#tbt – Causing Trouble at the 2006 Tour of Britain
Ah, the 2006 Tour of Britain. We don’t remember much about it apart from meeting a friend in a place called Penistone. He’s still a friend! And, if it really exists, Penistone is still a place.
SweetSpot gave us a press pass for the Tour of Britain that year. It was our first year with as official press at the event (though we’ve been press ever since, even upsetting Mark Cavendish in 2011), and we mostly just drove around the country racing the peloton in a Fiat. This was pre-GPS, so we had to remember which motorway exits we were supposed to take, and then we largely just snuck onto the course and hoped we could drive fast enough that nobody would be able to stop us as we tried to find a good place to take photographs.
Tour of Britain – Stage One
We’re afraid to say that we followed the first stage, from Glasgow to Castle Douglas, vicariously via the internets. It’s nothing personal or anything, it’s just that Scotland is, like, in a whole different country and stuff.
Anyway, following the race vicariously has been made rather easy this year. Tour of Britain TV’s morning show is a convenient way to follow the latest news, despite the terrible fact that it means we have to be out of bed at 11am to watch it. The programme does delve into the world of not-quite-professionalism — the interesting interview with John Herety of Recycling.co.uk took place in the boot of the team car (it was a big boot and the door was open, don’t worry) and Nick Nuyens was interviewed in front of a rental van with a Quick.Step sticker on the bonnet, neither of which really sold us on the magic of cycling (there must’ve been a cardboard “Tour of Britain” sign somewhere that the show could’ve used as a backdrop, surely?) — but this detail does nothing to detract from its charm. There’s a real sense of respect for the sport despite the show’s flaws, something that the more polished, soulless cycling media could do to learn from.
The programme also offered a real insight into the workings of race teams, with footage from the Davitamon-Lotto team bus. Allan Peiper’s tactics for the stage were equal parts sensible and bemusing: “Don’t piss in public,” and “Follow Quick.Step because they’re the best team.” The camaraderie on display certainly presented cycling as a team sport, something which is otherwise overlooked by people who’ve not been hopelessly engulfed by cycling culture.
The race:
During the race itself, three riders broke away on the 25km mark — Martin Pedersen (Team CSC), Luis Passamontes (Unibet), and Mathew Goss (South Australia.com-AIS). The peleton chose not to follow.
At the feed station at 39km, the classy Andreas Kloeden pulled out of the race and went home. He stated bronchitis as his reason, although we think this might be a reluctant superstar codeword for lack of interest. That’s fine; we like Tom Boonen much better anyway, at least he doesn’t wear those stupid nose strip things.
As the stage went on, the three leaders managed to increase their lead to eleven minutes. After the peleton bizarrely gave away half an hour on the exact same stage last year, the sentiment in the breakaway group must’ve been more than a little similar to Frank Schleck’s infamous “Fuck, I’m going to win this shit.” Luckily for those of us who rely on people actually wanting to follow the race after the first stage, the peleton had cut the lead to two and a half minutes by the finish. The promising Aussie sprinter Mathew Goss didn’t hold off his sprint until late enough on the uphill finish, and Pedersen took the win comfortably ahead of Passamontes. The time bonuses for the win meant that Pedersen took the yellow jersey, and Goss slotted into second position overall thanks to the points he’d amassed in the intermediate spints. Russell Downing took third place in the bunch sprint to finish a promising sixth on the stage.
This is going to be a very good ToB, we can tell.
Rider of the stage:
Luis Passamontes, for surpassing his performance in the ENECO Tour. (That is to say, he didn’t get disqualified whilst out the front this time around.) He also picked up the most aggressive rider award, quite justifiably, confirming our paranoid belief that everbody in cycling is plagiarising our opinions.
A massive pictorial review of a day’s worth of ligging at the finish of the Tour of Britain’s second stage! Ironic photos in abundance!
The army! They were doing the security. Apparently the official line from the recruitment tent was “Join the army and you might get to salute Juan Manuel Garate.”
Today’s stage featured a very technical finish.
Aren’t cyclists getting much younger these days. Shortly after this picture was taken, David Duffield ran out of his commentary booth, claimed to be the Pied Piper, then did a toppletail in the middle of the road. You think we’re lying, but we’re honestly not.
Some company had the genius idea of making a virtual training aid for turbo trainers, allowing you to realistically simulate riding on a road — something we could previously only dream of doing.
