May 14, 2006: Giro d’Italia Stage 8
Locals in Pescara informed us that unless we were able to arrive prior to 8am, driving our rental car up Passo Lanciano would be impossible. However, we did find out that if we drove to Pretoro at the base of the eastern ascent of Passo Lanciano (the Giro peloton was ascending the northern face of the mountain) there would be shuttle buses to transport tifosi to the summit. Once we made our way out of the maze that is Pescara, signs soon appeared for Passo Lanciano along the approximate 80km drive to the mountain nestled within the Abruzzo National Park. I gather it’s a fairly popular ski area in the winter, so signage to the mountain was plentiful. We had been in Italy for a week, and during this drive was the first time we started to see cyclists (most likely many en route to ascend Passo Lanciano for the purpose of spectating, just like us). We arrived in Pretoro and found no sign of the Giro, so we just started driving up the east face thinking that maybe we were fed bogus information and perhaps we would be able to drive our way to the summit since we weren’t on the actual race route. Plenty of cyclists were already laboring heavily up the climb: local teams all decked out in matching kits, some old guys on steel bikes from yesteryear devoid of STI or Ergo shifting, and quite a few recreational cyclists on mountain bikes or cheap road bikes, all steadfastly determined to make their way up the approximate 15 km climb.

Only a few kilometers up the slope the road was closed. After a few moments of indecision behind a few equally bewildered motorists, I did what any Italian driver would do: move out of the line, pass everybody, and see what was happening at the police roadblock. We discovered that, indeed, the road was closed to traffic, but a dirt road heading to who-knows-where to the right had a “P” logo which we assumed to be our cue to direct us to the shuttle bus parking. Thus started our off-road adventure in tiny Euro-cars. We just kept following the P signs on the dirt road which rapidly deteriorated into an entity no better than a washed out goat path. A very pricey looking Audi hot rod 2 cars in front of us was having second thoughts about the “road” conditions and proceeded to drive exceedingly slowly, much to the consternation of antsy tifosi in the caravan behind them. The Audi’s speed grew so slow that the car actually got stuck on a very steep section consisting of nothing more than loose rocks, spinning its wheels in futility. The guy in front of me hopped out, pushed the car, and got it moving. Then, I could see in the rear view mirror a crazed Smart car weaving through traffic behind us. He was truly 4-wheeling it, just careening over bushes, rocks, and saplings, and flew past me, roared around the Audi, and disappeared in a cloud of dust and a hail of kicked up rocks. The Audi got going and I floored our wee Fiat Panda to negotiate the rock scree. We soon found ourselves in a substantial mountain meadow and was directed to a place to park by Giro workers. We grabbed our backpack full of munchies and cold weather gear, then proceeded to the line of tour buses visible on the far side of the meadow waiting to drive us the remaining 10 km up to the summit. The last couple to board the bus were also Americans, the only other English speakers we were to encounter all day.

The bus driver expertly negotiated his full-size tour bus up the numerous hairpin switchbacks, all the while complaining loudly and gesticulating at the weaker cyclists who were forced to zig-zag along the road to negotiate the steep slope directly in front of our bumper. Amazingly, no flailing cyclists were flattened or jettisoned over the guardrail. We were dropped off near the summit and walked a few hundred meters further up the road to the finish area and Giro village. There were plenty of promotional booths, a booth to place bets on today’s stage, live acoustic music, and the Giro infrastructure all commandeering a tiny mountain village at the base of some downhill ski slopes. We arrived at the summit about 4 hours prior to the race finish. I didn’t really have any idea how crowded the mountain would be. Like L’Alpe d’Huez with maybe 600,000 people? Totally deserted? Somewhere in between? I predicted it wouldn’t be too crowded since I figured that most people eager to witness mountain finishes would wait until the Giro’s last week when the serious climbing would take place. Additionally, those climbs are much more centrally located to other nations north of Italy instead of the position we were at in Abruzzo, the southernmost stretch of the Giro. We found out later that evening that perhaps 100,000 people were on Passo Lanciano. At this point of the day it was crowded, but not crazy crowded, at the summit and we had no idea at all how many people were already postioned along the extent of the climb.

After wandering about the booths, checking out the jumbo-tron (tuned at this point to Formula 1 racing), and looking at the finish line being built, we started to walk down the north face looking for room along the road to set up camp. The road was rather narrow and steep (probably a steady 10% grade). After walking only 350 meters down from the finish line we stopped because at that juncture was the first wide open space free of spectators along the snow fencing. There was a huge crowd camped out with a view of the finish line and the final 100 meters, but the crowd was just now beginning to trickle down the slope to find viewing which guaranteed up close and personal glimpses of weary Giro participants.

So, we camped out exactly at the 350 meters to go sign and waited for the race to arrive. Loudspeakers wired in to the finish line announcer extended down the mountain approximately every 50 meters for the entire last kilometer of the climb providing us with an audio feed of the entire stage.

About 3 hours before the race arrived I proceeded to create my chalk masterpiece on the asphalt. It was quite a delicate art not getting run over by the countless Giro staff cars, police cars, and police motorcycles which continually trickled up the slope. Additionally, there was an endless stream of cyclists going both uphill and downhill and thousands of people heading downhill to claim roadside viewing spots of their own. The day before I ventured to the Italian version of Home Depot looking for graffiti implements. I was all set to purchase some quick drying spray paint, but noticed a bucket of chalk while waiting in line at the cashier and opted for the non-permanent option instead. While I believed I could get away with spray-painting the street in broad daylight, I didn’t want to push my luck and have to deal with The Man, so chalk it was. Since I was at the Giro deep in the heart of Italy, I didn’t want to upset the partisan crowd so I first drew a gigantic BASSO across the street. It was good practice with the chalk, and it was particularly funny listening to the crowd gathering to view my progress. This is what I heard:

“B… B… B… B… B-A… B-A… Bah… Bah… Bah… Bas… Bas… Bas… Bas… Basso!… Basso!… Basso!… Ivan Basso!… Bravo Ivan Basso!”

