Giro d'Italia 2013

The Giro started this weekend with a great win for Mark Cavendish on the first stage.  The Giro podium girls seem to give proper smackeroonie kisses not the little pecks the oh so refined Tour de France girls manage.

As usual it gives the jovially politically incorrect Italians the excuse to parade lots more examples of the splendid local femininity.  Above we have some pom pom girls from the team presentations.

Everything we like about Italian girls in one pink package.  None of this size zero anorexic look here, just a young lady you could take out to dinner and she'd eat a proper meal and not prod a bit of lettuce about her plate.  Deliziosa!

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Bradley Wiggins and Team GB in the Olympic cycling time trial

Bradley Wiggins at full pelt on the Portsmouth Road

Agent Triple P went out to watch the Olympic road time trials yesterday and cheer on Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome (and, indeed Lizzie Armitstead and Emma Pooley too; who both rode very well in a very strong field).

Emma Pooley

We were surprised how many people were out on the road to cheer them on.  Cobham has a big American school, which takes people from many nationalities, so we saw people from Norway, Spain, Netherlands, America, South Africa, Australia, Denmark and Germany waving their flags too.  The crowd was a mixture of gnarly cyclists and families, with some pretty elaborate picnics on display, as you would expect in this area.

Everyone cheered every rider as they flashed past.  Fortunately it was a bright afternoon so we managed to get 1/1000 of a second shutter speed, which you certainly need in order to try and capture the cyclists as they whizz past, sometimes only about five feet from you.  Indeed Lizzie Armistead was so close we had trouble photographing her at all.

Lizzie Armistead passes about five feet from Triple P

The time trial makes for a much better spectator event than the, blink and you'll miss them, road race and it was interesting to see who had passed the rider ahead from the original start order.

The police motorcyclists seemed to be enjoying every minute of the event, waving at the crowd and getting cheered as they went by.  Triple P enjoyed this fine specimen of the constabulary as she ensured the crowd got their feet out of the road before each rider came past.

Chris Froome gets some female support

We didn't find out that Bradley Wiggins had won the gold medal until we were on our way back home when there was a great cheer from those with radios.  Froome was a good bronze medal winner as well but we suspect Mrs Wiggins will have to get used to being Lady Wiggins next year!

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Congratulations to Lizzie Armitstead for Britain's first medal!

At least the sun came out for the medal ceremony!

Today's women's cycling road race was a much more exciting affair than yesterdays men's race.  The second half of the race saw appalling conditions, experienced by Triple P out on the road side, with a lot of nasty crashes.  It was so dark we thought that we wouldn't be able to get any photos but managed a few.

L to R Shelley Olds (US), Zabelinskaya (Russia), Armitstead (UK) and Vos (Netherlands) storm through Triple P's village

Olga Zabelinskaya's attack on Box Hill made the race and it was good to see her getting a bronze for her effort.  Shelley Olds, who was in the breakaway foursome, was unlucky to puncture in Esher but it took some of the pressure off the others as the American is a formidable sprinter.

This photo gives an idea of how bad the rain was.  All three sported road rash from earlier falls

Armitstead didn't put a pedal wrong tactically but beating current world number one, the formidable Marianne Vos, in a sprint was always going to be a big ask.  The Dutch team consistently attacked and made the race exciting viewing so for them to end up with the gold medal was well deserved.  A much better result than the men's race!

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Olympics come to Triple P's village...but no luck for Britain and a dismal show by the BBC

The peloton follow Triple P's route to the station

Triple P, unexpectedly enjoyed the Olympics ceremony last night and although it was a little too hip and multicultural for his taste we did think it was a striking looking production.

Today the Olympics came right past our door (well about a 100 yards from our door) with the men's road race coming through the village.  It was strange to watch it on TV going through all the places we know and then hopping out the house for ten minutes to watch it go by before racing back to catch the finish.  No doubt the local roads, which have been inundated with road cyclists since the route was announced will be even worse from now on.

Tour de France winner Bradley Wiggins (left) and Mark Cavendish (right)

Unfortunately the much vaunted UK team were victims of their own success in the Tour de France with no-one helping to catch the breakaway group.  The fact is that if Mark Cavendish had only taken his early stage on the Tour then people might have thought that he had lost some top end speed and someone like the Germans might have worked a bit harder in the chasing group.  However, his two later dominant wins in the Tour showed that he was still the fastest sprinter in the world so nobody from another team was going to help towards pulling the breakaway back to enable a bunch sprint.  They would rather the UK lost than they themselves won, as Cavendish rightly suggested.  

