TotW: The Good, the Bad & the Asinine

It’s a bumper issue of Tweets of the Week – we have all the news and debate from the Ronde van Vlaanderen.

The Good

Fabian Cancellara came to the race on Sunday ready to Ronde but days before, @Ponckster found Fabs’ Flanders plan of attack so we weren’t surprised by his victory.

Meanwhile, Sir Sky Supremo Dave Brailsford is watching … and watching …

The obligatory pictures of pain.

*I* am Spartacus … oh wait, no I’m not. And I’m not Zdenek Stybar either!

And Spartacus took it with his final attack on the Paterberg.

I love this: “The bus was so drunk when Fabian arrived …”

And what did Spartacus have to say for himself?

All-conquering …

And some final reactions: first of all, David Millar doesn’t dress Christian Vande Velde – got it? He doesn’t.

Jens is thinking about number seven while Ted King was powered for the race by maple syrup.

I particularly loved Althea’s ‘Fridge Magnets of Truth’.

The Bad

Last year, Fabs crashed at the first feedzone. This year, Tom Boonen crashed almost as soon as the race started. It was his shit day of #unluck.

Looks like @TourDeJose found a prophecy…

While Tim de Waele found this bit of wishful thinking.

And the Asinine

Peter Sagan went from being an exuberant kid with endearing victory salutes to an immature idiot with no self-censoring mechanism. I’m not posting up the picture – we’ve all seen it at least a hundred times – but as it is the centre of a furious debate on Twitter, I thought I would post up some of the reactions. These ranged from shrugs to outrage to questioning the validity of having podium girls at all to cycling’s attitude towards women’s racing. I’ve tried to include the whole gamut here … these might be a bit chronologically askew – it’s hard to keep track of conversations when they’re this multi-stranded.

Derek and Neal are talking about two pictures (which I’m not going to show) – one teeshirt on Sagan which basically makes a very crass and graphic equation for a good time and one teeshirt that Tom Boonen is wearing, amazingly enough while holding up the rainbow jersey (so it’s an old picture), that says what he’ll do on a first date. Either of which teeshirt if you saw on someone in person, you would judge as being worn by an idiot.

There were two articles written about this that you should read, both written by women. One by Jane Aubrey, which is here, the other by blogger @ZimmermanAnna, which is here. Bridie O’Donnell gives her take on Anna’s piece, followed by responses to her response.

The conversations are not over yet either – although I think we have a bit of pinch fatigue going on. It’s simple, really: don’t touch strangers in a provocative way. Don’t touch people you know in a provocative way unless you know that they want you to. Doesn’t matter if you’re an athlete or an accountant. Keep your hands to yourself. (And just for the record because I have been accused of sexism towards male cyclists, I would not pinch Fabs’ bum – admire it, sure; touch it, never. I have no right or good reason to. Full stop.)

But what about the two people involved? Peter Sagan recorded an apology and posted it up on his Facebook page.

And Maja Leye accepted it.

The Gruppetto

Tweets that are too good to miss. As we all know, Nutella is the breakfast of champions … Here is a beautiful rallying cry. (Okay, this is a picture taken at a demonstration in favour of gay marriage, not a bike race, but the Nutella sentiment works – it works!)