This year the maillot jaune is taken home by Cadel Evans, instigator of the CadelMageddon and best-of-the-rest.

The maillot a pois this year goes to mountain goat and fearsome attacker Sammy Sanchez who demonstrated that eating Spanish steaks all year around doesn’t necessarily mean a bad thing.

And the maillot vert is likely to go to cry-baby and fast man Cavendish who defied all the Krachtwerk by Belgian stronghold Gilbert.

For the 0chblog t00rp00l we have a classical end result and J-One can collect his bottle of Berentzen in EHV whenever he’s around. Thank you all.

Paar krachtige aankomsten tot dusver van ondermeer Thor Hushovd en Philippe Gilbert. Ook krachttermen van ondermeer Johnny Hoogerland en Laurens Ten Dam. Reden tot vreugde wat betreft het verloop van La Grande Boucle tot nu toe.

Life got a little bit in the way but we’re just in time for again another t00rp00l here @pl0rg headquarters. Join Team Kalashnikov and all other 0chers at the OCHBLOG subleague at sportpOOls (I guess the password was OCHochOCH). Registration is open until 12.00hrs CET this Saturday July 2, 2011. A votre demandé, les coureurs, les protagonistes et les grandes ettapes.

You can stack your vuvuzelas where the sun don’t shine as it is time again for the t00rp00l here at zérocéash. Join Team Kalashnikov and all other 0chers at the OCHBLOG subleague at sportpOOls (JayJay will probably throw the password for the subleague in the comments). Registration is open until 12.00hrs CET this Saturday July 3, 2010. A votre demandé, les coureurs, les protagonistes et la première semaine.

Gast! is wat gezakt, JayJay wat gestegen. Nodog handaaft zich toch vrij verassend in de top en ikiro is, zoals verwacht, bezig z’n achterstand goed te maken. Rams is nog steeds niet hersteld van die fatale 10 minuten waarin z’n selektie werd gemaakt. Illegaal bewijst dat als je een aap laat kiezen je ook gewoon in de middenmoot terechtkomt.

Eerdere update (waar ook de
selekties zijn in te zien)

Het is een behoorlijk spec-
taculaire tour totnutoe. Ook in de 0ch-subleague heeft dat consequenties. Wellicht draait alles om nadat de eerste bergritten zijn verreden maar degenen die op de juiste sprinters gemikt hebben trekken daar totnutoe flink profijt van.

Een paar dingen die opvallen: Armstrong wordt erg verschillend ingeschat (de 1 heeft’m als kluns, de ander als volwaardig teamlid). Op Freire na had men totnutoe beter geen Rabo-renners kunnen kiezen. Cancellara en Martin zijn lekker goedkope puntenpakkers gebleken.

Hier de huidige stand:

Opvallende hoogte- en dieptepunten: Rams weet het voor elkaar te krijgen een negatief puntenaantal bij elkaar te schrapen. Dit waarschijnlijk omdat hij z’n pl00g net gedurende z’n, zo’n 10 minuten durende, sobere periode van de dag heeft gekozen. Voor een brabantse wielerkenner is dat uiteraard funest.
Nodog weet boven zichzelf uit te stijgen en staat op de waarschijnlijk hoogste plaats in het algemeen klassement ooit door een 0cher ingenomen. Blijkbaar is hij daardoor zo van de kaart dat hij in derde persoon enkelvoud gaat spreken. Ikiro stelt niet teleur als zijnde 0ch’s wielerorakel en gaat naar verwachting nog wel wat plaatsjes opschuiven.

Voor die ene geinteresseerde buitenstaander hier de verschillende pl00gen per deelnemer:

Rams, Team Kalashnikov, Illegaal (a.k.a. Team Acrostichon)
JayJay, Gast!, J-One, ikiro, nodog

En terecht ! (dat schoppen dan)

Geklopt worden op de meet.

More p00lmania here at Och as it is time for the T00rp00l again. Join in on the OCHBLOG subleague at sportpOOls (JayJay will probably throw the password in the comments). Registration is open until 12.00hrs CET this Saturday July 5, 2008. A votre demandé, les coureurs et les connaiseurs. This year le Grand Départ de Bretagne, home to great cyclists such as le Biqet, le Boulanger de Saint-Méen, the Badger, and of course Marie.

