was a load of riders and bikes down. But I suppose the lucky thing about working all day on the front was the fact that the whole team was safe. We battled on, and just as we hit the 1km to go banner, another huge crash, this time taking out about 15 riders, things were getting dangerous as he bunch tried for the last attacks. I was lucky again, all safe, and as I just got my composure back, we heard Cavendish had won again, sweet, two in a row, and still in the lead. Julian Dean moving into second place, about 12 secs off Cav now.

Cavendish getting harrangled by the press before the start of stage 3

With stage three about to start, the rain that had been hanging around for the first few days, decided to pay us a visit. There had been no sun, sort of a overcast, showery, damp feel to the air all week. I was told it was the worst summer on record, so we were lucky with three fine days so far. The landscape was pretty green, much like little ol NZ, so that I think is where the comparison comes in. As for the rolling hills, they are almost the same, but then it stops there. Stone walls, shit small roads and scraggly looking forests, are quite different to what we see in the NZ countryside, add a whole load of trees to the farms, and then we are talking similarities. But stage three was about to start, and the boys were now looking a bit ragged, Franki and Berni were the worst of the bunch, getting dropped in the last stage near the end, they would be suffering today. But with the team owning the yellow jersey, their work was about to get harder, as more of the teams were getting hungry for a win. As we set off, there was the usual attacks happening. Sitting back in the caravan, seeing and hearing on their radios of all the attacks, you just can’t help feel a bit for the boys. Yelling out instructions, and fending off many attacks, one after another, it was going to hurt today for them. Finally two were let out of the bunch, a nice easy catch when we need to, gaining a maximum of 4 mins, we kept them at arms length all day.

And the boys are off to work for the day, and they will be working hard to day.

Near the end of the stage, we hear that one of the two escapees had crashed just over the top of the biggest climb of the day. The roads were wet, and the boys were warned over the radio about the danger. But just as we headed down the descent, a huge crash happened. With two of the boys down, Adam Hansen and Cavendish, we sprung into action. The road was blocked, as Adam was down and cut up pretty bad on his elbow, three long gashes (sorry missed taking a pic, so did Adam before they covered it). Cav was up and gone before we got there, so we left it in the hands of our Doctor (who was in the second car) and carried on. Cav was fine, bar a huge hit and graze to the hip, his bike was not too bad, Adam stopped the race, and the joy of stiches to look forward to. When we were ready we reeled them in for the finish, and what a finish. The sprint was a nasty one, with Dean sitting on Cav's wheel, ready for the attack. But the little guy came through again, with a hattrick, three from three, the team was pretty stoked. A bit of celebrating for the team, and a whole lot of work changing cassettes for the coming two days of mountains for me. We would be lucky to keep the jersey past today, but we had a secret plan, now to implement it.

And if you didn't see my last post, more pics are here and here.

Ireland Pics Posted

2008-09-03T18:16:00.003+12:00

I found some time to load a few pics of the Tour of Ireland, you can find them here and over here. Some interesting stories to follow.

Racing this week.

2008-08-24T23:23:00.003+12:00

Just about to leave for a bit of a journey, ready for the next stage race for me and some of the team. The Tour of Ireland, featuring five good stages, covering some of the nicest parts of Ireland. A country I have never been to, and one that I have wanted to look around for a while, so it should be nice. They say it's the green isle, and very similar to parts of my very own NZ, but I have to see it to believe it. Think thats why the little bit of interest in the country.

We have a crack team of experts, ready to show the locals how it is done, and maybe some of them will race their bikes as well. The truck is packed, and we are about to hit the road for a bit of a long trip. A few hundred kilometers to Calais in France, here we board the ferry to Dover, England. Up though England to Holy Head, on to another ferry to Dublin, Ireland for the start of the race. So stay posted, as I am sure they will have internet somewhere there, I will find time for some photos to get posted anyway, if not the odd story.

Wicked Workshops #6

2008-08-24T03:52:00.006+12:00

Another installment to my series on Wicked Workshops (#5, #4, #3, #2, #1).
One of the cool things about travelling around so much, is the fact that there will be many bike shops to visit along the way. Most of them won’t be so cool, just your regular, run of the mill, normal bike store, and generally with no real soul. But then sometimes, you get very surprised as to just what you find, in the most unlikely places. This ‘Wicked Workshop’, would not be 1km from our teams base in Bonn. I must have passed it a dozen times, every time I was always on another mission, without camera, or it was closed. I must have stuck my head in through the bars on the font door, many a time, trying to get a closer glimpse of what was hiding in the display cabinets, and what was hanging around the walls. It looked like more of a storage area for the second-hand dealers next door to it, with bikes piled in, with no real order in the display space. I could spy a few gems around the walls, and some cool looking bikes hidden in a few of the rows of bikes on the floor, so I was hanging out to get inside. But it took a while, but finally I managed to

Such a great name for a bike shop

I had a good idea of exactly what I wanted to see, so I made contact with the stores owner first. You never know sometimes, how they will react when you ask them if it’s ok to take a few photos of their place. I knew he had nothing to hide, and would probably be quite interested in showing me around the place. It was not so big, so it wouldn’t take too long, well that’s what I was thinking anyway. I was not worried making contact, I knew the secret bike mechanics handshake, I would be accepted, and welcomed into his workshop. It worked a treat, within a few moments, we were like old friends, and he was only too happy to show me around the place, giving me a bit of an inside handle on some of the cool bikes he had around the place. He was still working, so I know what it’s like when someone comes in bothering you, he still had a couple hours more to trade, and the store still had a small stream of clients coming through the door. Already I started to like this guy and his shop, each customer coming in to pick their bike up, struggled to get through the shop floor and to the cluttered workshop out the back. Here they were given a good description of the work done, a real ‘hands on’ approach to his work, and it worked well. Everyone was happy when they walked out the door, threading their clunky commuter bikes through the maze, to exit on the street finally. I had to really try to get out of the way, as there was no room for two of us in the one room.

What a classic, three speed, wooden rims, all original, ready to roll.

We started talking, and then it started, like I lit a fuse under his ass, he was starting to warm up, overflowing with that common problem we all have, bike addiction. I was shown some very special bikes he had on display, and this was only a small selection of what he has, he was saying. He has plenty of others at home, and is just waiting to display them. Three, very complete old road bikes were hanging from the walls, all with 3 or 4 speed drive-trains. They all had the same gear shifting system hanging from the chain stays, I had seen it before, but my man gave me a quick description. It was a Swiss design from the 30’s, won the Tour a few times that decade, and was the forerunner to the modern derailer system we all now use. The rims were all wooden, and all the bikes were in working order, even the tyres were pumped ready to roll. Such a nice touch for a display bike, I wanted more. Like most collectors, he looked he specialised in this era (30’s-40’s), as most of the bikes seemed to be all the same era. But he had more to show me, but I was in awe with the few I was already looking at. There was a very early inch pitch, single speed bike, sharing the window with a futuristic looking Hercules 2000 cast frame, this was one of two I could see, both of them mint. There was a few more customers coming in by now, and I kind of felt bad, as they were waiting for their bikes, and the boss was too busy showing me his goodies. But it all worked out, I made the excuse I had to take a photo outside, just so the customer was not waiting too long (that’s my years of retail experience talking there).

The busy workshop out the back, full with good stuff, even the mechanic and a customer is hiding in there somewhere.

The workshop was also pretty special, jammed full of everything you could imagine to repair to restore any number of types of bikes. I thought the shop floor was cluttered, but the workshop was amazing. Think of the classic cartoon wardrobe scene, open the door and all hell breaks loose, well this was close, and it looked just the part. I love the idea of a nice and tidy workspace, but sometimes work just gets in the way of that idea. Sometimes you need a bit of clutter to make it look like you are busy, and this guy looked very busy. I felt right at home hanging out in his workshop, I think I will be back again. I even managed to pick up a very special invention, but more on this later as I think it deserves it’s own story. After an hour or so, I still was finding things that I hadn’t seen before, an old track frame there, a nice mudguard emblem here, and there was still plenty to discover by the looks of it. I left him to it, promising to be back in a week or two. I have a couple of old and new jerseys I will swap with him for his museum. I need to get into having a peek at his home collection, just to see what beauty I can find there as well, and by the sounds of things I won’t be disappointed.

Ohh, this is nice, I would love to add it to my collection, but he might miss it.

You can check out a few more pics over here. And if you want to make contact, here are the details.

Tour de l'Ain

2008-08-17T09:16:00.005+12:00

A couple of days at base, catching up on a bit of sleep, and I was on the road again, this time in the opposite direction of Denmark. The race we were off to was ‘The Tour de l’Ain’, in the bottom of France near Lyon, close to the Swiss border. A nice little race, in a very nice part of France, with five stages over four days, and yes, another double stage day. We had a lot of the team over in China (Olympics) about to start the road race and TT over there, so we had what was left at home racing with us. Some of the boys had decided not to race the Olympics, and some were just not selected, so it’s not as if they were feeling B grade, or anything, but you could feel it a bit from other teams around the Hotel. The l’Ain area is very nice, full of national parks, rolling countryside, farms and nice little villages. You could almost say it looked a bit like New Zealand in places (I can say that, but most others couldn’t), just add a lot more houses to the scenery and it’s almost the same. Maybe I am just getting a bit homesick, as Denmark last week, was looking a bit like NZ as well. Our crack team of riders for the week were arriving the next day, a couple had just raced in Denmark, so they had as little rest between races as me, nice. Riding for us this time round was Scott Davis, John Devine, Linus Gerdemann, Frantisek Rabon, Tony Martin and the little Italian, Morris Possoni. Directing us for the week was Valerio, back from the last two weeks of the Tour, a bit more relaxed now that it is over. Linus was back to a bit of form after crashing out and breaking his leg earlier in the season at the Terreno-Adriatica race, my first race back in Europe.

The weather was looking good for the week, but no sooner than I had been enjoying the idea of another week in the hot sunshine (just for those in NZ who are having some pretty nasty weather at the moment). The weather report came over the radio that we should be expecting storms for the rest of the week, nice timing. The team was feeling pretty good about the weeks racing ahead, there was not too many of the bigger teams here, and most of the good riders were over in the pollution capital of China. It was nice to be back in France for a bit of racing, and the public were on form after a month of cycling frenzy. The crazy thing was, this tour was starting on a Sunday, normally the day that we finish on. Oh well, every day feels the same when you are on the road. I have a special watch that tells me what day it is, otherwise I would have no idea (yeah I can hear you laughing from here, but it’s true). I drew the short straw this week, so had to race in the first car for the tour, not sure how that worked out, but all the same, makes for a bit more action for the week.

What a nice shot of the countryside, and the bunch is racing hard.

Stage one was uneventful, a group away for most of the day, they almost didn’t catch them, but got pretty close. Nice to see some of the smaller teams winning the odd race now and again. Franki finished in 6th for the day, at least we would have a decent view form the caravan the next stage. Stage 2 started off pretty wet, the rain that was forecast was starting to arrive, the peloton slowed a little to start with, then put the pace down as the first hour ticked by. Just when I was starting to relax in the car, the first crash of the race happened, I heard on the radio that one of the boys was down. I jumped out, and navigated through the mess to Scotty Davis who was down on the ground with three others. They had all been taken down by one other rider, all of them slid into the gutter, and all were sporting the same hole in their left knee. The doctors were there pretty smartly, but Scotty was done, a nice hole in his knee. Cleaned up you could see a small layer of fat under the skin, all the way through to the muscle, shame I never had my camera there, it was impressive, to say the least. The others down with him, had much the same injury, and the doctors were moving from one guy to the other, trying to work out who to sort out first. Scotty was in a bit of pain, so I made the call and grabbed his bike and proceeded to put it on the roof, he was going for a ride, but not on his bike. We continued onwards, and caught up with the race, which had slowed dramatically since the crash., funny that. We were down to five riders for the rest of the tour, but think we will be ok. Franki ended up second in the sprint for the line, and third in the GC, so it was a good day in the end. Scotty was fine, nothing broken, a bit sore, and sporting a full leg bandage for his effort.

Hey, where are they, John Devine getting lost in the grass.

During the night, the rain started, and it poured down with a vengeance, and it couldn’t have come at a better time for the mechanics. Right ready for the days double stage, a small road race in the morning, and another, even smaller TT in the afternoon. Waiting to start the mornings stage, the rain was still falling, not too hard, but very wet all the same. The boys were not looking forward to the start, but I was, at least it was not raining inside the car. The stage was a short one, just over 100km, so it would be over soon for them, the roads were wet, and they looked very slippery as well, I hope no one went down today. But all was good, they raced like hell, it rained like hell, and we won with a sprint from Linus, to the line with three others. The leaders were dropped earlier on, so it put Linus into the leaders jersey, and the teams spirits were looking pretty good going into the afternoons soggy Timetrail. I was wet to the bone, while waiting for the rest of the boys to arrive at the bus, a podium to attend and doping control, saw to most of the spare time we had between the stages. Back to the Hotel, my dry co-mechanic Guido was done with the TT bikes, ready and waiting for the afternoon, we just had ten very dirty bikes to clean, then hop it to the start, and get set up. I was still wet, and cold by the way. The start was close, a few KM drive and I was back in the rain. Setting up the tent, the TT bikes and the base camp for the afternoon. We were a lot better sorted than most of the teams there, poor bastards, I thought as I looked out form our huge tent at some of the pathetic attempts to stay dry, but I was still wet, and now my last bit of dry, remaining my shoes was wet.

Linus out on the course, and the rain has eased off a little bit.

We raced hard, with Tony getting the fastest time of the day early on in the race. This was going to be hard to beat, he was an animal, and had no fear, even with the torrential rain to ride in. The course was only 7.3km long, but dangerous every turn you came around. I was following last with Linus, so was busy setting the others off on their merry way. By the time Linus was up (1st on GC, last to start), all the riders were gone, all my equipment was packed, tools stashed and the rest of the staff were happy and dry in the bus, I was still wet. I set Linus off, and we hit the road. The rain was crazy, but it didn’t stop Linus from giving it shit all the way, the best time of the day was still Tony. Linus raced well, and with about 10 large speed bumps on the course, my heart was racing hard every time he jumped up and off those suckers. He was second, sweet, Tony wins the stage, Linus second, a double stage, a double win, and Linus still wearing yellow. An hour or so more in the rain washing and sorting out the bikes, I was still wet, 13 hours so far I had counted. But the shower was close, the rain was at least warm, and it looked like it was going to stop by the morning. My toes thawed out by bedtime, and at least I was dry on the outside, but with a double win, it was raining alcohol on the inside now, and I felt warm, finally.

Hey it's Linus, getting ready to start the last stage, looking good in yellow. And he kept it as well.

The final stage was going to be a killer, many hills, many attacks and a few riders pretty close to our boy on GC. Right from the start they were attacking us like hell, huge groups and solo riders, but the boys were on to it. Chasing them all down, and eventually beating them into submission as soon as they tried it again. Most of the groups were far too big, and contained too many dangerous riders, but soon there was a good group away, we let it slide. By halfway through, we had kept it to about 2 mins, nice and easy for the team, just in case we needed them for the finish. Just as things were getting tough for the boys, Tony gets a puncture at a very bad moment, I fixed it, but there were attacks happening off the front, so the bunch driven by us, was chasing at full speed. Just when I had got back in the car, organised my wheels, Tony came over the radio that he had another puncture, what, I looked, and sure enough, second rear puncture in about a 1km, what are the chances. I fixed it quick, poor Tony, as the bunch was still at full speed, but the champ he is, and TT specialist to boot, he chased and was back on the front with the rest of the boys pretty damn quick. The last half of the race was in a loop circuit through the finish, this loop had a few good climbs, so was very dangerous for the team. But all worked out well, the group was caught by the last climb, the closest on GC attacked Linus at this stage, and he responded well. Tony did a fantastic job, keeping the speed high all the way to the 3km to go mark, and Linus finished it off with a second place. Keeping his biggest rivals at bay, and winning the tour overall. Great for the team, a great comeback for Linus, and a great result for the mechanics of course, cause without us, who knows what would happen.

And of course a few pics here and there. and if you haven't figured it out yet, the slideshow is a good way to see them all easily, depends on your internet speed of course.

Tour of Denmark #2

2008-08-17T05:32:00.005+12:00

Starting the fourth stage was kind of weird, the double stage was upon us, and it was funny to see how the staff and riders were going to handle it. Working in the women’s peloton, it is kind of normal in any stage race. In fact they seem to think that it is an integral part any race. We had a small stage in the morning of about 130km and an even smaller TT in the afternoon of 14.5km. The staff were getting a bit scared of the long day ahead, I was looking forward to it. It was easy, just don’t think about it too long and it’s fine, I was a veteran of double stages. I had drawn the long straw for the day, and had the morning at the truck organising all the TT bikes and equipment for the afternoon, so I had plenty to do, unfortunately. The weather for the week had been pretty nice everyday, up to 30’c most of the days, but this morning it was freezing. The hotel was right on the waterfront, and with the wind blowing it was chilling me to the bone. I dressed up warm and hibernated in the rear of the truck for the day. Only seven TT bikes, and a few wheels, I would be finished soon, then maybe I even might get a quick ride in, before the team arrived back from the mornings stage.

Marco Pinotti out on the course, about to pass his minute-man.

I really have a love-hate relationship with TT races. I love some of the technology that goes into them, the aerodynamics, the materials and the wheels. But I hate all the stress, the short stages, and the bullshit that is connected to ‘the test’. I don’t know what it does to the riders for the day, but somehow they seem to save all their stress and built up tension of the stage race for the TT. Some of them have it sussed, and look upon a TT with a happy outlook, others just detest the very thought of it. I am in two minds, the only thing I dislike is the amount of work that goes into a small TT, same work as a long one, but I suppose it’s over quicker. TT bikes are kind of like the freaks of the bike world (sorry but Tri bikes are even worse, I just don’t want to start talking about them cause they upset me too much). Every rider has a different preference in the set up and the components on each of their bikes. You just have to check everything twice, because you know they are going to make some changes at the start sooner or later. The other big problem is the bikes get checked at every race for the UCI regulations, even though pass through some of the commissionaires at some pretty big races no problems. There is always one or two races where you have issues with some dickhead judge who thinks the bike is illegal, but it’s not. I love these guys, and so do all the other mechanics lining up with bikes that passed every check the whole year except this one. But the bikes passed fine, the judges were pretty loose, so every bike was well in the limits.

Hey it's Franki, just pulled out a nice ride, 5th equal in the end.

All the boys were fired up, the bikes were ready, the sun was shining, and the wind was blowing like hell. The course was pretty open, so the first riders out would have a fairly hard time of it in the wind. Unlike most TT’s, the wind would be slowing down as the riders started, so being last would have an advantage. There was a fair few spectators hanging around, but most of them gravitated towards the CSC team base of course, we were passed by for the local team for a change. Just means we could get on with our work without anyone getting in the way. I was tailing only one of our guys for the race, Ronald was doing a couple, and the neutral service would pick up the rest. Franki was sitting the best on GC, so would be off last, I got the 2nd last seed of Pinotti. Last time I worked for him, he ended up winning the last stage TT of the Giro, so he was our secret weapon. By the time I got the first guys off to the start ramp, it was time to get Marco organised, he was feeling a bit nervous, even for such a small race he was worried. We started out pretty fast, and by the time we hit the halfway time check, we had the fastest time of the day, nice. As we finished the last two legs of the square-ish course, the wind was howling in his face. I had my fingers crossed every time that a gust hit him and the bike, moving from one side of the street to the other in a second. We came through the finish chute, fastest time came over the radio. I jumped out to congratulate him on such a good ride, I was happy, and so was Marco. Now the wait for the few riders left to come through the gate. Franki was off last, Ronald was following him, and you wouldn’t believe it, but the same halfway time as Marco. The wind had almost stopped by now, making it a bit easier for the last few, but it was still blowing a little though, evening it up a little. Franki comes through with the same time as Marco, right to the seconds, crazy. But it was not enough, four more riders through the gate ended up being faster, with my Swedish mate Gustav Larson taking the win for CSC for the stage. Franki 5th, Marco 6th with same time.

And the wicked bridge from the mainland to Copenhagen, nice work guys, looks great.

The last stage was nice and easy for me, driving the truck to the finish, and waiting for the boys and the bike to arrive. The finish was close to the centre of Copenhagen, so I would have a bit of time for a little sightseeing ride of the city. I found a good spot for the truck, right outside the showers and hit the road, it was sunny and warm and I had about three hours to kill. What else to do but grab my camera and go for a bit of a Tiki Tour of the city and the surrounds of the finish area. I had spent a bit of time here previously, so I found a few places I had not been before, and got relaxed before the long drive home. The road I happened to take into the city had no fewer than eight bike shops on, lucky they were all closed as I am sure there would have been a few something’s I would have found to spend my money on. There was a nice fixie I found in the window of one shop, a bit cheesy, but nice all the same. They say it is the city of bikes here, and from the amount of nice looking bike shops in a few kilometres, I would almost agree. As for the amount of people riding around, it was pretty impressive as well. The city was busy, seems like everyone was out enjoying the sun, the photography was a success, but the race was coming through soon, so I had work to do.

Nice looking overworked fixie in the window, 10000 Danish Krone, 1350 Euro, about NZ$6500 at this weeks exchange rate.

By the time I got back to the truck, the team bus had arrived, I had a few things to pack before the riders arrived for a few laps of the finish circuit. Just like the rest of the week, there were a whole lot of people waiting around the course, more than normal I hear. Must have something to do with CSC-Saxo Bank (the local Danish team) winning the Tour a couple weeks before. Who said cycling was suffering, not if the number of punters on the finish line, was anything to go by. The race arrived, a few laps of the finish and it was done. Not our most successful tour, but a sixth place from Franki, and Marco was ninth overall in the GC. It was CSC’s time to shine, we would take out the next races instead.

