THREE GRAND TOUR WINNERS HEAD STRONG BRITISH PRESENCE IN TOUR DE SUISSE

 

The Tour of Suisse (June 15-22) starting just as the Criterium du Dauphine finished in Franceboasts three British Grand Tour winners Geriant Thomas (INEOS), Chris Froome (Israel Premier) and Tao Geoghegan Hart (Lidl), and 11 British riders in all.

The other eight home riders on the start list provide further evidence of the burgeoning home talent mixing it with the best on the Continent. And none more so than Jake Stewart who landed his first Pro Tour win in a bunch sprint on stage five of last week’s Criterium du Dauphine. And there is also Lewis Askey stage winner in the recent Dunkirk four-day in May.

The overall winner of the Dauphine of course was world road champion Tadj Pogaca from Jonas Vingegaard with Florian Lipowitz third, and Remco Evenpoel fourth.

So, now the Tour de Suisse is in focus in the build up for the Tour de France next month, and also starting this week, the Tour of Belgium.

The11 Britisg riders selected for the Swiss tour are Finlay Pickering (Bahrain Victorious); Max Walker (Education First); Lewis Askey (Groupama); Geraint Thomas (INEOS); Tao Geoghegan Hart (Lidl); James Knox (Soudal); Sean Flynn (Team Picnic); Oscar Onley (Team Visma); Chris Froome (Israel Premier); Josepth Blackmore (Israel Premier).

Don’t expect they will have much time to admire the scenery.

It does beg the question, did someone win a design award for those sublime unblemished oh so Swiss views, the manicured grass slopes, the beautifully painted houses dotted among the green hills, the small trees with their oval canopies fringing the gardens.  And beyond the houses,  the lakes, and further away in the far distance,  forests lining the ridges on the lower slopes of the near mountains, framed by towering dark craggy peaks in the far distance.

It all looks so pristine, like an architects scale model unveiled that day.

Almost as if the view has been composed for a canvas. It just needs a model train threading the valley. Instead, the Tour de Suisse peloton is snaking through the valley.

Such a contrast to the Italian alps across the border, where I recall houses with more time worn look, in need of a lick of paint.

I am reminded – if I may go off on a tangent - of the remarkable scenes created by German landscape painter Casper David Friedrich (1774 -1840), whose beautiful, albeit gloomy, scenes so beautifully conveyed a sense of the mystery of nature. And yet many of these scenes were his creation.

That lake, the mountains, the forest, would be from different parts of Germany, assembled in Friedrich’s mind and committed to canvas, to convey his vision.

But hey, I’m getting carried away again.  I’m not actually in the landscape, I'm in my armchair,  having to make do with seeing it on the tele - minus  the commentary! I have my reasons!

 

 

SMARTPHONES - THE END OF LIFE AS WE KNOW IT

 

The new Information Technology - IT to you and me - is so advanced it has to be other worldly.

This is the internet, launched in 1983, same year as the first mobile phone.  Desk top computers arrived in the 1970s and the first of the ubiquitous smartphones in 1994.

We know, don’t we, that the inspiration for all of these gizmos  came from the planet Zob  in the constellation of Zing, courtesy of the Intergalactic Federation of Planets  (IFP) which reckoned we needed a leg up on the technology front.

It came with conditions of course.  In exchange for sharing this new tech with us they wanted permission to secretly abduct and/or tag people and animals, and for experiments.  

Well, you go ahead, US President Eisenhower who allegedly met these exotic tech savvy visitors to our planet in 1950s, said. But confine yourselves to lifting people out of South America. They are a very religious and superstitious and if word did get out no one would believe them.

Well, these activities have since become more widespread.

No evidence to support this, of course.

However, in 2023, 4,432,880 people worldwide were reported missing.

But hey, so many more of us have also been abducted, taken in, our lives blessed by this new tech, which  in recent decades has extended to smart phones  - a blessed nuisance if you ask me.

This past decade has seen many innovative tricks offered to those using this technology, while those who choose not to find themselves increasingly marginalised, left out of the loop, excluded. Some of them won’t mind. But many do.

The plus factor in this new technology is the lightning speed we can access facts and figures, news and obtain and share information previously accessible only after research at a library which may have necessitated taking a bus ride and packed lunch.  

