Look, the Tour's an obscene, decadent, Caligula-esque circus. But this year, for the notable though unfortunate absences of certain riders for whom we wish a speedy recovery if they're not actually just laughing their !@#ses off at their underwater James-Bond-villian modernist lairs far from the nefarious intrusions of antidoping controllers--and equipped with both unbearably-slowly nut-slicing stainless-steel laser tables and shark-infested feeding-freezy trapdoor-tanks in the improbable chance they *do* find their way in--we've actually got a modest shot of this year's race being (1) interesting and (2) possibly even competitive, with fun for snowball's-chance-in-hell GC contenders, sprinters, and puncheurs alike. So what've they got coming to them? This!
The Overall: Welcome to Brussels, home of the Grand Depart! This Tour's got something for everyone: plenty of sprints, some nice roll-y breather days for breakaway artists and the inevitable "next [insert iconic name that everyone desperately tries to think of that isn't Lance Armstrong]", and, of course, eye-candy mountains with buckets of opportunity for Movistar to figure out how they're gonna eat their own young, *again.* On to the specifics!
The Time Trials: Hey perfect mountain goat, want to lose the GC to some musclebound mother!@#$er who can barely climb a mountain on a !@#damn helicopter? Here's your chance! First, yer whole squad gets to screw you over with a mildy lumpy 27.6 k team time trial on Stage 2. Now, you can relax--and for heck's sake gain as much time as you can in the mountains--before Stage 13's 27.2 k bit-o-rise-y-then-pretty-darn-flat individual effort. Just--please watch out in the those corners, so we can all get back to the real race!
The Sprints: We start off the Tour in handsome Brussels with Stage 1 long 194-odd-kilometer leg-stretcher, then pick it up again on Stage 4. Then, a break for actual fun outside the final 5k before we return to Cav's Chance to Blow It on Stage 7, a bucket o' pain til the next sprint finish on Stage 10, and, after the first rest day, another shot at glory (and another fruitless play to rip the green jersey off Sagan) on stage 10. After that, you just gotta stay within the time cut for 6 more stages till the next easy jaunt on Stage 16 from Nimes to shining Nimes. And what would the Tour be without the magnificent finale on the Champs-Elysees? Yap, Sagan, yap--we still believe in you Greipel you big lug, let's cap off this season in style!
The Breakaways: Stage 3 starts off deceptively simply before delivering a nauseating roller-coaster ride for the last 30k. !@#$, I miss Gilbert already! Then, after a rest on Stage 4, stage 5 gives the hill-shy their first real leg nips as the tacticians start !@#$ing around the last 2 kilometers and--I mean, as they carefully assess their chances before going for that big last-minute surge from behind. And geez, with 5 (!) Cat 2s and two Cat 3s, Stage 8's really not joking about "hilly"--better make time for a winery-Tour refreshment as we hit the surprisingly painful road to St. Etienne! Stage 9 gives no chance for rest, though, as the unsuccessful stage hunters try for redemption with a rather hefty 7.2% gradient hump 13k out from the finish in Brioude. If you've blown all of that, though, you've still got a shot on Stage 17 with a likely decisive schlep 10k from the finish line. Team cars, now is *not* the time to drop trou on your breakaway guys!
