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Great Giro Pictures

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Vicelard said:
bettiniphoto_0039055_1_full_680x474t0_ic.jpg

in before she hides it
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
FoxxyBrown1111 said:
van_der_velde_gavia_1988.jpg





Van der Velde in the famous (& hardest) ever GT-Stage. This poor guy led at the mountain top, but finished like 1 hr. down in the stage, b/c he couldn´t make the descent. So he got in a car after only a couple of km downhill to get warm.

A friend of mine recalled this passage from Bob Roll who rode as a domestique for I think it was 7-11 about a stage on the Giro when late May snow intervened in the mountains

"I grabbed a plastic hat, long-finger gloves, and Oakley Pilots and took off down the pass for Bormio, a mere 15 kilometers away. I thought I could ride 15 kilometers in any condition, at any time, anywhere on Earth. I have never been more wrong in my life.

After a brilliant climb, Van de Velde, forsaking extra clothes in order to gain time on the descent, was the leader on the road and had the pink jersey waiting for him in Bormio. Only 2 kilometers of descending later, Van de Velde was on his knees in tears. Savagely hypothermic, he crawled into a car to warm up. One hour later, he got out of the car and rode to the finish way outside the time limit....

Meanwhile, I kept my head down and hammered, following the tire grooves through the snow. After only 1 kilometer, I was bloody cold. After 2 kilometers, I was frozen to the core. After only 3 kilometers, I was laughing like a lunatic and passed Rolf Sorensen, screaming at the top of my lungs in an attempt to generate some warmth. After 5 kilometers, I was crying and about to slip into a frozen coma. About halfway down, I was not thinking straight and was making poor choices. At one point, I got off my bike and began to run back up the hill in a lame attempt to warm up"

He was taken to hospital where his heart rate was only 20..........

He has a reputation as a rather wild commentator who puts foot in mouth frequently but can be very funny. Here's a few of his quotes

"Kilometers are passing like kidney stones"

"Lance Armstrong is the eye of the hurricane and he's headed straight for the Jan Ullrich trailer park"

"If riding your bicycle through the countryside on a fine summer's day were equivalent to a child's pretty drawing of a wildflower, then the Tour is a Sistine Chapel fresco painted by Michelangelo. Even though some great twentieth-century writers, such as Hemingway, have mentioned the Tour in their work, why haven't they been able to capture the essence of the Tour de France? Perhaps because they weren't racing in it. But I think, because it's so dynamic and the atmosphere so rarefied, it is impossible to grasp the greatness and grandeur of the Tour with words alone. Maybe someday, a combination of song, pictures, and words will do fair justice to the greatest of all sporting contests.
 

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