But how to draw Bobke Strut? The light bulb blinked into luminescence above my head: make it Scrabble-style off of BASSO. The B had a vertical BOBKE and the first S had a vertical STRUT extending down the slope. This is when the tifosi really got confused:

“Bob… Bob… Bob-ka?… Bob-ka?… Bob-ka St… Bob-ka Str… Bob-ka Stroot?… Bob-ka Stroot?”

Some Italians asked me what it meant and I tried and tried in my meager Italian to explain myself, “Bob Roll? 7-11? Americano Sette Undieci squadra? OLN? OLN tv? Americano ex-pro? Americano ex-pro nickname?” Nickname was the only word they glommed onto. I think they interpreted my ramblings as Bobke Strut being some kind of American nickname for Basso. They just had no clue who Bob Roll is. Oh well, the confusion of thousands of people certainly provided entertaining street theatre.

I started to get worried when the weather proceeded to turn crappy. What was once a sunny, 60 degree day was rapidly deteriorating as the race approached. It drizzled for a few minutes about 2 hours before the Giro arrived and I was afraid my art work would wash away. Fortunately, the weather held although it was getting gloomier, colder, and exceedingly dismal as the afternoon progressed. At the end of the day we would find the whole summit engulfed inside a cloud. Chalk also proves to be rather resilient. I gave it a quick second application, particularly the red borders, and it endured through the onslaught of countless cars, bikes, and pedestrian traffic.

With about 2 hours until the Giro’s arrival, the entire roadside behind the barriers had filled up on both sides of the road as far as I could see down the mountain. About 1 hour prior to the race arriving the promotional caravan rolled up the slope, probably about 50 vehicles all together. They drove until the first vehicle hit the finish line, parked, and shut off their engines. Then all the people inside the vehicles got out and started walking up and down the last 500 meters of the course passing out promo crap. We got some cheap plastic flags, packaged salami, bandages, literature from Polar, hats, and some honey. When the Saunier Duval-Prodir hotties strutted by in hot pants, knee high go-go boots, and Saunier Duval jerseys the older women next to us sneered and kept repeating “prostituta” as long as they were in view. It’s this type of crowd reaction which made me glad I didn’t try to sketch out a 40 foot tall penis in addition to my Basso/Bobke Strut graffiti. I think this would have gone over as well as if I drew it within Vatican City for the Pope’s perusal. I would not have made it off the mountain alive.

Once the promo caravan cleared out with about 45 minutes to go, the police arrived. They walked down from the summit and spaced themselves about 2 every 50 meters for the entire last kilometer. I draped a jacket over the snow fence and was soon asked to move it. At first I thought this was a safety issue, nothing loose that a rider could snag while he passed close to the fencing, but it turned out the guy was a Giro publicity rep. He was making sure all of the logos afixed to the snow fencing would be unobstructed for the cameras following the riders. I saw the same guy make several people remove their Di Luca banners which were also concealing sponsor logos.

My Italian was sufficient to hear what was going on down the mountain as the riders began their approximate 30 minute ascent (at least for the fast guys). The mountain top let out a collective groan when Di Luca (the local boy) got shelled. The peloton had disintgrated rather quickly on the lower slopes of the climb. By the time riders reached me with 350 meters to go, they came by in ones or twos, then groups of maybe 4-6. I could recognize a fair amount of the riders, but not all by any means. Unfortunately I left my start list in the car and I was going from memory and visuals only.

Amazingly, after about 10 minutes and maybe about 1/3 of the peloton through to the finish, people started piling into the road so they could walk uphill to the podium presentations. It was a real clusterfuck, especially since riders started coasting back down the climb after only about 8 minutes. Anybody who finished high up and who didn’t have to make a podium appearance or anti-doping test simply donned their winter clothing, scored some Coke, and made a beeline down off the mountain immediately. Nobody had helmets, everyone was decked out in jackets, knee warmers, and warm hats, and many were slurping down Coke while coasting down the steep slope no-handed. Then the pros started to get exceedingly pissed when doofusses got in their way. The riders did not want to touch their brakes. Surprisingly, at least to me, most seemed remarkably fresh and composed. Some Quick-Step riders started losing their shit and screamed at several teenagers on mountain bikes who almost took them out. Then a bunch of spectators, especially old men, started ripping into the kids, too. After about 20 minutes we hopped the fence and started walking uphill to the finish as well. Jan Ullrich, on his way down, came to a stop about 1 foot behind my wife, just patiently waiting for the crowd to part. He looked damn lean, just with a gigantic head. Two pretty large gruppettos rolled by us on the way up to the finish line. At least each had a motorcycle escort to urge the crowds to part. The cops totally lost the ability to keep the road clear, although they didn’t really seem to care after about the first 25 riders came through.