But this new tech can also be a pain the arse. This is not the fault of the gizmo; rather it is the nerds who design the software who have created this form of madness.

In the old days a letter would arrive in the post. You open it and read the information – maybe it’s an appointment; an invoice; your credit balance; your energy bill.

Information received and understood. 

Today, you get a text on y our phone or an email. It says, here is your appointment details/balance/bill.  Whatever.

Except the information can only be accessed by clicking on a link, and so begins the game devised by the Nerd. So it's click this, click that, swipe, swipe, swipe....

You need to enter your password – which you cannot remember from the 100s of passwords already accumulated, some OF SOME LENGTH and complicated.  So, with luck, you find the password in your password notebook. Enter it. If you are lucky this is accepted. Or it may say it doesn’t recognise it when it plainly should, which leads to an infuriating dance on the keyboard before it goes through.

And you move on to the next blasted step.  You are asked to confirm your age; your email address; your postcode; inside leg measurement; what you had for breakfast.

I am sorry, say the words on the screen, you need to fill in all the required zones; highlighted with a red asterisk.

You do it all again.

Then you may need a verification number, which it says will be emailed to you directly.

So you then must go out of that file, into your email. Or it’s a text to your phone which you have left in another room. You hurry to retrieve it.

 And yes, there is the verification number with the added warning, you have 10 minutes to enter this or you are knackered. You hurry back to the thing.

You hastily write down the number using the old art form of pen and paper.

And then maybe you lose the link in which case the whole shit show must be started again. But you may just be accepted, to continue this tiresome business.

The system may yet reject you, of course, for it seems entirely random, or it may allow you to see the information you so desperately want to read.

Hey ho. We’re through.

And the message is no secret formula. It is simply the date, time and location of the appointment; or whatever information they wish to impart.

A letter would be so much easier!

Or you want to download Wordfued. Some sort of game. Password to begin with, then comes the verification code and the keyboard dance to retrieve it and then enter it, then it wants ID number which you didn’t even  know you needed and don’t have.

So you invent one, and as soon as you enter this, Microsoft take issues with it take over the screen to ask, are you sure you want to do this?

Or if it doesn’t ask for ID, it calls for all sorts of other pieces of information and after providing all of this the screen blinks and goes back to the start. And it remains in this infuriating loop. Please provide password, and so you begin again: until CRASH SMASH.  That’s your laptop being thrown into the wall.

What a load of faff!

One can understand the need for security in bank transactions for example. But even so, if the information had come in the post it you simply could read it by opening the envelope.

More infuriating doings on the internet. You have located a cycling club, stamp club, bakery club, dance club, whatever, and you may wish to join or to glean more information.

But nowhere on the website is there a telephone number. This is because the people you are trying to contact wish to avoid human contact if at all possible. You may interrupt them at some other nefarious activity. So that is understandable from their point of view. But not mine.

 

 This new way of communicating is being abused to keep potential customers at arm’s length by requiring them to make contact by filling out forms and pressing send when all along all you have wanted to do is speak to a live person.

And then you must wait for a reply which may or may not come.

Then there is the automated voice, the robot and the several options which may or may not

answer your needs.

All the time you are required to  press buttons, and finally, finally, you may be put through t o a human who may, if you are lucky, speak clearly and in a dialect you understand but  probably won’t.

The few companies I have had no such issues with have been Sky, or Domestic and General, who quickly assign you a human being who speaks clearly and sets about sorting your query.

But mostly, connections lead to confusion with the added option of your mental breakdown.

SLAVES TO THE SMARTPHONE

And one other thing; smartphones. These gizmos, again as good as they are, are also robbing us of the last vestiges of humanity with their seductive on screen powers which means a lot of people now walk everywhere holding the thing in an outstretched hand, crossing the road, eyes glues to the screen, without looking for traffic or me – who is not on the phone - walking towards them. |I will shout at the last second (MOVE IT!)

And there is using a phone while driving; another obsession. They don’t care they could kill people, which happens because their response time, because their minds are taken by the gizmo, is worse than if drunk.

And so it goes on and on and on.

People in what ordinarily used to be moments of necessary idleness seated somewhere are now scrolling aimlessly gazing at the fleeting passage of words and images with blank expressions of joylessness .

Oh, yes, and then there are the people using their smartphones at the supermarket checkout.

