Funny, cruel, odd, personal … you get it all on Twitter. Each week, we’ll have a rundown of some of our favourite tweets. Here are the tweets for the week ending 18th March 2012.
Portraits of the peloton
I featured Kristof Ramon‘s twitpics a few weeks ago and anyone on our Facebook page knows that I often share his pics there as well. And why not? Kristof takes some of the most expressive portraits of peloton people with his use of black-and-white and Instagrams just deepening the beauty. Here are few of my favourites from this week.
I love this picture of Katusha‘s Oscar Freire on the eve of Milan-San Remo. He looks so joyous and relaxed.
As does Simon Gerrans of GreenEDGE&Ham, just after he pipped My Beloved at the finish of MSR. Okay, this wouldn’t be a Tweets of the Week without Kitty getting into the catnip so tell me this: In this picture, doesn’t Brian Nygaard (on the left) look like Darth Vader after Luke Skywalker took his helmet off in Return of the Jedi? Or is it just me being a teeny tiny bit bitter? [Do you really need us to answer that? – Ed]
Tosh van der Sande of Lotto-Belisol looks less joyous and relaxed – I reckon there’s going to be a lot of these expressions around the peloton in the next few weeks during the big Classics.
And last but not least, we have Mark Cavendish‘s former sprint mentor Erik Zabel (who won MSR four times and is now sprint-tsar for Katusha). I love this picture because the puffa jacket and the black-and-white picture makes him look like an Arctic explorer from days of yore. Or maybe that’s just me …
Or should it be Voigt Voyages?
You know, Jens hasn’t been tweeting at all since Valentine’s Day. We know he’s around as he was in that thrilling breakaway at, was it Tirreno or Paris-Nice? [It was the latter, with Jens being pipped bu Luis Leon Sanchez – Ed.] So many races in the past week, hard to keep them straight … anyway, we’ve gone Jens-free for long enough! Here are few choice mentions this week starting with one found by @TourDeJose:
I reckon Voigt Travel would specialise in Bear Grylls-type survival trips – cutting your way out of jungles, swimming the Amazon, pulling dog sledges across Antarctica (with the dogs riding on the sleds). And they’d all start on the special Jens Voigt National Holiday, as retweeted below by @rick_vosper:
Speaking of travelling, Adam Blythe of BMC seemed to be having some problems with the ‘airplane mode’ on his phone.
And while Liquigas’ Ted King was sightseeing in Italy earlier this week, he got snapped with an intriguing accessory hanging off his shoulder. He says it’s his girlfriend’s … I believe you, thousands wouldn’t …
Of course, the great thing about travelling is staying in a cool hotel with a well-stocked minibar. A €15 can of pistachios and a few €10 bottles of Peroni and you’ve got a party. Um, not for My Beloved Fabian Cancellara, however. You can almost hear the indignation as he taps this little tweet out earlier this week:
#Unclass indeed! His disgust rises as he documents the snack options in the hallway. That poor man, it was only last week or so that he was stuck in some sort of hellish death cab with no handles to roll down the windows! Who is his travel agent? Hey, Fabian, I’ve just quit my job and am at loose ends, let Miss Fondue fix you up this season. Five-star all the way!
We can’t close the column without checking in with Greg Henderson and Adam Hansen.
I wonder if their minibar is out in the hall as well. Never mind, it’s Henderson’s turn …
But let us end with Mr Henderson’s gentle advice to RadioShack‘s Hayden Roulston on how to deal with riders who are a little uncomfortable on a descent.
I’ve decided that this week, for all my major decisions, I will ask myself ‘What would Greg Henderson do?’ I suspect the chances of me getting punched by an offended member of the public might run high … but what the hell! I’ll let you know how it went in next week’s column! Till then, tweeties …