We were directed off the course at 150 meters to go where the team cars were directed into the field at the base of the downhill ski slopes. The later riders stayed at the top to ride down in the cars. I came across Sylvain Calzati standing in front of an AG2R car examining his totally fucked up bike. Both Ergo levers were destroyed and his jacket had some tears by his elbow. He looked fine, and I bet he had some type of mishap after he finished since he surely wasn’t climbing with his heavy jacket and tights. It rained hard for a couple of minutes, but then thankfully stopped. At this point, the temperature dipped into the low 40s and a cloud engulfed the entire mountain-top. Amazingly, Simoni and Di Luca were still sitting outside in the RAI studio fielding questions from the announcers. They were bundled up, but stayed outside for a good 1/2 hour after the podium ceremonies.

Then the off-the-mountain clusterfuck commenced. VIP vehicles, team vehicles, Giro vehicles, and police vehicles got off first. Then people who drove up early in the morning in their cars/scooters/motorcycles made the descent. Last off were the thousands of us poor schmoes who utilized the shuttle buses. We saw some poor AG2R rider, stuck at the top with his team car, trying to change out of his wet clothes under the raised rear hatchback door of the station wagon. The car was stuffed to the gills with wheels, duffle bags, and coolers and the rider (I don’t know who) was perched on the edge of the bumper peeling off his cycling shoes and looking particularly miserable. Then, all of a sudden, Ivan Basso appears with Bjarne Riis and a police escort. He has to walk about 300-400 meters through the scrum to his team car. I was dumbfounded that the team car didn’t make its way to the podium to pick him up. I saw some cops breaking up a fight. All we could see was a crying young woman sitting on the ground and 2 guys in their mid-20s each screaming at police officers. Didn’t quite figure out what that was all about.

Then it was time to figure out what was up with the buses. There was absolutely no organization at the summit and the handful of police still with us didn’t care at all about an orderly procession. It was a total free-for-all. What happened was buses started to appear at the summit turn-around already full. People were walking down the mountain and intercepting the buses prior to them reaching the summit. So that’s what we did, too. We probably walked about 500-600 meters down and finally found a bus with room. Then we rode up to the summit, turned around, and then drove down to the makeshift pasture parking lot where we successfully found our rental car (thankfully with no flat tires from the earlier 4-wheeling escapade).

Passo Lanciano photos:

A view of the Passo Lanciano finish line. Hydraulic lifts just elevated the finish line apparatus up into the air. I believe the structures with open windows are where journalists are housed. The riders will be approaching the finish line from the right. And who knew that Kid Rock (red t-shirt) was a Giro fan.

Looking a few feet to my left, this is the on-site RAI tv studio on the Passo Lanciano summit. In the background you can see the downhill ski slopes, the chairlift, and the “Welcome to Passo Lanciano” spelled out in the grass.

Looking just to the left of the RAI studio is the Giro podium. In years past, the Giro has continued upwards another 8 kilometers to a dead-end summit called the Block Haus. The road up this climb begins just to the right of the condo in the background. I think the logistics of negotiating a dead-end summit with very limited parking proved too unwieldy.

A bit further past the finish line are these rider facilities for massage (I presume) and anti-doping. And yes, I believe that patch of white is the last snowy evidence of ski season.

I’m standing in the road at 150 meters to go looking upwards to the finish line, trying hard not to get crushed by a frisky police horse to my left. On the road is spray-painted “Vai Killer”, words of encouragement for local favorite Danilo Di Luca. The only killing done that day by Di Luca was the collective crushing of his fans’ spirit when he got dropped about half way up the finishing climb.

A T-Mobile team car arrives at the summit well in advance of the peloton, perhaps to greet their team with post-race food and warm clothing.

This sign lets everyone know that the Giro publicity village is not far away.

It just wouldn’t be a professional bike race without a few models as eye candy, in this case perched atop special Giro-edition Piaggio scooters.

There it is, in all its glory: the Basso/Bobke Strut scrabble creation at 350 meters to go.

The Giro promotional caravan arrives at the Passo Lanciano summit.

My chalk masterpiece yet again, from my vantage point directly underneath the 350 meters to go sign. You can make out the “350″ spray painted on street indicating to the Giro crew where the sign needs to be situated.

A blurry Ivan Basso, only 350 meters from a commanding victory, undoubtedly pleased to see his name in print but surely wondering, “What the hell is Bobke Strut?”

Danilo Di Luca rolls through 1:32 after Basso in 8th place amidst a thunderous ovation. Danilo, repeat after me, you’re a man for the Classics not Grand Tours…2005 was a fluke.

Serguei Gonchar adorned in pink, but for only 350 more meters, with Victor Hugo Pena right behind the maglia rosa.

John Gadret (right) is about 350 meters from finishing 41st on the day, hot on the wheel of Columbian Leonardo Duque (Cofidis). Ivan Parra and Wim Van Huffel also rolled across the finish line credited with the same time for the day as Duque and Gadret. While Phonak’s Jose Enrique Gutierrez’s performance is likely the revelation of this year’s Giro, Gadret’s performance in the high mountains during the Giro’s final week also warrant a mention, particularly since this is his Grand Tour debut.

Check out today’s (Sunday, May 14th) Giro d’Italia coverage on OLN. There’s a rather large BASSO across the road at exactly 350 meters to go. Vertically (Scrabble-style) from the B and first S is an equally large BOBKE STRUT. Some Gazzetto della Sporto journalists photographed me chalking the street (I wanted to be a bit more environmentally conscientious than using spray paint. Plus, the summit was swarmed with police and I didn’t want to push my luck and get arrested). All the Italians (and of the approximately 100,000 people on the climb, I think 99% were Italian) had no clue at all what Bobke Strut was. It was truly comical listening to the hundreds and hundreds of people walking over it and exclaiming “Bas-so!!!!” and then uttering a perplexed “Boob-ka Stroot?”. I tried to explain it in my uber-minimal Italian, but I don’t think anybody understood.