The Mountains: Sure, the Tour's "mountain" stages basically grandfather in a coupla the Giro or Vuelta's definition of "hilly" stages, but still, there's pain enough! We start off the *real* race on Stage 7 to La Planche des Belles Filles (French for "Plank of the Podium Babes"), with 3 nasty Cat 1 climbs sandwiching a coupla Cat 2s and a throwaway Cat 3. Welcome to the Tour the France, kids! Then, after the first rest day and a flat stage that you all better stay upright on and ahead of any crosswinds dammit Mikel, Stage 12 welcomes us with a gentle valley start before pitching us onto the legendary Peyresourde, then the Cat 1, 7.5% Hourquette d'Anzican before a bit of a recovery descent to the finish. *Don't* try to descend out of your league, you-know-who-you-ares! If you've survived the ITT on Stage 13, and haven't decided to crawl home in mortification with some bull!@#$ 'gastrointestinal distress', Stage 14 gives you a chance for an prestigious victory, or embarrassingly public defeat, up the mighty Tourmalet. Make it through that? Say hello to Stage 15, as we drag you up--really, you drag *you* up--3 Cat 1s including the spankin' new Foix Prat d'Albis, French for "we're gonna grind you up like goose liver." Ready for tomorrow's rest day? After all that wine and pate' watching you saps, I know *I* am! After leaving the lovely Pyrenees, we head into the podium-deciding Alps, with 3 opportunities to helplessly crack just on Stage 18's Col du Vars, the agonizing HC Izoard, and, if you're still not crumbling next to the road sobbing uncontrollably, the beloved (or behated, if you're riding it) Hors Categorie Galibier before a merciful--or terrifyingly exhausting--8k drop to the finish line. C'mon Sagan, you can do this one--your fans will wait all night if they have to! Finally, the short (126k) 'n' nasty, Stage 19, with Col d'Iseran 35k from the end, which would give you hope if you didn't have the Cat 1 Montee d'Tignes to overcome before you hit the hotel. Ouch! Still within spitting distance of your competitors, including your stupid unsuspecting teammate? Well Stage 20 wraps it up with the Cat 1 Cormet de Roselend (French for "stop and smell the roses on your nature break, loser, I'm attacking you now"), a chill stage 2 interval, and, for the last gasp of the Tour--and your lungs--the oxygen-deprived summit up the phenomenal Val Thorens. I just wrapped up the maillot jaune? Great--now get that camera off me while I vomit!
Of course, the Tour *still* blows in comparison to the beautiful Giro and smashing Vuelta, but you all know we're all gonna watch it anyway, if only for Landa and possibly Thibaut Pinot YouTube highlights. Speaking of whom, next up (shut up haters!): the GC contenders!
Saturday, June 29, 2019
Monday, June 17, 2019
It's Yer Chris Froome Paranoid Conspiracy Theory Roundup!
Look, we all know that Team Ineos in the Sky With Diamonds is capable of truly epic levels of bull!@#$tery, like "marginal gains," "I had no idea what was in that Jiffy Bag labeled "HEY DAVE, HERE'S THAT BAGFUL OF BANNED PERFORMANCE-ENHANCING DRUGS YOU ORDERED FROM ME BY TEXT MESSAGE FOR YOUR RIDERS," and "we appreciate Geraint Thomas winning the Tour de France for us and will gladly support him again." But since Chris Froome's shocking 50-kph Tour-and-possibly-career-destroying smash into a wall, there's been a truly, startlingly paranoid quasi-Masonic deep-state X-Files Spy vs. Spy Bourne Identity just-!@#$in'-nutwhack tweet-blizzard o' conspiracy theories, so before we all get totally lost in the weeds here, let's recap, summarize, and clarify:
1. Juanjo Cobo, the improbable Vuelta a Espana champ/current milkman (a far nobler profession than 'pro cyclist', BTW), was busted for bio passport probs and potentially stripped of his win, in which Chris Froome placed an improbable 2nd, THE VERY SAME DAY THAT FROOME SLAMMED INTO A WALL BLOWING A SNOT-ROCKET ON A TT-RECON DESCENT CAUSING CATASTROPHIC INJURIES.
2. Some other pro guy said he once mistook Juanjo Cobo for a "fat mechanic," not a wasted wraith with the approximate BMI of a half-starved locust. So...karma, bitches!
3. Ineos sez Froome had multiple breaks to his femur, some broken ribs, and a fractured elbow. Normal people, including Froome-haters, were horrified, and wished him a full and speedy recovery.
4. Allegedly, a coupla tools were like "big whoop, he's a cheating scumbag anyway," leading to massive "YOU'RE A TOTAL !@#$FACE" outrage. However, I personally more saw, "Yep, hate him, hope he gets well soon, that's a !@#$ty thing to happen to anyone."
5. Updated medical reports said Froome also had a broken neck, and lost like 2 liters of blood.
6. Dan Martin and some other guys said either they were there and thought holy crap he coulda been killed and were blessedly relieved he was not, or told him "hey, careful on the descent there, cowboy."
