EVERY MONTH
BACK IN THE SWING
In commentating terms, I have not wintered well into 2019
BACK BEHIND THE MIC AND SCRAPING OFF THE WINTER RUST IN ITALY
David Millar, by his own admission, didn’t winter particularly well when he was racing. That is to say, he wintered a little too well. So when spring arrived and the season resumed its brutal privations, he was often found lacking. Paris-Nice, in particular, he remembers as a unique kind of hell mixing those riders who had already raced with those making their seasonal debut. It was, he often tells me, the sound of the bunch that nauseated him in particular; the machine gun clatter of a 180 riders clipping in – knowing what was to come.
In commentating terms, I have not wintered well into 2019. I was too busy to take part in any of the sixday racing calendar as I have done in previous winters. It would have been useful to have kept the vocal chords ticking over throughout November and December saying things like ‘Kenny de Keteles’ as riders in weird kit gyrated in an anti-clockwise direction in front of me.
And, for the first time in three years, I did not take up the opportunity of flying out to the United Arab Emirates to shout loudly and insistently into a microphone while nothing very much happened in Dubai or Abu Dhabi. In the past, these warm-weather treks through the desert have allowed me to re-acquaint myself with the peloton, figure out who rides for whom, and generally do some live research in an event that is not much more than a glorified training camp. And, since the rebranded UAE Tour now features a bit of every discipline (sprinty stuff, climby stuff and time-trially stuff), I’d have been able to practise the various rigours of all three types of race.
It’s very hard, as Marcel Kittel would doubtless tell you, to peak for a bunch sprint in February (‘Viviani!!!!’) when you need
to be at your very sharpest in July (‘VIVIANI!!!!!!’) and it’s time, once again, for the Tour de France.
Likewise, I forget during the off season that timing is everything on a mountain stage. For example, if Alejandro Valverde attacks with two kilometres to go before the summit, you shouldn’t get too excited too quickly and use your all your best lines straight away. It’s no good delivering the old, ‘He finished 2018 chasing a rainbow and he’s started 2019 with a pot of gold!’ (or some such nonsense) when there are still 15 minutes of gradual boring winning to commentate on. If you peak too soon, all you’ll be left with by the time he throws his arms in the air is a downbeat, mumbled, ‘Oh look, he’s won.’
And as for time trialling: well, each time I have to call one of these spreadsheet races, it’s like I’m doing it for the first time, as my mathematical prowess dissolves into a molten puddle of misfiring calculations. That’s exactly what happened to me during my first time-trial commentary of the year, at Tirreno Adriatico.
Team Jumbo-Visma (who I obviously referred to as Lotto-Jumbo with monotonous regularity) posted a time that was over 20 seconds faster than Deceuninck-QuickStep (who I simply called QuickStep). Confused by the simple arithmetic, I saw it the other way round and suggested that they’d fallen short by the same margin. Alongside me, Rob Hayles frowned in weary skepticism. He’d been to the UAE Tour, you see. He was prepared.
Over the course of the week that followed, I decided to get as many early season errors out of the way as I possibly could. It seemed sensible. So I called Jan Tratnik a neo-pro (he’s 29). I decided that Matej Mohoric rode for UAE Team Emirates (he rides for BahrainMerida). I stated blithely that Michael Hepburn was in fact Mitch Docker simply because he had grown a confusing moustache. I refused to accept that Nicolas Roche could be riding for Sunweb. I suggested that EF Education-First should be known as Garmin for ease of understanding. And I insisted that BMC was still in the peloton. Best to get these things out in the open.
Anyway, with further rather random stage races like Sicily, Turkey and Croatia pencilled in over the coming weeks, I fully intend to be vaguely up to speed by the time that the Tour de Yorkshire rears its four-day head, which will be the first big audience of the year on ITV.
Just in time, in fact, for Team Ineos to become a thing after nineand-a-half years of being Team Sky. Ho hum.