And how about how psychic I am. Basso kicked ass today. And I even snapped a photo of him right in front of my Basso sign. I got Rujano to look at me as he rode by inches away, and Gadret turned his head around. Probably not expecting an “Allez Gadret” deep in Italy. And damn, most of those guys out there were freaky skinny. The whole mountain top let out a collective moan of grief when the loudspeakers said that Di Luca (the local boy, he lives about 40km away and trains on Passo Lanciano frequently) fell off the pace. There was applause of respect for Basso, but not thunderous ovations.

More, much more when I get back in a week.

Ciao…

George Hincapie wants nothing more than to emerge victorious at Paris-Roubaix. This year, 2006, everything looked to be going Hincapie’s way. A major selection emerged after the Forest of Arenberg, and George appeared to be in the driver’s seat. Two strong teammates with him. Boonen isolated. Then, the inexplicable happened. As we all know, his steerer tube went “snappy snappy” leaving George in tears. A collective gasp spread through the cycling world…George is undoubtedly cursed. And he has been for some time.

1992(?): Georgeous George wins a stage of the Tour DuPont as an amateur, then is relegated to last for dangerous riding in the field sprint. Cursed.
1997: Hincapie wins the USPRO title…for 30 minutes. Then he’s disqualified for drafting a team vehicle following a flat tire late in the race. Cursed.
1998: Tour de France stage 3. Hincapie misses the yellow jersey by 2 seconds. Cursed.
2000: Sydney Olympic Games. Ullrich, Kloden, and Vinokourov TTT away from the field. Mysteriously, Hincapie and Armstrong do not realize the T-Mobile trio have rolled into the gold,silver, bronze sunset and think that their chase group is the gold medal group. Until Armstong looks on the Jumbo-tron and says, ” I saw that there were three riders in front of us and I said ‘George, who are those three?’” George’s reply was predictable and will not be printed here. Cursed.
2002: Hincapie initiates the winning break at Ghent-Wevelgem and looks to have it all wrapped up. Then Mario Cipollini, out of the blue, bridges to the break and torches everybody for victory. It is the only victory Cipo has ever taken which wasn’t a field sprint. Hincapie? Cursed.
2002: Hincapie eats it in a ditch at Paris-Roubaix, nearly drowns, and has to see his punk teammate Tom Boonen get on the podium. Yeah, George is cursed.
2005: Paris-Roubaix. The final three. Hincapie, Boonen, Flecha. George, “I can win…I can win…I can win…”. Nope. Cursed.

Bobby Julich may be flying high now with CSC, but things haven’t always been so peachy…
1991 and 1992 were spectacular seasons for the young, amateur Julich having twice finished in the Tour DuPont GC top-ten. Gatorade, the team of Gianni Bugno, came calling. Julich, not knowing a word of Italian and feeling a wee bit nervous about Europe at age 20, said no. His team for the 1993 season went belly up in January of that year. Oops. Say hello to a year of misery as a privateer in the US. Cursed.
1995: Julich given a no confidence vote by Motorola and is unable to ride the Tour DuPont. Instead of racing with the big boys, Julich shows up angry and fearsomely fit at Tour de Moore. Double curse. Julich?–denied his stage race, Me?–I get to feel his wrath first-hand for 105 miles.
1996: Julich has to undergo heart surgery at Duke University to remedy uncontrollable heart rate accelerations. Cursed.
1999: Tour de France. Lance wins. Julich crashes out in the time trial. Cursed.
2000: Tour de France. Smacked around by Jeroen Blijlevens after finishing in Paris. You should have squashed that goon. Cursed.
2004: Tour de France stage 13. Bobby goes back to the CSC car to fetch some bottles and is taken out by Bjarne. D’oh. Cursed.
2005: Fred-ly chainrings make their way on to Julich’s bike. Cursed.

Lance Armstrong. Well, one can’t be more cursed than a cancer death sentence.

All of these calamities may seem random, unrelated, and just all-around, old-fashioned bad luck. Not so, I say. I have definitive proof that these 3 poor souls’ lives were forever altered by the Performance Bicycle cover curse. Forget Sports Illustrated, the Perf catalog is far more wicked mojo. George, Lance, Bobby–they’re all there (and some other random dude on the left who’s so cursed I don’t even know who he is. His mere existence has been stricken from all memory.) And they’re all cursed.

Image source: Performance Bicycle

Just how does one neutralize the cover curse? Lance knows. Bobby didn’t quite know, but employed a pretty successful Plan B (the miracle man, Bjarne Riis). George? Well, George hasn’t figured it out yet.

The Lance Solution: In the closing stages of Lance’s 7th consecutive victory at the Tour de France, something rather peculiar began making public appearances in the Lance camp. Lots and lots of cryptic pictograms, creepy enought to make Proctor & Gamble conspiracy freaks blush. A rather nefarious looking responsible party emerged for interviews (”Lenny Futura”? How about “Louis Cyphre”).

The cat was out of the bag.