Pictures of the week can be found here and over here. And I almost forgot about these ones as well.

Denmark Pics Posted

2008-08-03T01:14:00.002+12:00

A few pictures for your perusing. a bit of the racing here. and some of the countryside here. We are lucky with a road race in the morning today, and a Time-trail in the afternoon, my favorite double stage day. But we are so organised I have a few hours in the middle of the day to mess around, catch up on a few emails etc. Last rider off tonight is 21.10 pm, so it is going to be a late night. So in the meantime enjoy a few pics.

Tour of Denmark #1

2008-08-01T08:44:00.003+12:00

I was really looking forward to the Tour of Denmark for some reason. Think the main reason was to have a look around a bit more of the countryside that I had not seen before. I had driven through it a few times en-route to Sweden, and we have even had a Team TT for the Women a couple of years ago. I had even spent some time having a look around Copenhagen, but there was still a bit more of the country discover. The tour pretty much was covering the whole of the country, so it was a great way to have a look at places you otherwise might not get to go. We had a fairly average team for the week, and with the Tour just finishing a week ago, and the Olympics a week or so away, most other teams were in the same predicament, so it was at least even. Racing for the week is Scotty Davis, Marco Pinotti, Andreas Klier, John Devine, Frantisek Rabon, Vincenti Reynes and Roger Hammond.

The boys off to the start on stage one. John Devine with lucky 13 on his back.

Driving up there was nice and relaxing, I had a pretty quick run through in the truck. Ronald, the other mechanic for the week was finishing up a very successful Sachsan tour. We had won four stages, had the yellow jersey for most of the week. We ended up getting 1st, 2nd and believe it or not 3rd in the TT, and this placed us with 1,2,3 in the general classification for the last stage, so it was easy to keep it for the final. Bert Grabsch taking the win overall, Andre Greipel had a couple of good stage wins as well. I must also mention the Women’s team, scoring another win overall in the Thuringen Tour for Judith, not far from where the Men were racing in the bottom of Germany. Not as close as it was last year, but just as difficult form the sounds of things. So we were starting near the top of Denmark, so as we raced we were heading in the direction of Copenhagen, for the final day. The sun was shining, and it was nice and hot. And for those of you back in NZ where the country is currently getting wasted with severe storms, it was a nice 30’c and not a cloud in the sky, with just a slight breeze just to cool you down a bit when lying in the sun or when out on the bike. The rest of the team were not arriving for a couple of days, so I took a bit of time out (after getting the prime position for the truck) and went for a few rides.

Frankie picking up his lunch in the feed zone.

First stage was a circuit, covering some very nice country roads, a few little hills (highest I heard in Denmark was 130m high) and some very cool looking coastal villages. The sun was not as hot as the last few days, and the wind was nowhere to be seen. A break of three local boy escaped on 15km mark, and they stayed away for the whole day, right up to the 10km to go mark. They had done pretty well, but the bunch reeled them in with a few km left to race. Nothing much happened in the race, and it was a sprint finish, the winner I had never heard of. Our boys gave it a shot, but having no real sprinters here, we finished with two in the top ten, so not a bad start to the tour.

Somewhere out in the countryside, its' wheat season, so the fields are looking brown.

Stage two was a bit more of a killer, 220km, plenty of warm sun, but at least there was some good strong headwinds to cool the boys down a bit. I was on truck transfer duty, so I was on the road at 9am, arriving at our beachside hotel at lunchtime. I set the truck up quickly, grabbed my bike and went for some exploring. I found some pretty cool little old fishing villages, full with period housing, looking just like I was expecting for this part of the world. The sun was shining hard (just for the Kiwi’s again) and I managed to find my way home, just in time for a nice brisk swim in the sea. It looked pretty nice, but I forgot it was the North Sea, my heart almost stopped beating when I jumped in. But lucky I am so healthy, otherwise there could have been problems. I now are awaiting the bikes and the riders, the finish is only a few km away, so they shouldn’t be that far away. Now to find some free wireless to get this posted, and maybe even get today’s race report from the other mechanic, and everything is up to date.

Hey that's roger in there, two more laps of 4km to go.

What's in the case?

2008-07-27T06:55:00.003+12:00

One of the few things that make us who and what we are, are tools, without them we are nothing, and with them we can solve most of the worlds problems. So I thought I would give you a quick look around my tool case, and a look at some of the tools that reside in there.

Hey, what's in the case mister?

With us constantly moving from race to race, we have to have everything you might need to work on a bike, with in reason of course with us. The only limitations being the size of the box you want to lug around, and whether you can carry it I suppose. Sometimes you got to draw the line at some of the bigger tools, but I am sure if you had the space, you could always squeeze them in. The most important thing is making sure that you have all the necessary tools, that fit the bikes you are working on. My box has a selection of tools that are pretty specific, (and a few custom made) for the bikes that the team use, both the road bikes and the TT bikes. All of the bikes have the same groupset on them, Shimano Dura-ace, so it makes things a little bit easier. But the big thing is making sure that if you are alone, you can pretty much solve any problems that might arise.

The bottom of the case holds all the big stuff. The hammers, the cassette removers, cable cutters, spanners etc. Tape, files, a torque wrench and a few cone spanners, a hole punch and a chain tool. Bottom left are the 'gap' tools, to set the wheels up to the perfect spacing for a speedy wheel swap.

I really didn’t think I had that many tools, that is until I took them all out of the case, to take a photo. And believe it or not, every tool gets used most of the time, otherwise I would seriously question whether I want to carry it around any longer. To make things a little bit easier, most of the bigger trucks we use, have an array of bigger tools that may be used occasionally, but you could probably do with out them if you really needed to. There is a headset press that we use for the BB bearings, but you could hit them in easily enough with a hammer. There are a couple of cutting guides for steerers and seat posts, and a hacksaw to cut them with, but you could do it freestyle if needed. But other than maybe a small vice, and a trueing stand that’s pretty much it for extra tools. And if you get some pretty hairy repairs, there are always a few other teams either in the same hotel or not far away that will probably have what you need.

I don’t really care where the tools come from, as long as they work and don’t break. Some tools you are going to have for years (unless they are permanently borrowed), so you might as well buy the best, saves replacing them all the time. I do look at other industries tools as well, as they generally are cheaper and most often better quality. There are a few specific tools, just for bikes, and with these, there is no one company that has all the best. You just got to have a good look around, and see what you like out of what is available. I have a selection of Shimano, Park, Pedros, Cyclo, BBB and Syncros bike specific tools. All my favourites for the specific job they doing for me, be it the Shimano chain tool, or the Park Cassette removers, they all have one job to do, they better do it the best they can. I use a few non-bike tools, Wurth being my favourite here, nice German quality, for Allen keys, bent or straight, Torx keys, cutters or poly-grips, you can’t beat them on price or quality. Other than that, most others are random tools that either feel nice (well balanced, good weight, comfortable), or have a cool job do, to make life a bit easier.

All the smaller tools are in their spots in the top of the case. Spare parts, cable ends, and assorted spare parts. All the drivers you can handle, knives, files and cutters of every size needed. Even some tire levers for those tough tubulars. Drills and taps for those emergency stripped thread situations, and some cool other very important little tools.

There are always a few tools that you end up using more than others, so having a spare or two of these ones, is important as well. Who knows when one will escape or get lost, then it could be trouble. I think I counted 6 different versions I have of a 4,5, and 6mm Allen wrench, funny enough, they are the most used tools in the box. I couldn’t do without my derailier alignment tool, or the Shimano chain tool. My trusty red screwdriver is hard to do without as well, and it’s been around for a while, ohh the bikes that have been tuned with this baby, I shudder to think. My cheese knife and spoon are very important, for keeping me feed, on those late nights and early mornings (sorry but my ‘spork’ is broken, it was my most important tool up till then). The tools travel in the race car every day I race, so I have everything I need to do most repairs before the start, or any bush repairs during the race or a crash. There are selection of inner cables and outers in the case, all the setups of the whole team, and a fold up hacksaw hiding in there as well. I can’t think of any other tools I need at this stage, but when I see them I will know. The never ending search is always fun, cause you never know when the perfect tool with cross your path.

Open and ready for action, notice how everything is nice and tidy now. A few more minutes and that picture will change a lot.

Most of the mechanics in the teams and around the scene, have all their own style when it comes to tool cases, and what they carry in them. But I suppose, we can all do the same job, with whatever we carry with us, so it doesn’t matter how you get there sometimes, just as long as it’s fixed, tuned and safe to ride. I found this site with a good selection of mechanics cases,
for your further interest. For flying to those races out of Europe, I simplify my tools to about a third the size, more importantly about ¼ of the weight (can’t imagine having to pay excess baggage on it). I even get rid of the hard case and swap it with a soft one. And there is always some local mechanic or shop you can borrow more tools if you need them for a special job. Most mechanics are pretty neutral when it comes to the races. We may work in opposing teams, and we may race like hell to win, but we all work with the common goal of making sure every rider has the same chance in the race.

The Evolution of a track cyclist.

2008-07-23T09:35:00.003+12:00

Ever wondered where trackies come from. Here finally is some evidence discovered from where they evolved from. And some early origins of the yellow jersey.

Think they also coined the phrase 'dirty, cheating monkeys' as well. Enjoy

Tour Top Shots

2008-07-23T08:19:00.003+12:00

Found this site somewhere on the net, and I thought I would borrow the images for a while (until they tell me to take them down). But here are some fantastic images I just thought I would share with you. If I was a photographer at the tour, I am sure my stuff would be a cool as some of this stuff. Credit where credit due, I ain't there, but these guys below were, so enjoy them while you can. So in no particular order, my top six shots of the tour this week.

Mark Cavendish sprints for 1st, Gerald Ciolek gets 2nd in the pouring rain on stage 8. Kim Kirchen takes the yellow jersey on the same day. (AP Photo/Laurent Rebours)

My good old mate the Devil (Didi), in full flight. He seems to be taking a bit of a low profile this tour, or the German television stations just don't like him. But nice to see is he hanging around as usual. (REUTERS/Bogdan Cristel)

Nice to see a bit of the massive country that France is. Great from the choppers, but not so much from the still cameras. (Jasper Juinen/Getty Images)

This is just a fantastic shot, almost looks a bit fake, kind of diaorama looking. And the lone spectator is great as well. (JOEL SAGET/AFP/Getty Images)

What a shit day, so glad I am not on the bike on a day like this. It may be summer, but it rains sometimes as well. Giving the mechanics more work than they need, both during the race and afterwards. But hey, thats what they are there for. (JOEL SAGET/AFP/Getty Images)

Everyone wants a a shot of the peloton going past the sunflowers. But you also forget the peloton of photographers following the riders as well. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

Krasna Lipa, a fine race.

2008-07-20T08:15:00.003+12:00

Just like all good plans, they are good till the next plan comes along. My plan for the month included the Giro Donne, one of my more favourite races on the Women’s circuit, but like all good ideas, it had to change. The Girls had decided to add another race to their already busy season, Krasna Lipa in the Czech Republic, and I was the lucky one chosen to work it. I had a double roll for the first few days, mechanic for the week as usual, and director for a couple of days. Krasna Lipa is just over the German Border in Czech, so it was not a very long trip. I have not been down here for a couple of years, and believe me I did not miss the place (I almost lost a few fingers here during a race once). The roads were bad, the weather normally pretty bad, the food is pretty backward, and the hotels are probably the worst we have all year. Arriving at our accommodation, my worst fears were realised. The hotel was an old school from about the 50’s, the place was a mess as they were halfway through renovations, though you couldn’t tell. It reminded me of going back to school, when they shipped you of to some dodgy camp somewhere in the countryside to get rid of you for the week. But this was much worse, at least you didn’t care so much as a kid. The car park had huge holes, filled with septic water as well, perfect as I stepped out of the van and my foot was submerged in stagnant water, what a great start to the week.

Mara on the podium, Angela Hening on the left, and Trixi Worrack on the right.

We had a small team for the week, as most of the girls were racing in Italy in the Giro. My team was looking good though compared to some of the competition, most of them from the east I had never heard of, so that was always good. Racing this time around was Luise Keller, Madeline Sandig, Emilia Fahlin, Anke Wickman and Mara Abbot. After collecting the numbers and race books, I had a bit of work to do before the race started, so I started to get organised. Working out of such a small van for the week, means I needed to have everything well organised. And organised it need to be as I had the extra job of directing for the first two days, so my time was very precious. A few hours out of my day was not what I needed, but that’s life sometimes. And getting the team signed in was the easy part, all the official bullshit that goes with it, meeting the race organiser, and the UCI officials, it all took ages, as all I was thinking was organisation for the morning. A race meeting for all the managers, UCI and all race officials was smack dab in the middle of the morning, all my work would have to be done as the race starts just after midday. The meeting was a drag as usual, getting introduced to every Mayor and city official for miles around. And then listening to a whole lot of stuff not really of any interest to the race, but it makes the locals feel real important I suppose, and without them, there would be no race. It dragged on, as they translated everything from Czech, to German, then to English. At least I had all the bikes almost ready to roll, a late night, and an early morning saw to that, but the meeting was still a drag, give me the unglamorous life of a mechanic, any day.

Stage one was about to start, a short stage of about 112km for the day, but there were some pretty nasty climbs, and some very narrow, dodgy downhills. I had the bikes ready, now for a small meeting with the girls, then off to the race. I had drew car 6, so at least I could see something if the radio was not so forthcoming with info, my Czech was not so good, so I needed all the help I could get. The plan was to attack on the last hill, with 10 km to the finish, it sounded good on paper. Directing and doing mechanics by myself is fine, that is until there is a problem, and with the rain and about a million rail crossings, there was plenty of problems out on the road, I was waiting for ours. And, as you could guess, not more than 40km into the race, after about 20 other call-ups, it was my turn. But like a hardened professional, I changed the wheel and was back in the race with in a minute or so. Emilia raced back to the bunch, and it was like it never happened, I hoped it was the last. Well the plan worked fine, in the last climb, Mara attacked like hell, she caught the bunch by surprise, and managed to hold them off all the way to the finish. A nice win for the team, a nice win for me, and the yellow jersey (my first one as director, shame it was in such a shit race).

Another beautiful day in the rain.

The next day we had a few plans, first was to protect the jersey as much as possible, and maybe even win another stage. The course was pretty lumpy, with some pretty nasty climbs towards the middle and end of the stage. The team was feeling great, the bikes were clean from the shit weather from the day before. We were quite lucky with only one defect, as most of the teams had multiple problems, with no rain, things were going to be a bit easier. Mara was looking pretty fine in the Yellow jersey, and Luise had the blue jersey as well, so it was going to be hard to spot them, (it was hard enough with a change of uniform anyway). But the race was underway, and the course was unrelenting, causing the peloton to split right from the start. But Mara and Luise were right up there, looking to take their chances on the last climb. With 20km to go, Marianne Vos attacked, Mara hung on to her wheel and they both left the main peloton. With in a few minutes they had a good lead, the bunch was still chasing, and the gap was increasing. Mara had the best time on GC, so her instructions were to sit on, but Vos was not riding so much, so we had to react. The plan was to try and distance the current TT world Champ Hunka, and it was working fine, but Mara had to ride a bit. By the time I raced up to have a look at the two, it was 10km to go, Mara was doing all the work, with Marianne just sitting on. As we came into the finish chute, Vos attacked at about 20m from the line, and just seemed to roll past Mara for the win, it was too easy for her. But we still had the jersey, and managed to take more time out of Hunka, ready for the next days double stage.

Luise in the blue jersey before stage #2 start.

By now I had some help turn up, with Petra arriving to direct for the last three stages. Which was just in time for my favourite double stage, TT in the morning in Poland and a road race in the afternoon back in Czech Republic. The TT was about 20km, so it was going to be hard to keep the jersey after today. Mara was not so strong in TT’s, so heading off last was going to be tough for her, especially with some times of the faster girls would already be known. And as expected, we lost the jersey, Vos ended up winning, which was a surprise when she beat Hunka. Mara was still in 2nd, with a minute so it was still good. Luise did super well, still in the top ten, and still both in contention for the tour win. But the afternoons small stage, split Mara from a fast little bunch, dropping her back to 3rd behind Vos. Luise was still 8th, so all was not last yet, but Vos is pretty strong, an she was going to give it all the last stage.

Out on the road, Luise coming close to the finish, Mara just setting out.

The last day was raining right from dawn, I hate that before a race, both for the girls and the bikes and it’s just not a good way to start the day. The rain just makes work hard, everything is wet, the bikes, the inside of the van, and the roads, it’s always dangerous out on the road, and there is always crashes. I was not looking forward to the race, but at least I would be dry in the car, until I had to jump out and save the day. And as I imagined, things got off to a rocky start, with breakaways happening all over the place. Vos wearing the yellow jersey punctured halfway through the stage, this was a signal to one of the team to attack (it’s pretty wrong to do that to the leader, but in Women’s cycling, they have no heart sometimes), and they attacked like hell as she was trying to latch on to the back of the bunch. Four got away, luckily for DSB they had one of their team members in, otherwise they would have lost everything. After a bit of fighting in the team cars, seems DSB took offence to the dirty tactics and started to tell the team who initiated the attacks that he wasn’t very happy. I was killing myself, as they both came to me looking for sympathy, they got none. Four were away, and they were making some serious time on the bunch, then there was another attack, with Luise and Mara in it, so we were ok for a while. The race had about 40km to go, and things were looking bad for Vos, her team mate was the best on GC in the leading group, so they had lost nothing really, just a change of leader.

Waiting for the train, 10km to go, last stage.

With the rain still pissing down, there were girls down almost every corner. Now Czech cars are pretty dodgy, so the amount of diesel they deposit on the road is a problem in the rain, as many girls found out. I was hold my fingers crossed, and Petra in the front was keeping hr legs crossed, she was dieing for a piss. We found a good spot, and left the girls to it for a bit, bad mistake. The moment we got back on the road e saw a few cars stopped up ahead, and you wouldn’t guess it, but it was Mara, who just slid on her ass across the road, lucky it was raining I suppose. She was ok, and continued on, our 3rd place gone, but we still had Luise up the road, there was some hope. After the crash of Mara, the small break slowed down, and by the time that we arrived, they were back in the bunch. We carried on till the end, watching the odd girl slip out on every corner, man I hate this place in the rain. Not far from the finish the bunch was stopped by the rail barriers, some 20 girls decided they could easily go around them. The jury didn’t like it and disqualified them as they passed over the finish line, I suppose after passing over so many during the week, they thought the last one was ok as well. Vos’s DSB team mate, Angela Henning ended up winning the tour, Luise end up 7th overall, Mara had a sore ass, and the rest of the gang were safe. I was packed in under an hour, and was on the road shortly after. Another successful few days, my first yellow jersey (there will be more in the future, don’t worry), and another stage win for the team. Nice for my last race with the Women’s team for the season, next up Tour of Denmark with the men. A nice tour, and a chance to see more of a country we don’t race so much in.

More photo’s of the race can be found here.

More Success

2008-07-20T04:34:00.003+12:00

Go away for a couple of days, and what do you know, they did it again. Mark Cavendish pulls off another two stage wins. Unbelievable for only his second Tour, it can only get better from here. A total of four stages now for the little guy, and by the looks of things he may be aiming for the last stage as well, why wouldn't he. Thats assuming he can make it over the Alps without any problems, what a blast if he can make it five.

Cav taking out his third win, looking pretty relaxed as well. (Photo stolen from Cycling News)

I forgot the other day to mention the crack team of mechanics looking after the team. Without them the team would be nothing, or at least not half as good as they are. So congrats to the mechanics on duty, Nick, Perry and Jorg, for a fantastic job. May you not get out of the car as much as other teams, and hope all the bikes make it home in one piece.

Nick and Perry posing in the truck, packed and ready to leave for the Tour.

Nice Work

2008-07-20T04:09:00.002+12:00

Just when you thought you seen it all, then this guy comes along. His skills on a road bike are pretty amazing. I was waiting for the wheels to fold, but on closer inspection the bike is a little bit modified. Almost like 36 or 44 spoke wheels, and the head tube has a nice gusset as well to strengthen it. Otherwise nothing special, and even looks like it's the right size as well. Enjoy.

Congratulations Boys

2008-07-17T07:06:00.003+12:00

After spending almost a week in the Czech Republic, with no TV or internet connection, I came back to some fantastic results. So I thought it was about time to congratulate our boys in blue currently riding the Tour. I have worked with all of them on previous races, so kind of know them pretty well. Watching them ride on TV, I feel as though I am there sharing their pain and joy. But it’s just not the same pain, lying on the couch in the sun watching the last hours coverage, but I do feel the joy when they win though.

Our team for the month from left. Kim Kirchen, Marcus Burghardt, Mark Cavendish, Gerald Ciolek, Bernhard Eisel, Adam Hansen, George Hincapie, Thomas Lövkvist, Kanstantsin Siutsou. (photo stolen from Cycling News)

It’s only been ten stages, but they have managed to pull off the almost impossible so far. Two stage wins with the fantastically fast sprinter Mark Cavendish. One with a 1st, 2nd with Gerald Ciolek. A second for Kim in the first individual TT. A few top ten places in the first few stages for Kim Kirchen. They carried the green jersey for a few days on the back of Kim Kirchen, but then he decided to swap it for the Yellow. The coveted yellow jersey, the want of every professional cyclist, and for a team, one of the greatest prizes you can get for a hard days work. This, the team managed to keep for four days on the back of Kim, but lost it on the Queen stage the other day. But Kim was fighting the whole day, and still isn’t done yet. In fact we had the young jersey as well, making a hat trick with Thomas Lövkvist. What a great start to the Tour, and a great start to Team Columbia. May they have many more successes, as the tour unfolds over the next two weeks. Of course you can keep up with the news on our own team’s website.

