Tweets of the Week: Hugs and hazards and Harelbeke

Pink shoes, rival affections, one tiny bike and a great sofa, the Lion King, naked bandages, shutterbugs, a Quintana quip, camp tattoos, bad goggles and much, much more! It’s Tweets of the Week!!!

E3 Harelbeke

E3 is always a great race and it gives us all a taste of the month to come. Anyone who loves the classics would have been particularly thrilled by the thought of Tom and His Magnificent Boonens racing at full strength with the Sacred Haunches himself.

I say this all the time, but I love these two guys because their fierce rivalry never gets spiky, fractious, trash-talking or anything other than respectful.

How on God’s good earth can that woman standing in the middle of Tom and Fabs look so … bored???!!!

This season, that Luca Paolini is really getting some camera time. Here, he gives chase to the breakaway with Fabs on his wheel.

In the end, it was Peter Sagan who was the victor in E3. Kind of took us by surprise in that he’s been looking a bit off his game lately. But this surely means that the next few weeks are going to be mighty interesting.

So Niki Terpstra sure does have a Henry VIII pose on with his unashamed presentation of his codpiece. As Scott says, at least Geraint is showing some class (although, Scott, to be fair, Peter isn’t doing anything untoward either).

But then, when your race poster is this, what would you expect?

But a big thank you goes out to these guys.

Get your Gent on

Another exciting day of racing on Sunday with Gent-Wevelgem. We’ll start with some lovely pictures.

Peter Sagan was defending champion but a huge crash at the sharp end of the sprint for the line gave ArgoGiant John Degenkolb a prestigious win.

This next tweet should set you to thinking …

And here is a picture of what it might look like if you did jump out of your car at speed. Fran Ventoso, however, wasn’t the worst off in the crash near the finish.

Unfortunately, Andre Greipel seemed to bear the brunt of the crash and is now out for some time with some nasty injuries. He was in such good form, this is really too bad. We wish him a speedy recovery.

Stijn was rarin’ for more, apparently.

Shutterbugs

With all the teams scattered hither and yon, racing their hearts out, there’s plenty of scope for some great pictures. Sit back and enjoy. First up, a Gruber Images special. Magnificent, no?

The luckiest woman in photography, Emily Maye, is again embedded with the Trek team this year and has taken some fabulous photographs. Including this one of Fabs, surveying the crowd chaos.

To check out all of Emily’s photo galleries of the team from the start of the season, go to the Trek Factory team website. Well worth a look.

Oh, and this is how NOT to photograph a rampaging peloton. Complete idiot. Is it just me, though, or has this guy dropped in from 1983? The two-tone hair in a wedge cut, the American varsity jacket … Just me? Really?

I suspect he will be the GreenEDGE bus of the classics – popping up in all kinds of pictures.

Meanwhile, back in Spain …

It was an all-out battle between Joaquim Rodriguez and Alberto Contador for the top step of the podium at the Volta a Catalunya. Purito came out on top, but not for want of trying on the part of Baby Blackbird.

Fashion questions

Socks over leg-warmers. WHITE socks over leg-warmers. >buzzer< Try again, contestant.

The Lion King might have put on a few pounds since his heyday but his confidence in his physique has not suffered in any way. Do any Americans out there remember the doll ‘Stretch Armstrong’? Modelled on Arnie, Stretch was filled with gel and had this enormous torso. This picture reminds me of him.

Could these shoes actually be pinker than That Boy Phinney‘s GiroShoes from last year? I think so!

I just don’t know what to say about this picture.

Can you really say no?

Stop it. Stop. It. STOP IT!!!!

They look unbelievably small and, well, yes, slightly creepy hung up like that, don’t you think?

To be honest, neither of these guys comes off very well in these get-ups, but I think Westra‘s all-turquoise get up – it’s the big gloves, actually, that are freaking me out – is posing the most urgent of fashion questions. Stef Clement looks like he’s saying to himself, “If I just don’t look at him, he won’t hurt me…”