And most times I am in line behind these arseholes; they are faffing about swiping the screen to bring up the bar code scanner making several attempts before succeeding with a smug expression. Or not. And I’m muttering, use you’re bleeding card. It takes a second!!!

And worst of all, communication via smartphones is fast becoming the way to access hotels, and other services to do business, to park the car. That doesn’t bother me as we happily are carless.  In 2019 it was estimated that 55 million people in the UK had a smartphone.

Which means smartphones are becoming divisive, for all those without are denied services accessible on QR codes and from using any links to information provided in messages.

Finally, the satnav.

There I was in a lovely hotel on the edge of Exmoor many years ago now. In the morning, at breakfast, I was moved to say to a couple who were gazing out of the window in wonder. “Isn’t this a beautiful location?”

And he replied: “I’ve no idea where we are. We just followed he satnav!” And he laughed. Imbecile.

If anyone was a candidate for alien abduction, he was.

 

 

………………

 

 

 

 

TWO BIG STORIES - one good one bad

 

The good story.

BRITAIN’S Simon Yates’s stunning breakaway to snatch the lead and overall victory in the 2025 Giro d’Italia made headlines in the newspapers.

Yates had played his cards right for three weeks racing up through Italy from the Albania start, lying low but smartly remaining close to all the main contenders before blasting into decisive action at the last.

Who will forget his fantastic escape on the monstrously long Finestre mountain on the penultimate day – the very climb he had capitulated on in 2018 when Chris Froome destroyed the field in a much longer lone break to win the Giro?

From lying third overall at 1-21 to race leader Del Toro – who was trailed by  second placed Carapaz - Yates catapulted ahead of both to leave them several minutes adrift with a series of brilliant attacks to set off on a stunning 38km escape.

What a ride! What a tactical triumph for Yates’s Visma-Lease-a-bike team who prudently had sent their ace in the pack, Wout van Aert ahead in an earlier move – to assist Yates if he got clear!

And what a failure for the teams of Toro and Carapaz not to react to the fact that one of the world’s best classics riders, Van Aert, had been sent ahead for this purpose.

For when Yates joined the waiting Van Aert, himself a Giro stage winner earlier in the race, the Belgian took off at a searing pace towing Yates well clear.  The Giro was both won…and lost.

Love it, when bike racing produces such dynamic racing: love it, love it, love it!

That was the good story.

Here is the bad.

How ironic and unfortunate that the
The Observer, which ran a graphic report of the Yates’s epic, also chose that same edition to run a double page feature entitled: “The doping that could kill cycling.”

Hate it, hate it, hate it.

Because that certainly wiped the smile off my face.

Both were penned by Jeremy Whittle and I bet he cursed under his breath when he saw that the motor doping story should be run in the same issue celebrating Yates’s epic!

The feature was all about “mechanical doping”, and the “persistent rumours” that hidden motors have been used to win some of the biggest races.

And yet, it is 10 years since a rider was detected using an e-bike, Belgium’s Femke van den Driessche at the 2016 women’s world cyclo-cross championships.

Oh, well.

That’s cycle sport’s legacy! No getting away from it.

But hey, what a relief that the last big sports doping story to break last September was wholly owned by athletics. This concerned the women’s 1500 metres at the London 2012 Olympic Games, when samples taken from the athletes were stored for future analysis by improved detection methods.

The event was described as the dirtiest in history, by the BBC, “with six of the first nine finishers falling foul of anti-doping regulations, the latest being Russia’s silver-medallist Tatyana Tomashova.”

She was banned for 10 years.

I suppose it is too much to expect that doping has been completely eradicated in cycling! Are we due one?

So what exactly did this latest “motor doping” story say?

Here is some of the detail.

The article was dominated by an illustration of a racing bike, showing how a motor could be concealed, with details of electro-magnetic devices in the rims spinning the wheels faster.

Small motors can be hidden in the bottom of the downtube, activated by a hidden trigger on the handlebars!

But the view from within the sport is that using a motor to win would be the greatest betrayal, worse than the conventional doping with medicines and pills - because with an e-bike the machine is doing the work, not the rider!

There is cheating and cheating!

So are e-bikes being used?

It has been claimed that in the 2015 Tour de France a dozen riders were using hidden motors!

