The Deutschland Tour on Cycling.TV has been a pretty good race so far, with some exciting finishes. The prologue was won by Gusev of Discovery Channel, who continues to hold the Leaders jersey and the best young rider jersey. Astaná-Würth scored a victory in stage one when Assan Bazayev outsprinted Erik Zabel and Danilo Napolitano to his first professional win. CSC’s Jens Voigt beat Davide Rabellin of Gerolsteiner and Astaná-Würth’s Andrey Kashechkin to take stage 2 in style.
Today the teen-aged Team Wiesenhof-AKUD rider Gerald Ciolek out sprinted Erik Zabel and the other sprint favorites to take a most excellent stage. Great sprint performances out of Ciolek are not too surprising, even though he is currently only 19 and on a Continental team — in 2005 he beat Zabel and Gerosteiner’s Robert Förster in a bunch sprint to become the youngest ever National Champion of Germany. Now in his second Pro year, rumors are T-Mobile is looking to pick him up from Wiesenhof for next year.
Overall Gusev continues to hold the leaders Yellow Jersey (by fractions of a second over Erik Zabel) along with the Best Young Rider’s White Jersey. Erik Zabel has a solid lead in the sprinters Green Jersey competition. The mountains really only begin tomorrow (Hartz mountains between Witsenhausen and Schweinfurt), but right now Gerolsteiner’s Stefan Schumacher has the lead for the Polka Dot jersey.
Voigt’s win in stage 2 was one part of a CSC hat trick for the day, winning three different races in one day. CSC as a ProTour team can and is fielding teams in three races across Europe right now, besides Voigt’s win with the D-Tour team, Fabian Cancellara took a win in the day stage of the Tour of Denmark and Marcus Ljungqvist won the day at the Paris-Corrèze. Amazing.
The great thing about Cycling.TV is that we can watch the 2–3 hour live show when it airs (usually starts around 9am EST) or if we can go out and do whatever needs to be done and watch the edited broadcast (60-90 minutes) of the stage anytime after they post it later that night. Awesome!
Johann wanted to know what cyclocross was, since I had referred to my amateur cyclo-cross racing in Germany and wanting to get a good cyclo-cross bike for winter and commuting use. Sure enough looking through the archives of Cycling.TV and there was the British National Cyclo-cross Championships from earlier this year. We watched Helen Wyman of Team Fat Birds Don’t Fly (I love that team name!) win the women’s championship and Discovery Channel’s Roger Hammond take the mens championship. Johann now knows what cyclo-cross is and thinks it very cool.
Did I say I like Cycling.TV ??
Wednesday, August 2, 2006
Today while we watched the Deutschland Tour this morning on Cycling TV, Johann helped me put new cleats on my Sidi Dominator’s
(by far, the best mountain/spd shoe I have ever used!) and switch out the pedals on the bike from the Shimano SPD-R’s — which I loathe — to some straight SPD’s until I can get some Coffee Covers for my Speedplay’s
.
Finally after a lite lunch I headed out for a short day at work. Really I only had to get a package packed and labeled for UPS pickup tomorrow. Unfortunately somehow time had escaped and it was now 1pm. As I stepped outside the temperature was in the triple digits and the humidity was at 90%. It felt like a sweltering hot Montgomery Alabama summer, not Mystic Connecticut.
Armed with 2 liters of water on my back and two weak energy drink bottles on the bike, I headed out of Mystic and straight into a 10–12 mph headwind! Off the big ring…and start spinning. I thought really hard about taking the cross country shortcut between Groton Long Point and Bluff Point, but it is a rocky path with lots of sharp gravel sections…
After two and a half hours at work, I refilled the camel back and bottles and headed home. About a third of the way home though I caught a piece of glass in the front tire, a tiny sliver really, but sure enough straight into the tube. As I rolled to a stop I heard the rear tire start to hiss. Sure enough… Double flatted. Damned glass shards…that’s three flats by them in two weeks.
Unfortunately I was only prepared to fix one tube at best, so I ended up borrowing a cell phone to call Tammy. She and Johann picked me up and we went straight to Mystic Cycle Center for a pair of Armadillo tires, more tubes, and two new patch kits.
While it might have all the makings for a miserable ride today…commute only, too hot, head wind, double flatting, that hill. Actually it was the single best ride since getting back on the bike. Sure I was miserably hot and sucking down water constantly, but I was spinning much smoother and I could feel the smoother spin in my climbing and riding into the headwind. It just felt better today than it has since Idaho. My form is coming back…now to get my weight all the way back down.
Wednesday, August 2, 2006
Johann: Daddy! Daddy! Gooseberry won!
me: ??!?
Johann: Gooseberry won the stage today.
me: You mean the Deutschland Tour? The Tour of Germany?
Johann: Yeah, Gooseberry won. From Discovery.
me: You mean Vladimir Gusev?
Johann: Yeah, Goosberry won the prologue!
We’re watching Stage One now on Cycling.TV.
Have I mentioned that Cycling.tv before?
If not, this channel really shows the potential for the future. They are subscription and advertiser supported, but the ad breaks are very cycling specific (Giro, Speedplay and Cervélo are the ones I remember), short and only shown a couple times in a 90 minute block. Finally I can watch Paris-Roubaix and the other Spring Classics live!!
For a more wide ranging Online TV experience…including the free content from Cycling.TV try Channel Chooser. Free to air, cable and satellite tv channels from around the world, free to your desktop. Includes NASA TV, Sci-Fi Channel and BBC…hey! can I cancel my Cable TV now?
An informative and fun interview with one of the great personalities of the TdF and cycling in Europe. It is an interview from a few years back, but fun to read even now. Did you know he is actually sponsored?
We didn’t see as much of him this year as in previous tours which is a shame. Don’t know if it was the French TV not covering him or OLN’s not airing the early portion of most stages.
In other news…
New entries might be a little light on this site for the next few days as I revamp this site and prepare another web site project to launch in August. Once I’m satified with them on the iMac the changes will show up here…