7. The ambulance took a while to get to and stabilize him before it was safe to move him to hospital. Suspiciously, though, THERE IS NO GORY INSENSITIVE DISRESPECTFUL VOYEURISTIC HELP-NO-ONE STREAMING YOUTUBE FOOTAGE of something that clearly would've completely traumatized his poor family if they'd seen it, so honestly, what the hell is *wrong* with you people?
8. He was in the ER/ICU, and then he was not.
9. Post-surgery, Froome posts a pic of himself giving a thumbs-up sign from his hospital bed, with basically a big band-aid on his elbow, a blanket deceptively pulled over his purportedly mangled torso, no IV lines, and his scrawny neck without any visible immobilization collar or other support. There is also a noticeable lack of overflowing blood-buckets in his disconcertingly clean hospital room, and a disturbing absence of machines that beep.
10. Some crackpot posts some kind of weird Masonic flat-earth fake-moon-landing little-green-men-but-cyclists thing, and everyone loses it.
11. Phil Gaimon posts a pic of himself after a vaguely similar track crash having apparently been put through a wood-chipper.
12. There are now two schools of thought on Twitter: "boy, he doesn't *look* that injured, he *must* be part of a vast team-and-hospital-wide conspiracy to fake us out" when all he actually had to do if he thought he was about to get popped himself was excuse himself out of the Tour with a much simpler bogus 'stomach ailment' and "WTF, you watch two seasons of "Grey's Anatomy" and now you're a medical expert you tinfoil-hatted freak?" Suddenly, a third group emerges! It basically just says, "Hmmmm."
13. We love Joseba Beloki talked about his own Tour de France career-crushing femur break and I almost bawled.
14. The upshot: (1) Froome's a dirty dirty you-know-whatter; (2) crashing is a crappy sad way for even an odious sports-weasel to end his career so let's hope he heals completely and quickly; (3) Geraint Thomas is *still* fucked; and (4) I've been running this pointless blog for 13 years and even *I* think we all need to get a life.
Glad that's settled. On to the Tour!
Sunday, June 02, 2019
It's Yer Incredibly Prestigious 2019 Giro d'Italia racejunkie Awards!
Okay, so I've been a *little* bit discombobulated this Giro by Movistar sucking *again* with some guy from it who's not Mikel Landa winning instead. But still and all, it *was* rather a ripper, so before the inevitable din and unbearable hype surrounding the inferior Tour de France kicks in, let's give credit where credit is (sometimes mortifyingly) due: It's time for Yer Incredibly Prestigious 2019 Giro d'Italia racejunkie Awards! Prizes (I swear), should any winner be so desperate as to claim them: a stylin' custom-embroidered racejunkie cap to adorn yer head; a passel o' racejunkie stickers to deface every mountaintop sign to pass in a car so you can pretend you actually climbed the thing on yer bike; and, in lieu of the hallowed Trofeo Senza Fine, a promotional statuary tchotchke plucked right from my local secondhand store and engraved with *your actual name.* So own yer glory, and yer shame kids--it's damn-near-as-good-as-a-maglia-rosa time!
Talk Softly and Carry a Big Stick (Except You Didn't) Prize: hey, we *all* love a little pre-race smack talk. After all, what better way to get the adrenalin flowing, the tifosi screaming, and yer rivals ready to stick a shank in your tire at 50 miles an hour? That's right, Simon Yates's suave suggestion that his fellow GC contenders oughta be "!@@#ing in their pants right now." Um, are you sure that wasn't just what you thought they were doing when they were actually 20 kilometers up the road ahead of you instead?
Caught With Their Pants Down Prize: heck, mechanicals happen. But when you really *don't* want them to happen, particularly when everyone's surmising whether you're about to take the entire show in Verona, is when your team car collectively decides now's a perfectly harmless time to drop trou at the side of the road for a little gruppo nature break. Still, Primoz Roglic managed to get another bike and get on his way eventually. Oh, well--it's not like he wanted the final maglia rosa anyway!