The article refers to the extraordinary performances of Tadej Pogocar, Froome, Alberto Contador and Fabian Cancellera which have fuelled conspiracy theorists.

All have denied wrongdoing.

So now there are post-race checks….with no advance warning of the UCI tech fraud squad approaching with scanners to examine machinery.

But it’s not easy for them.

Riders can and do change bikes during a race, usually for a mechanical!

Maybe they only use the e-bike for a particularly difficult stretch of the course before changing to a clean bike!

Which means they may finish on a different bike, so the one they started out remains undetected.

It all seems far-fetched to me! But then again I was one of those taken in by smooth-talking EPO fuelled Armstrong 20 years ago, right until the last!

But if the UCI squad cannot discover e-bikes it means one of two things. They’re aren’t any! Or if they are in use, then the team(s) doing it, are quick to spirit the bike away at the finish.

But how on earth can they hide it during a race. Do they conceal it somewhere in one of several team vehicles - cars, buses or trucks? It sounds farcical.

Unless someone is turning a blind eye – as they used to do in the bad old days.

Who hasn’t read Willy Voet’s book “Breaking the Chain - Drugs and Cycling – The True Story”, published in 2001? This is shocking account of organised doping in cycling. It provides an ugly perspective of the sport back then.

It may puncture any romantic notions you have of suffering for the cause. It has always been about suffering.  Ripping your tripe out was an expression I used to hear.  Our club training captain would study the route of that Sunday’s  hilly road race, grit his teeth in mock horror  at the severity of what was in store and call out, “Agh, der pain!” in expectation of the suffering to come.

But we loved it!

But we knew it was our choice, to conquer the pain and try for a placing, that was all we asked of ourselves. Of course, we also knew we didn’t have to do it.

Professionals have no choice.

Use of drugs has been common in sport from the earliest races in the 1800s.

One such pain killer reported to be in common use before it was added to the banned list a few years ago, is Tramadol. I recall a Sky team member referring to its frequent use. It’s a prescription drug not available over the counter.

Clearly it is a given that athletes need to take pain killers, but they cannot cross the line and take banned stuff.

The Voet story dealt with the use of far more powerful banned drugs, not just for racing but also in training. There is a passage where he describes giving amphetamines to ease rider’s discomfort on a long training ride in cold wet weather!

The rider later reported he had had a very enjoyable day, thank you very much.

The book was written by Voet to make a clean breast of his central part in

the Festina Drugs scandal uncovered at the start of the 1998 Tour de France.

It told of how he and others over the years had administered their “preparations” for selected top riders.

That really rocked the sport. Then when everyone thought the sport was squeaky clean, along came Armstrong in 1999, the cancer survivor, the hero, doped to win his seven consecutive Tours “because everyone was on it.”

That also rocked the sport. Nothing big since then.

The most telling thing about the publication of Voet’s book was the reaction from the rest of the sport. There was none – at least not publicly that I was aware of.  A telling silence.

But motor doping?  At least it will be safer than taking stimulants which are reckoned to have killed many athletes over the years.

 

Nah!

 

 

 

PIED PIPER CALLS THE TUNE

 

 

MANY posts on social media have revealed concern at the success of Reform UK in the local by-elections in May, at the growth of this right wing populist party driven by the Pied Piper of Parliament, Nigel Farage leading all who follow a merry dance.

Farage had David Cameron dancing to his tune to set the Referendum nine years ago, which resulted in that disastrous public vote to leave the European Union, to turn our back on our closest neighbours.

The Leave line was membership of the EU was costing too much. We’d be better off getting out, getting better deals with the rest of the world. But what do I know?

Well, I look around, read as much as I can for background.

 Let’s look at some of the facts:

Food prices rose by an extra eight per cent because of Brexit, according to SNP-commissioned analysis.

The House of Commons library research showed that UK food prices rose by 25 per cent between December 2019 and March 2023. It estimated that it would have only increased by 17 per cent if Brexit had not happened.

And now Mr Farage has Sir Keir Starmer under his spell exaggerating fears concerning immigration.  So up pops the Prime Minister to promise Labour will get tough on immigration, with an alarming statement saying we risked becoming an “island of strangers”.

Not only was this typical of Farage rhetoric, to some politicians his words echoed Enoch Powell’s notorious “rivers of blood” speech.

