Controversy, controversy, and more controversy! Plus, bad hair, giant saddles (may or may not be a euphemism), dogs, eyebrows…. Oh it’s a crazy, dazey, slipstream-riding, Cipressa-climbing, Poggio-descending Tweets of the Week, featuring Arnaud Demare, Alexander Kristoff, Fernando Gaviria, Fabian Cancellara, and the mighty Lizzie Armitstead, to name but a few.
One hell of a World Champ
Seriously, folks, what is not to love about Lizzie Armitstead? She has been on fire, ON FIRE, this season, taking those rainbow stripes across finish lines left, right and centre. This past weekend, she did it again, with her usual grace and grit.
This might be a blurry screengrab, but hell’s bells, WHAT is that sash that man is wearing? Hard to believe that both the rainbow jersey and the red design-classic Swiss national champs jersey could be outshone, but they have. I gotta get me one of those to parade around VeloVoices Towers …
I love the fact that Lizzie always has a smile on her face and a spring in her step, even during press conferences. This woman should be celebrated up and down the country.
BUT … dododododo (that’s supposed to be the music to Jaws, by the way), the magnificent Marianne Vos is back in the peloton after so long out because of injury. Forget Cav and Kittel, GVA and Sagan – THIS could be the rivalry of the year. Vos v Armitstead. Humdinger!
While it looks like Boels-Dolmans is the team to beat this season, we have found out that they are severely lacking in some very important equipment during the race …
Cats. Yes … ‘Mechanics out of cats and running to riders’
Careful, people, I’m packin’ cats! Definitely typo of the month!
Style and saddles …
The pre-race show on Saturday gave Twitter plenty to discuss. Alexander Kristoff was shrunk by the Eurosport Miniaturising Machine™ so that he fit in a mechanics trunk. Let’s just hope they weren’t packing cats.
You’d think that a gigantic saddle would be disturbing enough (I SO wish that thing would buck like a mechanical bull). But nooooooooo. It was his hair … his lopsided hair. This obviously clears up the mystery as to why his helmet is always on lopsided.
He wasn’t the only one with some strange hair. This was taken at the press conference the day before. Sagan reminds me *so much* of Terry Jones serving Spam. It might just be me, though.
But at least he hadn’t gone wild with the tweezers and eyebrow pen like *some people* .
It’s a Monument!
But that was just the pre-race show. The actual Milan-SanRemo race was pretty exciting. The Velvet Samurai, stress-free, hair tamed, children charmed.
Looks like Andre Greipel has been taking special Fabianese lessons at his local Berlitz school. (Here’s hoping his broken ribs heal up so we can see him back in the peloton soon!)
There were crashes galore in this year’s MSR, even though it was a beautiful day and the road surface was dry. Go figure.
There was a lot of imagine ifs … personally, I’m not really one for these ‘what ifs’. Part of racing is not crashing out.
Spartacus was disappointed but philosophical about it all.
Meanwhile, Stybar hit a dog. Shades of that TdF stage where PhilGil went to have words with a family that accidentally let their dog loose onto the road, causing him to crash. This also caused him to block Panache because he added laser beams to his eyes. Panache’s style of tweeting doesn’t seem to agree with riders (Bennati still hasn’t forgiven his tweets about his cats.) After Stybar hit the dog, Gregory Rast did too – but we think the dog is okay.
And where was Cav? We didn’t see him at all – except for that one time out the back.
The aftermath of a hard race (I so love BrakeThrough’s photography)
The finish (or is it?)
Arnaud Demare‘s unguarded response to the fact that he won.
We dreamt of what Marc Madiot might be doing.
That was before Eros Capecchi and Matteo Tosatto said that Demare either got a very sticky bottle or just out and out hung on to the car (Nibali-styley) to go 80kmh up the Cipressa.
Carry on up the Cipressa
Here we go…
It was pretty evenly divided between ‘you cannot be serious’ and ‘I knew it!’.
Surely *someone* had an iPhone on the Cipressa.
Conor doesn’t care, really. (He didn’t care last week or the week before, either, did he?) He’s a live and let live kind of guy.
Strava truth?
Seemed everyone knew one way or the other until someone else said something that kind of made sense too. Because let’s face it, the Twitter speculation was just that: speculation based on not a lot. But bloody hell that raged all day.
As usual, I look to InnerRing to be the voice of reason.
And thank God for those who gave us all a laugh …
The Gruppetto (no holding on to the cars!)
Nibali came out last week and verified pretty much what everyone already knew from last year. He’s not an Aru fan. He’s just throwing everybody under the bus these days, no?
This might very well have won Tweets of the Week…
Santa joins Mapei.
This is just the most fabulous podium picture. Always a fantastic race when there are special hats and giant glasses of booze at the end.
While it looks like Fabs has two directions to go in after his retirement: lounge singer (‘I’d like to do a little number for a gal named Kitty’) or a crime fighter.
The last word