Screw You Race Organizers! Award: Remember when time triallists were approximately size of the Abominable Snowman, and about as likely to disrupt the results of the final overall podium? Yeah, well *I* do, and time was, whippersnappers, where only the rarest of GCs was actually decided by a freakin' pile of suckfest TIME TRIALS THAT NO PURE CLIMBER WAS EVER ABLE TO NAVIGATE COMPETITIVELY ANYTIME ANYWHERE EVER. And yes, I'm a bitter Landa fan. Do you *know* how much this race would've changed if the first day (and the last!) hadn't taken a !@#damn baseball bat to this poor kid's legs, and ego? Perfidy, thy name is PLEASE PLEASE GIRO DON'T EVER DO ANYTHING LIKE THIS EVER AGAIN!
Superdomestique-o'-the-Giro: speaking of whom, in my misery over Movistar's usual hosing of our little Carrot underdog, I *do* have to in all honesty give this one to, yep, this year's new and now reigning Maglia Rosa, Richard Carapaz, who genuinely dug in there with his last ounce of energy in the race's penultimate stage to smoosh the GC contenders to almost--almost!--give the stage to loyal, if overall generally a bit bummed out, co-captain Mikel Landa. Aw, thanks for trying Richard--now *don't* come between Mikel and the (I hope) Vuelta!
Fake-Out of the--Hell, of the Century! Award: so what're a ravenous press, twitterverse, and bored-as-hell tifosi supposed to think when a bunch of guys in intimidating-lookin' hazmat suits ostentatiously descend on the notorious Alexander Vinokourov's Astana team bus and disappear inside with what looks like some high-tech James Bond spymongering gear? HOLY !@#$ STOP THE INTERNET AND FLEE FROM THE NARCS IT'S US POSTAL ALL OVER AG--uh, it's a minor new cleaning-product sponsor, like, *seriously* giving that filthy team bus a nice scrub. Well now that we're all freaking out Vino, can you get a damn whiskey sponsor out here to calm us down?
Total !@#$in' Hypocrisy Award: so someone finally notices that Alessandro "Wheezy" Petacchi, already renowned for sucking enough asthma meds right before the finish line to open up the airways of an entire herd of stampeding wildebeest, is retroactively implicated in some *other* ancient doping scandal that's just now being revealed by clowns lining up to take down a doctor everyone already knew was a dope supplier now that they've benefited from all the !@#$ they took from him, and what happens? That's right, the noble head honchos over at RAI--who've previously had no reservations showcasing *other* former pros snarled in their own doping allegations, who shall remain nameless because I like them--take the strapping ex-sprint king right outta the broadcaster's box and into the annals of Guys We Knew Should Make Us Look Bad But Like Who Cared Until Now Anyway?, while fellow miscreants-turned-commentator-darlings David Millar and Christian Vande Velde get to laugh their absolute !@#es off over a beer. I mean, not that Petacchi deserves a ticker-tape parade for his hijinks, but what the !@#$, people?!
Crash o' the Race (GC-Deciding): Y'know, in the absence of last year's defending-champ-who-declined-to-defend-his-title-therefore-dishonoring-this-beautiful-race-and-should've-been-thrown-into-a-viperous-gaping-snakepit, I was actually rather looking forward to see how runner-up Tom Dumoulin was gonna do--but we'll never know, because the poor kid was taken out by a nasty knee injury on Stage 4. Didja see how he at least tried to get on the bike the next day before succumbing to the inevitable? Now *that's* giving the race its due!
Crash o' the Race (Jaysus Thank God He's Okay!): speaking of asthma, this one's unfortunately for AG2Rs Alexis Vuillermoz, who actually did have a severe enough asthma attack on the Queen stage 16 to cause him to crash into a ravine, be rescued, hauled up, and treated, and, miraculously, climb back on his bike and proceed to finish the stage. Forget the hype about all the Classics guys--now *that's* some hardman !@#$!
*I'm* Not Crying, *You're* Crying! Prize: he burst onto the scene in 2015, climbing (and smiling) like an angel at the Vuelta, where he wore the yellow jersey, and then in 2016 at the Giro, where he hit the podium. And after that? Well, despite a lovely stage win at the 2018 Giro, the poor boy was gobsmacked for damn near a year by a bout of Epstein-Barr virus, with naysayers wondering if he'd ever truly come back. But come back he did, with a gorgeous victory on Stage 19 and a tearful celebration with his adorable parents. Oh, shut up and pass me the Kleenex, you sentimental fool!