But what irony that on the 80^th anniversary of the end of Second World War on May 8, marking the defeat of Fascist Germany, Britain should vote for the Right in local elections!

The migration issue is a major driving force behind the “popular” rise of Reform UK, as it is with the rise of the right across Europe. It is a depressing worrying trend.

In one post referring to the ongoing Channel crossings by illegal immigrants in small boats, the writer suggested a Spitfire be despatched to the beaches to “let ‘em have it”.

One has to hope that if he or she ever needs to flee this country, that wherever they wash up “foreigners” might look at them more kindly.

History records that Populism surfaces whenever there is growing dissatisfaction with the current government, prompting a demand for a stricter government to get a grip. I have read that a substantial number of the younger population favour an authoritarian party, a slippery path!

Today’s major concerns remain the cost of living and migrants, with a call for tightening restrictions on entry to the UK.

The former Conservative government created a huge mess and the new Labour government is beginning to look no better. Notwithstanding the serious and international issues demanding attention, people are pissed off with Labour rowing back on promises to increase investment in welfare and benefits. On top of that, there is the questionable demand to stop using care workers from other countries and to recruit from home!

The latter is a tricky one for without migrants there would be no NHS or care workers, to take jobs British people don’t want to do.

An authoritarian party scores because it sides with the Pops saying they will sort out the issues of most concern and, surprise, surprise, a lot people swallow that.

But while making a lot of noise about this, they meanwhile accelerate their own agenda promising the earth and lining their own pockets.
We’ve seen this in other countries. Meanwhile they whip up racism, stoke fear and divide communities. Once elected an authoritarian party can morph into a dictatorship threatening anyone who opposes their narrow outlook. Just look at what is happening under President Trump, as he turns America towards fascism. They can be hard to be rid of.

As for Farage, despite not being an elected MP at the time, this controversial character became infamous for sowing the seeds for Britain to quit the European Union.  It led to that fateful public referendum in 2016 offered by Prime Minister David Cameron who took the bait cast by Farage demanding the UK’s future with the rest of Europe be put to a public vote.

Cameron who backed “Remain” urged support for Europe but failed to understand how much he was disliked due to his party’s austerity program. Why would the “popular” crowd heed him? Answer: they didn’t.

And so it was that 17 million voted to pull up the drawbridge on Fortress UK, while 16 million voted remain. As we know, this resulted in the UK quitting the European Union, ending free movement of people and trade, isolating us from the rest of Europe at huge cost.

The Leavers claimed we would ditch trade with Europe and secure better deals with the rest of the world.

Yet to this day, Britain still trades largely with the other 27 countries which have remained in the EU, but at greater cost and under vastly increased layers of bureaucracy which has forced smaller businesses close.

 

The restrictions on free movement have come at a cost to the UK’s economy, with the plight of the Youth Hostel Association just one example. In 2023 they were forced to sell 20 of their 150 hostels as a result of loss of income when foreign school parties stopped coming.

The Reformers have been quick to angrily respond to criticism, claiming this was the “Popular vote”, both in the referendum and the recent local elections.

They also worship their champion of Brexit, the former Prime Minister but no longer MP, Boris Johnson.

One entry on social media angrily said “stop living in the past FFS”.

To which the only response is to say that only by understanding the past can we make sense of today and plan for the future.

But the point this gentleman raised was to say leaving the EU was all about regaining sovereignty, nothing to do with economics at all.

He couldn’t accept the EU interfering with how the UK set its own laws.

Well, that might be a concern. But just how did this work?

According to the UK parliament, membership of the EC/EU did result in loss of sovereignty in respect that the Government was obliged to “fulfil the requirements of the EU Treaties and law, which have primacy over UK law.”

The UK Parliament pointed out the pros and cons, saying:

“EU laws have resulted in higher standards in many areas, such as employment and environment, but over-implantation has also tended to impose a burden on business and industry.”

Remainers by contrast were of the view that the benefits of EU membership outweighed the issues of sovereignty.

Interestingly, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has recently been negotiating with the EU to remove some of the barriers created by Brexit.

That has already set the cat among the pigeons.

Meanwhile, as Reform supporters brought up the subject of Johnson, let’s examine this playful fool in more detail.

