Picspam time 3: guys just wanna have fun :)

To everyone's joy, the picspam season here at My Blog isn't over yet.

The last 2 days have been a bit tense here in the Blogosphere, so I think it's better if we all relax ourselves and have a good laugh together. In order to do so, I suggest you taking a look at these pictures that Mar (thank you girl!) and I collected over the last days. Enjoy!

First of all, here you have Chris Anker Sorensen and Matti Breschel wearing funny viking helmets on the Champs Elysées. After 3 weeks of daily fatigue and stress, you're allowed to behave a bit in a strange way, aren't you? Here's another picture from Saxo Bank's celebrations on Champs Elysées. This time, the one behaving in a strange way is Stuart O'Grady :) Talking about funny guys, then, how can we forget about Fabian Cancellara? Here we can see him making horns to poor Andy. The skinny Luxembourgian (just notice how thin his arms are!) looks a bit annoyed, but Fabian doesn't seem to care about it :) This time instead the victim of Fabian's jokes was O'Grady, who probably ignored what Fabian was doing behind him. Luckily Tom Boonen knows how to take revenge on the Swiss rider :) Talking about other former Saxo Bankers, I think I'm almost obliged to put some pictures of Jens Voigt in a post like this. Here you can see him riding a very strange vehicle.Below instead you have Voigt-san having fun with a supporter in Japan. And here we have the FA Jens having a coffee-break at work.
Here instead we have Matti Breschel joking with a photographer. Let's now abandon our Sexy Bankers for a brief moment and let's watch 2 pics about the relationship between riders and animals. For example, take a look at this rider who wants to stay with his adorated penguin even while racing.
Here instead we have a guy showing us the perfect descent position for riders. I wonder what the bear thinks of it.
Back to the guys who raced for SB this season, here we have Chris Sorensen reading a foreign newspaper. Has he just read something about a defeat of his favourite football team, or is he just shocked by the language in which the newspaper is written?
To close this post, then, I couldn't avoid publishing 2 pics of the Schleck brothers. Andy, you cunny guy, what are you looking at?
And here's a classic picture of Frank and his concentration expression. Everything's ok dear?
So, that's all for now. Thank you again to Mar for the help and let's hope you enjoyed this picspam :)

Picspam time 2: pictures of Matti Breschel + some fangirlistic stuff about C.Sorensen and los Schlecks:

After receiving a request of creating a picspam about Matti Breschel, miss Fede has found some pictures of him and in this post you can see the results of her work.
You must know that, once upon a time, miss Fede had hundreds of pictures of her favourite cyclists saved on her computer's hard disk, but then said hard disk blew up and all the photos got lost. So don't get angry if the result of my work doesn't appeal to you.

First of all, you probably know that, before of becoming a cyclist, Matti used to work as a model. In the pic below you can see the cover of Euroman, a Danish fashion magazine, featuring our boy (Pic by Lukas Renlund). Below you can see another Model-style picture, always taken by Lukas Renlund.

Here instead we have Matti getting kissed by the misses of Tour de Suisse (if my memory doesn't fail me).Pic by All Over.

Below you have an evergreen picture of Matti taken by Klaus Bannerup. I love the old-style kit-and the boy who appears in the picture, obviously.
Are you bored Matti? ;)
The boy has a very impressive thighs, no doubts about that. And then, he's also got the usual cyclist tan.

As you can see, in this post there are just 5 pics of Matti. However, don't start insulting me, you Matti's lovers. In fact here you (just like the supporters of other Team Luxembourg/SB's riders) can find some links that you'll surely going to enjoy:
http://wandan.pixnet.net/album/set/296784 (via: http://sansenmag.livejournal.com/ ): on this page you can find some nice pictures of Matti that go back to the time when he still was a model.

http://www.sportsagency.dk/ : on this page there are many pictures of Matti Breschel and of the riders who've raced for Saxo Bank until this year.

http://gaffa.dk/artikel/40670 : interview with Matti about his love for music.

http://www.sporten.dk/cykling/her-er-de-smukke-tour-kaerester : on this link (that I already published some months ago) there are some pictures of the Saxo Bank's riders (los Sorensens, los Schlecks, Fuglsang and Voigt included) at the Paris' party at the end of the 2010 Tour. Moreover, this link can offer to some of us fangirls the chance of expressing our ideas about someone else's fashion sense (beware: it features cyclists + girlfriends).