The second stage win for Mark Cavendish, with Gerald Ciolek coming in second. (photo stolen from Cycling News)

So good luck for the rest of the tour boys, my congrats for the wins so far, and success for the future.

Kim putting on the yellow jersey for the first time, he looks pretty happy as you can imagine.(photo stolen from Cycling News)

Le Tour

2008-07-15T22:14:00.003+12:00

Before I mention anything about the Tour, I thought I might remind you about the coolest Tour rider ever. Sorry all you newbees out there, it's not Lance, even though he has a few more tour victories than my guy. And he even may have come back from the dead to win these as well. But coolness is something you just have, you can't win it. And this guy sweats coolness.

Another Change of Colour

2008-07-15T21:31:00.004+12:00

Finally I am back from the Czech Republic, a week with no internet connection or Tv for that matter. So it's time to catch up on a bit of news. Of course you would have all seen our new colours for the next few years, all the way up to the end of 2010 if all things go well. And by the looks of things they are going very well (but that's coming up later). SO now that I am allowed to show it, here is a good preview of what the new colours look like. There is plenty more to come, but you probably see more in the coming weeks in the cycling media as we continue our world domination, both in the men and women's peloton.

Here we see George sporting the new look jersey and shorts and helmet. Pic stolen from somewhere on the net.

And here we have Madeline featuring the new aero skinsuit and booties. It's a really fast suit from what the wind tunnels test show us. And the bike is looking very clean and shiney as well, I might add.

The first truck to get it's makeover, all the other vehicles are quivering in excitement in getting peeled and stripped ready for their new skin.

One of the cars with half branding, the real race cars will get the full makeover. But you get the idea anyway.

Giro Stories #1

2008-07-03T00:30:00.009+12:00

With the Giro being so busy, I took the easy option of just posting photos. Energy levels were low, internet connections were few and far between, and I am sure I could think of many more excuses why I didn’t write much. But I have some time, so hopefully I can write a few stories down for you, that’s until I get bored or sidetracked with something else (which is not hard for my ADD infused brain).

There was one day I was kind of looking forward to and in the same thought, dreading as usual. The mountain Timetrail, stage 16 San Vigilio di Marebbe - Plan de Corones (Individual Time Trial). A couple of days before I had heard the rumours of what the climb was looking like, a pretty steep road section, then it goes into some hard packed gravel, and then opps, there is snow covering the rest of it, so the description stops there. None of the team were looking forward to it, and in the press and all the relevant websites there was cries of protest over the stage. Are they crazy organising such a stage, who was it set for, the spectators or the riders? Things were getting out of control in the few days leading up to it. I had had my own mountain TT a couple of days beforehand with one of the transfers in the truck. The GPS in the truck was having a bit of fun with me I thought, but it looked the fastest way on the map as well, and it looked the easiest way. The difference with this GPS is that it doesn’t know I am driving a truck, I think it thought I was in one of the Audi Quattro team cars. I was alone as I left the highway for the pass over the mountains, everyone I had talked to, mentioned this mountain range, so they must have know it, I thought. What they failed to tell me was there was another way, but it was too late now. I was already halfway up the climb, and things were getting very tight. There was hardly enough room for the truck on some of the corners, let alone some of the cars coming at me in the other direction.

The top of the mountain, with the road heading down, wish I was on a bike though.

I was just starting to get to that point of no return, when the roads seemed to flatten out and get a bit wider, by now I was about the halfway up the mountain point (or so I thought). Things changed pretty quickly, and real soon the roads got even smaller, the small alpine towns started coming at me with quite regular intervals. I was just thinking about places to start looking to turn around and go back, when I realised that the top of the mountain was very near, I continued up. Stopping near the top, or what I thought was the top, I had stop and take some shots of the road I just came up. A couple of friendly, non English speaking Swiss cyclists, stopped to get their photo taken with the truck. With a small amount of universal language, I figured they were getting photos taken just to prove to their local friends, that in fact there was a truck that they saw on the road, and not a mirage. They did know of the town I was heading for, ‘just over the ridge and down the valley 30km’ they said. I continued onwards and upwards, and up it went into a mountain top plateau, I tried taking my hands of the steering wheel to get a shot of the scene, but the road was so narrow, I was scared I might fall off it. This was not the sort of place to get a truck stuck, as I had not seen another car for an hour or so. But then a bus came over the horizon, and what a squeeze to pass, I stopped about 1km before the bus arrived, as it did not look like many passing opportunities in the distance, lucky I did, we just passed with a bit of jiggling rigs with only mm’s to spare.

Now I had reached the top, a ski field or two were visible, and about a 100 motorcyclists as well, sitting in the few cafés around the summit. I started the descent, and what a challenge, the road I could see all the way into the valley. Winding down and around the side of the mountain like a huge long tape worm. I would be taking it very easy, as in the first few corners, I had to do a 5 point turn just to get the ass of the truck around them safely. There was not much room for error, as the edge of the road just fell down some distance on to the road below. Ohh and the motorbikes seemed to multiply at the top, as they passed me one after another, it seemed like there was hundreds of them. All I could think about was the fact that I wish I were on a bike, descending down into the valley, corner after corner. The fact that I knew there was about 20 in the back of the truck, didn’t make me feel any better. And then there was the odd bus I meet, again a real mission to get past them, but I had the right of way, a bigger rig, and I’m sure I looked a bit crazed at the wheel by now. But I made it down, and getting back to a bit of civilization, I started to relax a bit. Now to find the hotel, but that’s another story. Upon finding the hotel, the advance arrival crew told me of their easy drive on the highway, and easy ride up another valley of 30km to get to the hotel. I cut off about 40km off the route, but sure I took off a few years of my life, with the stress.

Bradley passing Andre on a slightly steep little bit.

But the real race was about to start in a day or so. The mountain TT was a bit different, as the riders were using their road bikes for this one, with a few modifications to them. Most of the changes were in the drive train, with everyone using compact cranks, with a 34t front chain ring and a 27t cassette on the rear. For this we had a new set of SRM cranks to play with, the first time they have tried the compact system. Everything worked fine for the change over, and most of the riders were requesting the lightest wheels we had in the truck, but even that would not help some of them. We even broke out the scales for the first time all year, as we knew there would be weight control on the start line. Legal UCI weight for any race as you know is 6.8kg, with our bikes with standard low rim Shimano or the Zipp 202 wheels, things are generally on the money, even with the SRM system on. So we made sure they were all legal, and they were all perfect, with in 20 gm of the limit. With the Lightweight wheels, the bikes felt super illegal, but at 7kg’s it feels pretty light compared to 7.5 for example which is about normal race weight, with normal wheels. But we checked them all just in case.

Finally dawn was upon us, and then we could see what all the fuss was about. We arrived at the course, last team there by the looks of things, so the bus and cars were about a km or so from the start, shit for the mechanics, and for the riders as well, but at least they could ride to the start. So we set up base for the day, and got our selves organised for a long day. I drew the short straw for following the first rider up the hill, and it kind of sounded like a bit of fun. The race organisation had provided motorbike escorts for each rider up the hill, as the course was far too steep and skinny at the half way point for the team cars. I ran to the start line to start two of our guys off, Andre Greipel was off first, and a minute behind Bradley Wiggins. My job was to follow Wiggins, but also I could look after Andre if he had any issues. I found my Moto for the ride, and made sure my guys were ready, their bikes both passed the weigh in, just. I jumped on the Moto, wheels in hand for the trip up the mountain. There was a lot of talk of how difficult it was at the top section, but already from the get go things were looking pretty good. Half of the race was on sealed road, this was the easy bit, nice and smooth, with a great views of the valley below. I had my wheels in one hand, and my camera in the other, taking photos was pretty easy, and I had two of the boys in shot as Bradley was gaining on Andre. None of the team had seen the course, so it was new to everyone, we still were climbing at a rapid rate, the trees started getting smaller, and the crowd started getting a bit thicker and louder.

700m to go for Andre, the nice view in the background.

When we reached the halfway point, the road ran out of tarmac and onto a sort of rolled white gravel. Luckily we had changed every bike over to the compact cranks, as by now both the boys were in the 34 on the front and 27 on the back. But it kept getting steeper, and just when I thought Andre was going to get a good time, he blew and Bradley passed him like he was sitting still. The road looked about a 18% gradient, at this stage. We rounded a few more corners, and I saw what I thought was the top, but the air was starting to thin, and I was seeing things I think with lack of oxygen. We hit a bit of a plateau at this stage, the trees by now were short and stunted with the altitude. Now the road started getting a bit messy, the rolled gravel, which could be mistaken for a sealed road in some parts of the world, just stopped. Now I was getting a bit worried about punctures, the stones were getting bigger, the holes in the road were growing in size and regularity as well. The riders were picking what line they could through the rubbish, it didn’t seemed to slow them too much, as they were almost standing still anyway. I was calculating the whole time how far to go, current speed and time to ‘best time’ and then we saw the ‘2km to go’ sign. I was looking at a winning time I thought, that’s until we turned the corner. And what a sight, thousands of fans spread out as far as I could see, flowing up the ridgeline, what I thought was the top. By now the gradient felt like about 20%, and the moto I was riding was having a bit of difficulty staying upright at such low speeds. He would wait a bit for the rider to get away a little, then, ride as slow as he could until we caught him again. By now Bradley was still looking pretty good on time, he was in the smallest gear, and struggling to push it, even out of the saddle struggling, the spectator noise was deafening. Time was slipping away as he struggled up the steep section, then I spotted the ‘1km to go’ sign. The top was part of a ski resort, pretty famous in these parts I was told, and snow was still all around us, bringing a chill to the air. In hindsight, my shorts and T-shirt, that suited the sun drenched valley start, was starting to look fairly stupid by now. I was freezing, as the wind was blowing chilled air directly at me. But the crowds, yells and screams were keeping me warm, and the thought of a mechanical or flat now, was also taking my mind off things.

Morris Possoni with 500m to go till the top. What a crowd.

We rounded the last corner, and then there it was, the last km, right before our eyes. I almost fell off the back of the motorbike as I strained my neck looking up at the finish. There are many ‘walls’ in cycling races, but this was an actual wall, just leaning off centre a bit. With 1km to go, I was thinking normal time 1.5-2 mins, but this one was going to take a while. The gradient now was about 28% (looked about 45%), and Bradley was almost stopped ahead, crawling as fast as he could, in front of us. The crowd now was about ten deep, all yelling as loud as they could in their best Italian, with the road only about 2m wide here, I could feel the warmth of their screams, perfect. The moto slowed, tried to stop, but the track was so steep, he could not get a foot down in time. I had my camera in one hand (trying to get the shot of the day of course), my wheels in the other, and then we started falling. I was planing my escape off the bike for most of the last 5km, as my driver was starting to look a bit dodgy in some of the steeper bits. I knew I had to be ready at a moments notice, but not now, please. I was thinking of the hot exhaust, burning a hole in my un-clothed leg as the bike started falling, and trying to not let my camera smash on the rocks as well. Just as the bike hit the ground, my leg was out, but with my ass still on the seat, I just smashed my upper body on to the stony road below. I still had the wheels in my hand, I heard no glass lens breaking, but my elbow and hip took a hammering as I Ianded. I jumped up, leaving my stupid ass driver, to sort out the bike (there was hundreds of fans to help him up). I ran behind Bradley for a few hundred meters, that’s until I was completely fucked. Running up mountains at altitude, was never my thing, lucky, cause just then my bike was back (but not before getting a cool shot of Andre coming past), I jumped on, and we rode slowly through the finish, which was still climbing up at a horrible rate. Nothing special with both their times, but they would have beaten the time cut for the day, easily. The view was awesome from the top, I had a walk around the finish line a bit, trying to stop my body from smarting as much as it was. We had a good laugh with the other moto’s, but inside I was not too impressed, but someone had to crash today, and I am sure I won’t be the only one.

Morris with 150m to go, and he's still climbing.

Now for the mission to get down, either wait an hour or so for the last riders in my group to come up, freezing, or take the gondolas down. Gondolas sounded fun, but they failed to explain the amount of changes and hiking involved. Now, we were up pretty high, so I didn’t fully have a good think about my actions, but I had three more riders to follow up the mountain, I didn’t want to be too late. I started heading down on the first gondola. There was such an amazing view from the top, as we headed down slowly, I realised just how far up the boys had rode up, in the short 12km, no wonder they were looking a bit shattered at the top. About a third of the way down we changed gondolas, but this was not an easy change, especially as we had no skis on. A small hike of about 2km, directly up the side of the mountain to the second change, this was real steep climb, about 37% gradient for sure. By the time we made it to the second gondola, I was shattered, lucky I could rest for a few minutes, as my body was now starting to hurt a bit, now that it was starting to thaw out a bit. One more change of gondola, this one was only about 100m from the other, and then the 2km walk back to the bus, I was home. I checked the time for my next escort up the hill again, 5 minutes, shit. Time to put some clothes on, some stuff to keep my hand from bleeding, and I was off for the next trip. Now only two more to come, but this time I would be ready for another crash, the cold weather, and the walk down. Man I slept well that night, the injuries were not too bad, and then back to the real race the next day. Media reports, and most of the riders interviewed were giving the race organisers shit over the stage, but they just gave it back. Harden up, was the translation I got from the newspapers. Our boys were pretty quiet that night at dinner, and I could understand why.

And if you missed them, some more pics of the stage here.

Beautiful

2008-07-02T10:18:00.001+12:00

The Cyclists.

Bit of an Update

2008-07-01T01:27:00.003+12:00

Believe it or not, but I have actually almost caught up with my races for a change. It’s amazing what a few days off can do for the old energy levels. I have even managed to get out a few times on the road bike for a look around the town. The teams base and apartment where I stay in between races is in the city of Bonn. Sitting right on the river Rheine, and what was the capital of Germany until a few years ago, is pretty nice for riding around. There are plenty of pretty nice bike paths that follow the river on both sides, if you want to take it easy. As long as you choose days other than the weekend, they are generally not too full and pretty relaxed. I have managed to increase my rides up to about the 100km mark after a week, so I am now getting the chance to see a bit more of the countryside as well. This is also a famous area for growing grapes and making red wine, though I have yet to taste the local stuff. But they seem to grow the vines on some of the steepest land they can find, making it look as though they would slide directly off with a bit of serious rain. But the cool thing is it makes for an interesting ride through all the valleys and up over the ridges. And it gives a welcome break to the flatness of the river bike paths. The area is steeped in history, but yet have to visit any of the many museums and galleries to check up on that. But will see what I can do over the coming weeks.

Monument to some famous guy along the river ride.

Cologne is the nearest ‘big’ city, about 40km by bike, I have only attempted going there once, I thought I would just go casual, on the road bike. I started out in perfect sun, also thinking I knew where I was going, well that was a mistake, I get lost in my own house most of the time. The 40km ride there took about 85km for me to find it, it was cold, and then to top it off the rain started just as I arrived. My mission was to get some photos of the cathedral in the main square, this was now impossible, with dark skies and torrential rain. I was wet, so took my time thinking about where I went wrong on the way there, looking at my soggy, smudged map, working out the best route home. I found the train station, just in case there was a train going my way, being Sunday, I could have waited another 3 hours for a dry ride home, but it was only 40km, I would ride. Well I had to get going as I was freezing, and my wet cotton t-shirt and baggy pants were really starting to piss me off. So to cut a long story short, I didn’t get lost on the way home, I managed to follow the exact wrong way home again, doubling my 80km to 160 for the day. My clothes, bag and camera and body were soaked to the skin, my ass was raw from the most uncomfortable pants/underwear combo I could have worn. I was tired, hungry and it was dark when I got home, so funny enough, I have not been back there yet. There is always next week, at least the sun is out now, and most of the rain has gone home to NZ.

One of the local churches in Bonn.

The month of July is looking pretty easy for me at this stage (until they decide to full me up with a few more races). I am currently on a train heading northish for the Dutch Nationals, here we only have two racing, Chantele Beltman for the Women’s race, and Servais Knaven racing the men’s. The bikes and my tools left the other day, so I will meet up with the rest of the team tomorrow. To date the team has been rather successful again, with Marco Pinotti, defending his Italian TT tittle again. Kim Kirchen winning the Luxemburg TT tittle as well, and with a weekend of racing to come, who knows how many national champions we may end up with. Then there is just one last race with the girls, in the east of Czech Republic for a few days. Not much else happening other than a race in France for the men, the Tour de France, but I miss out on this circus, thank god. Plenty of others putting their hand up for this one, so being the ‘new boy’ on the team, I get to miss it, but on the waiting list for emergencies. I have been helping with a few of the bikes that needed building for the Tour, and a few more to get built yet. We have a new TT bike that has finished being tested, now we just have to try and assemble them all before the truck leaves (Kim Kirchen was on the new bike for his national win). A pile of new wheels to sticker and glue tires on as well. And with all the name changes on all the vehicles and equipment ready to roll with ‘Team Columbia’ for the first of the month, there is always something needing to be done. The grand release for the ‘new look’ will be at the press conference for the Tour, so you will have to wait until then for some pictures (they are burning a hole in my hard drive waiting for the release date).

Just lying around the town.

I will have a pretty full calendar until the end of the season, so I will try to even get a bit of a holiday in somewhere. Already I have the Tour of Denmark, Tour de Ain, Plouay, Tour of Ireland, and the Tour of Poland on my list, and I am sure they can squeeze a few more races in as well before the Worlds in Varesse, Italy. The tour of Ireland I am looking forward to, I have never been there yet, so it will be nice to see. For everyone that has ever been there, say it’s almost like my home country of New Zealand, similar at least in many ways. The race details just got released the other day, and by the looks of it, the toughest one so far. I think there will even be a couple of ferry trips with the truck, so that will be a nice little adventure as usual. Otherwise, the sun is up, summer is really nice and warm, almost too warm (is there such a thing), it’s nice to wear just shorts and a open jersey on the bike (and no helmet as usual Jessie, in case your wondering). So for those of you in winter at the moment, too bad, put some more clothes on, only a few more months to go.

The Cathedral I rode especially to see, very dull looking in the rain.

And you can have a little look at a few more images of the city and surrounds.

Ster-Electro Tour

2008-06-28T00:12:00.004+12:00

With the race in Spain out the way, I had a quick trip up to Holland to start with the men in the Ster-Electro Tour. After the race it was a bit of push to get the girls out of the chairs, into the showers and off to the airport. But I managed to not waste much time, and before they knew it, the girls were checking in at the airport, and I was on the road again. My mission for the afternoon was the north side of Paris, being Sunday night, it was relatively easy to pass through the city. But wait until Monday morning, and you can bet you have a few hours sitting in traffic trying to navigate past this monster of a city. The team had a policy of no driving past midnight, and things were going to be tight, but I managed to take it easy and pass through no worries. The trucks near the French border were gone, the strike must have lasted only a few days, so the roads were clear, the border open, but I was in the Van, so they couldn’t touch me know, even if they wanted to. But how wrong was I, by the time I was leaving the outskirts of Paris, the French truckies had a little surprise planned for the highways. Seems they didn’t want to be out done by their Spanish buddies, and had a nice little protest to slow me down.

Just when the going got good, 420km to my destination, the traffic seemed to be stopping. And when you have three or four lanes of traffic stopping for miles, you know it’s going to be a long wait. I reached the crest of the hill, and as far as I could see in front of me was stopped, the crazy thing is that there didn’t seem to be any traffic on the other side of the highway either. I was thinking it must be a huge accident, closing both sides of the highway. After half an hour of siting still and moving very slowly, coming up the other side of the medium strip, was a whole pile of trucks, in perfect formation taking up the whole road. Big signs on the front of them, protesting the same shit, price of fuel, long hours etc. There was about 50 in a nice little peloton, moving about 15km/hr, blocking everything from coming past. I would probably surmise that whatever was blocking my side was the same protest. And an hour or so later, we started moving, the other side of the highway started as well, there was some pretty angry looking people as well. But it was not the end of it, another 300km later, I was just about to enter Belgium, and what do I see on the other side of the highway, but the same sort of protest. Yep, the traffic was slowing down, and then it stopped, the bastards got me again. They must have thought about it for a while, cause there was no other options for leaving the highway, I was stuck again for at least another hour. Oh well, give them their day, I kind of felt like I was one of them most of the time, as I drive the big trucks a lot of the time, so I had some small bit of support for them. The race did not start until tomorrow, so I had time.

Tony in happier times with the yellow jersey.

Arriving in Eindhoven was almost like going home, I had lived about 20km from here the last few years with Flexpoint, my old team. The teams base and house was close, so I knew the area well. We had 5 stages, including a TT prologue to start with. The race was right on the border with Holland and Belgium, so they would be using all the usual climbs for the races. We had a good little team for the week, Mark Cavendish, Andreas Klier, Bernhard Eisel, Roger Hammond, Gregory Henderson, Servais Knaven, Tony Martin, and last but not least Frantisek Rabon. First up was a small prologue of about 6.2 km, around a pretty small, tight circuit. A few big roads, a lot of small roads, and plenty of right angle corners, not the sort of fast course I like. The boys checked out the circuit while we organised the bikes and trainers for the warming up. It might only be a small lap, but still the same amount of work goes into it from my point, no matter how long the race is. So off first was Tony Martin, the strong German just seemed to put it into the biggest gear (55-11) he had, and it looked like he just cruised around the course. He took the corners at full speed, giving me a few nervous moments. I found out later he had been around the course six times already, checking out just how fast he could take every corner. And it seemed to work, fastest time of the day, but there was still a 100 or so to come behind him. Things got pretty tight towards the end, Tony keeping the lead by the slim margin of 18 seconds, but it was enough to put him into the yellow jersey, and kept the team in the front of the race.