Who will ever forget how this rogue become Prime Minister but who was eventually forced out in disgrace, accused of misleading and lying to parliament on a number of occasions. They included the famous Downing
Street parties which were found to have breached his own government’s guidelines to maintain isolation during the Covid pandemic.

But the big one was the prorogation controversy in 2019, when Johnson sought the Queen’s permission to suspend parliament. It was a blatant attempt to avoid scrutiny of his government’s Brexit plans. After a legal battle in the courts, his prorogation plan was ruled unlawful.

Then there were his many exaggerations, including declaring he would build 40 new hospitals when there was scarcely money to build one.

So, it is important to look back at those crazy times because they paved the way to the present.

I would see Boris up close at press conferences when he was Mayor of London.  Likeable fellow, charismatic, fun to be around. Everyone knows that. He has missed his true vocation as stand-up comic.

It is said he is the classic narcissist, all the while seeking attention to feed a huge ego.

 No one ever thought for a moment he was fit to become PM!

Good writer, as a journalist he spent many years taking the piss out of the European Union with half-truths that did much to create populist Euroscepticism. 

I wonder how many people recall that Boris first backed Remain when the referendum was announced; switching horses to Leave in the belief he could make political gain. But all the while he remained convinced the public would vote to remain in the EU.

I read that he was visibly shocked when the Leave vote won. I recall reading a piece about Johnson’s reaction to hearing the result of the referendum. He could be seen mouthing the words to his fellow Leave campaigner Michael Gove; what do we do now, when the results came in.

But hey, he became Prime Minister when Cameron resigned. So, a win win.

That was his major aim in life, to become PM and get into Downing Street.

But then began another Johnson charade: “Get Brexit Done”.

It was never done. Britain was undone.

But a lot of people like catchy phrases like that, “Get Britain Done”.

Or across the pond: “Make America Great Again”.

And the Pops go around chanting them and hey presto, to their minds Brexit’s done and America is Great Again.

Analysis reveals that Leave won because most of those who voted Leave  were concerned with the plight of the NHS, the cost of living and immigration. But they failed to understand these issues were the result of the British government alone, nothing to do with the European Union. So quitting would have no effect on those issues.

So it was that the Leave voters wrongly blamed the EU for our financial woes, and that mistake carried the vote, not concerns over sovereignty.

I recall one young man in Wales justifying his decision to vote Leave, asking what had the EU ever done for his locality. He had no idea the new sport and leisure centre he enjoyed using was built with EU funding!

More recently, a member of the Welsh Labour party, alarmed by  Starmer’s remarks insinuating there were too many migrants, has sought to bring some clarity to the discussion.  She says that 7 percent of the population in Wales are migrants. And yet from this small number,  50 per cent of doctors and dentists in Wales are from migrant families. What would Wales do without them?

We will for ever recall the decal on the side of the Leave Battle Bus with the claim and pledge (disputed by the UK Statistics Authority and Institute for Fiscal Studies) "We send the EU £350 million a week, let's fund our NHS instead",  and  the slogan "Let's take back control".^[2]

It was one of the most prominent symbols of the campaign and a lie and Johnson exploited it to the full.

But he was “popular” so who cares. And despite his reputation, he it is said he has been earning £2.5m a year as an after dinner speaker.

He’s vowed never to return to politics.  But don’t bet on it.

Which is a worry, for he and Farage have cosied up to Trump widely criticised for his racist stance and for creating turmoil for the world economy with his shit show of huge tariffs on world trade. At home  he has cut funding in US scientific research and education. 

Vital government agencies have been disbanded resulting eliminating thousands of jobs. Billions of dollars for biomedical research have either been clawed back or stopped completely.  He’s now ordered Harvard University  to stop taking foreign students.

As if this is not enough to deal with, how do you like this?

In a recent edition of The New European in a piece written by Nicky Woolf, we learn that key to Trump’s administration is a woman called Laura Loomer who is 31.

She describes herself as “proud Islamophobe” and “pro white nationalist”. And she is a guiding hand in all the crazy stuff Trump does.  She has gone so far as to make sexual assertions against those who oppose her master.

In a tweet reacting to the election of the new pontiff, Loomer wrote simply “Woke Marxist Pope”.

She has been compared with “Rasputin, the sinister mystic who held Russian Czar Nicholas 11 under his spell.”

If I was at all religious I would say this is the work of the Devil.