Anyway, talking about another Danish rider of SB, Chris Anker Sorensen has recently updated his blog with a post called 'Ferie' (http://blog.tv2.dk/chris.anker.ol/entry388307.html ) . In it he wrote that he had a good holiday in he USA, visiting museums and eating at Starbucks, and that now he's going to move from Luxembourg to Italy. 'In Italy the weather is better (...) and there are greater climbs than in Luxembourg (...). Moreover, Italian cuisine, coffee and cappuccino are second to none'. Well, what can I add more, if not that I totally agree with Chris and that I welcome him here in Italy?

And before of closing this post here you have a Serge Waldbillig's pictures of the Schleck brothers. After all, you can't write a fangirlistic post without including any picture of them in it, can you?

(Credits to the pictures are included in the post)

Picspam time: wonderful pictures of Jakob Fuglsang (kindly offered us by Mar)!

Dear readers, as you may think, winter is a hard time for us bloggers: there are no daily interesting news, there are no races, we have to study/work a lot without the distraction of cycling... And things can even get worse when, after watching Tim De Waele/Corvos' pictures from Curaçao, you realise that those two photographers took very few photos of Jakob Fuglsang, one of the best (and hottest) riders of Cycledom (and great friend of Andy Schleck too).

To put a remedy to this lack of pictures from Curaçao, our great blogmate Mar has sent me some amazing pictures of Jakob that I had never seen before. They're very nice, so I owe a big 'THANK YOU!!!' to our friend Mar (thank you very much, these pictures really made the day of this Fangirl =)

And now, let's enjoy the view girls!

First of all, here's a picture of Jakob looking very cool and lovely. As Mar pointed out, the boy's got a nice fashion sense (Dolce& Gabbana's scarf, a simple t-shirt, nice shoes...). Andy, I think we've found you a new personal shopper! ;)

Another nice pic of Jakob, still wearing very cool clothes. And the landscape is very nice too.
Jakob and Andy Schleck at sea (or, at least, I think so). Again, very good clothes' choice (and very skinny legs ;).
Our boy's putting a wheel on his bike and showing us that he knows how to wear jeans.Can we help you, Jakob? ;) What a lovely smile!
In the picture below, you can see Jakob's wearing the new Team Luxembourg kit (I'm joking). I love his expression and the bike he's riding (the pink bell is great)!
Jakob laughing at a joke.
Jakob wearing the infamous Claudia Schiffer's t-shirts, but looking very good anyway.

The famous 'zzzzzz I'm sleeping' picture. Let's just hope that our boy didn't fall of the couch ;)
And a last pic of Jakob...I hope you enjoyed the pictures as much as I did. Jakob is very good-looking and so it' always nice to see pictures of his. The comments I made to the pictures may sound a bit too fangirlistic, but I'm a girl who hasn't seen any cycling race for the last 20 days, therefore, I beg you to be clement with me.

Before of ending this post, however, I thank Mar once again. She made a great work by collecting the pictures and she also gave me inspiration as far as the pictures' captions are concerned. Thank you again girl!

PS: as I said in the first lines of this post, I've run out of ideas lately, so if any of you readers have some ideas for new posts, feel free to tell me!

Velo d'Or, Bartali, Cancun and more:

Although 5 of my teachers have decided to examine me in the last 6 days, showing their evilness and their hatred towards me , here I am to write a post about what's happened in Cycledom over the last few days.

First of all, this week the winners of the 3 Velo d'Or awards have been announced. And the 2010 winner of the main prize was....Fabian 'Spartacus' Cancellara!
I completely agree with this result, especially because this year Fabian won Roubaix in a totally spectacular way. Moreover, he won Flanders, wore the yellow jersey at the Tour, helped Andy on the cobblestones, decided to neutralise the Spa stage of the Tour, won 2 stages at La Grande Boucle and also won the TT World Championship for the 4th time in his life. Amazing.
Second in the trophy's classification was Alberto Contador, while third was Andy Schleck.
As far as the Velo d'or français was concerned, its winner was Thomas Voeckler. Me was very surprised by this because I thought that Sylvain Chavanel was going to win that award. And instead no, there comes Thomas and gets the prize. Third however was the track sprinter Grégory Bauge.

Velo d'or Espoirs instead was won by Andy Schleck in front of Nibali and Cavendish.

Talking about this award, I'm afraid I'm going to write something that the most of you won't like. And that something is: I don't think Andy deserved that award more than Nibali.