Fan !@#$wit Award (Were You Raised By!@#dam' Wolves or Something? Edition): look, we all live for waiting on a freezing roadside for seven hours in the vain and statistically unlikely hope that a passing domestique will toss a water bottle, an empty musette, or even a spit-covered half-empty gel packet, our way. And honestly, most of these guys are nice enough to actually look for some eager kid (or grown-up!) to toss 'em to, when they've got quite *enough* to attend to at that moment, thank you. But just a bit *too* eager was the big adult assclown who thought it was perfectly okay to bodily wrench a water bottle from the very mouth of poor Marco Haller like a medieval barber yanking a rotten tooth from some poor bastard's head with a rusty farrier's hammer. Forget the fan--I'm inclined to award this one to Marco for charging over and berating the !@#$in' idiot!
Fan !@#$wit Award (Malice Aforethought Edition): between the too-close-flag-wavers, the selfie-stickers, the dog-walkers, and, may heaven protect our eyes, the exhibitionists running beside the riders screaming in their too-small banana-hammocks, it's often hard to pick who gets a Fan !@#$wit Award in the Giro or any Grand Tour. But to their credit, at least they're just stupid--it's a whole 'nother animal when someone actively picks up a pale-blue cruiser bike and intentionally throws it in the race course, which inevitable near-catastrophe was heroically averted by another tifoso who immediately ran out into the road ahead of the charging peloton and retrieved it. Holy crap, and I thought tossing tacks into the road was bad!
Fan !@#$wit Award (Vigilante Justice Edition): What's even worse than a stupid crash when you're riding like mad for the final podium? The roadside moron who puts you there! Undaunted by the ticking clock, though, Miguel Angel Lopez took the time to give the gentleman an etiquette lesson--if you can call smacking the guy upside the head til his hat spun out like a frisbee "etiquette." And while everyone was quick to assure that they don't condone violence, even the race organizers, with the power of expulsion in their hands, were inclined to let this one slide. Hell hath no fury like a GC contender impeded!
Nice Guys Finish Last (But Also First!) Award: Chad Haga--who generously entertained the lot of us with his pithy #GiroOversimplified daily roundups via twitter--slogged through rain, sun, rain, and rain for three straight weeks and sat in the hot seat for damn near the entire final day before finding out the truly bitchin'--he won the Stage 21 time trial, and single-handedly salvaged the demoralized leaderless Team Sunweb's entire Grand Tour. Nice to have something sweet to cheer about for once, amirite? Woot woot woot Chad Haga!
And Finally, the Punk-!@# Move of the Giro: y'know, I usually have a wealth of options to choose from here, as the race for the final maglia rosa grows more intense, tempers rise, and frankly, usually Alejandro Valverde is racing it. But this year he wasn't, and aside from a little argy-bargy in the sprints from Elia Viviani, and Vincenzo Nibali clearly about to go completely over the edge at Primoz Roglic's failure to assist him in overthrowing, well, Primoz Roglic, this year was astonishingly civilized. So here's a slightly revised "Dumb-!@# Move of the Giro" Award: for forcibly abandoning your own team leader Nibali (who could've really used the help, by the way) by getting popped for a 2013 Austrian doping scandal 5 stages into the race, Kristijan Koren, this one's for you!
Well folks, there's my Giro d'Italia awards for 2019--now either claim 'em, correct me, or hope to heck I don't have to give your sorry !@# another prize next year!
Talk Softly and Carry a Big Stick (Except You Didn't) Prize: hey, we *all* love a little pre-race smack talk. After all, what better way to get the adrenalin flowing, the tifosi screaming, and yer rivals ready to stick a shank in your tire at 50 miles an hour? That's right, Simon Yates's suave suggestion that his fellow GC contenders oughta be "!@@#ing in their pants right now." Um, are you sure that wasn't just what you thought they were doing when they were actually 20 kilometers up the road ahead of you instead?
