It’s a slow day. Everyone else is leading off with the T-Mobile Tour selections, but I will be different and slightly ironical (yeah, that is a word) by linking to the ’07 London Tour Departure on the T-Mobile website. Besides, what’s the big news about T-Mobile not selecting riders with a proven record of success at the TdF? Oh, I get it: the news isn’t that Giuseppe Guerini (two stage wins, inlcuding Alpe d’Huez) and Oscar Sevilla (3rd overall in ’01) haven’t been selected, it’s that they haven’t been dinged. In other team news, Caisee/Balears has finally been presented. But no mention is made of the two-jersey system I was so excited about earlier. I would have asked about it if I had been on hand, but, for some reason, I wasn’t invited.
What else have I got for you? Well, it seems some Dutch dudes (who else, really?) have up and decided that it would be a grand idea to have a bike race from Paris to Dakar. The surprisingly exhaustive article points out that this would be a bike race based on a car race based on a bike race, which is really more levels of reflexivity that I care to deal with without being paid. But if you’ve got 6,000 clams and 10 weeks to burn, why the heck not? Oh, and Cedric Vassuer, a former maillot jaune and implicated doper (never charged) seems to have surprised a French interviewer by pointing out that, no, being the only Frenchman on the Quick.Step squad will not guarantee him selection to the Tour de France. Better make sure not to tell that to Matt Wilson (scroll to “Wilson unlikely”).
The ’05 Matt Wilson reference puzzles me. Plus my French is not good (Vasseur link). Please enlighten me.
This year Vasseur and Wilson are ‘foreigners’ on different Belgian teams. Wilson was a ‘foreigner’ on a French team last year. At this point Unibet is not a shoo-in for a wild card entry in the TDF.
I’m pointing out that, though the French may still cling to the idea that “their” race should have as many French riders as possible, the demand for good results is opening the TdF doors for foreign riders on French teams, as it closes them on Frenchmen who ride for foreign squads.
The suggestion that Matt Wilson might be be upset to hear this stems from his recent transfer off the French FdJ team, which was a ProTour squad with a guaranteed invitation to the TdF. Had he remained with FdJ this season, the attitude of team management may have been different (due to the increased focus on results), and thus his odds of a TdF start in ’06 better there than with his current Unibet team.
Upon re-reading my post, though, the connection is very tenuous.
Also, my French is awful. I rely largely on babelfish.altavista.com and my knowledge of Latin to sort out what most of the non-English language webpages I link to say. Occasionally, I’ll even consult an authentic French-speaker.
Okay. Good. Thanks.