Random post about random things (politics, Schleck, Contador, Bob Dylan, Schleck, random randomnesses...)

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen! To your joy, miss Fede is back blogging again.

A few noticeable things have happened over the last few days: for example, Italy has managed to create a decent government for the first time in 19 years (*chorus of 'allelujah' coming from all over the world...hey, the Frenchmen and the Germans look really relieved!*). It was high time, wasn't it? Still, I don't think that Berlusconi will remain far from the goverment for a very long time. That man is like a cat, he's got 9 lives (however, cats usually have a true fur, whereas Silvio's hair are made of plastic).

On to another important thing that has recently taken place: on Monday evening I went to Bob Dylan's concert, which was simply amazing. I went there with my father and two of his friends and we managed to find four tickets for the concert just 5 minutes before the beginning of the concert. This happened because a few days before the concert we phoned the ticket-selling agency, but they told us that the concert was sold out. Still, dad and his friends decided to go to Milan anyway, hoping that someone would sell us a ticket there. Luckily, in the end our choice paid off :) 

Dylan's concert actually started after that Mark Knopfler, the former guitarrist of Dire Straits, had played for about 90 minutes. In fact Mark and Bob are on tour together this year and during the concert they even played two songs together.

It's not the first time I go to a Dylan's concert, but this time I must say that Bob looked really good. He sang (of course), he danced (well, kind of :P), he played the armonic, he played the guitar, he played the piano and he also gave us a few nice solos on the piano, on the guitar and on the harmonic. Amazing. Moreover, Dylan (or shall I call him Robert?) played wonderful songs like 'Leopard-Skin-Pill-Box Hat' (together with M. Knopfler), 'Tangled Up in Blue', 'Desolation Row', 'Ballad of a Thin Man', 'Simple Twist of Fate',  'It's all Over Now Baby Blue' ,'All Along the Watchtower' and 'Like a Rolling Stone'. Not bad, is it? (ok, I confess it: I'm a Dylan's fanatic)

Talking about other things that have happened over the last few days, here's a sad news: my crush has decided to move to Trieste and attend university there. As you can understand, I'm a disappointed girl right now - and my disappointment becomes even bigger if you think that all the boys in my Russian class are thinking about stopping learning the language. Shocking, isn't it?

Anyway, enough talks about me. Let's now talk a bit of cycling. First of all, Contador's hearing takes place in a few days time, but the judges will till us their opinion on Steak-Gate just in 3 months time (no comment on that). Paolo Tiralongo will go to Losanna for Contador's hearing, since he was amongst those who dined with Contador on that famous evening of July 2010. Interviewed by la Gazzetta, the Astana rider said: 'In those days I was Contador's shadow: we used to do everything together. On that famous evening, Contador, some other teammates and I went to dine after that Vinokourov and my Kazakh teammates had already eaten. They told us that the food served by the hotel wasn't very good, so we decided to have that famous steak cooked. It was a delicious piece of meat which a friend of Alberto had brought to him a few days before'. Asked about the Losanna's hearing, Tiralongo stated: 'When Alberto asked me to go there as a witness and help to defend him, I immediately said 'yes'. We didn't do anything wrong on that occasion'. Time will tell if the judges agree with Paolo or not. I'm personally tired of Steak-Gate and, right now, I hope Contador will be cleared (no, I haven't become crazy): in fact cycling would receive a very bad blow if its best athlete was banned for one or two years after winning 1 Tours de France and 1 Tour of Italy in the last 16 months.

Talking about another rider, Andy Schleck has been recently cited and fined for driving his car too fast. This may sound like a great gossip, but remember that our boy wasn't driving at 250 km/h, but at 101 km/h. After all, it wasn't too fast, was it? (I just hope he wasn't driving in a village when he reached that speed!) Actually, this isn't a nice period for young riders who are enjoying their off-season: whereas Andy got fined for speeding, the other day Euskaltel rider Romain Sicard had a a very strange adventure with some policemen. In fact the 23 year old rider was stopped by a few policemen after he was spotted while trying to put a traffic sign in the boot of his car (http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/sicard-detained-by-police-after-drunken-prank). Once they stopped him, the police officers also found a traffic cone in the back of his car. Later they found out that Sicard had been drank too much on that evening.

Poor Romain has recently apologised to the supporters, the team and his sponsor for his 'immature behaviour' - still, I think this story will haunt him for a while once he gets back in the peloton.

Still talking about Andy Schleck, one last news: he may come to the Giro next year. In fact Bruyneel thinks that Andy can't win the 2012 TdF (96 kms against the clock and 3 summit finishes, I repeat: 96 kms against the clock and 3 summit finishes!), so he thinks OGL should start thinking about taking part in the Giro. Becca is said to agree with Bruyneel (actually, rumours suggest that mr. Leopard got very angry at Andersen & Co. when he first saw LT's line-up for the 2011 Giro), while Merckx (who is a friend of the Schleck family) has told 'la Gazzetta' that Andy should really come to Italy next May, because 'a victory in the Giro worths more than a 2nd placement in the Tour'. Ivan Basso instead has said he'll be happy if Andy decides to race the Giro, but he has also said that the Luxembourgian will have to fight hard to win the race. I agree with Basso and I'd like to add one thing: if you come to Italy, dear Andy, do it because you want to win. Italian supporters prefer Contador to you and, if you came to Italy just in order to train, you'd lose all their respect. If you don't want to come here and try winning, you'd better go to the Tour of California. Is it clear?

Ok, enough serious news for the moment. To end this post, here's a list of interesting links:
- http://marleen888.tumblr.com/ : this is the link to Ride On's Marleen tumblr :)
- http://cyclistsandmore.tumblr.com/: this is the link to the tumblr of our other Marleen, another great cycling lover :)

- http://www.speedskating-online.com/ : ok, I know, mine is a blog about cycling, not about other sports. Anyway, here's the link to a website run by a great cycling lover with a very big passion for speedskating - take a look, and have a good night!