Jacques’ first victory was the 19th Grand Prix des Nations, an individual time trial over 140km that Fausto Coppi described as the hardest race on earth before collapsing after finishing. It remains still a mystery how the, then 19 years old, phenomenon managed to turn those massive gears with such skinny legs. This phenomenon becomes a legend when you consider that he won the Grand Prix des Nations for a record nine times, and pulverized Coppi’s 14 year old hour record in 1956.

Besides being Monsieur Chrono, he was also the first cyclist to win the Tour de France five times and the first to win all Grand Tours. Not too shabby. He got his other nickname, Maitre Jacques, when he ruled in the 1961 Tour. At the start, he promised to take the Maillot Jaune at the prologue and carry it all the way to the Champs Elysees. A promise that he kept, not in the least strengthened by his race number: number 14…

In his professional cycling career that lasted from 1951 to 1969 Anquetil successfully picked up the gauntlet against i campioni del ciclismo of that era: Fausto Il Campionissimo Coppi, Louison le Boulanger de Saint-Méen Bobet, Charly de Engel vun de Bierger Gaul, Raymond Pou-Pou Poulidor, and Federico El águila de Toledo Bahamontes to name just a few. Famous is the duel on the puy-de-Dôme where Poulidor (La Vache Qui Rit) and Anquetil (Chanel Homme) rode coude-à-coude battling for seconds.

The documentary Le Mystère Anquetil, aka the Man, the Mystery, the Legend Anquetil, not only shows that Anquetil was a great champion but also that he liked to live life like everyone else: he was a great drinker (champagne on the Galibier), he had an explosive liver (whatever that means), and a big heart (that only pounded 32 times per minute when in rest). Something not be missed, although my apologies for the English voice-over.

demonoid

History is made up of truths that end up becoming lies. Myths are made up of lies that end up becoming truths – Jean Cocteau.

In Tour des Légendes (2003), director Erik van Empel takes us back to La Grande Boucle of 1948, the last tour without the presence of television cameras, when he tries to find out about the story behind an old newspaper photo of cyclists covered in mud riding through a snowy alpine backdrop.

It is likely that a future generation, say, 50 years from now, will read an account of the race Briançon – Aix-les-Bains ridden today, 16 July 1948. How will that generation see the historically correct account of today’s race? They will call it exciting, dramatic and epic, but also a good story. A good story in the sense of something inconsistent with reality, but still a good story. Si non revero, bene trovato, as the Italians say.

Back then, you had to use all of your imagination to visualize the heroic battles that i campioni fought on the flanks of the then unpaved mountain passes of monstruous giants such as the Galibier, Croix-de-Fer and Izoard. Fortunately, reporters such as Henri Desgrange and Karel van Wijnendaele (de Homerus der Koersen) made that a bit easier with their vivid and colorful reports on the race.

Riders in the 35th Tour de France have seen it all. Glorious weather, sunshine, paradise, even the apocalypse, but the 13th stage was hell.

As if the weather and parcours did not made it difficult enough, Gino Bartali was on special mission. Because of civil unrest in Italy, Il Campionissimo was asked, practically ordered, to win a stage in Le Tour to motivate the Italian people towards happier feelings. Despite that Il Pious was twenty minutes behind leader Louison Bobet (le Boulanger de Saint-Méen), he managed to recover himself and crushed the competition by winning three consecutive etappes and carrying the maillot jaune back home to a quieted Italy.

Various interviews with the others that played a role in that inspirational victoire, in which Briek Schotte and Marcel Dupont steal my heart, sketch the hard conditions in which the riders were forced to risk their lives (something about donsveren). Finally, Van Empel treats us with a visually and musically astounding apotheosis of etappe Briançon – Aix-les-Bains, etappe 14…

Vino… Vino… Did the guardian angel that stood by you and carried you to fame ignore your pleas for help? Have you become like the others? Suddenly, in mid-race, you’ll feel strangely alone. Like a king at war who turns to give orders and discovers his army gone. That terrible moment will come, but when? You don’t know.

Later that year, Bartali, Bobet, and Schotte joined Coppi and Magni when playing guestroles in Totò Al Giro D’Italia while preparing for the Giro di Lombardia.

demonoid | review | Bartali by Paolo Conte

Yep, it’s time for t00rp00ls again. Join in on the OCHBLOG subleague at sportp00ls. Registration is open until 12.00hrs Saturday 07-07-07, ask one of our edit0rs for the password (via mail or BSC). A votre demandé, les coureurs et les connaiseurs.