All of that miracle Tour de France luck on display since the ‘99 TdF can be traced back to Lance fighting fire with fire and conjuring up more potent juju to negate the Cover Curse. Says Lance, “Hey, you can’t test positive for voodoo. Suck on that, UCI.” Lance’s minions were constantly battling Armstrong in those final days of the Tour, insisting that seemingly benign arrangements of symbols such as these adorn his top tube:

However, what Lance really wanted to unveil to the world was this setup:

Photographer: Tim Maloney
Image source: http://210.10.97.10/photos/2005/tour05/tech/?id=bikes4/cntdf05-techla7-1

Lance says, “This particular arrangement is titled ‘Seething Rage’…Translation: ‘I hate Christian Vandevelde, I hate Filippo Simeoni, I hate Dave Zabriskie, I hate Floyd Landis, and I hate Roberto Heras.’ May you all break collarbones, crash into walls, crash in TTTs, put your arm through glass doors, adopt goofy time trial positions, forever suck in le Tour, and fail drug tests.” And now that Lance has gotten antsy and fidgety less than a year into his retirement, I’d watch myself if I happened to be a world-class marathoner. Lance has you in his crosshairs and he’s playing for keeps.

Exactly one week from today I will be boarding a plane for a two-week vacation in Italy. Not-so-coincidentally, a certain Italian grand tour will be taking place the entire time we’re overseas. However, since man cannot live on professional cycling alone the trip will not be dominated by tifosi-ism, but there will be two stages we’ll see in person. On May 14th, we’ll be at (or very near) the summit of the Giro’s first mountain top finish on stage 8’s Passo Lanciano. The next day, May 15th, we’ll partake in the start village festivities at Francavilla Al Mare for stage 9.

Here’s my action-packed agenda for those 2 days:

1. I will author Passo Lanciano road graffiti (most likely a very prominent BobkeStrut.com)

1a. If anybody has a particularly amusing suggestion for road graffiti, I will try to add your comments to Passo Lanciano as well (spray paint supply permitting…)

2. Phil Liggett will mention my road graffiti on OLN that evening.

3. I will stalk the freakiest man in cyclocross who’s making his grand tour debut: AG2R’s John Gadret.

4. I will shake Giovanni Lombardi’s hand and tell him he needs to ride all 3 Grand Tours this year, too, just to shore up his peloton badass rep.

5. I will shake Marino Lejaretta’s hand because he rode 9 grand tours in a row.

6. I will shake Allan Peiper’s hand because he was an inspiration for my early cycling days.

7. I will tell Michael Rasmussen to eat a sandwich.

8. I will tell Basque nutter Roberto Laiseka to eat a sandwich.

9. I will tell Charlie Wegelius to eat a sandwich.

10. I will make sure Jan Ullrich does not eat any sandwiches.

11. I will not be punched in the face by Wladimir Belli.

12. I will not get run over by a motorcycle on the Passo Lanciano.

13. I will “liberate” some Giro signs.

14. I will watch taciturn chain-smokers wash bikes (because I’m a cycling geek).

My other cycling-related venture will be a trip to Madonna del Ghisallo prior to our flight home out of Milan. After all, I must make my pilgrimage to Mecca.

I’ve noticed a common theme in the life of Chris Horner these past few weeks. See if you notice anything suspect:

Exhibit A: post Fleche-Wallonne, April 19th

Photo source: http://www.cyclingnews.com/photos/2006/apr06/
flechewallonne06/index.php?id=fleche_bd_20060419_161033

Exhibit B: post Liege-Bastogne-Liege, April 23rd

Photo source: http://www.cyclingnews.com/photos/2006/apr06/lbl06/
index.php?id=lbl_finish_bd_20060423_164901

Exhibit C: post Tour de Romandie Stage 2, April 27th

Photo source: http://www.velonews.com/race/int/articles/9798.0.html

If I ran Davitamon-Lotto, there would be a person on the payroll whose job title reads “Chris Horner’s Cabana Boy” — someone whose sole responsibility consists of waiting at the finish line of every race to provide Horner with a freakin’ chair. Is a wee bit of post-race comfort too much to ask? This man is riding out of his skin, and what happens when he crosses the finish line? Horner just wants to sit down and compose himself, scarf down a Coke, maybe get the grime wiped off his face, and he’s got nothin’ but cold, damp asphalt/concrete at his disposal. And a couple of months ago Horner had to hit up a California bike shop for a tube, CO2 cartridges, and a seat pack for his Ridley so he wouldn’t be stranded on a pre-TofC training ride. Where’s all that megabucks ProTour team budget going? Can’t someone at Davitamon-Lotto toss some spare change Horner’s way so he can at least have one of these in time for the Tour de France:

Forgive me for posting rather infrequently these days, but my pesky Clark Kent duties have proven to be a rather pernicious intrusion into time formerly devoted to my exhaustive ingestion of all things pro cycling.

Limited time, limited verbiage, however, does not necessarily equate to limited understanding. One only needs to glance back in American history to the power of economical word choice. Esteemed orator Edward Everett bloviated onwards for approximately two hours at the dedication of the Gettysburg cemetery, then handed over the rostrum to Abraham Lincoln who laid waste to the previous speechmeister in 2 minutes.

While my prose will likely never be equated to the rhetorical gifts of Honest Abe, ladies and gentlemen, I give you the 2nd annual distillation of Amstel Gold into haiku form. There’s no need to read those lengthy cyclingnews, velonews, pezcycling, etc. reports, when everything you need to know has been condensed into 68 finely crafted syllables:

Frank Schleck
Anonymous Lux
All those pre-race favorites
Can’t catch me, bitches!

Steffen Wesemann
Effervescent watts
Sweet…I ripped the field to shreds
What the…? Who’s Frank Schleck?