Hugh Porter and David Duffield were there, guaranteeing that the commentary never delved into the realm of relevance.
A not-very-in-advance notice.
“I guarantee you that we won’t get a British winner today,” is what we said five minutes before this.
Pretentious arty bollocks photo number one. Also: our caption competition. Entries to the usual address.
Pretentious arty bollocks photo number two. We wanted an ironic photograph of the media taking photos of Hammond from their uniform positions. Stand here, photograph this. Please.
We also went to Roger Hammond’s post race press conference but forgot to bring our camera along. He didn’t really say anything we could write anything funny about, so we didn’t take notes. You can probably read the whole thing on a proper website anyway.
Some other things we saw but didn’t take photographs of:
— Johan Museeauw eating a sandwich
— Jimmy Corkhill from Brookside
— Tony Bell
— The awkward looking man from Cycling.tv looking particularly awkward
— A scouser leaning into the CSC team car shouting about how much he loves their team
— Some kids being told off for riding bikes (they were riding BMXs, so it’s fair enough really)
— The usual entourage of British ex-cyclists
— A tandem with a tandem kiddie carrier thing attached, carrying a full family of four
— A man with an excessively long beard
The jersey status, copied and pasted from a press release we got e-mailed
Yellow jersey – Mathew Goss, South Australia
T-Mobile Sprints jersey – Martin Pedersen, CSC
E.ON King of the Mountains jersey – Rosesems
Points competition – Russell Downing
TOMORROW:
The Yorkshire stage.
Photographic evidence of the existence of the Tour of Britain’s stage three
Media accreditation has done terrible things to us. Our fears of becoming integrated into the fairly standardised (and very cliquey) world of cycling journalism proved to be entirely justified, as we too began to be not actually all that good at following a race. Our plans for the day went from “go to the start and the last climb” to “just go to the last climb” to “if we can average 100mph on the M1 we might just make it to the finish line in time.” Sheffield turned out to be fairly good for ligging in anyway, even if the course was on a busy shopping district that was still operating. Our two least favourite social groups are elderly women carrying Spar bags full of groceries and goths who stand outside HMV comparing one another’s hair, so there was a moment of resentment before we forgot our prejudices and got down to doing the “cycling journalist” thing (which is to say, taking ironic photos and looking smug because we had a bit of laminated cardboard).
Umbrellas obscure views. WEAR A HAT.
Some youngsters had reasoned that since they were already soaked through, they couldn’t actually be any wetter no matter what they did. They put their theory to the test with some success, although we were still a little hesitant to join them.
Tom crashed. He wasn’t happy 🙁
We think we’re supposed to use our media accreditation for things other than stalking Tom Boonen, but it’s not really working out that way.
He’s bleeding :((((
We were stood shoulder to shoulder with Gerry McManus, Cycling News’s photographer, for the whole press conference, but look at that contrast between the two photos. That guy must have mad Photoshop skills or something because Filippo didn’t smile once.
Spirits were very high in the press conference, as you can see. You’d hardly be able to tell that they’d just spent all day racing over hills in torrential rain.
Oh shit, he’s spotted us. Escape. We’re pretty sure we heard him say “Wasn’t that the raggy haired, moustachioed gent who writes for that rubbish sarcastic website?” as we left.
He looks slightly less awkard in real life than he does in those low resolution videos on Cycling.tv. The camera operator isn’t even looking what he’s filming.
We also found:
A bar full of the crew from the Belgian teams, just near the team vehicles. We didn’t dare go in, because we reckon Johan Museeauw would be a really mean drunk.
TOMORROW:
We’ll wank a load of pictures out from today’s stage (Wolverhampton-Birmingham) to finally get all this picture gallery rubbish out of our system. Writing about things is more fun than trying to think of funny captions for boring photographs.
Wolverhampton-Birmingham: a Midlands photo voyage
Race starts are bit rubbish really. The superstars hide away and only turn up for the final minute of signing in, whilst the busy people under employment by the teams find themselves having to work around all the mouthbreathers taking photographs of the car and asking stupid questions.
Mouthbreathers like us. Apparently racing in Italy is nicer for soigneurs because they sometimes get police escorts.
The race sign in is presented by Hugh Porter and David Duffield, who spend most of their time checking their notes for things to say about all the riders who come in before the ones who people have actually heard of.