Vinokourov (centre) whizzes along the A244

Given there were some good riders in the breakaway it was a shame it was won by convicted blood doper Vinokourov whose Astana team has always been dodgy; as, indeed, has the whole Kazakh cycling federation who let Vinokourov back after his ban tremendously early so he could compete in the Beijing Olympics.  

The biggest problem will be that Bradley Wiggins buried himself for Cavendish and only has a day to recover for the time trial.

The BBC coverage of the race was appalling and Tour de France commentators Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwin were much missed.  Thank goodness for Chris Boardman as Hugh Porter constantly misidentified riders and, indeed, countries.  He is seventy two now, only four years older than Liggett, but has completely lost his touch.  Time to find someone else BBC (hint his name begins with "L").  The lack of time separation information was also unforgivable.  The French can manage real time information regarding the gaps between groups why can't the BBC?  The BBC didn't have enough cameras out on the route either. 

Triple P has a horrible feeling that this will just be the start of a series of disasters for our top stars in the next two weeks!

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Tour de France 2012 Podium Girls: 5

If we had organised ourselves properly we would have finished our look at this year's Tour de France podium girls by finishing with the yellow jersey.  We could not have foreseen Bradley Wiggins' monumental victory back then or, perhaps, we didn't want to hex it!

So, instead, we have the climbers jersey girls who include our favourite hotesse on this years Tour in the incarnation of this exotic beauty.

So that's it for another year in what has been a remarkable Tour de France for Britain.    Olympics next!

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Tour de France 2012 podium Girls: 4

Tejay van Garderen has been up close with the maillot blanc girls this week

We're running out of days to cover the remaining podium girls so we'll look at two of the newer categories in this post.

The maillot blanc for the best young (under 25 years old) rider was first introduced in 1975 but ceased to be awarded in 1990 only being reintroduced again in 2000.  The winner of this is often a good tip for a Tour winner of the future.  The maillot blanc is sponsored by Skoda and the young ladies that present the jersey on the podium are some of the nicest looking of this year's Tour; all looking elegant in their nicely figure-hugging dresses.

The winner of the prix de la combativité every day doesn't get a red jersey but he does get a red number to wear the next day.  The podium girls for this prize have had to wear the most over the top of what are a rather conservative collection of podium girl fashions this year.  Dressed in balletic ball gowns they certainly couldn't pop unnoticed into a local bar, for a post race vin blanc cassis, in these little numbers.

Just one jersey left, the  maillot à pois rouges, which we will look at tomorrow.

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Tour de France 2012 Podium Girls: 3

A completely awesome sprint from Mark Cavendish to take today's Tour stage and give him his 22nd Tour win.  Since his win in the first week Cavendish has had to sacrifice his stage win aspirations to support Bradley Wiggins' seemingly unstoppable route to becoming the first British winner of the toughest sporting event in the world.

Cavendish had deliberately lost weight to help him on the nine ascents of Box Hill on the Olympic road race route, taking place next weekend (and passing just 200 yards from Triple P's house) .  He seemed to have lost his top end speed in some of the other sprints early on in the tour.  Despite all those mountain ascents, however, he looked like his old self in Brive-la Gaillarde today; coming from way back to take the line in one of his greatest sprints ever.  It bodes well for the Olympics!

Most satisfactory!

So its appropriate to look at the points leader's jersey podium girls in this post.  The PMU girls are not slavishly following the all over colour coding of the other jerseys but instead have these rather elegant white numbers with just a hint of colour.  Elegant!

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Tour de France 2012 Podium Girls: 2

Time for another look at this year's podium girls and this time its those who hand over the maillot jaune so they really should be the pick of the bunch.  Bradley Wiggins has been picking up a fair few Credit Lyonnais lions this week but at least he has been collecting them and his jerseys from some delightful podium girls.  Triple P particularly likes the one on the right.

The one on the left is too Minnie Driver for Triple P whereas the one on the right is more Kristin Davies which is better.

Minnie (not her real name)

Charlotte (that is her real name)

Sometimes the Yellow Jersey girls wear black for some reason but have natty little scarves so that they can remember what they are supposed to be doing.

But mostly its yellow.  There are four maillot jaune hostesses but this one is the only blonde.  Well, actually we don't think she is a real blonde.

The Tour seems to have abandoned its totally misguided trial last year of podium boys which would have only been appropriate for female riders.  Some people (ugly women, mostly) say there is no place for podium girls any more but we can't see them disappearing any time soon.  This is France, after all not Canada.

Marie-Alexie

This girl, Marie-Alexie Bazerque, is something of a veteran podium girl, having been a maillot jaune girl back in 2007, a year after she was a semi-finalist in the Miss France competition.

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