Not
sure how I came out of it but apart from losing a fair amount of skin and having
a stiff neck today, I’m relatively ok. A few bruises and a tad skinless, but
that’s nothing unusual when you get dumped on the tarmac at 55km/hr in the
middle of the sprint. Amazingly that’s all I came out of it with. I can’t
believe as can’t any of the other riders - or anyone else who saw it on TV. I
got off pretty lightly given what carnage it could have been.
AGAIN!!!
Anyhow,
I’ll start from the start. The day began crap when we got woken up by the
‘vampires’ at 7 in the morning. It was supposed to be a
tad later wake up than normal but they ruined that for us. I was feeling
absolutely over it as it was the third time I had to give a blood sample in 5
days. And some say they need to do more testing!!!
The
stage went by ok but as some of you would’ve seen, it ended bad for both me and
Thor who, to the incredulity of all the other riders - including those involved
- was relegated to last after touching shoulders with another rider during the
moment of my crash. None of the other riders thought that it was bad or
intentional and in fact there weren’t any protests made to the Commissaires but
they took it upon themselves to relegate him anyway.
It
just doesn't make sense after the other day when Robbie moved completely out of
his line nearly taking out Thor and nothing was done to him. This has been a big
blow for us in our effort to defend the green jersey and all because some
Commissaire decides to carry out a random act of ‘judging’. Then smearing great
big chunks of sea salt into the wound, they fined me for moving out of my
sprinting line. Shit man, what are you supposed to do when you are finished a
lead out? It just so happened I couldn’t move to the left ‘cause we were coming
into the left hander before the final straight. If I’d moved off to the left, I
would’ve had guys up my arse into the corner and if I hadn’t of moved over to
the left or right, I still would’ve had guys up my arse… Anyway, as I pulled
off, I got bumped by one of Boonen's boys coming round the outside of me. He saw
that we were gonna collide so he leant in with his shoulder ready to take the
weight. I was relaxed and trying to get my breath after the lead-out and wasn’t
expecting the collision so I dropped like a rag doll. If I was in full flight,
fully gripped and tense, then I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t have gone done.
Today,
the other rider involved came up and apologized. Didn’t seem like his fault or
mine but just one of those things that happen. Yet, we still have to pay the
fine even though everyone involved, once again, accepted that it was just one of
those crap moments in sprinting….
So
that’s good, I got fined 200 Euros for crashing myself. I'll have to remember
not to crash myself again and lose all that skin ‘cause another 200 Euro fine is
more salt to a wound than I need. I ask you???
The most
important thing is that I’m ok and no-one else came down. It could’ve been a
huge mess but thankfully it wasn’t. I’m a little stiff with a few aches but you
have to expect that, I s’pose.