Caught With Their Pants Down Prize: heck, mechanicals happen. But when you really *don't* want them to happen, particularly when everyone's surmising whether you're about to take the entire show in Verona, is when your team car collectively decides now's a perfectly harmless time to drop trou at the side of the road for a little gruppo nature break. Still, Primoz Roglic managed to get another bike and get on his way eventually. Oh, well--it's not like he wanted the final maglia rosa anyway!
Screw You Race Organizers! Award: Remember when time triallists were approximately size of the Abominable Snowman, and about as likely to disrupt the results of the final overall podium? Yeah, well *I* do, and time was, whippersnappers, where only the rarest of GCs was actually decided by a freakin' pile of suckfest TIME TRIALS THAT NO PURE CLIMBER WAS EVER ABLE TO NAVIGATE COMPETITIVELY ANYTIME ANYWHERE EVER. And yes, I'm a bitter Landa fan. Do you *know* how much this race would've changed if the first day (and the last!) hadn't taken a !@#damn baseball bat to this poor kid's legs, and ego? Perfidy, thy name is PLEASE PLEASE GIRO DON'T EVER DO ANYTHING LIKE THIS EVER AGAIN!
Superdomestique-o'-the-Giro: speaking of whom, in my misery over Movistar's usual hosing of our little Carrot underdog, I *do* have to in all honesty give this one to, yep, this year's new and now reigning Maglia Rosa, Richard Carapaz, who genuinely dug in there with his last ounce of energy in the race's penultimate stage to smoosh the GC contenders to almost--almost!--give the stage to loyal, if overall generally a bit bummed out, co-captain Mikel Landa. Aw, thanks for trying Richard--now *don't* come between Mikel and the (I hope) Vuelta!
Fake-Out of the--Hell, of the Century! Award: so what're a ravenous press, twitterverse, and bored-as-hell tifosi supposed to think when a bunch of guys in intimidating-lookin' hazmat suits ostentatiously descend on the notorious Alexander Vinokourov's Astana team bus and disappear inside with what looks like some high-tech James Bond spymongering gear? HOLY !@#$ STOP THE INTERNET AND FLEE FROM THE NARCS IT'S US POSTAL ALL OVER AG--uh, it's a minor new cleaning-product sponsor, like, *seriously* giving that filthy team bus a nice scrub. Well now that we're all freaking out Vino, can you get a damn whiskey sponsor out here to calm us down?
Total !@#$in' Hypocrisy Award: so someone finally notices that Alessandro "Wheezy" Petacchi, already renowned for sucking enough asthma meds right before the finish line to open up the airways of an entire herd of stampeding wildebeest, is retroactively implicated in some *other* ancient doping scandal that's just now being revealed by clowns lining up to take down a doctor everyone already knew was a dope supplier now that they've benefited from all the !@#$ they took from him, and what happens? That's right, the noble head honchos over at RAI--who've previously had no reservations showcasing *other* former pros snarled in their own doping allegations, who shall remain nameless because I like them--take the strapping ex-sprint king right outta the broadcaster's box and into the annals of Guys We Knew Should Make Us Look Bad But Like Who Cared Until Now Anyway?, while fellow miscreants-turned-commentator-darlings David Millar and Christian Vande Velde get to laugh their absolute !@#es off over a beer. I mean, not that Petacchi deserves a ticker-tape parade for his hijinks, but what the !@#$, people?!
Crash o' the Race (GC-Deciding): Y'know, in the absence of last year's defending-champ-who-declined-to-defend-his-title-therefore-dishonoring-this-beautiful-race-and-should've-been-thrown-into-a-viperous-gaping-snakepit, I was actually rather looking forward to see how runner-up Tom Dumoulin was gonna do--but we'll never know, because the poor kid was taken out by a nasty knee injury on Stage 4. Didja see how he at least tried to get on the bike the next day before succumbing to the inevitable? Now *that's* giving the race its due!
Crash o' the Race (Jaysus Thank God He's Okay!): speaking of asthma, this one's unfortunately for AG2Rs Alexis Vuillermoz, who actually did have a severe enough asthma attack on the Queen stage 16 to cause him to crash into a ravine, be rescued, hauled up, and treated, and, miraculously, climb back on his bike and proceed to finish the stage. Forget the hype about all the Classics guys--now *that's* some hardman !@#$!
