Best Bib and Tucker on Eurosport's Giro d'Italia Breakaway

 THE Giro d’Italia has gripped me solid these past two weeks.  Eurosport Television’s daily coverage has been especially enjoyable, but what makes it extra special is the expert race analysis provided by Breakaway, the half-hour programme which follows the live coverage presented by Orla Chennaoui.

It’s also a kind of fashion show, with everyone wearing their Best Bib and Tucker. One reason for watching is to see what Orla is wearing. She choses a different stylish outfit for every stage. She has so many clothes her wardrobe must be the size of a team bus.

In vain her guests try to match her flamboyant style and only Adam Blythe with his curly mop gets close,  one day choosing to wear a beautifully pressed shirt, one of those festooned with buttons where no buttons are needed. He looked a dead ringer for John Travolta in Grease.

Sir Bradley Wiggins, sporting a lot more muscle these days, preferred plain tee-shirts and skinny leg-hugging jeans – swopping these for what looked like thermal underwear for Saturday’s program. The plain look nicely offsets the blackened tattoos, a work of art, covering both arms.  I fancy it’s a tapestry, perhaps recording his major victories. It’s all complimented by a shaved head and Captain Birds Eye full beard. Next day he was in  Sunday best, black suit but no socks.

Dan Lloyd, meanwhile, is conservatively turned out in similar gear every day – black jeans and black tee-shirt bearing the letters GCN, standing for Global Cycling Network, the entertaining TV show he presents.

Sean Kelly. Er, I cannot for life of me recall what Sean was wearing. But he looked and sounded fine, there on the red sofa.

So, anyway, Orla, a former All- Ireland triple jump champion and formerly Sky’s chief correspondent for the 2012 and 2016 Olympic Games before becoming Eurosport’s lead presenter for cycling, gets the prog. underway with a summary of the  stage finish we've just watched.  If you’re like me, I’m often left thinking what happened there, where did he come from.

Not to worry, Orla has it all worked out and soon directs her sofa full of pros to dissect the action as only pros can, providing a tantalising insight into what the hell is going on.

That’s because they’ve all done a bit themselves.

My arm’s not long enough to list all their achievements.

Kelly was one of finest classics riders of all time until his retirement in 1994.

Winner of nine road classics, and 193 professional races in total.

Seven times winner of Paris - Nice, winner of Tour of Spain, four times winner of the green points jersey in Tour de France. It goes on.

As for Wiggins, well! 

The first Briton to win Tour de France in 2012. Say no more. Well, just a bit.

Four world track titles, three Olympic titles, and he’s worn the leader’s jersey in all three Grand Tours. That's just for starters.

Adam and Dan palmares are more modest, but they’ve travelled the same road in the big Continental races, ridden for big teams and probably suffered more, and they know the sport inside out.

Dan is now lead presenter on GCN and does other commentary work besides.

The stage win which had me out of my seat - and the Breakaway team  off the sofa – was the 198km stage thirteen finish at Verona when the reigning European and  National Italian road race champion Giacomo Nizzolo did what has narrowly eluded him many times before.  After 19 second places in Grand Tour stages – 11 times second in the Giro – this time he at last won!

His was most devastating long sprint out of the bunch that I have seen -  and into a headwind!

Thanks to Dan’s video presentation which enabled me to focus exactly  how that chaotic sprint played out.

As Edoardo Affini opened a big lead with 500 metres to go, Nizzolo saw the danger immediately and attacked, rocketing clear of the rest, devouring the tarmac but the line seemed so far away.

Affini was way ahead on the right of the road.  To reach him Nizzolo dived first to the left, into the cover of wheels of another charging group, and almost immediately struck out into open space switching to the right and eating up the ground to reach Affini’ rear wheel.

A split second of respite, and incredibly, Nizzolo lit the blue touch paper for the third time and launched himself off Affini’s wheel and into clear daylight as others tried to close up.

The victory, so often taken by others, was his at last. He punched the air again and again and again, before finally coming to a halt to be swamped by rivals who forgot their own disappointment and instead were queuing up to congratulate him. He made it at last!

Meanwhile, it's back on the sofa for the final week of the Giro.

Can race leader Ergan Bernal win the overall? Has second overall Simon Yates got what it takes to snatch the victory?

 I'm plugging Cycling Weekly which is one hundred and thirty years old this year and to celebrate they are featuring many of the individuals who have significantly changed the sport in that period.

 

It's a great read and I know I'm biased, having worked for them once upon a time, after answering an ad for a lad to clean the editor's bike and empty his ashtray. They also gave me a pen and a notebook and  sent me out to report.