Michael Boogerd
Waiting for Oscar
Phil, Bobke mock my tactics
Once more, I blew it…

Chris Horner
Sole Yank at Amstel
Tour of Georgia?…Full of scrubs
Give me a man’s race

Why does Team Discovery Channel hate George Hincapie? He got the Rumsfeld treatment: “George, you go to Roubaix with the cheap-ass commuter franken-bikes we have in Waterloo, not the pull-out-all-the-stops setup you want”.

If Lance Armstrong wanted to win Paris-Roubaix, he wouldn’t be rolling into the Compiegne staging area on this rig (I’m surprised this hasn’t been purged from the site yet). Which Trek engineer would have the balls to tell Armstrong his Roubaix killer is nothing more than a crappier version of his road frame married to a commuter bike rear triangle? I think it would rather be something on the order of this: Roger Hammond’s custom ‘cross bike. Except Lance would have got on the phone to Keith Bontrager,

“Keith?…Yeah, this is Lance. Winning le Tour is fine and all, but I really want to stick it to Frenchie. Make me a bike that will win Paris-Roubaix. Pull some of that crazy Santa Cruz ‘cross karma out of your ass, dust off the torches, and make me something sweet. I want five proto-types in a week. And they better be at the UCI weight minimum and strong enough to hit every freakin’ rock in 3 Peaks and not break.” 

Click. And this would be in January.

It’s funny, for a company that has Keith Bontrager on the payroll and an ex-world champion on the roster, Trek makes a pretty crappy ‘cross bike. But the fine print states Roger’s not riding your ordinary X01, he managed to have a custom frame built with Madone geometry. Slap some fat road tubulars on that and you’re good to go 259 km of Paris-Roubaix madness. Maybe George would have been arriving in the Roubaix velodrome like this instead.

Pretty much all of the ProTour teams who fielded riders with a chance of being a factor in Paris-Roubaix rolled out their special, cobble-crunching Roubaix bikes, and it pleases my aesthetic inclinations that the adaptations are subtle, not the beat-you-over-the-head-with-a-sledge-hammer-mad-scientist-cobble-tamer designs of years past. The tech warfare was beginning to get way out of hand, and then Frederic Guesdon thankfully burst that bubble with his 1997 win on a totally rigid, goddamned tank of a bike. It was all steel, had 36-spoke MA-40 wheels, and he even had the audacity to win on clinchers. I think it actually weighed in at a not-so-svelte 22-23 lbs. Outside of Team Discovery Channel’s micro rear suspension setups, to the untrained eye (hell, even the trained eye) this year’s Roubaix beaters were decidedly normal. There’s really nothing more to Roubaix success than doin’ it old-school like Peter Van Petegem: fat tubies, box rims, and a Rolls saddle.

Now, let’s make fun of some people…

Allesandro Ballan: Was Lampre too cheap to spring for 2 pairs of ‘cross levers, did Ballan and Franzoi have to split a set and use one each? Actually, Franzoi did have a complete set on his bike which leads me to believe that Ballan conjured up the same idea as me, you really only need one lever dedicated to feathering the rear brake for micro speed adjustments.

Frederic Guesdon: Holy crap, what the hell kind of cable hanger is that? Did the mechanic find some random pieces of scrap metal lying in the street and say, “Yeah, that’ll work…” It’s not like FdJ didn’t have an elite worlds ‘cross racer (Frances Mourey) finish on the podium this past January. Don’t they still have some ‘cross parts lying around in their truck full of tech goodies? And I hope somebody re-aligned his rear wheel before the race started…

Tom Boonen: Boonen pulled the old Jedi mind trick on cyclingnews.com, because I don’t think he rode this bike during Roubaix. Mr. Cyclocosm mentioned this before, but check every photo of Boonen during Roubaix and look at the bar tape and fork colors. Different bikes.

Obi-wan Boonenobi: “This is the bike I rode”
Hapless journalist: “Yes, this is the bike you rode Tom”
OwB: “Move along, there’s nothing to see here”
HJ: “Yes, we’re moving along.”

Day at the spa: Things are a bit different when you’re a scrub team in an uber-Classic. You know you don’t have a chance in hell of doing well, so you have to set your sites a bit lower. And for Agritubel, those sites are stupefyingly low. This is what they race for, the chance for their highest finisher (in this case Christophe Laurent, 39th place) to have his bike styled by some Euro fashion plate. Check it out, the wash is over and now it’s getting the blow drier treatment. And I’m sure everyone in the grupetto were wondering just what the hell was going on, because Laurent just barely squeaked by his Lithuanian teammate Aivaras Baranauskas (41st place) with a mid-pack bike throw for the honors. Also, based on photos I’ve seen over the years of the rider’s abysmal, medieval post-race showers, I think I’d opt to get hosed down in the parking lot by my mechanic to cleanse myself of Roubaix grime before he gets to work on the bikes. I’m surprised Laurent isn’t out here getting the deft power-washer/blow-drier treatment along with his bike.

Oops: I think he blasted that rear derailleur, too…

Can we go home now?: And let’s hear it for Koldo Fernandez (80th), Andoni Aranaga (87th), Markel Irizar (91st), and Joseba Zubeldia (102nd), the poor bastards from Euskatel-Euskadi who drew the short straws and had to race The Hell of the North. Those freaky Basque mountain goats actually survived and didn’t bail in the first feed zone. Chapeau!