Roger Hammond and his army of surprisingly talented children. “At Discovery Channel, I was one of the children,” is what he didn’t say (but should’ve).
Pippo Pozzato looks pleased to see us again.
We’ve been a bit unfair in our dismissal of race starts — they’re actually a very fine place to get photographs of the side of Axel Merckx’s face.
Race finishes are bit rubbish really. You stand shoulder to shoulder with other spectators in a tiny area with a very limited view of anything other than the enormous head of the person in front of you, whilst the wives and kids of the organisers are lording it up in the hospitality section right on the finish line and not paying the slightest bit of attention to what’s happening. Then the riders flash past in a blur and you smile and go home and tell everyone you think you saw Frank Schleck and then you feel stupid a week later when you find out that Frank Schleck wasn’t even riding.
David Duffield: looks like a wizened old man, runs like a very young girl.
There were some youths on hand to do things that should never be done on bikes. Like riding slowly and wearing baggy trousers.
Frederik Willems won the stage, largely due to the fact that HE’S A MASSIVE CHEAT. Paul Manning wasn’t happy.
Every sprint finish, Matthias Kessler has crossed the line with his hands off his bars. Not celebrating or whatever, more an “I could’ve won today but I’m more interested in tugging at my jersey” kind of thing.
The obligatory “things we didn’t get a photograph of” bit:
-What would’ve possibly been the most ironic photograph ever: an ironic photograph of a photographer taking an ironic photograph of a photographer taking a photograph of two podium girls. Sadly we thought about it too much, and they’d all gone their separate ways by the time our head had stopped hurting.
-Millenium Point. In particular, the view from the top floor of. We rushed up there rather than going to the jersey presentations because we knew it would make a great photo, then discovered that our camera’s battery was dead. We fail at “journalism”.
The previously unseen “people we did get a photograph of but are saving for the long winter period when there’s nothing better to write about” bit:
Tom Boonen, Juan Manuel Garate, Tom Boonen, Michael Rogers, Tom Boonen, Dean Downing, Tom Boonen, Mark Cavendish, Tom Boonen, Igor Astarloa, Tom Boonen, Nico Mattan, Tom Boonen, Tom Boonen, Tom Boonen.
A disclaimer
Despite what we’ve said, going to the starts and finishes of races is actually very, very good. And yes, this is even the case when they’re taking place in the Midlands. Try it yourself: it’s a bit like reading this website, only you have to think of your own snidey comments and you’ll probably get backache from all the standing around.
More Tour of Britain stuff. They’ve certainly got their money’s worth out of us
Let’s all try and erase the badness of stage five from our memories and just focus on today’s final stage. Deal? Good.
We all knew the stage was going to run along the Tour de France route for next year, and we all knew that it was going to finish with several laps of a small circuit. What we didn’t know was that it’d turn into a pseudo track event, with riders taking laps out and others losing huge amounts of time because fixing punctures took so long (there’s a tenuous link to tubular tyres there, see). We’ve not been so perplexed by a road event since the first time we saw Paris-Roubaix, so it’s probably fitting that today’s winner was Tom Boonen. Rumour has it that his sprint was tequila fuelled, although the last time we tried to ride a bike after drinking tequila we fell off in front of a group of teenage girls and nearly got run over because we forgot to turn our lights on, so maybe don’t try it before your next big race.
The verdict on the BBC’s coverage of today’s stage:
It was good. Although it was a shame that they filled the gap inbetween the stage finishing and the presentations with 45 minutes of people mincing around on horses and Jo Brand making a big deal out of running three miles, it wouldn’t be a televised cycling event unless there was a bit of disappointment.
The verdict on the Tour of Britain as a whole:
Fantastic. All the boring fat track riders using the internet to whinge because the hills weren’t hard enough couldn’t even put the event down (and, on the contrary, gave us an opportunity to use the oft-overlooked retort, “How many hills are there on the track, Chunky?”). Hammond and Pozzato took fabulous victories; Willems provided us with controversy; an opportunistic breakaway from three promising young riders proved decisive; Chicchi’s duel with Cavendish just about saved a disastrous stage; and Boonen nabbed the final stage whilst wearing the rainbow jersey. There’s never been a better line up of riders in this country, and you all know it. Roll on next year.