The beautiful countryside during the 3rd stage

Stage 2 was pretty hard for the boys, a few nasty climbs at speed, but they defended brilliantly the jersey, but things were getting closer. Only 8 seconds was the time gap, with four riders at the same time, now the race was really starting to open up. We had a surprise visitor that night, with the teams owner and manager Bob Stapleton coming to pay us a visit. Was nice to meet him for the first time, a bit jet lagged from his trip over, but all the same nice to put a face to the name. Bob decided to come for a ride on the race car for the third stage, giving both myself and the director Tristan a bit of added stress for the day. not that we had anything to worry about, but you know what it’s like with the big boss checking you out for the day. The riders certainly knew it as well, they seemed to be pretty active on the race radio today. More information and tactics getting discussed than ever before, oh well maybe they put on a good show for Bob today, with another win. For some reason, I had a feeling it was not going to be an easy day, and before you knew it the first puncture was happening. I fixed that, then not half an hour later, Tony wearing the yellow jersey had a problem with his headset, I had to sort it out quick smart. The headsets have been problematic since day one, for no reason tightening up, all by themselves, even just resting them over night in the truck was sometimes enough for it to change (something creepy going on if you ask me). So again we stopped and I leapt out and sorted out Tony, he seemed pretty relaxed, it was an easy finish, so the pressure was off him a bit today. Wham, then another puncture, not my day today, third time out of the car, not some very good odds. No sooner did we relax, have a little bit of lunch, talk some history, solve the worlds crisies, then we hear Roger Hammond on the radio with a front shifter problem, one bike swap later and we were on the road again.

The bike in the back, such a shame.

Things were starting to heat up a bit at the front, we were chasing the small breakaway group off the front of the peloton, there was about 5km to go, things were looking good for the team and Tony was looking safe, oh did I say it was raining and the roads were wet, well they were. We passed the 5km to go mark and then crash on the front, shit, I looked up as we sped to the scene, and I see the yellow jersey down, his bike on the ground with the seat broken off, shit. Out of the car for the fifth time, his spare bike straight of the roof, and I ran to find Tony, he was bleeding pretty bad. I had a quick look and there was blood everywhere on his hand and arm, the rest of the body looked a bit open and a bit of road rash, but nothing too serious. He took off slowly, looking a bit at his hand as he left, I then ran back to the car to pick up the bike and get underway. But the car decided to meet me half way, but there was Tony’s bike between us on the ground, the car accelerated towards me, and then I heard that loud crunching, scraping, splintering, snapping sound you never want to hear. Yep the bike was under the car, and it was looking a bit worse for wear. I got Tristan to reverse back a bit so I could get what was left of the bike out, I had to stand on the bits poking out, to stop the bike scraping even more down the road. It was not a good sound, almost like when someone scrapes their fingernails down a blackboard, but worse cause you know just how much the bike costs. After a bit I got the bike out, and the front wheel, which was not wanting to leave the underneath of the car in a hurry. It was one of those times you could use the line ‘this would make a nice wind chime’. I picked up what I could and put it in the back of the car, folding it in about three places. And then jumped back into the car, the car was silent, there was no need to say anything, a moments silence for the dead bike, then we went to have a look at Tony’s injuries.

The view from the back of the convoy, car #19, last car for the day.

He had to stop, the blood was pissing out of his hand pretty bad so we had to have a look. Well it was not so bad, a few holes in his knuckles where he slid down the road on his hand, and a couple of scrapes on the forearm, pretty lucky. We did a bush repair, as the race doctor was busy at the crash site, and our one was in the second car, stuck way back in the race. Tony managed to get to the finish line, but of course lost the yellow jersey. We had now started to laugh a bit in the car, even Tristan was starting to warm up a bit by now. But it was one of those days you never really have, shame was that the big boss Bob was there to share it with us. Hey got to have the lows sometimes, so you can enjoy the highs more. The next day Tony started, but we now had nothing to race for, our best GC rider was in about 67th place, and the car was relegated to last place in the convoy, so we saw nothing anyway. Naughty boy Tom Boonan won the sprint, he had to do something to try and salvage his month. But with the last stage, we did make a bit of a comeback with Mark Cavendish taking out the sprint for the win. So we said goodbye to Bob (he then went to see the boys in the Tour de Swiss, and they lost the yellow jersey with Bob in the car as well, so we didn’t feel too bad after all). A nice short drive back to base, and a few days off, nice.

And of course there are a few more photos here and over here.

More Time Wasters.

2008-06-26T10:14:00.003+12:00

I have been cleaning up a bit of old video, so here are a couple or four bits for ya. My small camera has been out of action for a while, so I have been suffering with the loss of it. I am trying to save the money for a nice new HD quality Sony camera just been released. So in the meantime, have a look at some this older stuff, it can only get better from here.

No it's not a jet engine warming up, but George Hincapie warming up before the TT in Terrino-Adriatica back in March. He did pretty well from memory.

One of the many stops while servicing the Flanders race this year. Here was stop 3 of about 10 for the day. There was a bunch away, here is the chasing group. See if you can spot any of the team.

Another stop on the Flanders tour here a small group is away. With George Hincapie and roger Hammond from us, things were looking good. But there was still about 60km to go.

Columbia here we come.

2008-06-26T09:32:00.002+12:00

With the change of name there are quite a few changes to everything in the team, but unfortunately you will have to wait for a week or so for the official release. In the mean time a couple of adverts I had heard of from Columbia that I found on Youtube.
For those of lucky enough to have seen them for the last few years, I only managed to find two of them. Enjoy, and it might take you mind off the fact that I am slacking a bit on the old writing.

Iurreta-Emakumeen Bira

2008-06-26T08:59:00.003+12:00

With the Giro out of the way, I have a couple of the more relaxing races to keep me busy over the next few weeks. So the few days at home base, were spent with a bit of sleeping and trying to do a bit of riding. And the sleep was good as well, long and very quiet, the riding was no so forthcoming. But the few days were not barely long enough, and soon I was back into preparing for some racing with the girls. I had a bike or two to build, the truck to pack with whatever wheels and equipment I could find for my races. We had half the girls away in Montreal for the World cup, which Judith won easily and retained her Leader Jersey (she even had a special bike and helmet to match the jersey, sure you can find a pic). And they were staying for the Philly race as well, so there was quite a bit of stuff missing. But the cool thing working for such a big team is the fact there is always some more wheels etc, kicking around from the men’s team. So build a couple of bikes, packed, then hit the road for sunny Spain.

A quick 1000km drive to Bordeaux in the south of France, and driving the final 450km the day after. heading into the Basque region of Bilbao for the Tour of Bira with the girls. But by the looks of things on the road, we might have trouble getting into Spain. The highway was starting to look crazy about 100km from the border, trucks everywhere you could think of. Spilling out of gas stations, spilling out of every rest stop, and the closer I got to the border, they just then took over one whole lane of the highway. I was starting to get worried, it looked they were there for a while, small groups of truckies camped out on the right lane of the highway like gypsies, they looked like they were going to be there for a while as well. The closer I got to the border, the more worried about getting through, was there a problem with the road, some sort of police problem, who knows. 50km form the border, things were really getting blocked, I was now worried I would get stuck on the side of the road with the truck for a few days with the rest of them. But my truck was a small one, you could probably drive it inside most of them that were stopped. I f the road was washed out or something, I am sure I could find a way though, the race most go on.

Luise out on the TT course.

Close to the border there seemed to be a whole lot more police kicking around, the traffic seemed to be moving but very slowly. Truckies were waving at me to stop driving. There was some hope anyway, and a delay of a day was fine, as I had one up my sleeve to spare. Getting right close to the border, things were looking grim, as if the world had run out of diesel or something. The Highway was down to one lane, and was crawling slowly, police were everywhere, but they just seemed to be standing around as every car was stopped by a bunch of men. There was a whole load of truckies waving me down, telling me not to go ahead, but I kept going. Right on the border I was stopped, there were a few onlookers giving me the dirty stare as my man started talking. First in German, cause of the plates, then I asked for the English translation, first he asked what I was carrying, Bikes I answered, race bikes. We got a race in a day and the Girls need the bikes, I explained, with the most innocent look on my face. He then explained they were striking, stopping any trucks crossing the border, as long as I was not carrying any goods I was free to go. He gave me a paper with the full story. Today was the first day, and it was already looking serious, can’t imagine what it’s going to look like in a few days. The roads in Spain looked just as bad, with trucks stopped, waiting to get into France for another 100km south, I was smiling to myself. It was a relief to get through, but I pity those poor bastards who don’t want to strike, and have a load of stuff they have to deliver to survive.

Iurreta-Emakumeen Bira, was a five stage, four day stage race for the Women, and I was looking forward to a few days in the sunshine, and some racing of course. Bira is a nice little race, small stages, some nice scenery, and a few climbs, and a little TT with a double stage thrown in, just to make it feel like work. We had a crack team for the week, Luise, Linda, Anke, Alex, Emilia and Madeleine, ready for some action for the week. The first stage was only 77km, a bit of a change from some of the stages of over 200km in the Giro, but it was nice not to be in the car that long anyway. And probably nowhere near as much stress during the race as well, nice. There were a few good teams here for the race, with plenty of good competition to keep the girls hot on their pedals. And the first stage started pretty fast, with such a short race, it was almost a sprint after the first half an hour warm up. Marianne Vos was pretty hungry in last years race, with a couple of stage wins, but she couldn’t beat Susanne last year, so was motivated to win it this year. And she didn’t disappoint either, and was attacking like hell the whole race. With about 20km to go, she left the bunch with Luise in tow, and they managed to stay away till the finish, Luise just losing contact on the last climb. Vos was in the lead, with Luise on 18 secs behind her, with the rest of the bunch coming in about a minute behind. Not a bad start to the tour, but we have a few days to go yet.

Emilia taking it a bit hard on one of the climbs.

With Marianne Vos being the talent she is, it’s pretty daunting for most of the girls to get inspired to attack her during the race. Her DSB team were keeping good control of things on the front, and she was patrolling the peloton as well. 84km is not long enough to hurt those who have not had enough training, but the speed was on right from the start. And as usual, a small bunch was away near the end. Unfortunately they stayed away and took a bit more of Luise’s second place, the time gap was decreasing, now down to about 10 secs, with Vos increasing her lead a little to almost a minute. But with a double stage in the morning, with a TT to start with, that should change things a lot. But with the late starts, that always means late finishes, and just when you are getting real tired, they throw the double stage at ya. A 10 am start for the individual Timetrail, which should last for about three hours, a few hours wait between stages, and then another late stage to top the day off. Ohh and don’t forget the early start for the last stage the next day. Race organisers sometimes should have a thought for the staff and riders sometimes, what makes a good race sometimes is not the best for the teams, especially for the staff, having to work late into the night.

The TT was a small, but very nasty little course, twisting through the countryside. The Girls were ready, the bikes were ready and I was early and organised as usual. The sun was shining for the first time all week, in fact it was the first day that it didn’t rain for the whole trip into Spain. The girls were having a good time out on the course, with some wicked times by Alex early in race, then by Linda, a little later on, things were looking good. World TT champ Hunka came in with the best time of the day, but there were still a few more good riders to come. I had managed to set off all the girls without any problems, all the bikes were sweet, no crashes or punctures, and now only one rider to go, Luise. She was looking a bit worried, TT not being her thing, so she could loose the 2nd place this morning, but she was feeling positive. I did a quick calculation and the strongest TT riders were not looking too close, unless she really blew it, she would remain in second, but she had to give it all on the road. And everything she did, it was looking pretty slow out on the small and dead roads, but her time was good. Only one rider left, Vos herself, and she was going to give it everything. Miriam Melcher’s-Van Popple was in second place, and Hunka was sitting in 1st, but she gave it everything she had, I was half expecting to see her on the road when I was following Luise. But not, she won, took more time out of Luise, 1.38 and now Luise had kept her 2nd place in the GC, and even gained more time from Guderzo, sitting in 3rd place. Now two stages left, hope someone can give Vos a bit of a run for her money, as most of the team seemed to be sitting happy with second place, fight I say, till the very end.

Hey that's Linda poking out from the back of the group, Cantelle right, Brandli left, and Miriam at the back.

I had a little time to spare in between stages for a bit of a wander (after we dropped the truck back at the hotel), the town had held the TT for the last few years, so I knew my way around. I took a bike and the camera to see what I could find, and it’s pretty small, so to find anything new was a surprise. But I found a nice old church, with some pretty impressive doors, one with a nice skull and a bit of a warning over the top of it, but it made for a good pic all the same. The afternoon stage was pretty hard, with some of the best climbs of the race. The bunch split up pretty quick, but they all managed to get back together again. I watched as one of the teams changed a wheel on Elodie Touffet’s bike, struggling to get the wheel in, the mechanic was really panicking, then they tried to tow her up to the bunch by using the ol ‘brakes are stuck on’ trick, so I had to reach out and look a them (while the car is accelerating). She almost crashed as they sped up, and to top it off, when she left the car, she was moving a bit too fast for the corner coming up. And off she went, tipped on her front wheel as she applied full brakes, she disappeared of the road, and the bushes just closed behind her. I was too stunned to grab my camera (would have been a great shot), as I watched in disbelief, luckily her team car was behind her, as I am sure no one else saw her disappear but me. Luise finished in the front bunch, in last place, and the GC stayed the same.

the chasing bunch on the last day, Linda and can you spot Luise?

The last stage was the longest, with a couple of nice nasty little climbs in. the action was on right from the start. The first attacks came on real early. By the time we hit the second climb with about 30km to go, there was a small group of about 12 girls up the road, and it was all the big hitters in the race. They stayed away for a while, and then the action came on again, with many more attacks coming out of the small group. We had Two of the team in there, with Linda and Luise fighting hard to hang on. Then it split, with four attacking near the top of the hill. Vos was there, so the race was done. Luise and Linda chased like hell in a small group with Brandli and Cantele from Bigla. But it was not enough, they stayed away, Guderzo was in there as well, so we were fighting for 2nd place now. We didn’t catch them, Vos wins the race, Guderzo in 2nd, and Luise in 3rd by 8 secs, close, but a good result in the end for the team. A quick pack, and a change of vehicle, a drive of 1680 km to my next race starting in Holland in two days with the boys. I just hope the border is open, as most of the shops in Spain were getting a bit empty of fresh food, please let it be open.

Here are a few pics of the trip.

A New Sponsor

2008-06-17T06:54:00.002+12:00

Here is the latest news, hot off the press for ya. A change of name, a change of jersey, and a change of bike colour probably. And thats about all I know at this stage. Read for yourself and then you know as much as I do.

Columbia Sportswear Company and High Road Sports Announce New “Team Columbia” to Debut at 2008 Tour de France

Team High Road Will Ride in the 2008 Tour de France as “Team Columbia” Under New Sponsorship Agreement Supporting Columbia Sportswear Company’s Outdoor Brand Leadership

GENEVA, Switzerland and SAN LUIS OBISPO, California – June 16, 2008 – Columbia Sportswear Company (Nasdaq: COLM), a global leader in the active outdoor apparel and footwear industries, and California-based High Road Sports, Inc., the owner of Team High Road, today announced a new team sponsorship agreement that prominently places the Columbia brand at the starting line of the 2008 Tour de France on July 5.

Team High Road, one of professional cycling’s most successful young teams with star riders such as George Hincapie, Kim Kirchen and Mark Cavendish, will compete as “Team Columbia” for the remainder of the 2008 season and will unveil its new uniforms in Brest, France on July 3, two days before the start of Europe’s largest sporting event, the 95th Tour de France. In Europe and around the world, the Tour de France international cycling event is considered comparable to the United States’ Super Bowl in terms of popularity among fans and media exposure.

“Columbia Sportswear Company’s sponsorship of Team Columbia provides an ideal opportunity to elevate the positioning of Columbia in multiple European markets by communicating our authentic, outdoor, active, American brand to our target demographic,” said Tim Boyle, president and chief executive officer of Columbia Sportswear Company. “By sponsoring one of the top men’s and women’s cycling teams in the world, we leverage the international popularity and broad media reach of the cycling sport among enthusiast and recreational audiences, promote Columbia’s outdoor brand leadership in Europe and the U.S., and support our seasonal product initiatives, such as Omni-Shade™ apparel and accessories for sun protection.”

The three-year sponsorship agreement runs through 2010 and includes both the men’s and women’s professional cycling teams, which are top ranked worldwide and have won over 70 races combined in 2008 – the most wins of any competing team. In addition, at least 15 riders from Team Columbia are expected to represent their countries in the upcoming Olympics.

“This is a partnership with great potential,” says High Road Owner Bob Stapleton. “Columbia is a market leader with innovative products, progressive management, and ambitious marketing objectives. We welcome Columbia Sportswear as a key partner for the next several years,” Stapleton added.

About Columbia Sportswear Company:
Founded in 1938 in Portland, Oregon, Columbia Sportswear Company is a global leader in the design, sourcing, marketing and distribution of active outdoor apparel and footwear. As one of the largest outerwear manufacturers in the world and a leading seller of skiwear in the United States, the company has developed an international reputation for quality, performance, functionality and value. The company manages a portfolio of outdoor brands including Columbia Sportswear, Montrail, Mountain Hardwear, Pacific Trail, and Sorel. To learn more about Columbia, please visit the company's website.

About High Road Sports:
High Road Sports, Inc., based in San Luis Obispo, California, operates the only USA owned and registered ProTour Elite-level professional men’s cycling team and the world’s number one ranked women’s cycling team. High Road’s athletes include 42 men and women from 17 different nations making it the most international team in the sport. High Road was founded on the principles of clean and fair sport, and is the winningest team in pro cycling during the 2008 season. High Road focuses on developing young talent in the sport under excellent veteran leadership and an experienced management team deeply committed to the sport of professional cycling. To learn more about Team Columbia please visit the team’s web site.

Finally it's over

2008-06-07T07:52:00.004+12:00

The Giro is over, exactly one month after we hit the road to the start. But for me it was even longer, as I had been racing with the Women’s team for three weeks before meeting up with the Men. So the last few days I have been catching up on a bit of sleep, a lot of sleep really. It’s always nice when you have no reason to get up in the morning, except for the days ride, or breakfast. I have already built a couple of bikes for the Girls, as I hit the road to Spain on Monday for a weeks racing. In the meantime I will have time for a couple for a couple of stories. I have already updated the last couple of stages in the photo album. So go and have a look, they are pretty amazing.

The long climb up the side of the Gavia, now around the corner will start the snow, sweet.

Stage 20 - Saturday, May 31: Rovetta - Tirano, 232km A very nasty stage, with a couple of very big climbs for the day. A very wet and cold Passo di Gavia, with temperatures in the low 6'c, and very wet rain to top it off. Then just when they thought they were over the worst, the just as bad, if not steeper, Passo di Mortirolo. A Pantani favourite, with some heart stopping corners, and some hell descents. All the boys made it over, bar one, but that's another story.

The GPM on top of the Gavia, looks nice doesn't it?

And last but not least, the final stage, individual Timetrail in Milan. Just when we thought that three stage won was enough. We almost succeeded with a full podium for the day. Marco Pinotti, the current Italian TT champ took an amazing stage win. But he knocked off Tony Martin for first, giving us a 1-2 victory for the day. Most impressive was Bradley Wiggins in 4th, only 13 seconds away from 3rd place. That would have been a blast for the team, if it wasn’t enough already.

The beautiful old grandstand at the starting ramp of the Timetrail.

4 stage wins in a Grand Tour, that’s a record for the team as far as anyone can remember, and pretty impressive from the young gang that was riding this Giro. The riders were happy, all the staff were happy, the management was very happy. The mechanics of course, were very happy, cause it meant we could finally go home, and have a day or so off. Nah of course we were just happy to be part, if not the most important part of the whole show.

It's Tony Martin, on his way to second place in the TT

A few more photos.

2008-05-30T07:55:00.003+12:00

Sorry no stories yet, but I am working on a few at the moment, but as usual, here are a few more pic for your viewing. That's just till I get over this tour and find some time to sit down and write. Having some stable internet, in fact just having internet in this country is pretty special. Most, if not all the hotels have nothing, or it might be present and not working.

So have a look in the meantime, here, for Stage 10 - Tuesday, May 20: Pesaro - Urbino (Individual Time Trial), 39.4km. Here for Stage 11 - Wednesday, May 21: Urbania - Cesena. Forgot what stage this was. This stage was great, a nice nasty mountain TT, and what a day, thats a couple of good stories just right there, I still got the bruises to show for it as well.

Some nice shots of the country, when I got a bit of spare time (all three mins of it). And some of the new Shimano 2009 prototype groupset.

Frankie getting a tow up to the peloton, Stage 11, Urbania-Cesena

Monte Carpegna, on the same stage 11. It was a bit of a toughy.

Stage 16, the last km of Plan De Corones Timetrail, and what a climb it was.

Bradley Wiggins passing Andrie, his minute man on the same TT

And more coming up, three more stages to come, and then maybe a few days off, on the couch, of course.

A few more Photos posted

2008-05-20T07:40:00.003+12:00

A rest day for all except the staff today on the Giro. But I did manage to find a bit of free internet and manage to post a few photos. So go and have a look here. Most of them will have captions on them so you get some idea of what's happening until I get around to a bit of writing. so here are the latest albums #3, #4, #5, #6. Individual TT on tomorrow, and it is mean, 20km of kind of flat, then 22km of climbing, it's going to hurt them a bit I think.