There are quite a few rider nicknames floating around the past and present pro peloton. Outside of a few apt and appropriate monikers like “The Tashkent Terror” (Djamolodine Abdujaparov) or “The Cannibal” (Eddy Merckx, of course), one has to admit the corpus of material is rather staid, if not out-and-out pitiful. Amongst the league of nations making up the pro peloton, however, the Italians seem to be in a class by themselves regarding not only their predilection for embarrassing nicknames, but their continuous prediliction for self-administered embarrassing nicknames.

But it just can’t end there. Nope. These lame-ass nicknames come to life on their saddles for all the world to see. Let’s take a walk down memory lane:

1. Claudi Chiappucci aka “Il Diablo”

Image source: http://www.gs-bike.com/shop/index.php?cPath=37&osCsid=7d1e556d726f14edae2eb4f273594128

It’s hard to be a badass “Il Diablo” when you’ve got a cherub face and looked to be all of 16 years old while in the prime of your cycling career. Plus, there was already a fetid German dressed in a devil suit spectating at every Tour de France you ever rode who already laid claim to being “The Devil”. Claudio, you’re a day late and 20,000 lire short…

2. Marco Pantani aka “The Pirate”

Image source: http://www.herneweb.com/image.php?imageID=197

I’m not the biggest Lance Armstrong fan, but he hit the nail on the head during his 2000 Tour de France Ventoux gifting fallout,

“I call him Elephantino, not Il Pirata because last time I checked you’re not supposed to give yourself nicknames,” Armstrong said. “The Italian media gave him the name Elephantino, so for me that’s the official name. I can’t say my name is ‘Big Tex’.”

Game, set, match to Mr. Armstrong.

3. Paolo Bettini aka “El Grillo” (The Cricket)

Image source: http://www.cyclingnews.com/tech.php?id=photos/2004/tech/features/sanremo/MSR04_05

Ok, at least Bettini didn’t commit the fashion crime of having some chirpy Jiminy Cricket icon flitting about on his saddle, but this faux pas comes pretty close. After winning the World Cup, Bettini showed up at the beginning of the next season sporting this World Cup homage saddle on his ride. The problem is, you can’t autograph your own saddle. That just needs to be excised with an indelible Sharpie right away.

4. Filippo Pozzato aka Blond Angel

Image source: http://www.cyclingnews.com/photos/2006/mar06/msr06/index.php?id=Pipposaddle

Oh. My. God. Is this the saddle of the man who just won the 2006 edition of Milan-San Remo, or is this the saddle of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer character. If I were a UCI commissaire, Filippo Pozzato would have been relegated to last in Milan-San Remo for fashion crimes against humanity.

Thankfully, there are a few Italian professionals sporting saddles which carry a wee bit more gravitas than “Blond Angel”. Leave it to me to scoop the cycling paparazzi with these images:

Exhibit A. Filippo “Die Lance Die” Simeoni’s fizik saddle:

Simple, yet elegant. Says Simeoni, “Now Lance can kiss my ass every time I ride my bike”.

Exhibit B. Giovanni “Jules” Lombardi’s saddle:

Quentin Tarantino rips off material from all walks of life. Having been duly impressed by the embroidery on this very saddle visiting the Giro way back when, Jules Winnfield ended up with an amazingly similar wallet in Pulp Fiction. Of course, there can be only one. While Andrea Tafi was still breaking legs in the peloton this saddle was known to make an occasional public appearance. These days the “Bad Motherfucker” torch has been passed to evergreen Giovanni Lombardi. Never mind Lombardi’s prior Grand Tour stage wins and Olympic gold medal, anyone who notches a single season Grand Tour triple-header is a freak.

My road racing wheels are decked out with Michelin Pro Race tires, my ‘cross bike has Michelin Mud and Michelin Sprint tires for training. Did you ever wonder who that chubby little character on the label is who’s waving at you? The Michelin Man, aka “Bibendum”, hasn’t always appeared in his present benign, innocuous persona. Back in 1898, when Michelin only dealt with bicycle tires, their anthropomorphic tire-man was a cigar-chomping, monocled, sinister icon. Here is Bibendum’s history in a (rather lengthy) nutshell:

The Michelin Man was anything but cuddly in his earliest incarnations. He had a frightful, mummy-like aspect then, and sometimes appeared as a gladiator or a kickboxer. In the Italian market he was a grandiloquent memoirist, a nimble ballroom dancer, and an incorrigible ladies’ man. Stranger still, back then he was known as the “road drunkard.” To this day his official name is Bibendum, the Latin gerundive meaning “drinking to be done.” The name comes from the first series of posters featuring him, which bore the Latin legend Nunc est bibendum–”Now is the time to drink”–and depicted the tire man hoisting a champagne goblet filled with nails and broken glass, sometimes garnished with a horseshoe. The seemingly tortured conceit, as the ad copy spelled out, was that “Michelin tires drink up obstacles”–i.e., they wouldn’t puncture easily.

Yet what sounds today like a preposterously ill- advised advertising campaign made keen good sense at its moment in cultural history. And the quirkiness of Bibendum’s origins is part of what inspires such loyalty among his fans today.
[…]

In 1889 the brothers André and Édouard Michelin took control of a struggling rubber products business in Clermont-Ferrand, an industrial city in central France. According to the company’s official history, a bicyclist came to their workshop in 1889 with a flat tire. Pneumatic (inflatable) tires had just been invented by John Boyd Dunlop the year before. Pneumatics provided a much more comfortable ride than the alternative–solid rubber tires–but they were subject to punctures, especially since roads were so poor. In fixing the flat, the brothers discovered that the customer’s Dunlops were glued to the rims, making patches extremely time-consuming. They soon developed and patented a detachable pneumatic tire that could be repaired in 15 minutes or so. Next they pioneered pneumatic tires for carriages, and by 1895 an early automobile known as the Éclair (it looked like one) completed a 750-mile race on Michelin tires.

