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BOBKE: BOB ROLL'S TOUR REPORT: TRAFFIC JAMS & BAD COFFEE
Bobke
July 10, 2010
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Oh Zappy, this is heinous…we are stuck in the worst traffic jam
possible. We don’t have much a drive to make tonight, but we’ve moved
about five feet in the last hour. It’s always good when the Tour visits
new towns, but it can come back to bite all of us if they have no clue
about crowd and traffic control. They have none here in Station des
Rousses. Making matters worse, this humongous thunder and hail storm
just blew through. It was like the world was coming to an end. Luckily,
the all the riders were already in off the course, but it was bad.
As
for the race today, I’d say Sylvain Chavanel definitely silenced all of
his doubters with his performance today. And, as France’s highest paid
rider who hadn’t done too much as of late, there were plenty of doubters
out there for sure. But I was absolutely impressed with him – that was
a tough ride, no doubt about it. The thing is when you level insults or
accusations about riders at this level, they will react and the best
way to react is to attack. Sylvain shelled all those guys today! I’d
have to say that his teammate Jerome Pineau also rode well today by
taking five of six KoM awards.
With a stage like today, it came
as no surprise to see all the real GC contenders sit still. This was a
course that you could go really hard on and make up about 15 seconds,
but really hurt yourself for the harder stage that comes tomorrow where
you could easily give up a few minutes. Of all the guys, if I was Andy
Schleck I would be most concerned. He was isolated and vulnerable today
and that can’t happen tomorrow. I’d say Ryder looked good today and
it’s nice to see him climb to third all though I doubt he’ll still be
there by race end.
The big question in my mind now is what the
weather is going to do. If this stuff hangs around tomorrow it’s gonna
be grim and it will extrapolate the gaps at the finish; three seconds
will turn into 30 seconds and 30 seconds will turn into three minutes.
You
know what I was thinking? They need to get more Italians to move to
France if only so that they’d have some good coffee in the morning. The
only problem is that once you live in Italy you would never move to
France. How can a country that gets it so right with a bike race get it
all so wrong with coffee in the morning? I’ll leave you with that to
ponder.
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