Giro here I come

2008-05-15T01:19:00.003+12:00

By the time we got to the ferry in Genoa, we had a few hours to kill, but being in Italy you never know where you might get caught up in traffic. So we entered the compound for those waiting to board the boat to Sicily. Within a few hours most of the team had arrived, the bus, and a few cars. Still missing was the truck with all the bikes and equipment, and the Van. They were running a bit late, and by the sounds of the phone call, a bit stressed about it being a bit late. By taking the ferry to Sicily, we cut about 1400km of driving out, and when you think about the country you miss out driving through, it was a no brainer for most of the teams. Time was moving on, we were getting a bit worried about the truck, but with two hours to sail, in she rolled, and not a moment too soon. The ship left at 10pm, and arrived in Palermo at 6pm the next day. A nice relaxing cruise, a bit of down time, and a chance to hang with the staff for a day before the real work starts. A sun deck and a nice restaurant, a bar, good coffee, what more could you ask for. I had a great plan of catching up with a few stories during the many hours on board, but I made the usual mistake of taking my laptop on the bus for some work before we boarded. But I forgot to take it with me, and upon leaving land, there was no access to the vehicle deck (I should have know this from multiple ferry crossings in my own country, but no). Shit, a good plan foiled again, so I spent hours wandering the boat looking for something to read or do, sleep was almost a good idea, until you lay on the bed and felt the full force of the engines vibrating the room to a nice dull thumping noise.

We arrived some time later in Sicily, and the city looked fantastic from the boat. It was when you finally got to land, then, the real fun started. We only had 35km to the hotel, but the locals said count on and hour and a half. Well they were pretty much on the money, lucky I was in a car, I can’t imagine driving the bus or truck through some of Palermo’s streets. I wondered why there was no lanes painted on some of wider roads, well in a minute or two I realised why. Traffic like I have never encounted before, ever, not like anywhere in Asia, India, or China, but like all of those countries bad habits in one street, cars everywhere, all over the road, with multiple scooters and motorbike whizzing through what small gaps there was through the cars. Red lights meant go, and by all means you can drive into oncoming traffic on the other side of the road and then throw a red light or two in as well (think you get more points for multiple infractions per trip). We had less than 3km to get to the highway, this took most of an hour. Not only were there cars double parked, but also triple parked, and for sure it was only a two lane street. Stop for a second at an intersection, and it would be ten minutes before there was a inch to stick your nose in to get to the other side of the intersection. After a short while of this, I hardened up and was just as aggressive as the rest of the cars. But upon looking around there was not a single car without many dents all over them, all except us in a new Audi A6, looking very out of place. Maybe the local authorities gave up years ago painting the lines on the road, as no one was using them anyway.

Heading into port, Palmero, sicily, and doesn't it look nice.

Arriving at the hotel, we picked one of the best spots in the carpark, there were six teams expected, and we were the first. And what a spot, over-looking the sea, the coastline going on for miles, what a sight. What a fantastic workshop for the week, as long as it didn’t rain, but the sun was shining, I was feeling pretty good about my first Giro. With the first stage happening in a few days, we had plenty of work to get on with. A few frames to swap out, and a few new bikes to build, and there was no time like the present. Another treat for the Giro, was four very small Japanese mechanics (opps, I mean Engineers) from Shimano, turning up with two new 2009 Dura-ace group sets to play with. But more on this later, as soon as the heat dies on it, I will post some pics and a report on the new changes for the season (it is still top secret I officially). We have a team of three mechanics for the tour, and already we are all busy, and by the sound of things, the work never stops.

the Shimano Ninja's, with a case full of top secret 2009 products.

The team for the tour is looking pretty fit, and sounding pretty positive, which is always good to hear, always makes work seem not that bad when you have motivated riders to work for. On the riders list is (in no particular order), Bradley Wiggins, Mark Cavendish, Adam Hansen, Andre Griepel, Morris Possoni, Marco Pinotti, Tony Martin, Rabon Fran……, and Sivtov. A couple of Italians, a couple of Brits, a Aussie, two Germans, a Russian and a Czech, so a good selection. Of course the crack team of mechanics for the tour, myself, Perry and Werner, both these guys I have worked with on a few races, so we already work well together, and are not scared of hard work. There is two Kiwi riders in the tour, Julian Dean, the NZ road champ, riding for Slipstream, who by the way has another Kiwi mechanic working for them, Kris Witherington or Grommet to his friends. Also Tim Gudsel riding for his French team (I can never spell it, so I won’t even try). Not sure if Scotty Geater is working for his Astana team, but will soon find out. Roll on the race. We have a bit of a roster with the mechanics for time in the race, so we all get a bit of a rest. I have been hotel bitch for the last three days, thus the updates, I am still waiting for the team and the bikes to get back now, and it’s just rolled on to 21:45, so it will be a late one. It’s warm outside, I just had a nice risotto for dinner, some nice red wine, and now I am in the truck filling in time writing, listening to some nice Italian opera on the radio, waiting for the onslaught of four cars filled with bikes. And another late night.

The wicked view from our workshop for the week, Sicilian southern coast.

More pics of the trip down here.

Bern World Cup 08

2008-05-13T05:24:00.003+12:00

Just as soon as I started working for the girls, it was almost over. Just under three weeks, a few races, and it was back to the boys for a while. We had a double program running for the last week, so we were sharing what few resources we had for the women, between two teams. The truck headed down to the Czech Republic for Gracia Orlova stage race, and I took the other team and the transporter to Switzerland for a couple of races. The last being the Bern World Cup, number six in the series, and a tougher course than the last few years. It should be interesting, as there is a lot more climbing, and right from the 3 km point. The two favourite teams for the race (besides ourselves of course), was Bigla (who were organising the race, and it was finishing right outside their HQ), and the other Swiss team, Cervelo. They had their strongest teams racing, and they were going to put up a good fight, that’s for sure, but we were ready.

Judith was sitting in second place in the world Cup standings, just behind Vos, but she was racing Gracia (and she won this), so would not be present. Susan De Goede was in third, not far from Judith, so they (Nurenburger) would be fighting as well. We were not really focused on the WC, but being this close to the leaders jersey, is always on your mind. I was pretty organised with the bikes, I had to be, as I was working out of a very small van, so things had to be in their place, or it would turn into a nightmare. The bikes were ready, the girls were ready, they were a bit quiet after having a look at the course during the day before. We had most of our stronger climbers, and some of the hard working gang, so I was not worried. The team for the day was Judith, Oenone, Kim, Linda, Kate and Chantele. The weather was looking good, no rain or wind for the afternoon, so I couldn’t ask for anything else, maybe some more sleep, but that was going too far.

And the race is off, 1st 100m of the first lap, hey that's Chantele, and Linda behind her

The race started with a hiss and a roar, and as I thought, Bigla and Cervelo attacked like hell, right from the start. And as usual, Judith was at the back of the bunch that was splitting all over the place. The team had to chase like anything to get her back on to the front. We weren’t alone, as there were others chasing the front bunch as well, but they were not going to make it to the end anyway. By the time we got through the first of 4 laps, the race was not looking too good for many of the teams. There was a front bunch of about 60, with about the other 100, getting left behind quickly on the nasty course. The race radio was the worst I have ever heard, well we heard nothing, that’s the problem. We were not alone, as we saw car after car in the caravan, talking to the jury to try and find out the situation in the front, and giving them shit as well, it was a world cup race afterall. We were stuck behind the big bunch and could not get through to talk to the girls in the front (the girls radios have a limited range) to see what was happening. By the time we reached the climbs for the second time, we worked out that there was two bunches in front, and they were a long way in front. Still nothing on the radio, what a mess for the normally precise Swiss. By the time the third lap was starting, we were finally let through. And there were not many of the girls left in the front bunch, by now, about 30 from what we could see. But there was four of us up there, so things were looking good.

The bunch is splintering up the first climb

By now we were seeing most of the Cervelo and Bigla team getting dropped. Their plans for the day looking like they had failed, there was only a couple of each team hanging off the back by now. Getting dropped and then coming back on. Going into the last lap, the pace was high, the last climbs were coming, so they were trying to stop the attacks happening. But they started already, with 20km to go, attack after attack was going off the front. We chased what we could, so did the few teams that were left up there. With 10km to go, there was one rider attacking out the front, my old team mate, Susanne Ljungskog, and she was looking good. The bunch tried to chase her down, but they were looking pretty tired, there was just no speed in the chase anymore. She stayed out with 23 seconds, then to 21 secs, but it was not moving very fast and she got back to 23 secs. Now you might think that would be easy to chase down, but with 120km or so in the legs, and with a lot of climbing, it’s not so easy for the girls left. With only a few teams having more than one rider left, no one really want to expend energy they might need later on in the finish chute.

What a beautiful day in Switzerland, love the countryside, almost like home.

With 3km to go, Suze was still in the front with the same gap, it was not going to change. We took the deviation for the cars, and I sprinted to see her cruising through the finish line with plenty of time to enjoy her win. She was ecstatic, and it showed with the huge grin on her face. But the bunch was about to arrive, and they looked almost like they were in slow-motion as they came close to the line. Judith was looking good, sprinting like hell right to the end, second place, nice. I collected up all the bikes and girls, and we had a moment to relax, or at least they did, I was busy packing a few of the bikes into bags (a few of the girls were flying home, Kim back to USA, Oenone back to Australia, Linda to Denmark) and trying to cram everything I could in the van for the trip back to Bonn. News came through that with Judith’s second place she was now the new leader of the World Cup series. What a great finish to the week, and for the first time ever, Judith wears the rainbow jersey.

Susanne comes home for the win.

We had just a bit of time for the girls to have a quick shower back at the hotel. Time for me to get my things together, they were dropping off at the train station. It was unusual not to be driving home after the race, got to be a first, and it was feeling rather strange. I was to be picked up in Geneva, as the men’s team were finishing up at the Tour of Romandy, and dropping riders off to the airport there. From here we leave for Genoa, to meet up with the rest of the staff for 20 hours on a ferry. The truck, bus, transporter, and four race cars, with eight others. The ferry was off to Sicily, for the start of the Giro d’ Italia. I was excited, my favourite race ever, and my first grand tour with the team (first ever actually, but racing with the girls feels rather grand sometimes). Plus I have been wanting to get to Sicily for years as well, so nice to combine some sightseeing in with some bikes, racing and a bit of work. Ohh and don’t forget the food.

See more photos here.

Giro d' Italia, Stage 1

2008-05-12T10:13:00.005+12:00

Finally a little bit of internet, and a bit of time for some photo uploading. so here you are the first two photo installments of the Giro. I should be able to file the story soon as I will have a bit of time to finish it in next day or so. We leave Scicly for the mainland in the morning. The boys have stage three, I am on truck duty for the day, so I will have some fun on the Italian roads again. So go have a look in the meantime, getting there is here and the first stage is here. Righto time for some sleep, it's going to be a long day for us tomorrow.

Easy Update

2008-05-12T01:45:00.004+12:00

After landing in Europe I was directly on the road working for the Men’s team for a while. First to the Eroica race in the middle of Italy. Run on dirt roads, like the classics of old, we had a good race. I was on truck driving/hotel duty so missed the whole thing. Photos

Next up was the Terrino-Adriatico Tour. A seven day tour with the likes of George Hincapie, Mark Cavendish, Thomas Lovquist etc. This was great as we were going well in the GC, right until the TT when our main rider, 2nd on GC, Linus Gederman crashed out in the TT breaking his Tibia (top of the shin bone), but we had Thomas in 3rd place, this he kept until the end, and we also won the teams classification as well. I got to follow and coach my favourite modern day rider in the TT, George had a good run, no problems on the bike though, except he was not fast enough on the day. A bad crash in the rain on the last day, put a couple of the lads out as well, but they were ok, the bikes suffered a lot though. The food was fantastic though, and some of the countryside I had not seen before, so that was pretty cool, a new part of Italy to discover. Photos, #1, #2, #3

Then right to the middle of Holland for Ronde van Groen Hart, for a very cold nights work. Here I recorded on my hands, a temperature of -7’c. snow was falling on me as I washed the few bikes that were dirty still. Washing the car in the morning was great, once I got rid of all the ice of it first, but the snow kept away until they started racing. I was holed up at the finish, getting ready for the return of the bikes, Rain, hail, snow and sunshine the riders experienced, all in one race. They were so lucky, as I watched the race from a hot café, with not too bad coffee.

Next day the cold weather continued, with snow falling throughout the night in Cologne. Morning broke with a bit of fine weather for the Rund um Koln (around Cologne), but as soon as the cars were washed, and the bikes loaded on top, the snow came down. And snow it did, what a pleasant sight, the bikes looked so pretty, all covered in snow on the cars. The riders were not looking too happy, as the roads would be pretty dangerous for a race of about 200km. The organisers postponed it an hour at first, then two, then cancelled it all together. First time in 100 years, so it was pretty bad for them. The moment they made the decision to cancel, the sun came out, things dried up and it was a beautiful day again. We still had to clean the bikes and all the cars, so it was just like they raced anyway. Photos

Two days of the Criterium International in the north of France was next. This was near the Belgium border, and a somewhere I had not raced before. With a double stage to finish on, we took the stage win with Bosan-Hagen and second with one of the other boys (oops I forgot who), a nice 1-2 finish. This was in the battle fields of WW2, so there was plenty of cemeteries we passed along the way, sad really the amount of death around here, but that’s War for ya. Photos

That was the month of March, so think I had one day at base to relax for the afternoon, then April started. More races with the men, and into the classic’s season, in Belgium and Holland.

A small Tour to warm the lads up called ‘Three Days of De Panna. In the north coast of Belgium, fast and dangerous three stages, two road and a TT from memory. Plenty of crazy cycling fans to deal with, crowds are not something you have to handle with the Women’s racing, but sure beats fighting the crowd to do your work. Photos

A warm up for Flanders saw us race the ‘Het van het Mergelland’, with no real results. But it was all training for the big ones.

Flanders, another race I always want to see, let alone work was next. This was crazy, with thousand of punters watching the race from every possible position they could find. I was in the second car, racing from cobbled section to cobbled section, running to a good spot and waiting for the race to come through. We had a third car doing the same as well, and a few thousand crazy Belgium fans doing the same thing. It’s a race itself, to see the race as many times as you can, we managed about 12 stops and passing of the race. Man it was pretty tight in places, and we missed one spot we were supposed to be. This is a story in itself, this I will write about I think some other time. The girls race the same course of course, this you will remember from other years. And our team won this one with Judith taking out the win for the Team. What a blast for the girls, as this is a biggy for the year. Photos

Gent-Wevelgem was next. Here I was hotel bitch for the day. We had two mechanics in the race, and I had quite a bit of work to do for a couple of up coming races. Some wheels to build and a few tyres to glue as well. But we had a good race, and there was no mishaps on the day, nice.

Finally back with the girls for a few weeks. But first a few days in the service course (team base) for some bike building, a few TT bikes for the upcoming stage races, and a bit of track testing in Buttigen, just up the road. Six of the girls were meeting for testing at a indoor track. A few modifications on the bikes, a bit of position tuning, and a lot of messing around to go with it. But it was successful, the bikes were all dialled in, now a few days finishing them off, and my week off, turned into one day off. We have had a new truck being built up for the big tours for the Men, so a bit of work inside one of them hanging wheel racks etc for a day or two took the other spare days I had left. Photos

A Couple of weeks on the road with the girls saw us stop in the top of Holland for a race Called ‘Gelderland’. A small race, and not too much happened either. Then another World Cup race ‘Fleche Wallone’, in Belgium. Raced on the same day as the men just like Flanders. Except this time we got a second or third with Judith, it was a pretty messy race, so we were lucky with that at least. The men had some great results with Kim Kirchen winning, it was a great result for the boys, and the whole team really.

A couple more smaller races, Borsele in Holland and then back to Rosalare in Belgium. Not much happening here, with a third with Ina in Boresele, and a third with Kim in Belgium. We did the best we could in both of them, but it was all we could muster up. The team worked well together, and it was some pretty good training for the up and coming tours.

That was all of April done, and straight away I was off to Switzerland for a couple more races before meeting up with the Men’s team again. A TimeTrail was first in the Sion area, just north of Geneve. Here the men were also doing the same course, part of the Tour of Romandy. They have a invitation race for the Women, called Magalie Pache. Here some of the Worlds best TT experts were racing. We had Judith and Oenone racing, it was a tough field they were racing against, so it was not going to be easy. The course was flat for a bit, then it just climbed straight up a mountainside, then down. We raced, think Judith was 5th and Oenone was tailing at last position. Oh well, she won it a few years back, so we know she can do it. Photos

Then all the riders and us headed off to Bern for another world cup race. This was getting serious, race number 6 out of 10 in the series. The team was looking pretty good, with all the serious girls booked in to race, as we had another team racing in the Czech race ‘Gracia’ in Orlova. We fought hard, as there was a big climb right from the start. The race split on the first lap, and the field was smashed to bits on the very first lap of 4. We had some great results, with Judith getting a second place. This brings her into the World Cup leaders jersey, for the first time in her career. She was pretty happy, and so was the rest of the team, and of course so was I. As the bikes were perfect once again. Pics

It was a good time to leave the girls on such a high note. I now leave them for another month or so and join the men. In fact, directly after the race, I boarded a train for Geneva, here a car was waiting to pick me up for a trip to Italy. Here we meet up in Genoa with the Truck, Bus and three other cars, and a transporter van. We then all jumped on a ferry, with about ten other teams for the trip down to Sicily for the start of the ‘Giro d' Italia’. The second biggest tour in the cycling world, and my favourite race of all time. This brings us to the current day, where we just raced the first stage earlier today. But that’s another story. Photos

With thanks to Cycling News for the race reports.

Almost Ready

2008-05-12T01:38:00.003+12:00

If ever there was some sort of amnesty offered for errant bloggers, I would be the first one standing in line to claim it. As time rolls on, my attempt at trying to clear a few races and a few good stories, seems almost like a distant dream. It is really stopping me getting on with the real issues of life of a mechanic on the road. But this I suppose is sometimes the reality of this job, when you get a bit of spare time, the last thing you want to do is sit down with the computer. Sleep is first on the list, relaxing or mindless foreign television watching is next in line. Closely followed by a night propping up the bar in some dodgy hotel after a nights work. Drinking some crap local wine, and trying not to talk bikes for a while.

I have talked to many people both riders and fans about my current situation about my website, and they all have the same problem. When they get a little too far behind in the stories and updates, it becomes overwhelming to try and catch up. I suffer from this more than most this time of year, as the work just does not seem to stop coming. I suppose it is a good sign, the team is happy with my work, and the riders as well are happy with their bikes. It shows in the amount and frequency of races they are sending me to at the moment. So it is not a bad thing, and the work will never stop coming unfortunately. I just have to find a way to catch up quickly, and easily, so then at least I can give you some reasonable updates for the current and upcoming races I will be working on.

So I have a plan, and this is one I have used on many occasions before. The good ol ‘Picture says a thousand words’ excuse will work fine for me here. I was going to forget completely about any sort of catch up, and just pretend that nothing ever happened. But I knew you would all be so on to it, that you would not let me pull this one. So here we go, almost two months in one single entry. Then maybe I can get back to the real story telling I know you all love (well at least the 12 of you that have told me so far, thanks to you lot). Some of the races I have some pictures loaded into my photo pages, and some I will be loading shortly for the last few races. And if I get all inspired and have a bit of spare time on my hands (could happen), I will fill in a few gaps for ya.

The Drought is Over

2008-04-26T02:39:00.005+12:00

With some serious blogging over the last few months, things have ground to a bit of a halt. In a moment of laptop spring-cleaning madness, I managed to delete a few updates I had stored for uploading when I found some internet somewhere. Three good long drawn out races, just the sort of stories I know you all love, gone, though no other reason than operator error. Oh well, now you will get the short versions, as I have no interest in repeating my work. I am sure there was some 'Bloggers Block', and a bad case of 'CBF' thrown in as well

And actually having some spare time since landing in Europe has been non-existent at this stage, and doesn’t look like it is going to change in a hurry. So time to start the short versions (there has been a lot of racing) or else I just start from where I am now, and save myself a lot work in the meantime.

I will try to give you the short versions of all the races I have working on, we see. Of course you always have the photo pages to make up your own stories from. I will endevour to fill in the odd race report for the past, but don’t count on too much, too soon.

In the mean time here are a couple of things to keep you busy, just to give me a bit more time to get organised.

The coolest bike storage building in the world, only in Japan. Just park your bike, swipe your card and it's gone. When you are ready for the ride hime, swipe the card again, and in under 25 seconds, it's ready to roll home. Now thats the sort of thing they need in every city.

And one of the coolest pedal powered machines I have seen for a while. This even looks like you can ride it as well. A blast from the past, made in the modern era. I got to get me one of these. Check it out a bit more here

Tour of Wellington 08, Part 1

2008-03-12T10:18:00.004+13:00

Flying home to my own country New Zealand, was exciting, but I was still not looking forward to customs with all the bikes and all the equipment they might want to look through. But we were lucky, there was another four teams on the flight, so they kind of left us alone, and passed us through with out any fuss. We arrived late about midnight and there was a truck and bus waiting from the race organiser to pick us up for the small trip to the hotel. All teams were staying in the Angus hotel, as usual, so there was a bit of a battle to get everyone organised into their rooms before it was too late. The weather was looking ominous for the week, so I was hoping for a repeat of last years perfect sunny conditions. But I wasn’t holding my hopes high, it was Wellington after all, famous for high winds and bad rain. But there was going to be some great racing at least, there was quite a few more teams that we didn’t race with in Geelong here for the week. A little bit more blood to fill the peloton for the races, hopefully we see some more action with a few more hungry girls, looking for some wins.

Most of the NZ team lined up for the start of their very own tour.