During this period Bibendum was in gestation. His first kick in the womb came in 1893 when André argued to the skeptical Paris Society of Civil Engineers that pneumatic tires could “drink up obstacles.” Fetal Bibendum kicked again in 1894, when Édouard motioned to stacks of tires at an auto exposition in Lyon and commented to André, “Add some arms, and you’d say they were men.”

Then, in 1897, while thumbing through a commercial artist’s portfolio, André had a fateful epiphany. It was triggered by a sketch that had been rejected by a Munich brewery, showing a legendary king hoisting a stein and uttering a Latin toast. André told the artist, who went by the pen name O’Galop, to substitute a tire man for the king. In O’Galop’s final version, completed in April 1898, Bibendum is flanked by two tattered, flaccid rivals who couldn’t hold their rusty nails. To contemporaries, the competitors’ caricatured faces were readily recognizable as those of John Boyd Dunlop and the then-chief of Continental Tire.

Image source: http://vintage.artehouse.com/perl/search.pl?search=michelin

If Bibendum was made of tires, the reader may ask, why wasn’t he black? Simple answer: Tires weren’t black until 1912, when makers first began adding carbon black as a preservative. Until then they were either a gray-white or a light, translucent beige.

Image source: http://vintage.artehouse.com/perl/search.pl?search=michelin

While it may seem astounding that a company would base an advertising campaign on a Latin motto, the Michelins weren’t wooing the masses. Both motoring and bicycling were rich men’s avocations. Accordingly, O’Galop’s Bibendum was, like his customers, quite upper crust, smoking a fat Havana cigar and wearing a lorgnette.

Image source: http://vintage.artehouse.com/perl/search.pl?search=michelin

André Michelin gave Bibendum his first speaking engagement in December 1898 at a Paris cycle show. He set up a large cardboard cutout of the tire man at the Michelin booth and hired a cabaret comedian to crouch behind it and provide in-character banter. According to a biography of Bibendum by Olivier Darman, André had specified that he wanted someone with “perfect elocution,” “keen repartee,” and “wit without vulgarity.” So large a crowd is said to have formed around the spectacle that rival vendors became enraged, pushing and shoving broke out, and gendarmes had to be called in to restore order.

Image source: http://vintage.artehouse.com/perl/search.pl?search=michelin

In those days competition was brutal, and so was Bibendum. One poster depicts him as a gladiator in the Coliseum, his sandaled foot across the throat of a writhing, bleeding tire man, with three tattered tire corpses littering the arena behind him. Competitors responded in kind. A maker of solid rubber tires depicted its own symbolic champion, a Pre-Raphaelite beauty, about to drive a huge nail into a cowering Bibendum, who abjectly begs for his life.

Image source: http://vintage.artehouse.com/perl/search.pl?search=michelin

In 1907, Michelin launched a travel magazine in Italy, giving Bibendum a regular column. In one, he wrote of a Ball of Nations he had attended, praising ladies representing various lands. According to biographer Darman’s translation, Bibendum addressed Italy: “O you sublime Madonna, Rome’s destiny, accept my homage, you whose eyes shine with the splendors of the Renaissance.” In an almost cruel postscript, Bibendum reported the crushing impact his social conquests were having on his rivals: “ashen-faced suitors with fixed smiles, living symbols of a shattered illusion.” No Pillsbury Doughboy he!

With iconic status, alas, comes a certain responsibility to one’s public. As a product succeeds, its mascot must appeal to a wider audience–and tone down his sharper edges. In the early 1900s, Bibendum swore off violence and began to strike more playful poses–say, riding a bike while flinging tires like Frisbees–and he increasingly defined himself as the motorist’s guardian angel. In a 1914 poster he assists a family with a flat by donating the biggest, choicest tire from his own midsection, as an azure sky shows through the hole left in his abdomen.

These behavioral modifications were complemented by physical ones. As the late biologist Stephen Jay Gould once observed in an essay on Mickey Mouse, successful mascots frequently undergo an evolutionary process he called “neoteny”: They develop increasingly juvenile physical characteristics, because those are the ones that we consider the most lovable and unthreatening. Like Mickey’s, Bibendum’s head over the years has grown larger relative to his body, his eyes bigger relative to his head, his jaw less prominent, his limbs pudgier. By 1925 he had discarded the lorgnette, and in 1929, during a tuberculosis epidemic, he gave up cigars too.
[…]

-from Michelin Man: The Inside Story by Roger Parloff

Derny racing, circa 1920s:

Derny racing, Dortmund 2005:

Photographer: Gerhard Ramme
Image source: http://www.stayer.de/

I envy Edmond Hood. Whether he’s providing insight into the first salvo of Belgian semi-classics from bergs and bars, detailing his runner duties amidst recent winter 6 day events at Copenhagen, Berlin, or Ghent, or shedding light on the truly hoopty technology proliferation of derny racing, this man has an uncanny knack for illuminating the details or the side stories noticeable only to seasoned Euro pro tifosi.

Those derny bikes have a freak-in-the-basement-with-a-welding-torch quality that would make Graeme Obree proud. It also seems interesting to me that the design of the bikes as well as the dernys hasn’t changed all that much over the years (at least to my untrained eye).