The Tour Down Under

By: TeamTheShack

Act I – The Serious stuff

When we mentioned to someone outside our tight knit sphere of cycling fans that we were going to pass up an evening function because we’d be busy listening to the debut of Team RadioShack at the Tour Down Under; they only half heard us and asked us cryptically…”You’re going underneath a RadioShack? What?” And so might many of your conversations have quickly ended as you hurriedly finished your evening meals in the US, woke up from a deep sleep in Europe, or gleefully lived one day into the future if you were already in Australia.

The Tour Down Under (TDU) has become one of the best fan experiences for ProTour cycling in the world. While we don’t know this personally and first hand, anywhere the water might swirl the other direction down the drain is good enough for us to want to see for ourselves. The TDU allowed Team RadioShack to send proverbial shots across their competitor’s bow and vice versa. The increasing level of rider competition has led to consistent growth and attention for the race. The local and national flavor has been deeply infused by the sponsors, host cities, and the supportive South Australian (SA) @PremiereMikeRann. Even Clare Valley Mayor Allan Aughey was seen at the races wearing his “special purpose only” jacket that was a fine shade of purple floral, a seashell necklace and an incredibly fancy shirt. That fans have familiar figureheads who say “yes, we support this race and you should too” along with a growing Aussie presence in all aspects of cycling, it’s no wonder we continue to see fan growth and interest globally. In Adelaide, Lance’s 24 hr advance notice twitter ride in Adelaide drew 7,000 while the organized Mutual Community Ride (where fans rode along the stage four course departing only hours ahead of the riders) drew 8,000 attendees this year.

The TDU certainly offered plenty of daily coverage to chew on. Team RadioShack had a strong presence on the ground each day and plenty of video was uploaded, pix were twittered, and race recaps offered. Johan gave a behind the scenes stream of some places we’d never be offered…like the team car (our reputation as a back seat driver may have gotten back to them). Because of the race’s global popularity, internet feeds that covered video and audio were available from national and local Australian media outlets. Daily tape delays of the races were available in the US via cable and satellite. Despite all of this visual and audio availability, TDU also had a live twitter feed that was one of the best real-time sources each day of racing. TDU website is also well done. We could go on, but we’ve established that 1) TDU is well supported by SA, and 2) you’re a Luddite off the grid if you missed the coverage.

Act II: Hair Removal, Ochre, and the Wallaby

 Where were the Glorious Fan Moments of Cycling Brilliance? Should we trademark this phrase? It is quite striking to our literary senses. In order to save you the awesomeness of having to read the entire phrase, we’ll just call these GFMCB’s. We expect that the season will be full of them soon enough.

In our first GFMCB from TDU, the lovely Samantha Lane from TheAge.com.au was on top of the burning questions in giggly interviews about hair removal and superstitions amongst the peloton.  It was the riders giggling, but answering honestly. Bath or shower? Legs and Arms? Just legs? Electric trimmers were used and waxing made a brief mention only to be struck down by the statement that waxing “…was great until the ingrowns.” Ummm, yeah. Rider superstitions are as varied as American baseball and included new socks, old lucky socks, socks inside out, lucky meals, carrots(?) and getting dressed in the “right” order. We didn’t get a chance to ask Jason McCartney about wearing number 13 for TDU, but whatever he did to ward off the superstitions, he came through just fine. Thank you dear Sam and the willing riders who shall remain nameless for “going there.”

Our second GFMCB comes from our unfamiliarity with the SA accent. We kept being asked if someone was wearing the Ogre Jersey. Ok, that’s right and fine, but who what is an Ogre Jersey? Because we only had the tiny box of crayons and not the 128 we so dearly needed, we had to explain that the Ogre Jersey was really the Ochre Jersey. See?  It’s all much clearer now. We conducted a random poll of the five people within shouting distance at the grocery store as to what color Ochre was…shockingly none could answer before we were asked to leave the premises. Perhaps it was the fact we still had the cycling cleats on and running after them to get an answer sounded like a staccato Ben Vereen routine. Regardless, the color ochre was not Oprah’s first movie. Nor is it a vegetable. It’s a brownish or yellow gold color tint and the mixed color of the Jersey (since 2006) everyone at the TDU would not mind wearing.

The third and final GFMCB comes from the ever-present animal at the TDU, the wallaby. Those of us not correctly schooled in the finer points of zoology would call anything furry that jumps a kangaroo, simply because we read too much A.A. Milne in our formative years. All the babies are named Joey, even if they look more like a Chad or David. A wallaby is smaller than a kangaroo and exponentially more cute. Thus, the need to have every rider hold the wallaby and measure their tolerance for this imposed cuteness. Many riders were not the least bit anxious to hold the wallaby. It was either that or their contract had an exceptions clause reading “Rider is exempt from holding any jumping furry animal one hour prior to commencing competition.” Cycling commentator Phil Liggett, on the other hand, has no such clause and got up close and personal with the wallaby under his shirt like a pouch. We believe this likely violated the wallaby’s appearance contract. In other news, Phil soberly spoke of hippos in his backyard. We were five shades of jealous and always wanted hippos in our backyard. Mostly. On giant leashes, though.

Act III: Racing

So Team RadioShack laid down a significant, in a 10 to the 8^th power sort of way, number of joules, kilocalories, and watts below the equator. If you missed Team RadioShack’s Cathy Mehl daily updates here, you may as well have been assembling a jigsaw puzzle in a pillowcase. In addition to her insights, Chris Brewer was also ensuring you saw a bit off the beaten path from his on-site perspective. Even Allan Lim was busy cataloguing the road signs of Australia via twitter.  We won’t duplicate what they have ably written, but a few observations:

Steegmans was not only a sprinter of formidable ability, but he also proved he could bring Lance into the hurt locker during a breakaway. It’s not lost on anyone that the man who is 6’ 2” can leverage some power when needed and we’d love to have seen what those power files looked like;

Trek-LIVESTRONG presented by RadioShack U23 rider Tim Roe was off the front and managed a day in the King of the Mountains and Most Aggressive Rider Jerseys. Tim was “on loan” to the University of South Australia (UniSA) team for the TDU – keep an eye on Tim this season; and finally,

The TDU squad appeared to work really well together and the stage placings and overall result were no reflection of the huge daily effort being put forward in the peloton. Every team at TDU had something to show and did everything they could to rein in the focus. Team RadioShack was no exception. It is not even February and we’re seeing some riders hammering along like it is August. It is going to be an amazingly competitive season. The debut race now behind Team RadioShack, we’ve got some serious studying to do for the Tour of the Algarve in Portugal and for the next training camp in Calpe, Spain. LIVESTRONG and WE’RE READY!

 Photo: Graham Watson