The tour was a bit different from the last few years, with a couple of new stages, and a couple of new finishes to some older stages. We started with the usual criterium up in the Hutt Valley, nice and close for the girls, so not to much travelling on the first day at least. In the weeks leading up to the tour we had great trouble finding any rental cars and vans, but I had managed to find a dodgy rental company for a van at least. The car we were still looking for, apparently there was the Golden Shears (A national sheep shearing competition) on in Masterton, and a few other festivals on around in the area. Most of the other teams, had the same issues as well, we were not alone, they were all complaining as well. After calling all the rental companies in the Wellington and surrounding areas, we decided to head to the airport to see if there was any cancellations. We were lucky, one car left, we didn’t care what it was, but it would be ready the next day, at least we didn’t need it for the crit. The bikes unpacked well, with no damage at all, which is a nice change from the airline baggage guys. I got organised in the bike room, trying to keep as much space to work in as I could. It was going to get messy in the next few hours as there were a few more teams to arrive, and with six of us in there, it was already getting full.

The photo of the photo finish, DeGoede nearest us and Oneone a few cm behind her.

The day of the first stage arrived, it was not raining, and the sun was even shining. We headed out to the course a few km up the road, the girls looking fantastic on their nice clean and shiny bikes. Time for a bit of a warm up for the girls, and time for me to have catch up with a few of the Kiwi’s and some of the other mechanics. Crits are such a social time for the staff, that’s as long as the girls are staying upright on the bikes. It’s so nice to use my kiwi slang for a while, talking as fast as I want and still getting understood, it will change in a week or so, time to make the most of it. The crit was about to start, so I made my way to the pits, with spare bikes and wheels in hand, ready for the worst. The tour had started, and there were plenty of nervous riders in the bunch as usual, and there was going to be some crashes for sure, I would be ready for it. Things were going well, a few attacks off the front, but nothing too serious, we were certainly active in most of them. Nothing major happened, a few small crashes, but my girls were safe in the front. There was the dodgy Chinese National team, famous for their crashing, also the Japanese national team, not as dangerous, but bad all the same. The hour was soon up, and then two laps to go, there was no real attacks off the front, but on the last lap we saw a little gap with two out the front. Oneone and Susan DeGoede (Nurenburg) were out the front, they sprinted, and it was too close to call. The stupid announcer got it wrong as usual, announcing Oneone as the winner. I was right on the finish line, ready with my camera as usual, and it looked like DeGoede took it by a few centimetres. And I was right, he came back on air to tell us that in fact it was DeGoede for the win, Oneone 2nd and coming in 3rd was our very own Joanne Kiesonski (Cervelo-Lifeforce). DeGoede takes the leaders jersey, and we leave for the country town Martinborough, for the second stage in the morning.

Come on, get serious Ina, it's a race after all. The opening Crit.

Stage two from Martinborough to Masterton was a nice little stage, with a number of good little climbs, then a run through to the finish with about 20km flat racing. We also use the same two hills for the third stage, but then we throw in Admirals hill to finish on, making these two the toughest stages of the tour. I just love the drive up through the Rumitaka’s, kind of classic Kiwi scenery, perfect for the tourists here for the week. Heading down into the valley on the other side, was much the same drought conditions of last year. I was half expecting a greener look after Australia, but that was not going to happen. We started the race with a lap of the town, it was over in half a minute, not sure of the population here, but sure it’s about a 100 or so. The real race was on, and we started out nice and slow, almost too slow, as the car was ready 15 km/hr in places, kind of embarrassing for Women’s cycling really. The speed stayed slow for another hour or so, almost making us fall asleep in the car, it was going to be a long day at this speed. By the time we hit the first good hill at about the 75km mark, the team was starting to stretch their legs a little, and the speed was on. They started with a few attacks, and started to see who was keen on a bit of a race. Nothing much happened until the last big hill, this I am sure gets bigger every year, but I just think everyone is talking about Admirals hill in the third stage, and they forget about this little kicker.

Art Shot, climbing during the 2nd stage.

The pace came on right on the start of the hill, with about 40km to go, it was the decisive move of the stage. Three of us attacked, and drew a few out of the bunch, think there was about 12 that went with Oneone, Chantele and Judith. A couple of Cervelo and a couple of Menikini, even NZ had a rider in there as well. We put the pace on, and kept the speed high. With 20km to go, Judith had spent almost all the time on the front, with Chantele helping as well, not any other team was in the break working, maybe they thought we would do it all ourselves. But the speed was high, and the gap between the peloton increased to about 2 mins, and they were not interested in chasing at all. With 10km to go, Judith was pulling the break at high speed, we had the leader jersey safe (virtual leader) on the back of Oneone, as long as a disaster didn’t happen, then we would be sweet.

In through the beautiful NZ countryside, a bit brown though.

The head Judges were been asses, and would not let us pass the small bunch of what was left of the peloton, seems she had some special rule we did not know about. We pushed to go through to the break, it was more than a minute (that’s the UCI rule) so she had to let us go through. But she was stalling bad, a bit of power had gone to her head. Another two cars came up to press her into action for the break, and she decided to let us through. And just in the nick of time. As we were speeding through to the break (a minute can seem like ages when you drive it), Oneone came through on the radio that she had punctured, it was our leader in the race, and they were about 7km before the finish, a very dangerous situation. The neutral service were just looking at Oneone as we arrived at speed (they couldn’t work out if it was a front or rear wheel needed I think), I leaped out of the car, changed the wheel and pushed her on her merry way. The neutral service guy still didn’t realise just what happened, looking with a stunned look on his face, wheels in hand as we drove off. The bunch had slowed a little, as they should, as our team towed them the last 40km. They must have known she was in the lead, and their conscience must have got the better of them, as they were not riding that fast in front. Judith had dropped back to help Oneone back to the break, and with the power of a diesel truck, she pulled her back up to the break with 2 km to go. Now it was up to her, the bunch sprinted hard, but Oneone must have had some adrenalin still flowing from the puncture, I know I certainly did. She pulled hard, and took out the sprint for first, and took the leaders jersey for the day, not a bad result really, considering it could have ended a lot worse in such a short space of time.

Part two coming up. And some pics here somewhere.

Geelong World Cup

2008-03-12T09:59:00.007+13:00

With the team in good form from the smallish Geelong Tour, we were looking pretty good for a good result in the first World Cup race of the season. For a good run down on how the world cups go, think I saw something on Womenscycling.net, so you can get a better understanding how they work with the points etc, saves me trying to explain them. It’s a pretty hotly contested series every year, whether the team targets them directly, or the girls individually, depends on the teams direction. I am not sure of our direction with the WC races, but we race them all, so must be high on the list of wins we are aiming for the season. The top ten UCI teams automatically get entry, and the first five nations, the rest is up to the local organisation running the race. For Geelong, the same teams that raced in the tour are also doing the WC race, with a few rider changes from some teams.

My makeshift workshop for the week, Aussie style

The bikes were looking good, but with the first World Cup race being fairly serious, I had almost the whole day to mess with the bikes and get them perfect. I was lucky enough to have a spare bike to ride, so I was out on the bike in the morning, having good a look at the course with the team. It was good, but open to traffic for the day so there was plenty of stopping and starting with all the traffic lights around the place. The course was a lap of about 12km, for a total of 11 laps, the girls would get a good look around it on race day, that’s for sure, I unfortunately only had time for a few laps. The weather was not looking good, as rain was predicted for the whole day, but from the looks of things the night before, I was doubting that call. The morning dawned a little bit cold, but otherwise fine, the sun was struggling to shine through the cloud, but at least it was still dry. I was more worried about the bikes than the girls, as the last thing I needed was a few tumbles on the wet roads. We had some new tyres for the team, and they were looking pretty slick and I was not so sure how they were in the rain. So far so good for the Schwalbe tyres, only one puncture so far, and they were wearing in nice. But I was not looking to test them in a World Cup race, we would have time enough in Holland and Belgium at the start of the European race season.

Waiting for the start, the first World Cup of the season.

We rolled into town for the start, the sun had come out and the girls were stripping off all the arm warmers and rain jackets as they rode to the start. Everyone was excited, and there were even a few spectators hanging out at the start/finish line. It was nice to see a few people interested today, as for the tour, we hardly had anyone interested or watching. But I had work to do, and a few last minute checks on the bike to do. Everything looked fine and I had about half an hour before the start to kill, but just when I thought everything was in control, disaster struck. Judith, our captain for the day was doing her usual pre-start fiddle with her seat height, when she manages to strip what was left of the thread on the seat clamp (the rest she had stripped out a few days earlier 5 mins before the 2nd Geelong stage, a longer bolt worked here), I had half an hour to get it back on the road if possible. I had spent a little bit more time setting the spare bike up exactly for her position, because I was expecting this situation all week after the first incident. Luckily I had packed the only spare seat clamp today, as with this integrated seat clamp system, no other bikes parts will work as a substitute. I sweated a little, but was fully ready for it, and in perfect controlled panic, set about sorting the problem as fast as I could. Judith was very apologetic about the situation, but it was a good lesson for her, not to mess with it too much before such and important race. Maybe she learns something from this, but I doubt it. Most riders show their nervousness other ways, with Judith it’s adjusting the seat (Eddy used to have the same affliction, even during the race he was moving it up and down, and always had a allen key in his jersey) it just takes a little time to learn what each riders outing is when you join a new team. I will set another seat up on a new clamp for the truck in Europe, just to speed up and take the stress away from an otherwise dangerous situation.

Half the NZ team waits, Cath Cheatly, Carissa Wilks, Toni Bradshaw.

But the race was underway, and as soon as it started there was a fair bit of action happening off the front. With a couple of laps done, there was a large group of about 12 riders away, we had Linda in the group, and most teams were present, so it was not too much trouble. But by the time we got the numbers of who was in the group, it was looking pretty serious. There was all the right teams present, and they had the power to stay away for the entire race, but there was far too many good sprinters for Linda to win, so we decided to pull it in. Within one lap, the team had reeled in the break and the bunch was together for a while. There was still numerous attacks from the group, but nothing really serious coming out for good, but the speed was still low, so something was going to happen soon. And before you could mention it, two riders attacked, and got some time on the peloton. Emma Riccards (Cervelo-Lifeforce) and a rider I had not heard of Katherine Matthias (Webcor) escaped. We watched and waited for the bunch to react, but nothing happened, so we left it as well. Emma I knew, and she was in good form at the nationals and at the crits at the start of Jan, but the other rider was drawing a blank. The gap increased, 4 mins, 5 mins, 6 mins, and still no reaction from our director, with three laps to go it was getting serious. 6:40 and he decided to start catching, with less than 25km to go, it was an almost impossible ask from the girls. We had heard that a couple of other teams were going to help us chase, but so far they had not started at all. The girls put their heads down and started working, a few minutes caught, but it was still 3 mins, to the two with one lap to go. As the two out the front were going hard, I managed to catch a glimpse of them both as they came past us back out on the last lap. Still all the other teams did nothing to help, were they not interested in wining? I recognised Matthias, but still the name did not register with me. We got close, but the two girls in front we slowing things down a lot near the end, at the 3km to go mark, they were sitting on 500m to go. The race was done, we had no chance to catch them, the girls had started dropping of the back in the last 10km to go, completely spent from working so hard.

Halfway done in the race, five or so laps to go.

Katherine Matthias won the sprint, Emma was second, and now the bunch was at 1km to go. The sprint started, and there was some serious action on the front of the bunch, but it was Ina who took the last podium position, with a nice sprint for third. Not bad really, considering we could have lost everything on the day. Katherine Matthias of course I knew, but under her old name of Currie, such a good tactic for the girls to get married, then you can race under another name for a while until you get known again. No time for any celebrations just yet, as I had a few bikes, wheels and all the equipment to pack up before we headed for NZ the very next day. So I worked quickly, start slowing down and you then have time to think about how much work you really have ahead of you, then it gets real slow. Trying to pack everything as safe as possible and as fast as you can is a tough job, but I managed to finish just before the team left for dinner. Now for some nice food and wine, a nice way to finish a tour and two months in Australia off, Now I get a week in my own country, even if it is Wellington before flying back to Europe for some racing with the men, and maybe even some winter weather for the first time in a couple of years.

Alex covered in salt after the race, love that Aussie heat.

Some more shots of the race here.

Geelong Tour 08

2008-03-05T20:58:00.004+13:00

The first race day arrived around pretty quick, and the bad thing was that it started with a double stage. At least there was no TT bikes or equipment allowed for the short Timetrail. At least there would not be as busy messing around with equipment and stuff, which is usual for such a race. The sun was up, but as usual, when we arrived early at the course, the wind was starting to pick up steadly. It’s always a gamble who to send out first, as who knows what the weather will be doing for the two of three hours while we set off all the girls after each other. The order for the start was the usual TT rules, every team sets of one rider after another, till all the teams have sent their first out. Then we start again with the next in line for all the teams (as opposed to order of GC in reverse). This order is given the previous day, so no changes on race day. The good thing is that you get into a bit of a rhythm for the morning. Once I have the first one off, there was about twenty minutes to get organised for the second etc. Ronnie was driving behind every girl with wheels just in case of punctures or crashes, and Klaus was prepping the legs and bottles, and looking after the girls upon their return with food and drink. It all worked like clockwork, and as long as the girls had no issues on the course, Ronnie would get back just in time to tail the next girl.

Chantell belts it out for the TT

The first two stages were in the Portarlington area, with a nice beachfront course, the Europeans were loving it. They don’t get to see beaches like this very often, and the sun was pretty rare in some places as well. With such a small distance to race (6.5km), things in the GC would be pretty tight, but it was still serious as you could keep your lead easy with only two stages to come. All the gang rode well, and there were a few good TT riders here, so we were not expecting much in the way of podium finishes. Karin Thurig and Kristen Armstrong were both ex World TT champs, so were the favourites for the day. But Ina shone this morning, with the top time until the last few riders. Christiana Soeder (Cervelo) took the win, Susanne Ljungskog (Menikini) was second, but we got a third with Ina’s blinding effort (she’s not known for her TT prowess). All the others finished well, but for such a small race, I think we had four in the top ten, not a bad start. Now for a few hours hanging around till the afternoons stage.

The back of the bunch

The afternoon start rolled around pretty quick, I only had time for a quick bite to eat and a couple of coffees. The lap was pretty simple, but a hell of lot nicer than the crit they usually have here. Only 75km or something, so not long enough to hurt the other riders. The peloton looked good at the start, a few black jerseys from the Kiwis looked great, always makes me proud to be a Kiwi, and I love black as well. I was starting to pick out our new team uniforms in the peloton, they were a bit harder then the black kits we had in the Tour Down Under. But it would not be too long to pick them out at a distance from the caravan. The race was underway, and things were pretty fast on the first lap. A bunch of nervous younger riders were hanging out the back of the bunch, but they stayed all together. Second lap and we had a few attacks form a few riders, and even Brie from NZ stayed away for a while, but there was some action at the back. A couple of wheels touched, a few riders were down, lucky, but our girls were all at the front. One rider down was Rochelle Gilmore, with a broken bike, and another couple of girls down with a broken ass. I breathed easy, but was not relaxing yet. Third lap and things were speeding up a lot. We got on the front to drive it home, trying to place Ina in a good position for the sprint. With 10km to go, the bunch was starting to split, no the training starts to pay off for those that have done it. Things were spread out in single file as we hit 5km to go, we still had control on the front, driving hard. With 3km to go, Oneone had the front, and kept the speed high for Ina. But she was too fast, and Ina decided to leave a gap, but sprinted as well. Success, first place for Oneone and a second for Ina, our first podium for the team, and two was a good start.

The good old Kiwi team, with a new kit this year.

The next day was the last stage out in Barwon Heads, the current town of Cadel Evans, so it knew about bike races. The loop around the beach was a long and windy one, kind of boring, and heavy roads as well. Should really sort out the field fast today, and with Ina in second place 27sec behind the leader Christiane Soeder, and another 10 sec to third with Susanne, it was looking difficult before we started. With only 93km to race it would be hard to pull in that much time. We raced hard, attacked like hell, a few riders got away, but it came to nothing. The surf was looking great as we came though the finish line on every lap, at least the surfers were having a good day. Halfway through there was another little crash, but nothing important, all the gang was safe up front. We tried a few things, but Cervelo were taking good control on the front, seems they had some good friends in the USA national team, they were far too strong for us. Coming into the last lap, we put some speed on the front, pushing as hard as we could for a win. At least we could take another stage if we couldn’t win the tour. We battled on, and almost in a repeat of the day before, we placed Ina in the perfect place for a win, this time Oneone moved aside and took the second place, nice, 1st and 2nd on the podium again. Looking at the results on the finish, we had also managed to gap both Soeder and Ljungskog. We were within 10secs of winning the tour, but got second overall with Ina, we were happy enough for so early in the season.

Spread on the Barwin Heads circuit.

The final podium, from left. Oneone-sprinters Jersey, Linda- young riders jersey, Ina-second, Soeder-first, Susanne-third.

Check out some more pics here. Next report is the Geelong World cup, followed by the Tour of Wellington in my own beautiful country. But don’t get too excited as I have just arrived in Germany and about to drive to Italy for two days for some more racing with the men. See how my time management goes. But at least you can check out some of the images in the meantime.

Geelong Tour Preview

2008-03-05T06:12:00.004+13:00

The first race was looming for the Women, the Geelong Tour and the Geelong World Cup, so I was starting to get excited. The girls were flying direct from the teams training camp in California, same camp the men had left for after the Tour Down Under. I had seen a few reports of the happenings of the training camp, but most of it was team bonding and bike and clothing fittings. I was kind of glad I wasn’t needed, as it can be a pain with all the small adjustments and changes needed on the new bikes. The last day of the camp was finishing up with the teams presentation. Basically it’s just that, presenting themselves to the Worlds media and the sponsors. I scoured the internet the day before the team was set to arrive, looking for images of this years line up, and of course the new team uniform. I could find nothing but a few dodgy cell phone pics on some just as dodgy blogs. But time to start getting organised, the first arrival was a nice 6.30 am the next morning, with the rest of the team arriving at 9.30am. I was going to take the medium time, have a coffee or three with our new soigneur Klaus, and wait for the rest of the gang. But my plans for a sleep in till 8am failed, as the Director sent a message through at 5am saying they were delayed three hours in Auckland, en-route to Melbourne, so time for a drive, to pick p Klaus a bit earlier than planned. But as you might have guessed, upon arriving about 7am, Klaus’s plane was delayed three hours as well. Seems like the only two planes delayed out of the multiple arriving were the two I was waiting for. It did give me a bit of time to check out some of the photos of the Team Presentation, and what a treat, the team was looking fantastic, all lined up, hair and makeup done for possibly the only time all year. There was one of the girls missing, Kate Bates, I later found out she had a small case of pneumonia, and was recovering in hospital. But the rest of them looked great, with the boys surrounding them, they looked dangerous, watch out world, we are now ready for business.

Linda and Alex in the background, out training in the sun.

Finally after a few hours hanging out at the airport (not my favourite pastime), Klaus arrived, we had time for some caffeine before the rest of the team arrived. And they arrived, with enough baggage to fill the hold of the plane almost all themselves. But at least all the bikes arrived, safe and sound with no damage that I could see. I spent the afternoon unpacking and putting everything back together that had been taken apart and off the bikes for travelling. A few tires to pump, the odd hanger to straighten, otherwise just the odd tune and bar alignment to sort out, and they were ready to ride. At least I had a little bit of work to do for the day.

I had been out on the loaner bike for a few days earlier, so had a few hours in my legs, at least I would be able to keep up with the girls while they are full of jetlag. Everyone slept well, Klaus was the worst off, with the usual 24 hours from Europe jetlag, those of us in the southern hemisphere are so used to, so he was looking pretty wasted by bedtime. The training ride was sweet, and for the first time this year, I was looking at a full team of girls rather than the guys, and even better from a bike than in the car for a change. Time for a bit of team bonding, and It was also time to hang with the new Director, see what makes him tick, and see what sort of knowledge of racing he has under his belt. The staff were the new guys on the team, all the girls had been in the team last year, so we were the ones trying to blend in, just to make us look like we had been there the whole time. But the racing was starting tomorrow, so there was not too much time to spare. We were starting the Geelong tour with the usual smaller than last year 8.5km Timetrail in the morning. Stage two in the afternoon was not the usual criterium, but now three laps of a 25km loop, a real road race for the afternoon. The day after we had the third stage out at Barwon heads, and that was it for the tour. The nice hilly stage up in Lara was not happening for some reason this year. A day recovery for the girls, and a days serious work for me, then right into the first World Cup for the year.

The beautiful beaches of the Geelong area, must be time for a swim. Linda and Oneone (right)

The Kiwi National team was also racing this week, with a few of the usual faces back again, Toni, Marina, Carissa, Cath and a couple of others whom names elude me at this stage. Cervelo-Lifeforce, Nurenburger, a few Aussie teams, as well as the National team. Menikini with Susanne in her new kit. USA had also managed to get a start, along with Webcor (the only UCI team in the Sates this season). All of these team would be going to race in the NZ tour as well, along with another few National teams, so the racing was looking like it might be a bit more serious this time around. Let hope our girls have some legs that are race ready. The bikes will be perfect of course.

New kit for year.

2008-02-15T12:25:00.002+13:00

By now you would have all seen our new kit for the season, if not here is a couple of pic I stole from Cycling News. Or course I thought the black strip was very cool, it was very flattering on the couple of rides I had with it, but not everyone thought the same. Thinking it looked a bit cheap and not very fitting for such a professional team. Maybe the fact that it looked a bit like the New Zealand National kit was why I liked it so much. But hey even the new strip has to be better than the last few years of T-Mobile’s colours. I only had one reservation coming to the team, and that was the use of pink, opps, I mean magenta everything, bikes, cars, truck, clothes, etc. But now it’s the best of both worlds, black and silver bikes, a bit easier to keep clean. And a nice looking uniform on the road, at least we should be able to see them from a distance again.