The obvious link between Jour de Fête and la Grande Boucle is of course the US Postal Service Pro Cycling Team (1996-2004), another bunch of American postmen that taught their European colleagues a few cycling lessons with rather impressive results. A bit further back in Tour history, the successes of TI-Raleigh (and later Panasonic) lead by Peter Post come to mind when tagging this Weekendmovie as Het is koers. Most notable success of the Dutch postmen (/Jean) is the 1980 Tour victoire by Joop Zoddemilk which may be considered as an achievement by the whole Raleigh team.

Finally, because I love it when things come together, we can’t go by without paying attention to this hommage to the Red Scare from the East who always has been a trusty postman that never failed to deliver, both in his Panasonic and US Postal service years. Props to Vladimir Karpets for maintaining Samson’s powers.

demonoid | torrentspy | teaser

Be sure not to mistake panache with the Indian Apache tribe of Geronimo fame.

Because that’s exactly what I did, when Rams reported from his motorbike that Ramsussen shows panache. Apache! Jump on it! was my first reaction, hailing Sugarhill Gang’s incarnation of the Incredible Bongo Band’s funky trackApache. Meanwhile performing a little motivational dance for The Chicken, as perfectly demonstrated by Will & Carlton.

Being it the second time that Och made me bump into Apache, with the Worst Videoclip Of All Time pots coming in first (check also the re-edit), I decided to dig deeper into the musical history of Apache.

Props to my mum for pointing out that The Shadows of Cliff Richard fame (Who?) already recorded Apache way back in 1960. Thirteen years later, Michael Viner and his Incredible Bongo Band picked it up and added organs, horns, and, most importantly, bongos and congas. Then, somewhere in the late seventies, cool people like Clive Campbell and Joseph Saddler found out how to move the crowd by throwing the percussion added by Viner&Co into a loop. The rest is musical history, as the Apache break got the same status in temporary music as the notorious Amen break (see Nate Harrison’s installation Can I Get an Amen?).

But I expected this to be just the tip of the iceberg: what else happened? Well, that’s the easiest part, thanks to Wiki leading us (me, my mum, and you) to a paper by Michaelangelo Matos describing how

a record written by a white Englishman imitating Native Americans as portrayed by white Americans and made famous by a Dane with a vaguely Hawaiian sound, arranged by a Canadian, became the biggest record in black New York.

Even better, an audioblog by Oliver Wang titled All Roads Lead to Apache ads the relevant links and MP3s to the paper.

So, with the Matos paper, Wang’s audioblog, and the wiki, little icing is left for me to add to this Apache cake. My only contribution on the subject matter is that Grandmaster Flash has panache, DJs Supreme and Undercover from Hijack have panache, Tommy Seebach abuses panache (retro!), and Floyd thinks he can get panache from a testosterone patch on his little boys, allegedly.

LONDON (AP) — Tour de France champion Floyd Landis tested positive for high levels of testosterone during the race, his Phonak team said Thursday on its Web site.

Website: Sportsillustrated

Ow, Floyd Landis has got a blog, hmmm let’s comment: here (via Rams)

Update:
Screenshots here and here
Les Guignols de l’Info – Virenque et l’Epée (via Nodog)

Sometimes I wonder what those cyclist really drive (Seth) to participate with a wheelerround. Is it to see the environment? The pricemoney? The smell of Simson SF solutie? Or is it just simply for those fricking/sizzling hot and horny roundemisses?
After all those kilometres having your prostate massaged (remember to use the right saddle) the only thing you need is such a roundemiss. One that presses her nicely curved and fresh body, smelling like L’eau d’issey, to your hot and sweaty body, only to congratulate you for your 80 roundjes around the church…

So, with nog two etappas for the b00g, experience the same as all those lucky La Grande Boucle cyclist experience here, here, here, here, here and here.

Links:
Le tour ticker
Live footage Nos

En hier zijn ze

Nodog: The tour is underway and getting into it’s final fold. It’s offseen for the riders while the man with the hammer is always near.
These last couple of days have been pure “glued to the screen and/or FBSC-with-Rams’-live-commentary” entertainment and like the live coverage isn’t enough, here’s some more tubefilling[/seth] for the fans:

-Greatest Climbs (1990-1999) (with atrocious commentary and background music, still good though!) (dem | tor)
-Overcoming (superb docu about CSC-team in the tour) (dem | tor) + extra’s (dem | tor)
-Earlier posts on Och (wicked stuff!)

gast!
And because the on-site coverage of today’s stage by the Dynamic Duo Rammeses and Ikiro (driven by the notorious Neel himself) has been postponed until further notice; check the live stream here!