Random Links about Saxo Bank riders (Didier,Breschel,Cancellara and C.Sorensen):

As you may have thought considering my lack of posts in the last days,I'm in a very busy period at school.In fact all my teachers have entered their "OMG I need a mark!" period and so they've decided to make us do at least one test pro subject in this week.Nice,isn't it? This morning for example I had 2 P.E.tests (and realised that high hoopes have something against me),1 art test and 1 English test (that caused me and some classmates to repeat the sentence "Romeo,Romeo,wherefore art thou Romeo?" for the whole morning).This morning then it snowed and I even woke up later than usual.These 2 facts combined together forced me to skip breakfast,run to the bus stop in a terribly fast way,argue with my father because I couldn't find my wristwatch ("You've lost it!" "No,it must be somewhere here in the house!" "And why can't you find it then?" "You're putting pressure on me,that's why I can't find it!"),risk to break my neck by slipping on the ice right in front of the bus stop and freeze happily outside of the school building between 7.30 and 7.50.

Btw,in the next days I'll be blogging slightly more,especially because I'm finally going to post that old old old interview with Frank Schleck that I translated months ago.And then sooner or later I'll also post my personal review of the 2009 cycling year.In the meanwhile however you can take a look at these totally random links about Saxo Bank riders:

http://lequotidien.editpress.lu/les-sports/6916.html :that's an interview with Laurent Didier, the new Luxembourgish rider of team Saxo Bank.About the survival camp in Fuerteventura he said:"We were divided into five teams and each of them was formed by 11/12 people.One of my teammates was the French bus driver Lolo (Editor's note: Laurent Plu) and we really had a lot of fun,even if the camp wasn't that easy.Anyway,the riders who had already participated in other boot camps have said that this year's one was a bit softer than usual".
"One day we had to swim for 2 kilometers.In my group we helped a new rider who couldn't swim.The purpose of this kind of camp is obviously to develop human relationships.We form a team and we must remember that during the whole season.This isn't always obvious,because during races for example we never meet the mechanics.In fact when we return to the hotel in the evening,they immediately take care of our bikes and then they eat after us,therefore we don't have the chance of talking to them very often. "
"Obviously I already knew quite well the Schleck brothers,but when I sat at the table together with Cancellara,Voigt and O'Grady I realized that I'm in a very important team and I started to look at these riders in a new way.In Fuerteventura I discovered how these riders actually are in everyday's life"
Didier gives also a litte information to people who are interested in seeing the new team jersey: "We have already seen the 2010 team jersey.It is similar to this year's one,but it's alittle bit darker on the shoulders".

Didier said he hopes to race the Ardenne's classics and the Giro this year and I hope he will achieve his goals.

http://www.sporten.dk/cykling/matti-vil-vinde-paris-roubaix :In this article Matti Breschel talks briefly about the 2009 season and says that his main goal for the next season will be the Paris-Roubaix.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/indergand-beats-cancellara-to-swiss-cyclist-of-the-year : Both Logic and Fangirl have been incredibly surprised by this news.Now I wonder: are the Swiss fans taking revenge on Fabian because he didn't win the RR World Championship in Mendrisio?

http://blog.tv2.dk/chris.anker.ol/ :yes,Chris-Anker Sorensen has updated his blog,but the unusual thing is that he's updated it twice in the last 2 days (I remember you that we aren't in the Tour de France period,therefore this is a pretty strange thing).Btw,the reason for this frequent blog updates is the description of what happened during the SB training camp in Fuerteventura.Here's a very brief and uncomplete translation of what I understood from the posts.

http://blog.tv2.dk/chris.anker.ol/entry352660.html : Advent Calendar on the blog:
Lots of you may think that it is a bit late to start an advent calendar on the 16th of December.I can only agree and add that this calendar is ending on the 19th of December,since it will describe the boot camp that we Saxo Bank riders had to face this year.I would have preferred to post it on the blog before,but the Internet connection down in Fuerteventura wasn't working very well.
This year the boot camp started on the 1st of December on the beach of Playitas Resort.There in fact we started the training camp with a two-men kayak race.

We were divided into 5 teams and my teammates were Torsten Schmidt,Stuart O'Grady,Frank Høj,Gustav Larsson and other people (...).We won the kayak races and then we had to cope with other 4 disciplines: golf,orienteering,diving and swimming. (...).In the golf competition my team came in 3rd.Then we had a classic orienteering race and Gustav and I volunteered as the best runners in the team.Anyway other people were stronger than us and we came in 2nd (...).Diving wasn't our favourite competition at all and so we came in 4th (...).We came back to victory in the swimming race and we ended up as overall winner.In this competition we were abandoned with 2 surfboards in the sea,2 kms away from the beach.It's not a secret that it was a little challenging for me because I've never been a great swimmer.Before of the training camp,the longest distance I had ever swum in my life was probably 200 meters in a swimming pool.Anyway I managed to face that 2 kms without drowning,although at the end I had a very bad taste in my mouth because I had drunk a big amount of sea water.
After that we thought that the challenges were over for the day,but 30 minutes after dinner we were given some MTBs and we had to drive on some gravel roads in the dark.It was pretty exciting because we couldn't see where we were going.In spite of this,we did arrive to our destination without crashing (...) and there we made a great bonfire (...),sat for a while and chatted a little (...).When the fire stopped burning,we came back to the basis with our MTBs.By the time I entered my bed in the hotel,it was already 2:00 am.

http://blog.tv2.dk/chris.anker.ol/entry352788.html :Second day:

The following morning my alarm clock rang at 6:00 am and I was certainly not very satisfied with my sleeping,since 4 hours of sleep just aren't enough for me.However we were lucky to get a bit of bread before of the departure of the buses.

We got off the bus after a 1 hour travel and we found ourselves in a small town near to a pond. There we were controlled in order to avoid that one of us faced the day with some food taken from the hotel and then we got the prizes from the previous day (...).The prizes actually consisted in food and since we didn't know when we would have received other things to eat we decided not to eat them as long as we could.I actually waited to drink my cola so long that I actually ended up drinking it in the very last few days of the camp.

Btw then we received a map on which there was a marked point.The distance between the point and the little village where we were standing was of 10 kms.Of course we had to reach the point marked on the map by walking,and facing 10 kms by foot actually didn't look that hard.The real problem however was that we couldn't just walk in a straight line towards the marked point,but we had to get over a mountain before of reaching it.Btw when we got on the top of it,after a lot of sweat,the landscape was really worthwhile,since while we were there we could hear the roar of the Atlantic and see the waves rolling towards the coast.

The path leading down to the sea then led us in the wrong direction,so we had to walk in the sand for 5 kms.However we were the second team to arrive,so we had the opportunity to lie in the sun and sleep a bit.When all the teams had arrived,we were divided in 5 new groups and had to go and look for 2 marked points on a map (...). We had been told that in those points we would have found some food,but actually we could found just some water,a pan and something to make a fire with.Since the other groups had found something similar,plus blankets,we were a little worried about the food situation and I immediately ate my 7 biscuits.
In the evening,a surprise came.The local park ranger (...) in fact wasn't happy to see us.First he wanted to make us go away and then he started to threaten us.In fact the local authorities had forgotten to inform the park ranger of our permission to spend the night in that place.Since nothing,not even some calls,could convince the man that we were telling the truth,we decided to go few kms down towards the sea (...).