Adam Hansen in his new Aussie TT colours.

And a pic of the new team shirt, matched with black shorts, with the stripes down the side like last season.

And keep watching the cycling sites, as the team has their big presentation to the worlds media, in the next day or so. Held in California, voiced by Phil Legget and shown around the world to all the cycling fans, it should be interesting to see the full team line up for the season. And if there is any new sponsors, we should know by then.

Wicked Workshops #5

2008-02-15T12:12:00.004+13:00

With a only couple of days left in Melbourne as the racing is about to start in a few days time. I had two more Wicked Workshops to find and have a good poke around in. The last two workshops were the two that I had wanted to visit the most, one I managed to find, the other will have to wait until some other trip. I had heard about this workshop for a year or so, and it was the most difficult to find out of all. Featuring the most unobvious looking entranceway you could ever find, kind of a top secret location if you like. Again this was run by another Singlespeed advocate, seems they are the most inspiring of the lot so far. I first met Dan a few years ago, believe it or not, at another Singlespeed event, this time he was one of the two organisers running the event. I liked his style immediately, and I like his style even more now. He has run a nice website here and run cool web-store for a few years now, so have a look around it. But I think it has a R18 rating, so kids it’s off the menu, sorry, unless you love bikes of course. Dan is one of those guys that has managed to infuse a rock and roll lifestyle, with bikes, and it seems to have worked well together for him. His workshop is definitely the most wicked looking so far, with some of my most favourite products for sale, and a fantastic workspace to boot.

What a nice tidy looking tool box.

Dan works in a regular bike shop as a mechanic during the week, and after work and on weekends, that’s if he’s not riding, or visiting his Mum, you will find him in his studio workshop. That’s assuming you can find where it is. Nestled in the middle of a bunch of artist studios, built inside a bunch of old industrial buildings, you will find a pretty simple looking standalone doorway. With some milk crates as steps, you climb them, standing nervously on the top step, you press the doorbell, and hope someone comes to answer it. We had made an appointment earlier in the week, in fact I checked out the shop and his regular earner a few days earlier. Where as most cyclists hang out in bike shops, looking at the new bikes and products in the showroom, I tend to gravitate towards the workshop, for some strange reason. As with most of the workshops in cycle shops here Australia, they are hidden way out the back of the store, as if too keep the mechanics away from the customers for some reason. I know some of my old customers back in Auckland, would be thinking that would be the perfect place for me to hide out the back and work quietly. Then at least they would be safe from my constant constructive critique, as they dropped their bike off, or picked up a new tube or two.

A nice lineup of sprockets, very shiny.

So back to Dan’s studio workshop, upon entering the building, I spied many bikes kicking around the floor, the walls and hanging in the ceiling rafters. Most of them were of the one geared variety, some old, some new, already I was getting excited, this was just what I was expecting. I entered the workshop, and my eyes had trouble focusing on anything specific, there was so much good stuff to look at, where do I start. Dan had a customer’s bike on the stand, and the customer hanging around waiting while he was working on it. The customer was a new convert to cycling, and his first bike by the looks, a fixie (Key: a fixed geared track bike for road use, normally with or without brakes, very popular and fashionable in and around Melbourne for the last few years), he was soon on his way, a happy man. Dan later told me, it was strange for him, as he used to go and see the guy play in a band, they were, and still are pretty famous, he was in awe of them at the time. Now they all come to see him, as if he is the famous mechanic they all want to buy bikes from, and get work done by him. I think he was starting to realise he had created something pretty cool, and had some great respect in an industry full of mediocrity and copycats. I had a bit of a quick chat, before the next customer was buzzing him from the alley outside.

Dan's Jersey from his mountain biking days, in the back ground.

I spent a bit of time checking out some of the products and artwork hanging around on the walls. Of course I spent about half an hour checking out one of the cabinets treasures. So many Phil Wood and other nice hubs, almost a lifetime supply for a freak like me and my friends. Featuring close by was all the sprockets and parts to make up the most fantastic wheel sets you could dream of. Cubby holes were stuffed with some of the oldest, new stock I have ever seen, toe clips, toe straps, bar end plugs, ribbon tape and some of the coolest hand grips I remember growing up with. Next to the Phil Wood shrine was a the biggest selection of quill stems I have ever seen in the last ten years, a pile of chains, and a selection of shiny sprockets, both types, in every size you could imagine. With a selection of great looking handle bars, any style and configuration you could think of that was in. A pile of caps, modelled by some of the best heads I have seen, I even found a nice one for myself, should be great for the European winter I was about to enter.

The man himself, hanging out.

Dan had said he needed to have a bit of a cleanup before I visited, but I already knew he was a pretty tidy mechanic. There are generally two types of mechanics, a clean one, with an impeccable bench and work area. And of course the messy type, with shit and tools everywhere, but of course these types can also pull the old excuse, that they are far too busy to keep a clean bench. And there are those like me, stuck in the middle, clean and tidy, but always busy as hell, a nice compromise, but at any one time, it could look bad for me. At his regular day job, the tools were all in their place, the bench was clean and tidy, I didn’t expect anything else from him really. His studio workshop was unbelievably tidy, all the tools perfectly laid out like a surgeon’s instruments, ready for action. I was impressed by his innovation with the layout of his tools, and the cleanliness of everything on his workbench. I know a fair few mechanics who could learn a few lessons from Dan, and a few mechanics who could learn a bit more passion for the job from him as well. There was plenty of memorabilia hanging around the walls of his racing career, and some of the races he has organised over the years. Some pretty nice original artwork as well, all featuring bikes of course. There was a small tribute to the king, the king of rock and roll, not the king of mechanics, sorry (maybe we can find out who that might be some day).

But it was time to go, a few hours had passed, and it seemed only like a few minutes to me. Talk about a kid in a lolly shop. I have a lot of time for mechanics that have passion like Dan’s, they make you feel normal for a change, a world of similar passions, and like minds. I brought a few goodies for myself, and few friends, but resisted all the shiny bike bling for today, at least I know where I can find it now. I was gifted a couple of nice t-shirts, (you should stop reading this now Mum) one featuring his catch phrase ‘Ride.Race.Drink.Fight.Fuck’, all of which I have been guilty for in the past, and probably in the not too distant future. Thanks for the tour Dan, I will be back.

You can see some more pics here.

Another good find.

2008-02-11T12:47:00.001+13:00

From the front door of HPV, we spotted a bit more of a bike path, we had to follow it, so far it had been good for us. And guess what we found, but an old velodrome, from an era long ago, almost ready to fall to the weeds and grasses surrounding it. It must have beautiful in it’s day, with the remnants of an old stand surrounding it, just wasting away to the elements. There was a nice bit of artwork just been painted on the lockup, it was sweet, a nice bit of work by some local artists. It looked pretty fresh, as there was no other tags or paint on it yet, I recorded it for history, while the boys had a bit of a blast around the track.

The wicked paint job on the old bike shed.

An era of racing, long passed on, but only if those bleachers could talk, what stories they would tell.

How long have you been here? Nice work.

The mural on the lockup said established in 1916, and from the looks of things, the current track had been laid in the seventies, probably covering what they rode on before that. It was a nice end to a morning of new beginnings, and seeing the end of the line for a few more bikes, that never made it back into a garage. I hear from the lads, the track still gets used a bit by the local club. A training session for kids, twice a week keeps the track alive, at least for a few more years yet. And for the odd messenger meetings and fixie fiends, to show who is the coolest on the day. I just hope the encroaching subdivision does not claim it too soon. As it looks like it could make it to 100 years old, easy.

Scooters bike looking the part, as some of the older club members look on.

And the winner is, cycling, cause it's still better than walking.

Wicked Workshops #4

2008-02-11T12:19:00.003+13:00

Just when you thought there could not be more than one place, where bikes go to die. We found another one, not more than a km away form the last. This one was a bit more upmarket, called ‘Human Powered Vehicles’, and the idea of some sweet speed machines got my interest up (HPV’s are normally fully covered people machines, designed for speed runs). A quick ride down a bike path that followed the river, and we were there. And just like the last place, this had a pile of bikes sitting around the front yard in various states of unrepair. With about 150 bikes kicking around the place, I went for a bit of a ruffle around to see what I could find. What I found was a bit of Melbourne’s bike history, all sitting waiting to be claimed. I found about five different makes of bikes, built in and around the city in the last few decades. Not one of the companies still manufacturing anymore, but who could compete with China these days for price.

The shop floor display, they don't get much rain here apparently.

There was a nice workshop sitting in the middle of the yard, and from the look of things, the clutter and disorganisation continued it’s theme inside it. I wandered around, making conversation as I checked out everything of interest in the place. There was some good stuff coming out of some of the staff that worked there’s mouths. Kind of brought me back to the good old days of Adventure Cycles in Auckland, hey days, with Bruce and Brian out to change the world, and the wheel. They were feeling pretty proud about their new work stands, and work stations, I gave them a look of satisfaction back. With the new wheel stand they had just finished, looking like it could handle the like of a Harleys rear wheel, and also fix the delicate work on a road wheel, the same. The tools were well set out, with almost everything I could ever need, to fix anything in the yard hanging in it’s place. A welding torch and gas cutter on the corner, when that bit just doesn’t budge.

One of the nicely set out tool boards.

I thought it was fantastic that a place like this existed, when I spied the ‘Bike Shed’ earlier in the day, but to have two of them, so close to each other was crazy. But this one seemed to have a bit more order about it in the way stuff was stacked around the property. There was a lone female mechanic, working on an old Malvern Star Ten speed, she was busy and didn’t seemed to even notice me snapping away with the camera. The other three staff (it was hard to tell who was working there actually) were standing around, trying to make sense of a white board system, that looked far too confusing. The boss seemed to think he had cracked the cryptic white board code, I doubt it though from the state of it. With a bit of wheel building talk, they seemed to accept me as one of their own, kind of scary seeing how the bottom feeders, take me in as one of their own. But I think they have the same passion I have for bikes, the only difference is they have a lot more patience for old bikes, than I do.

The home made wheel trueing stand.

It was one of those workshops, much like most of them I have been in now thinking about it. But one of those places you can talk bikes all day, as time seems to stand still inside, as still as the lines of bikes waiting for new owners outside the door. They have three prices they charge for the bikes they recycle. One price for a waged worker, a lower price for students and the unemployed, and no price for asylum seekers and refugees. Kind of great to make the people that can afford it pay a bit more. There was a pretty standard fixie in the racks outside, with a price of A$1600, I think they had a moonshine still they were drinking from, hidden under a pile of bikes somewhere in the grounds. No one would be paying that price, but that’s the idea, it’s just a starting guide to grind down, till you can afford it. I had enough of Junkers by now, time to leave, and continue on my travels for the day. Must be time for another coffee by now, and this was not the sort of place to be having it.

Hey they are almost all there, nice work team.

Check out their website here, and some more pics here (when I get a chance to load them).

Wicked Workshops #3

2008-02-11T02:18:00.001+13:00

With a nice sleep in on a lazy Saturday morning (till at least 8.30), an easy breakfast while reading the morning paper, it almost felt like I was living a regular life for a moment or two. This was my last weekend in Melbourne for a while, and almost the end of my small break for this month. I still have a couple of workshops to find and to have a look around them, so I was getting a bit nervous I might miss out on them. But like usual, it took the boys all of 25 seconds to convince me to sway my day’s plans a little. The magic words were uttered, coffee and a bike recycling and public workshop visit. With the sun starting to warm things up a little, I could almost taste the coffee already, as I listened to the description of what we were about to encounter for the mornings visit. Not more than about a half hours spin from where I was staying, was a community project called Ceres. A collection of buildings with a outdoor café, a plant nursery, gardens, a outdoor market selling local and grown on the spot organic goodies, kindergartens, and school rooms. And tucked right into the corner of the property, was a bike recycling and public workshop area.

A whole load of recycled bikes, ready for their new owners.

As we arrived at the gates of the place, there was an enormous sign telling you it’s a ‘Car free zone’, kindly leave you vehicle at the gate, sweet. We rode on in, past the nursery, still to open up for the day, up to the very full bike rack on the edge of the café. There seemed to be a small bunch ride of about 15 riders about to leave the carpark. Not the ordinary bunch of roadies covered, from head to toe in lycra, but a bunch of down to earth looking bikes and riders to match. Every bike had the obligatory set of panniers or baskets, packed to the brim with what I can only imagine was a very nice lunch in each. They saddled up and left us to it, ahh the coffee was close, I could smell it already. The café was pretty busy for mid morning, but I suppose everyone had the same idea as us. There was many kids and dogs wandering around the place, good to see them getting dirty. Nice to see for a change, so different from some of the sterile café’s that tend to serve the good coffee these days. The bike shed opened at 11am, so we had a few coffees to go yet.

The well quiped work bench, I just wonder how many tools go missing here.

You want to know where dead bikes go to die, well by the looks of things most of them end up here. There was piles of shit everywhere, bikes in various piles of sizes, rusting away in the weather, together. There were tires heaped high, and wheels so plentiful, they even had time to make some pretty cool artwork with some of them. The doors had just opened to the shed, so I busted my way on in, but there was so much stuff in the two-levelled shed, I could only get a few feet in the door. But there was plenty to see, and most of it had had, a good life one day, but still most of it was there for a purpose. For a small fee of $10, and $5 if your unemployed, you can use the tools and workshop for the year. By the sounds of things, you could take you pick of the parts and pieces filling every nook and cranny, for free or worse, a nominal fee. There were bikes they had recycled themselves, and for a pittance, they could get you on the road, tell you which way to ride, and how to stay safe. Need some help with your repair or some advice on how to fix it yourself, well look no further, there is plenty of help available from the friendly staff kicking around.

And piles of small parts, stripped off bikes previously.

I had a good look around, and even managed to convince Lewis, who was on duty for the day, to let me climb the ladder, into the potential gold mine on the top floor. Man oh man, what a lot of stuff, from piles of new shiny spokes, to solid rusting chains, a fork maybe, or a recycled 16” wheel for your kids bike. Well you come to the right place. I had a good rifle through the shed, just in case there was something that needed to be saved. But alas, no such luck, but the guy looking through a pile of bikes in the front yard, looked pretty stoked with himself for his find. With such a small joining fee, and a pile of wicked stuff like this, a shed full of tools, and all the knowledge you could need. A space like this, is deffinatly needed in most big cities. Where else do those bikes end up, I shudder to think of the alternatives.

A fork anyone? ready for those old restoration jobs.

You can find them here. And a few more pics here.

Wicked Workshops #2

2008-02-05T23:28:00.001+13:00

‘COG’ Bike Café

Sometimes the simplest of ideas just fall together, and together they seem to work perfect with each other. What more do you need in a bike store, a well equipped workshop, a mechanic that knows his way around the bikes. A collection of parts and accessories to suit the most basic needs, some fruit bits locked up, and a phone to order those tricky parts you don’t carry. How about good coffee, it’s almost essential, if not one of the more necessary needs for both the staff, and customers alike. How about some nice quiet roads for the roadies, and some easy and expert, off road trails, right outside your front door. And how about some food, fresh muffins, baked while you wait, ohh and how about a nice smoothes as well. Well look no further, welcome to the COG, bike café.

we are here, and what a nice relaxing looking place.

The work shop, with the wall full of P&A, nice.

Sitting right on the Warburton Rail Trail, near Mt Evelyn in Melbourne, sits this wicked workshop. Surrounded by a load of native forest and a National Park, full to the brim with some pretty damn fine singletrack. We arrived early with bikes ready, to meet up with Damo, the part owner and resident do everything guy, for a ride. Damo was our guide for the morning, which was just perfect, as local knowledge in the forest is the only way to ride. Damo was helping to open up, positioning all the hire bikes and various other bikes for sale outside, when we arrived. We got a coffee, and checked out the place while we waited. The ‘COG’ was almost split in half, with one side devoted to the bikes, with workshop and P&A taking every possible spare spot. There was a pretty nice work stand, sitting right in the place of pride, right in the middle of the work shop floor. An old modified drafting stand, with an old cruiser frame mounted on top. This had the clamp on the head tube to hold the bikes, and in where the rear wheel sits, was a trueing stand, for wheel making. It even had some custom made flames added, to just add decoration, and to make it look even cooler than it was.

A double short espresso please, and a cable for my rear brake thanks.

The café side was just as cool, surrounding the beautiful coffee machine, was a whole load of yummy looking muffins, both savoury and sweet. Libby, Damo’s business and life partner, was busy with some baking, knocking out a few batches before she was off for a ride with a friend. There was an old stand up stove in the middle of the workspace, giving it the look of an old holiday home, kind of sweet. Down the wall was the overloaded notice board, full of good information. A few bike magazines, to waste the time away with your coffee, and a fantastic old gramophone case, adding to the homely look of the place. But as Damo reached to turn this old beauty on, I spied some modern sound equipment filling the insides, even better. The coffee was great, but the trails were beckoning, so we hit the road. Now right outside the door, the Warburton Rail Trail runs right past the front door. At about 50km long, and like most rail trails, some riding that suits even the most unfit riders. There were bikes passing almost constantly, all shapes and sizes riding them, and some large family looking groups by the looks.

I first met Damo at another World Singlespeed event. At almost 7 foot tall, he was wearing a tight fitting, purple jumpsuit, and large afro wig over his helmet. Not only did his costume make such a huge statement, but so did his bike, with faux tiger skin saddle, it was also fully wired for sound. A car audio system totally covering the front triangle, with two sets of speakers, one hanging off the front forks, and the others off the rear stays. Quadraphonic I think they call it. There was some very nice funk playing out load, and for some reason, it all worked together rather well, I was a fan. Since then I have met him at many events around the World, every time he has had the sound system with him on various bikes. With plans for another COG café, at the other end of the Rail Trail opening soon, I don’t think I will see him overseas so much this year. The mountainbiking was great, with the real riding starting, not ten minutes from the coffee machine. The trails were in perfect condition, a bit a rain a few days earlier, had managed to keep the dust away, and to pack the trail down a bit. The bush was full of natives, so the smell of eucalypts was intoxicating as we headed up to the summit for a look. We only had a few hours, being Sunday, Cog was going to be busy. So he showed us a few thrilling trails, so we could get a good idea of what was kicking around on his doorstep. And we were pleased he did show us, finding trails like this never happens while riding blind.

What more do you want to know.

Damo left us after a while, he had a café starting to fill up and some work to do unfortunately. Soon after him leaving us, we met Libby on the trail, just bike testing with a friend, and taking the dog for a run. Again, she was only leaving the café for a few hours, then back to work for her as well. We arrived almost in the front door of the café, after blasting down another nice bit of track, Righto, time for some more caffeine and a bit of solid sustenance. I couldn’t resist the fresh mango smoothes, and they were perfect finish to a fantastic morning. Time to head home to the city, and at only about 40km away, I thought I was in the middle of nowhere moments before. There were still punters riding past the door, most of them stopping for a look, and a purchase. I will be back soon, as the trails were too good to miss, and with coffee this close to the trailhead, why wouldn’t I.

And you can read more about the Cafe, and a few more pics here.

Wicked Workshops #1

2008-02-05T13:36:00.000+13:00

Jessie’s Bike Bar, Melbourne

With a few days off between races, it was time for a bit of riding and a bit of retail therapy. Time to recharge the batteries, and recharge the mind, and what better way than hanging out in a few workshops for the week. You would think that by now, it would be the furthest thing on my mind, more bikes, but your wrong, it’s the first thing on my mind usually. I always have an interest in other mechanics, and some of the places they work from, makes me feel normal in my addiction. There are always some cool bikes or tools to look at, and always some new projects in the pipeline to discover, hidden away in the corner or on the stand. Even an old beauty, being restored or modified to some modern glory. Melbourne seems to have some of the more eclectic workshops that I have come across. And with a week or so up my sleeve, I will track four of these, not so obvious, and well hidden gems for your viewing.

First up is the very hard to find, well disguised, ‘Bike Bar’. I can’t even remember where it is, even though I have been there three times. I have even been in the small street it sits on, and still could not find it (will get the address for you later). One thing gives it away, a nice old early rusting 50’s Holden pickup hanging in the car park, with ‘The Bike Bar’ painted on the thing. This is enough to get me excited, as I know what awaits me inside. I first visited Jessie, and his magnificent workshop a few years ago. I had just raced the ‘Singlespeed World Champs 04’ out in Castlemaine, north of Melbourne. Not my most successful attempt at racing, with almost half year of preparation, I was out in a count. Crashing badly on the first of four laps, putting a huge rip and hole in my knee (13 stitches, and a nice hematoma down the whole leg). It was, surprisingly enough, a result of a mechanical failure of my front disc brake, seems I get to work on everyone’s bikes, pre race, except my own. So Jessie was the Hope agent, and we ended up there, picking a few parts up, and getting side tracked as usual along the way.

Just one corner of his very full workshop, what more you say?

A lot of things have changed here since my last visit, a couple of years ago, mostly more stuff, filling the place almost to capacity. But there were still plenty of places to stand, to get a good view of the surrounding fruit hanging of the walls and shelves. Jessie is one of those perfectionists, a mechanic with passion, and with vision. He had done his stints in normal bike shops, also a bit of time as race mechanic for a French team, many years ago. Working now with not only with bikes, but has moved into the tool making sides of things as well. Featured around the walls and shelves are many different customers jobs, in various states of repair, and many of Jessie’s own projects. He has moved a bit sideways from when I last left him, with the workshop filling up with many more cool old machines to play with. His new interest is machining bike tools up, sharpening existing ones, and making and designing more mechanic friendly tools for the trade. He is loving the micro-machining side of sharpening and tool making. There was a name for it, but I forgot, there was too much stuff going on to remember the current affliction he has, but he was happy all the same.