*I'm* Not Crying, *You're* Crying! Prize: he burst onto the scene in 2015, climbing (and smiling) like an angel at the Vuelta, where he wore the yellow jersey, and then in 2016 at the Giro, where he hit the podium. And after that? Well, despite a lovely stage win at the 2018 Giro, the poor boy was gobsmacked for damn near a year by a bout of Epstein-Barr virus, with naysayers wondering if he'd ever truly come back. But come back he did, with a gorgeous victory on Stage 19 and a tearful celebration with his adorable parents. Oh, shut up and pass me the Kleenex, you sentimental fool!
Fan !@#$wit Award (Were You Raised By!@#dam' Wolves or Something? Edition): look, we all live for waiting on a freezing roadside for seven hours in the vain and statistically unlikely hope that a passing domestique will toss a water bottle, an empty musette, or even a spit-covered half-empty gel packet, our way. And honestly, most of these guys are nice enough to actually look for some eager kid (or grown-up!) to toss 'em to, when they've got quite *enough* to attend to at that moment, thank you. But just a bit *too* eager was the big adult assclown who thought it was perfectly okay to bodily wrench a water bottle from the very mouth of poor Marco Haller like a medieval barber yanking a rotten tooth from some poor bastard's head with a rusty farrier's hammer. Forget the fan--I'm inclined to award this one to Marco for charging over and berating the !@#$in' idiot!
Fan !@#$wit Award (Malice Aforethought Edition): between the too-close-flag-wavers, the selfie-stickers, the dog-walkers, and, may heaven protect our eyes, the exhibitionists running beside the riders screaming in their too-small banana-hammocks, it's often hard to pick who gets a Fan !@#$wit Award in the Giro or any Grand Tour. But to their credit, at least they're just stupid--it's a whole 'nother animal when someone actively picks up a pale-blue cruiser bike and intentionally throws it in the race course, which inevitable near-catastrophe was heroically averted by another tifoso who immediately ran out into the road ahead of the charging peloton and retrieved it. Holy crap, and I thought tossing tacks into the road was bad!
Fan !@#$wit Award (Vigilante Justice Edition): What's even worse than a stupid crash when you're riding like mad for the final podium? The roadside moron who puts you there! Undaunted by the ticking clock, though, Miguel Angel Lopez took the time to give the gentleman an etiquette lesson--if you can call smacking the guy upside the head til his hat spun out like a frisbee "etiquette." And while everyone was quick to assure that they don't condone violence, even the race organizers, with the power of expulsion in their hands, were inclined to let this one slide. Hell hath no fury like a GC contender impeded!
Nice Guys Finish Last (But Also First!) Award: Chad Haga--who generously entertained the lot of us with his pithy #GiroOversimplified daily roundups via twitter--slogged through rain, sun, rain, and rain for three straight weeks and sat in the hot seat for damn near the entire final day before finding out the truly bitchin'--he won the Stage 21 time trial, and single-handedly salvaged the demoralized leaderless Team Sunweb's entire Grand Tour. Nice to have something sweet to cheer about for once, amirite? Woot woot woot Chad Haga!
And Finally, the Punk-!@# Move of the Giro: y'know, I usually have a wealth of options to choose from here, as the race for the final maglia rosa grows more intense, tempers rise, and frankly, usually Alejandro Valverde is racing it. But this year he wasn't, and aside from a little argy-bargy in the sprints from Elia Viviani, and Vincenzo Nibali clearly about to go completely over the edge at Primoz Roglic's failure to assist him in overthrowing, well, Primoz Roglic, this year was astonishingly civilized. So here's a slightly revised "Dumb-!@# Move of the Giro" Award: for forcibly abandoning your own team leader Nibali (who could've really used the help, by the way) by getting popped for a 2013 Austrian doping scandal 5 stages into the race, Kristijan Koren, this one's for you!
Well folks, there's my Giro d'Italia awards for 2019--now either claim 'em, correct me, or hope to heck I don't have to give your sorry !@# another prize next year!
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