Ok, Andy was second in the Tour just because of a mechanical problem. As well as that, he is younger than Nibali and this year the battle between him and Contador made the Tour very exciting. Moreover, the Luxembourgian won 2 stages at this year Tour and also won the TT national champiobship. But at the same time Andy didn't get any good result in the Ardenne classics and was also kicked out from his team during the Vuelta, which he rode without getting any decent result.
Nibali instead won a stage at the Giro, wore the pink jersey, was 3rd in the GC of the Italian GT and in September he won la Vuelta. As well as that, he rode very well in the Worlds. Therefore I think that, if we have to compare Nibali and Andy's seasons, Vincenzo's one was more regular and more successful than Andy's. That's why I think he, and not Andy, should have won that award.

Anyway, after getting my part of insults for what I've just written, I go on to another topic. In fact, the other day Gazzetta gave the news that Gino Bartali, one of the most famous cyclists ever, is going to enter 'Il Giardino dei Giusti', which is internationally known as 'Yad Vashem'. Under this name people indicate a number of gardens (spread all around the World), where every person that during the 2° World War saved at least one person of Jewish origins, has a tree planted in their honour.
Gino Bartali is considered to have saved a lot of Jews during the 2° WW since, using his trainings on the bike as an excuse, he used to go from a city to another with false documents hidden in his bike (for example, inside the handlebars). These false documents were then given to people of Jewish origins, that showed them to the authorities in order to avoid being sent to the Nazis lager.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/guldhammer-steps-away-from-professional-cycling : The Danish rider Rasmus Guldhammer, 21 year-old, cancelled his contract with Columbia and decided to step away from professional cycling. He told DR Sporten that he missed his friends and family during his first year with a ProTour squad, therefore he decided to quit professional sport for one year.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/chris-anker-sorensen-aims-to-be-top-climber-at-2011-giro-ditalia : Chris Anker Sorensen is going to ride the Giro again next year and this is obviously causing me great fangirlistic attacks. As well as that, also Lovely Lovkvist has said he's going to race the Giro next year, so the battle between me and my sister (I support CA, she supports Thomas) has already begun.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/barredo-bids-farewell-to-quick-step-team-and-fans : Carlos Barredo is leaving Quick Step in order to join Rabobank. However, Carlos won't be able to race in his new team until 28 February 2011. In fact, he's been banned from 1st January 2011 to 28th February because of the fist fight he had with Rui Costa at this year Tour.
Talking about bans, also Johan Bruyneel has been banned for 2 months after that Radioshack wore Livestrong jerseys in the last stage of the Tour.

On http://www.gazzetta.it/Sport_Vari/Golf/27-10-2010/brevi-inverno-711609874872.shtml there are some short, interesting news. For example, on that page you can discover that, just 3 days ago, Philippe Gilbert and his wife Patricia became the parents of the little Alan (congratulations to the whole Gilbert's family!!).
However, one of the news that caught my attention was the 'Tour, WADA chiede controlli notturni' one. In fact, WADA has said that it would be better to repeal the unwritten rule according to which riders can't be tested by the anti-doping guys in the middle of the night. To me this makes no sense, because cyclists are human being too and they need a good night sleep as well when they're riding a Grand Tour. Actually, I think that waking up riders in the middle of the night could create differences also in their stage's results, since it's obvious that those who wouldn't sleep because of the controls would probably feel their legs much heavier than anyone else on the following day.

CANCUN CRITERIUM: The race was won by Mancebo. The Schlecks didn't start because their flight to Europe (?) was anticipated of some hours and prevented them from taking part in the race.
Some pictures (featuring los Schlecks, Kreuziger, Sagan and Vinokourov, who wore a newspaper rather than a t-shirt) can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/album.php?aid=293162&id=103246938668&fbid=490618488668 .

Tour de France presentation seen from Logic and from Fangirl:

For those of you who were afraid that the season here on My Blog had ended with Sunday post, here I am to reassure you that no, although the season has ended me will go on writing cyclistic bullshits during the whole winter. What a happiness.

As probably everyone in the world right now knows, the new Tour de France parcours was presented the other day in Paris. The parcours seems very well done and this time no cobblestones carnage are in sight.

The first stage starts at Passage du Gois and ends on Mont des Alouettes. So, no prologue for next year Tour, but a little ascent at the end of the first stage. The second stage is a 23 kms long team time trial (guys at Luxembourg Pro Cycling Team-is this the official name?-will probably be very happy about this, especially if it's true that Cancellara is joining them),while the 4th and the 7th stage are perfect for sprinters.

The 5th stage ends on Mur de Bretagne which, apparently, is the Britanny version of Muur de Huy. The 6th stage instead may be tricky because of the wind, while the following stage will probably end up in a sprint.