Some of the wool jersey's, hanging around waiting.

He is still the Hope agent, so you can still see remnants of normality in his workshop in places. Boxes of disc brakes, bleed kits, hubs and old hub bodies lining the shelves. I spied a rack of vintage wool, climbing a ladder (it’s hanging out of the way of greasy hands) I flicked through his collection, ‘any for sale?’ I asked, kind of expecting to hear no. ‘Well if there is anything YOU want, I am sure you could have it’, but I couldn’t do it, thinking of the bag I was already having trouble closing, I declined. But I did register my interest in a nice classic Panasonic team jersey, maybe I can pick it up next time I visit. I spent a couple of hours, watching him work on a mates wheel, being sidetracked by another friend working on a project in the back of the workshop. The world famous Gonzo, (Gonzo Labs, another crazy local mechanic) was making a gravity bike. Small 20” wheels, long heavy suspended frame, no pedals, and looking very fast. This he was making for the impending gravity games in Sydney, in a month or so, apparently he is one of two Aussies invited to race with the worlds best (it’s a newish sport here, but famous elsewhere, 1.5km race on steep roads, standing start, must find out more). He was borrowing space and machines off Jessie, to finish his fantastic machine.

Only one old lady owner, so still looking pretty good for it's age.

There were plenty of nice old bikes, lining the walls, a nice original Gary Fisher MTB, one of the first to be imported here on display, a few early Malvern Stars (Aussie icon brand). A nice old Western Flyer Cruiser form 1948 above the door, in original condition, Jessie being only the second owner. Jessie is a fantastic wheel builder, so we talked wheels for a while, we are a dieing breed, so some wheel building language was quite nice for a change. I had a good look around all the back rooms and dark corners of the place, a sign of respect really between mechanics. He knows I will see something of interest, and drag out and ask questions on half finished projects he has long forgotten about. I will be going back before I leave, I have a special tool I need made, and this is the only guy I think is capable of making it for me. It’s nice to know there are places like this for me to escape to every now and again, where I feel at home. I could envisage owning such a place like this in the future, but what a great place to do all your inventing and fettling, you would need no more.

Love the display here, could easily work in this corner for a while, three to go.

And a few more shots of the workshop here.

TDU Stage #6

2008-02-03T23:24:00.001+13:00

The feeling around the team camp was pretty damn good, the boys were wearing smiles you couldn’t wipe off in a hurry. Andre was looking his worried self, nervous as hell, but you could still see his smile though. The staff were all happy as well, but we still had a bit of work to do, as second place, and yesterdays leader Alan Davis, was only 7 seconds behind, and could easily take the tour. In fact the top 10 riders, were only 29 second off the tour win, now you can understand Andre’s nervousness. Doing a few calculations, you realise how serious second place is, with 3,2,1 seconds available on both of the intermediate sprints, and 10,6,4 seconds for the stage, the 7 seconds is not a comfortable lead. But that didn’t change my work, just another day for the mechanics, yes I was thinking of the situation, but what more could I do. The bikes would be perfect at the start, and should make the distance, bar a few crashes, ready to win again. I spent a little bit more time, making sure and double checking things one more time. The stage was a flat street circuit of 5.5 km per lap, 16 laps in total for a distance of 88km. And the best thing was it was a late afternoon start, so a bit of time for relaxing before the race, and another chance to really make sure the bikes were more than perfect.

The leaders board, before the start. Things are looking pretty close.

The circuit was in the middle of town, so a short ride to the start for the boys, and man the town was busy. They were expecting a record crowd of 85,000, and by the looks of things, checking out the course, they had already reached that total. It was going to be a fun day, let the race begin. With a few laps warming up, all the teams were looking great. They were all posing for pictures for the crowd, and for themselves. It was the last race of many, and for some, the last time they will be in this fine country till next years race. It was nice for the public, as they got to hang real close to the riders all week, and today was no change. I saw at least 20 people, handing over there orange jersey’s (interesting fact in Australia, they call jerseys, ‘gernsey’s’, stems from the footy I hear, I thought they were a little bit affected by the sun when I heard it for the first time, crazy) they had from the others days race, for signing. The boys were right into it, anything for the public, makes them come back, time and time again. Great for the sport, and great for next years tour. Now on to the race.

Don't look so nervous Andre, you got Adam beside you, all the way, chill.

They called the top riders to the line, and as usual it took a few minutes to get them sorted. I was in the pits for the day, feeding and wheels if needed, and of course manning the camera for the day. My work was done, I waited for the start, wheels in hand just in case of any issues at the line. The gun exploded through the PA with such force, it brought the hair on my head to a standstill. I was very excited, but deep down inside, I was nervous, not my usual 10% nervousness, but it was a mighty 65%, doh. Not normal for me, but this was my first race with the men, things were a lot more serious with a UCI Pro race, the crowds were larger than I had seen before with the Women, things just felt a lot different today. But the boys were reaching the first corner, and with some super fast speed, it looked fantastic for the crowd. The course was great for spectatoring, as you saw them riding both directions on most of the lap, so great to get a good look at the competition twice per lap.

The speed was high, but it still didn’t stop multiple attacks, trying to leave the bunch. UNISA was controling the front of the race until the first sprint. They wanted it bad for Alan Davis, and rightly so, they had a good chance to win everything, that’s if we left them to it, but no chance. Right up to the first sprint, there was also CSC riding hard, looked a bit strange, as they had nothing to gain from it. The bell rang out, signaling the sprint was up next time around. I moved position so I could see the finish line, and just as I got there, the bunch came screaming around the corner. UNISA was in a good place, but to my left, I could see a couple of black jerseys of Greg and Andre coming through the field. They rode closer, but it was too hard to pick, Andre was getting boxed in big time, he’s not the best at positioning himself right, but this looked dodgey. They were on the line, Alan took the 3 secs, Greg took the 2 secs, as Andre was boxed in good, Alan moved closer, 4 seconds from GC. Right away you could see he was not happy, hand raised for the comissionares to see the replay. But it was not to be, hope the next one would be a good one. Andre would have to win the next sprint, and hope Alan was no where to be seen, if he was to hold on to the lead.

The boys are really looking good, controlling and patrolling well.

The race carried on, with again the race being controlled by CSC, Team UNISA had nothing left, it looked like they had cooked most of the riders with the first sprint. It’s always bad when you see the dirty tricks being played by some of the teams in the lead. Why were CSC racing I wonder, well make up your own mind, but money talks, and winners walk proud, even if it’s a dirty tactic. Who knows what favour they were paying back, or what price they had asked for to keep things under control, It’s one of those things you never hear about too much, but is bleedingly obvious if you look around the odd races. But more later, the mafia is everywhere in cycling. But we had a sprint to win, the bell lap was coming up fast. And ring it did, the speed was unbelievable with CSC on the front, but they had done nothing all week, so probably had some energy left. The bunch came around the corner fast, and in the front I saw a few more black shirts than last time. They sprint was on, and I could see Andre now, with his ochre jersey, shining in the sunlight. His placement was good this time, ready after the last blocking he got. And I could see Alan Davis sneaking around the middle, and bang, it was over, Andre takes the 3 seconds. Can’t remember who got the 2 and 1 seconds, (sure you can look it up) but we were back in it, and Andre was looking a bit happier this time round the corner.

And the winner is, Andre, check out the rest of the team in the background.

The team was working hard on the front, now was their time to shine, Andre was so close now, time to give everything for the cause. The boys were looking good, a lot better than UNISA team, as most of the team was hanging around the back of the peloton. With a couple of others dropping off the back, hey they have done well this week, but time for the big boys to show them what they got left. And what a show, adressing every attack with vigour, showing the competition not to mess with our boy today. I was trying not to watch the big screen, not 50m away, but was still sneaking a look every now and again. There was a crash a few days later, a Rabobank rider went down in the sprint, of course in an orange jersey. So the idiots running the live feed decided to replay the crash, right in the middle of the race, maybe if you were watching at home with sound, you might know what they were on about. But I was just glancing at the screen half heartedly, and wham, a huge orange (ochre) jersey going down, I freaked, thinking Andre had crashed with five laps to go. I leaped to attention, wheels at hand to find the crash. Only to realise that it was just the Rabo guy going down, replay number one. Just when my heart had a chance to get below 180 bpm, a couple of laps later, same shit, crash, my heart raced, until I realised it was the same replay, once again. I hope I meet the producer at the function tonight, I might just see how his reactions are going.

But the last bell was ringing, one lap to go. The boys were chasing down another attack, still looking strong, Andre was close by at 10th wheel. It was now getting exciting, with less then 1km to go I got into the finish straight ready for action. And action it was, they rounded the corner in full flight, I could see a single orange jersey, a few riders back, but no lead out from the boys in black. I waited, and the front was a mess, with 150m to go, the sprint was on, riders everywhere, what a mess, but I could still see Andre hanging around the front. And sprint he did, Alan Davis was stuck behind, and could not get a free run, and by the looks of things, he was done. Andre smashed the lot of them, taking the stage win, equalling the record of four stage wins. He had done it, we had done it as well, Andre wins the Tour Down Under. Not only taking the tour win, 4 stages, the Classic Race, and the sprint Jersey, but also the first white Jersey of the UCI Pro Tour. What a machine, he is going to great to look after this season, especially if he can do this again at a few races. The team was elated, the staff were excited, it was after all a fantastic start for the Men, and for the new Team HighRoad. A great end to the month of wins.

What an occasion, the team explodes with emotion upon winning the Tour, and the press is about to attack him now.

And here are the last pics of the tour, right here, unless I get the urge to show some more bikes.

Now for a couple of weeks off, time for some riding, and some pretty cool shops that I have found here in Melbourne. More later on the racing, when I start with the Geelong Women's Tour, the first World Cup of the season, again in Geelong. Then to the beautiful country of new Zealand for the Tour of Wellington.

TDU Stage #5

2008-02-03T23:11:00.000+13:00

With Andre sitting close to first place in the GC, things were getting serious for all the main players. Stage 5 was piped as the deciding stage, Willunga to Willunga, a two different lap course, including the infamous (famous for locals, but small in comparison climbs in Europe)Willunga hill, for a total of 147km. It was a simple race really, with a nice flat loop out to Aldinga beach, then back into the little town of Willunga, this they did three times. Then a single lap of the hill, a short little climb, up to about 8% in places, but not what you would really call difficult. Then follow the ridge for a bit, then a nice winding decent, almost all downhill to the way to the finish. The next stage was a flat 88km Criterium around the city circuit, not any surprises expected there, so today was our only chance to get it in the bag. The team was excited, Andre was nervous as hell, as I think the reality of him winning the tour was becoming a reality. We had a couple of climbers ready for action, to chase any attacks that might threaten our positions, and to also do some attacking to hurt the opposition. We could not do any more. The crowd was stating to fill up at every vantage point around the course, pretty impressive really as the announcer was saying there were 75,000 spectators out already, and the race had not even started yet.

Hey it's Machello, with a baby Kangaroo, doesn't he look happy.

We had been out here twice in the week leading up to the start of the tour. Every one of the boys had had a good look at every corner and possible place to attack, and to be potentially be attacked on, so we were ready. Team UNISA was looking decidedly nervous, as can be expected when they have the leaders and the sprint jersey riding on the back of a young rider. The Spanish teams were hungry for some action, and I think, most of the other good riders, were all looking at this stage to make their moves, and salvage what they could of the tour. With only 20 seconds between the first three places, and 50 seconds between the first 50, it could go anyway today. I was mechanic in the team car today, at least for half the race, as Nick, the head guy wanted to see the hill section. Fine by me, as I was new to working with the director, I would leave the most stressful part of the race to them. Plus it would give me a good chance to check out the finish, hopefully to see the German Giant, weave his magic again in the sprint.

First lap about to finish, with Greg up the road about 4 mins, with a couple of others.

We were off, and right from the get go, the speed was high, on the leg out to the coast, we were moving at speeds of around 70km/hr, pretty fast for the first lap. As we hit the beach leg, the crowd was massive, everyone waving Aussie flags in the faces of the riders. It was Australia Day, a national holiday (which was to be celebrated on Monday instead), celebrating the day the British wrangled the country off the Aborigines, who had only been there for about 30,000 years. Mostly it was a day to do all things Aussie, drink, bbq, hang out at the beach, and watch a bike race. By the time we finished the first lap, the speed was still high, and there was a small break out the front with our own Kiwi, Greg Henderson and a couple of others in it (think about 5 of them). They were riding hard to keep away, and the good thing was that they would take the two sprint time bonuses for the day. Leaving them out of the hands of the Aussie in Ochre. The break stayed away for most of the three laps, but they reel them in by the time the hill lap started.

Nick had jumped in the car by now, and I feed the boys before the last climb, just before Willunga Hill. They started climbing, and as expected there was numerous attacks off the front. We controlled most of them, with Adam Hansen chasing down almost all of them himself. Some fantastic team work, as he also helped keep Andre in the lead bunch as well. The word came over the radio, we were excited at first, as there was a break of about 25 riders in the first group over the top. The bunch had splintered behind this bunch, with the leader, and most of his team caught back in it. Here the radio played it’s usual tricks, one moment Andre was in the lead bunch, then he wasn’t. We hear the leader was on the front of the second bunch, almost a minute behind, and was riding hard by him self. No one was going to give him any help, and by the sounds of things, his team was running on empty as well. Still I waited for the numbers in the lead bunch, and no joy, as he tried to tell a few more of the riders numbers, but no Andre. I was hoping, and had all my fingers I could possibly cross, crossed. He must be wrong, but he is a big boy, and it was a very fast ascent, not being the climbing type, and with multiple attacks, this could be the race.

Such a nice shot, bet it came out ok.

I helped the boys get organised for the returning riders, chairs, tents and bags organised. The parents of Greg Henderson came over for a seat in the shade, and still no radio confirmation. There was a small attack happening off the front of the small group now. A lone Spanish rider was off the front, almost a minute in front, and with only 10 km to go, it was getting to close to call. I ran to the finish chute as the first police came through the finish, I was hopeful, but still no information coming over the sound system. I could hear the announcer starting to get excited, so they must be close. I could barely see the road, let alone the sprint about to happen. I stuck my camera above the massive crowd, and snapped blindly as the sprint fanged past me. I caught only one glimpse of a black rider passing me, he was in front. The legs were bulging out of his shorts, and I recognised the upper body movements as I sighed a breath of relief. Andre did it again, took the stage, number three for the tour, and from my calculations, took the lead and the Ochre Jersey. Sweet, we were in front for the first time all week. By the time the team got back to the vehicles, they were jumping for joy, so happy for the work they had done bringing Andre to the lead, sounds like there was much more happening out on the road than we knew about. But the press were about to maul him again, so we made for the base, there was work to do. We would celebrate after tomorrow’s stage, that’s if we can hang on to the lead, only 88km to go.

Andre past me, about 30m to the finsh, and he's already in front.

And some more from the stage here.

TDU Stage #4

2008-02-02T01:07:00.000+13:00

Part of the celebrations happening this week included a peoples ride, that was happening today on the same course as today’s stage. The difference is that they were starting about 5.30am, we had the luxury of sleeping a little longer, with an 11am start. Stage #4, was from the riverside town of Mannum, 134km to the town of Strathalbyn. There was a few distances available for the public, a full length, half and quarter. With 3500 entries it was going to be a long day for some of the participants and those organising the race. We were told the last few years were pretty hot, think they got 44’c out on the road last year, with a few heart attacks, a death, and a few people lost and disorientated throughout the day. Everyone riding this years event was bar coded, and dressed in a bright orange jersey (so the spotter planes could see them if they went walkabout). Every quarter of the ride, they had to enter a rest stop, get scanned in, wait under shade, drink and replenish themselves for ten minutes (no early departures we allowed), before they were scanned out of the rest stop. Medical staff were on hand, to keep them back, just in case they thought they were not looking good. But hey, it’s just a safety issue, and we all know how bad a shape some of the public are on these rides. Kind of funny really, imagine if they did it to the big boys as well, what a mess when there’s a race to be won.

Some of the wicked old buildings in the start area.

The transfer to the start, was pretty long from the hotel, even with our escort it seemed to take hours, driving through the parched countryside. And with time ticking over fast, we would have about 40mins at the start before we were racing. But everything worked out sweet, everyone was ready on time, and the local crowd there to see the race off, was great. The local talent and schools, had plenty of action happening on the stage, to keep everyone entertained while waiting for the gun. I was in the team car, for the first time on this tour, I was excited, but also a little bit nervous (I am the new guy in the team remember). I am not sure why, as I have been in race cars, more than 500 races before this, including racing for the men at the Worlds a few times, so there was no reason to sweat it. But my intuition was telling me something was up, so I kept busy, right till the starters gun. The stage started with a nice little climb for a km or so out of the town, and I spied team CSC riders all warming up before the start, I told the boys to keep an eye out, and they started to warm up as well, just in case. After the start, we climbed slowly, with a side/head wind for another 20km to a small set of hills, it was going to be the start of the fireworks here for sure, so we were all ready with some good plans. My brother Steve (from the bike shop back in NZ) was over on business, so I managed to swindle him a ride in the car, for his fist time in a serious race, he was excited.

Berni posing for the girls.

We were under way, and as expected, CSC was trying everything they could to get away, but to no avail, teams reeled in every attack, including ourselves. As we started getting into the hills, the inevitable call on the race radio came up, ‘HighRoad, defect’, shit, that was us, and to make it worse the speed was on, and the race was about to bust wide open. Our first puncture for the race, and with our best climber for the week, Adam Hansen, I jumped out and sorted it, taking a little bit more time than usual (he was in the 25t at the back, and the Zipp’s were not liking going into his bike), he was off. The bunch had split by this time, and a group of about 50 riders were off the front. Andre was it there, as well as a couple of the other boys, kind of safe, but still, it was early on, and we needed a full team up there, if we wanted to win today. So the pressure was on, the front group had put the hammer down, and three of the lads were struggling to get organised in the back group. No one else was wanting to help, as you can imagine, so it was left up to us. They started chasing hard, and the boys were working great together, just when I thought they may have made it, the time check came through with the boys loosing another 25 sec’s. But somehow, Adam managed to get away from the group, and attack off the front, with Scotty and Rabon being left behind. It worked sweet, Adam managed to get away from the group and find his way back to the leading bunch, pulling a few others back with him as well.

The first good climb of the day, and the first (and only) puncture of the tour coming up.

I relaxed a little as we speed up to the leading bunch. But just as it was passing through a little town, ‘CRASH' (‘chute’ actually, the French word for the same thing) came over the radio. We rounded the corner, and I managed to count our four riders passing the corner safely, waiting to hear on the race radio who was down, I waited, nothing, so I jumped out, along with a few other mechanics, wheels in hand looking for the downed riders. Sweet, there was only one rider down, a French rider from the AG2 team, phew, the lads were safe. After this, things seemed to settle down a bit, time for some feeding from the car, the temperate was reading 37’c, but it didn’t seem that hot in the car, thank god for air-conditioning. Soon enough, the other bunches behind joined the leaders, bunch complete. Now to wait for the next attacks, and before you could say, ‘feed zone approaching’ the speed was on. A couple of the boys were spewing as one of the teams attacked through the feed zone. This is not good, a sign of no respect for the other riders, as most of them missed their feed bags, but they calmed down a bit when we gave them some food and drinks.

The scrum for position to talk with Andre, what a mess.

The road was littered by now with people in orange jersey’s, from the peoples ride still happening. I knew we would catch some of them, but there was heaps of them, hiding under every bit of shade they could find, (they could also have rode out for a look after they finished, but I doubt it, by the shape of some of them). We were nearing the finish, bunch was still together and was getting nervous. Many teams tried to escape, but were pulled back in by the three teams head of the GC, Rabobank, Team UNISA, and us. 1km to go and the speed was up super high, our boys were fighting hard to lead out Andre, and what a team. They rounded the corner, with two of us in a good place, 500m to go, CRASH comes over the radio, shit, I almost bit the ends of my fingers off in nervousness, but we were ok. Team HighRoad in the front, HighRoad, HighRoad takes the win, Andre take his second stage of the tour, we rejoiced in the car like a bunch of screaming school girls (not that I know what that sounds like, I just have a good imagination). We arrived at our van and the place was going wild, all the riders had arrived, and were ecstatic with the win, some fantastic tactics, and some fantastic teamwork had brought another stage win for the boys. The crash looked pretty mean on the playback screen, with one of the Italian riders, giving a mean head butt (it was an accident he was quoted saying later) to a Rabobank rider, Matt Hayman. He reached out over 1m to hit him with his head in the heat of the sprint, it looked mean, but only a broken collar bone, luckily.

'And of course, I would like to thank my mechanic Benny for a fantastic bike today'.

Andre was surrounded by press in a flash, leaving him no time to even get changed before they were shoving microphones and cameras in his face. But the bikes were on the roof, and the riders were in the van, we were outta here once again heading for home with a smile on our faces. The boys were animated the whole way hame, talking about the race and all the action of the day. I was watching the punters still grovelling their way to the finish on their own crusade to finish what they started, hours earlier in Mannum. With a bit of work to do, and a few bikes to wash and tune, time was of the essence, and the race village was full to the brim with the public, hoping to get their orange shirts signed by some of the riders. Waiting near our stand for more than a couple of hours, was two fans, when Andre finally turned up after the podium and doping control, I grabbed their shirts off them and got them signed before his disappeared into the hotel for the night. We celebrated a little with the team after the race, and everyone was still smiling. We were 2nd on GC, with only 18secs to first place getter, Alan Davis, nice.

And need more to look at, try here.