There are many people who have helped make the sport successful. 

I nominated Alan Rushton for bringing British television into cycling when he promoted the city centre pro criteriums in the 1980s, followed by the Pro Tour of Britain and World Cup road races featuring the Continental stars and in 1994, bringing the Tour de France to Southern England for two stages. 

Also listed is Chris Boardman (above) whose gold medal at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 set British Cycling on track to becoming a top cycling nation two decades later.

For his success helped seal the bid to build the Manchester Velodrome which was key to everything which followed in the New Millennium, as British cyclists began to dominate the  Olympics thanks to the  pioneering sports science of Peter Keen. When he handed over to Dave Brailsford he took Olympic success to another level and also drove Bradley Wiggins to that historic first British Tour de France victory in 2012.

The issue is packed with great stories about remarkably talented individuals who have shaped the sport not just in Britain, but across the cycling world.

Of course there is always room for more nominations and I would like to give an honorary mention to John Potter, creator of the famous  London to Brighton bike ride in the 1970s for this big ride became the daddy of them all, raising money for the British Heart Foundation. The London - Brighton was the first big charity cycling event in the UK and it inspired many other charity rides and brought tens of thousands of people into the sport.  

OK, OK....let me get my coat off

The Rolling Stones, Melody Maker and Cycling

FUNNY, how amusing moments can stick in the mind, some of them from way back.

I’m writing about some of them instead of a story about how cyclists and pedestrians have been barred from using the Humber Bridge because of suicides there. When I started writing that story up it made such uncomfortable reading I binned it.

Instead, a few funny things, not all of them cycling related.

Here goes.

“On the left”…. Trevor Bull’s shouted command in a British pro road race sprint finish in the 1970s cost Phil Bayton the win – because he obeyed and moved over!

The affable Bayton (known as the “Staffordshire Engine” and hard to beat) laughed fit to burst that he should fall for that one.

Phil Liggett, the cycling TV commentator when a humble staff man on Cycling magazine in the 70s relieving the boredom of subbing the racing results and keeping the rest of us entertained by calling every rider by the first name of Harry.

Ken, the genial post room clerk in an engineering firm I briefly worked for, doing virtually the same thing, coincidentally also calling out  aloud  “Harry” -  instead of the real name on each envelope as he popped them in their various pigeon holes.

And for good measure, listening to an imaginary conversation going on around him by occasionally calling out “Oh yeah”, as if in agreement with what was being said.

The Dog. This was the moniker given Merseyside pro Geoff Dutton on training runs, whose call “coming through” – sounded more like a gruff bark.

Egg. This was Terry Dolan, now a reputed frame builder to the stars, who I recall rushing around the deck on the overnight Isle of Man ferry, snatching cushions from under the heads of sleeping passengers. No idea why Terry was called Egg.

 

“Can’t stop there…” Liggett winding up his companions by refusing to pull over for a café stop when driving ahead of the Tour de France – if the café was on the wrong side of the road, only to relent after howls of protest. Can't recall which side was "wrong".

“What you doin’ down there, Hardi’?”…Former national road race champion Pete Matthews to his Liverpool Mercury club mate Keith Hardiman who was sliding by on the road, still fastened to his pedals. Hardy had been the first to fall on a greasy bend in the Circuit of Ashurst, the Merseyside season-opener.

Many others skidded and fell that day, including yours truly in the exalted company of Tour of Poland stage winner Billy Perkins.  That was my claim to fame and it earned me a pint from a club mate at the Jazz Club that night.

 

“Good morning, my English friend, have you had your bacon, eggs and fried bread…” a French pro’s greeting to Tony Hewson, the new boy to Continental professional road racing during in 1950s, recalled in his splendid book “In Pursuit of Stardom”.

The Tour  of Sweden pro-am 1984: Peugeot’s Sean Yates distracting the Dutch amateur team from setting a furious pace – by whistling as he sat on their rear wheels.

Also on that same Tour of Sweden, Peugeot’s Allan Peiper chasing down an amateur who had attacked through the feeding station. Having got alongside him, Peiper thrust a ham sandwich into the trouble makers face, shouting, “Eat you stupid sod, eat – or you’ll never last the week.”

Assistant Editor Sid Saltmarsh, arriving at Cycling’s offices each the morning irritated by a question from a colleague before he’d barely got in the door… “OK, OK… let me get my coat off.”

Sid tapping his fingers on the window pane of the office partition with music paper Melody Maker, calling out “two minutes”:  his time limit for turning down the volume on the racket from a Rolling Stones album. And when they didn’t, shouting: “Oh, for FUCK’s SAKE!