The eight stage instead ends at Super Besse. For those of you who have forgotten it, that's where Riccò won a stage in 2007 Tour de France,on the day when a very unlucky Andy Schleck lost some precious seconds because the yellow jersey (Schumacher?) had crashed right in front of him.

3 stages (and a rest day) later the riders will arrive on Luz-Ardiden, first 'serious' uphill finish of the race. On that stage the riders will also have to face le Tourmalet and another new (and apparently difficult) climb, so we supporters will surely have a lot of fun. The following day the stage will start in Pau and end in Lourdes and on the parcours the riders will have to face L'Aubisque (although the finish-line is 50 kms far from the top of the last climb). The last stage in the Pyranees instead will end on Plateau de Beille.

After these 3 tough stages, the riders will arrive in Montpellier, have a rest day and then face another flat stage ending in Chateaux. Then, on the 20th of July, they will start from Gap and arrive in Pinerolo after facing Monginevro and Sestriere. Hopefully, I'll be there ready to cheer on the riders.

The following stage will start in Italy and see the riders facing Colle dell'Agnello, col d'Izoard and finishing their daily fatigue on Col du Galibier. A day later, the riders instead will face Telegraph and Galibier before of ending up on l'Alpe d'Huez. Mont Ventoux is actually harder than Alpe d'Huez, but obviously l'Alpe is the climb on which every rider would love to win one day.

After these last days of pain, the riders will face an individual time trial in Grenoble, which will be 41 kms long. Then, the following day, we'll know the name of the 2011 Tour de France winner and the riders will have their usual parade on les Champs Elysées.

So, this is the parcours. Me likes it because it seems reasonably hard and because there are just a few kms against the clock. Then it looks like there won't be too many boring stages and this is obviously good. Moreover, the only stage that seems a bit dangerous on paper is the first one, with the riders facing Passage du Gois. Anyway, according to some experts, this time this stage won't create a carnage like the one of 1999 because the Passage will be faced at the beginning of the day, and not at its end (let's hope so). Then, last but not least, the riders are coming to Italy for one stage and, as an Italian, I'm obviously very happy about this.
Anyway, that's what Logic suggested me to write. Now, it's time for Fangirl to write her ideas about the Tour presentation. And, as you've probably already started to fear, this is the moment of the post in which me will talk briefly about skinny men dressed in suits.

At this year presentation Contador and his shiny pink tie weren't present, but this time the one who decided to wear pink was Vinokourov. After watching him dressed that way, I think everyone has understood why Astana kits get worse year after year.

Thor Hushovd looked great in his casual look (I loved the blue shirt), while Ivan Basso's green scarf (see pictures on Tim De Waele's website) terrified me. Nibali instead looked good, just like the Schleck brothers. Andy finally decided to give us the honour of seeing him dressed in a suit at a Tour presentation, and I thank him for this. Imo, he probably looked better than everyone else on Tuesday (even better than Frank). Cavendish opted for a more casual look, but I didn't like it very much. Evans was ok, just like Hincapie and Voeckler.

Sastre went for a classical grey suit that made him look terribly old. Menchov opted for a classical look too and looked very bored at the presentation. Poor Denis, trapped between the Schleck brothers and the Italian couple Nibali-Basso (or at least, that's what it seemed from some pictures).

Pozzato, for once, didn't wear anything of particularly strange and had to seat next to Vinokourov. Something tells me that Pippo gave Vino some advice about his look and this may have horrible consequences for next year's season (read: Vino could wear moustache at next year Giro/Tour/Liége/whatever else). If this happens, we'll know who we'll have to put the blame on,

As far as the other riders are concerned, I didn't see anyone making fashion disasters. Hopefully, the boys will dress well also on Saturday.

So, this was the presentation of 2011 Tour de France (and Fangirl's stupid opinions about what was fashionable on Tuesday and what wasn't). While waiting for the Giro presentation on Saturday (please tell me they're arriving in Bergamo city and not in Caravaggio!), I close this useless post by wishing you a good night.

Pictures from the 2010 Giro d'Italia: as they say, better late than never...

To your unbelievable joy, the magic moment has finally arrived: the magic moment in which miss Fede, ignoring the fact she has to read the 600 pages of 'Promessi Sposi' before of Wednesday, has finally decided to publish on this blog the pictures she took during this year Giro d'Italia.
For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about,here's a little resume: this year I went to see 3 stages of the Giro live (you can find the description of them on http://fede-myblog92.blogspot.com/2010/06/fangirl-at-giro-part-1-brescia-aprica.html , http://fede-myblog92.blogspot.com/2010/06/fangirl-at-giro-part-2-passo-del-tonale.html and http://fede-myblog92.blogspot.com/2010/06/fangirl-at-giropart-3-verona-verona.html ). Unfortunately, when I wrote those posts my computer had just broken down, so I had to wait a lot before of being able to upload the pictures on the computer. When I finally succeeded in doing that, however, I simply forgot about the pictures. Yesterday however I received the news that Bergamo is going to host a Giro d'Italia stage next year (yayyyy!) and that reminded me of the existence of those pictures, that here I finally publish. Btw, before of enjoying them, here are two random news.
FIRST NEWS: According to Jakob Fuglsang, los Schlecks are heading to Curaçao also this year.
SECOND NEWS: I know what Torri said about cycling yesterday ('all cyclists are doped') and my point of view about this is: in cycling there are many dopers because only in cycling you have such modern tests.

And here we go with the pictures (the quality isn't very good, but I'm not a photographer...)!!!

FIRST DAY: APRICA STAGE
Saying that I went to see the Aprica stage perhaps is an exaggeration, since I actually came across the riders in Edolo, while they were heading to l'Aprica and I was heading to my hotel on Passo del Tonale, by accident.In fact the familiar who had to check the riders' parcours had completely forgotten about this task of theirs, so we were very surprised when we got the news that we couldn't drive towards Tonale before of 6 pm because of the Giro. 'But the Tonale stage is tomorrow!', one of us said. 'Yes, but they're riding here also today', a policeman answered.

My surprise was actually so big that I didn't take any picture of the rider on that day. But still, when I finally got to my hotel, I started to take lots of pictures. That wonderful evening, the atmosphere on Passo del Tonale was cold, quiet and still: probably one of the best evenings of my life (also because bumping into Davide Cassani outside of a hotel doesn't happen everyday...).

SECOND DAY: PASSO DEL TONALE STAGE
On the morning of Tonale's stage, Basso was wearing the Maglia Rosa and he was heading towards his Giro victory. The weather was simply wonderful, although it was pretty cold anyway.That's how the mountains looked with the light:

In the pictures below you can see the arrive village and, under it, the Processo alla Tappa stage. On the afternoon, while walking there, I saw Beppe Conti and Gianni Mura.

Later in the day the weather, as you can see in some of these pictures, got a bit worse, but luckily the sun was shining when the riders started to arrive. Here are the two places where I went to see them: Below instead there are some of the supporters' cartels. The yellow one is dedicated to Savoldelli, who followed the Giro as Rai chronist (and showed to everyone how the Bergamask accent sounds...). The other one instead was dedicated to Simoni, who that day was on a breakaway- the last breakaway of his career.

As you can see, the writing below instead said 'Sorensen'. I swear I didn't write it myself (will someone believe me?) .Obviously, however, that's where I went to take the pictures ;)

Talking about Chris, well, that day I managed to see him very well. And at a certain point, when I screamed 'Go Chris, go go go!' as he was riding past me, I had the feeling that he was watching me and trying to smile at me. It was just a fast feeling, but when I think about it it still gives me goosebumps.Btw, here's a picture of Chris that I took as he rode past me, before of starting a bloody argument with the boy who kept on running behind the riders and ruined all my pictures by doing so (I'm kidding: I was too happy to start bloody arguments- but my pics all got ruined by that guy anyway!!).
As I already mentioned, the quality of the pictures isn't that good. But still, remember that they were taken by a super excited Fangirl!!
Here are Sastre and Vinokourov.
The eventual winner Tschopp.
Linus Gerdemann, Marcel Wyss, and the idiot who ruined almost all my pictures.
The good-looking Laurent Didier (the boy has great eyes, believe me):

Iban Mayoz:
De Greef (yay!):
Ardila Cano:
Miholjevic: Cioni:

Wurf together with other riders:

To miss Sansen's joy, here's a picture of Pozzatolocks taken especially for her:

Petrov:

Stortoni:

THIRD DAY: VERONA-VERONA
Dulcis in fundo, after 2 mountain stages me went to see the ITT in Verona, which was also the last stage of the Giro. There I took a few pictures,some of which actually aren't very nice.
Here's Lastras:
Richie Porte:
Sastre:

The Arena that day:

That's the place where I went to see the riders:
So, these are the pictures. They probably aren't worth the long await, but I think some of you may enjoy them anyway. Hope you liked them and, remember, the Schlecks are heading to Curaçao this winter too!

(Pictures taken by me)