SB Nation - Login for mobile commenting

Podium Cafe

Tour of Qatar Stage 5 LIVE

Camel Race Track - Al Khor Corniche 160 km

Today can't possibly be as good as yesterday. Or can it?
Podiumcafe's likely suspect: Adam Blythe (still)

Official site , Startlist , Stageinfo

Live video:13:00 CET (07:00 US EST, 23:00 AUS EDT)
Video: steephill , cyclingfans , Procyclinglive , Sports Livez.

0 recs  |  302 comments

Comments

Adam Blythe you ssuperstar! Nice comment yesterday of the ES commentators
Do you think that being on a team with so many superstars will hinder his progress, through lack of opportunity?
We have an expression for that in Holland.

Asking the question, is answering the question

Have they let you out of the asylum?
Noo.. They have set me in an asylum again.

Have to get back to Norway.. The horror

It's very beautiful here today, today.

I’m off for the snow-clad woods in 12 minutes.

Secretely I also want to go to Norway once..

Maybe this summer.. If I can get a 100% coldfree card entering Norway

Your secret is safe with us.

Such cards are now issued in the passport control at the airport. Ha en fin dag!

That doesn't however tell me whether the answer would be positive or negative, which is why I asked.

I see it as a possible problem. On the other hand, if he doesn’t have to race exclusively with Gilbert, and can do all those SSR’s that give a rider a good grounding, then it could be an excellent year.

I'd take the use of that particular expression

as an affirmative. Hence my follow-up question.. :)

Thanks. Glad someone here understands English. It isn't me tonight.
In Dutch it wuld be interpreted as a 'no' from Frinking
Really? I should get back to Dutch because I meant yes..
Your English was perfect, but the saying doesn't leave room for the fact that sometimes we ask

because we don’t know the answer.

Asking without knowing the answer? How very un-lawyerly of you.
But very teacherly.
My advice to you:

Try to think of your classroom as a courtroom. You are the judge, the prosecutor, and the jury. Your pupils are the defendants, the attorney for the defense, and the spectators. See what I mean?

How boring would that be?
Ok, new suggestion:

Think of your students as the jury. A hung jury.

Like dead? Or that they drank too much?
A hung jury is one that can't reach consensus.
In most cases..
No room for generalisations?
Quite the contrary, generalisations

are what makes passioned lunch break conversations go round and round and round. I was just implying that I was leaving the door open for a more literal interpretation in this case.

empassioned?
impassioned ;)

And, yes.

Yup

Probably a frenchism. Check out this link: Empassion

Spelling...such a minefield.
Oh goody. There's always room for more pedantry.
What about a well hung jury?
Potentially a lot more fun.
We're no longer allowed to beat students in this country.

Unfortunately.

There's the option some of my colleagues like: boring them to death.
Yep it is..

But.. The arguments that he wasn’t going to make a superyear were in the question itself. So, you can argument, that you knew the answer..
But it remains speculation. There are not to many sprinters on BMC, but there are a lot less helpers on the team. Curious ro see how it works out

Thanks. Me too.
Ah, I thought the initial question was 'is this a good thing'

should have looked back

Ils sont fous, les Hollandais.

So, like if someone asks you: “Do you love me?” and the response is “Asking the question is answering the question” then it would be ill-advised to go around looking for a wedding outfit?

I think his frienship with Gilbert is a good thing for him.

That got him a good ($) contract with BMC and since they haven’t got many sprinters he’ll get his chance from time to time.

Thanks. The friendship is potentially a wonderful thing. I hope it works out that way.
Some fun reading from a PdC member who shall remain nameless. I gather it's created much comment.

http://cyclismas.com/2012/02/farrar-blasts-garmin-barracuda-signings-and-team-tactics/

Vaughters came out on twitter trying to dispel rumours of Tyler's dissenting team-mates

Guess this article was where it came from. an amusing piece.

It is. Vaughters is visibly frustrated with those who missed the satire.
Is that really Farrar?

Because if it is he rocks..

Well it's not farrar who wrote it, although it was him whose 'Fuck', borne of frustration, was audible.
Farrar's comments make me think he is a keeper.

Let me see, who to boot.

You mean 'fuck', because the rest is a very clever fiction?
I like frustrated riders.
If it pushes them to win, it's good.
Unfortunatelly..

He lacks some speed and a good train to really win the big races.. But his sprint in the classics compensate much

I love the last line
Stage Five of the Tour of Qatar goes on Thursday, where it is expected that Mark Cavendish will again take his turn at frustrating Farrar.
LOL. I like the whole thing. Some talented writers at PdC :)
Wow

People actually thought that was legit?

They mentally heard those words coming out of Farrar’s mouth…around cameras and microphones? Really???

Apparently MANY people...ridiculous hey?
I know!

The Farrar bit was absurdly obvious enough, but then people still believed it when they got to the JV quote? Hahaha

Demare led the peloton home last night

So he’s my roughie for a good placing.

It's the Queen stage today...all 160 km's of it. Should be fun.
there's a queen stage in a flat race?

If its as good as last nights race, I’ll be pleased.

I’d probably still enjoy it regardless actually :P

I'm joking...only the length makes it different to the others.
and the camel track

a camel track!

The first time I read "Camel Race Track"

I thought it was something sponsored by Camel cigarettes or something. But, no…no…….

Bobsledding! (Camel ad from the ‘40s featuring my family’s only gold medalist)

Not one single case of throat irritation in 1949

Don’t you long for those simpler times?

Apart from the clouds of smoke everywhere.
The snow is white, the sky is blue, Holdenmate is heading for the hills. Ta ta!
lucky you
says the Odyseus of Crete and Spain

But yeah, lucky me. :)

Odysseus Odysseus Odysseus
Who's been riding the rollers all week long because of the snow
As long as you're on a roll, let the good things roll.
DNS today, chicchi
so he won in Argentina, and now its hibernation during the rest of the season?
There's always Eneco.
tailwind finish today
Just like yesterday. I hope it's as much fun.
'twould be nice
I've just switched from Safari to Chrome. Much faster.
great isn't it

though mine keeps crashing when my Skype is open

Today, I finally decided I was sick of being patient with Safari. So far I'm very impressed.
actually why is PC/SB such a memory guzzler?

runs ok but computer whinges a bit upon loading the front page

In Chrome, that appears not to be happening. Fingers crossed.
I believe that's usually because the site tries to deliver

geo-relevant advertising, which means that it pulls ads from different content networks depending on where your IP address is located. If you run an ad-blocker that would make it faster.

The other thing is that Chrome caches the hell out of most sites which means more static items (like navigation images, etc.) load from the local cache, rather than the web.

Anthony McCrossan @antmccrossan
4 riders on attack #TourOfQatar Wagner, Bodnar, Kuchynski, Bertolini, Nishizono. 4 mins 15. Avg speed 52.3kmh!!
i don't know. but i count five names there.
Four riders and five names :)
oh i hope wagner was a mistake

he’s meant to be the protected sprinter!

Love that guy.
Steephill preview:

The peloton is expected to have 8 mph crosswind for this stage.

o/t: fastest way to waking up sleeping puppies: whisper "breakfast"
And on that note

My parents’ dog has perfected his “What is that? I’m not going to eat it.”-look.

What a very cat-like dog.

All the dogs we ever had would eat just about anything.

Well, yes

He is sort of cat-like in more ways than just about food. He’s got the ability to land on his feet.

Singhstax arrives late

because of sand storm.

Morning! Late shift for me today so just arrived at work.

Aupa Tommeke.

Viddy at the top of the hour, right?

Hooray, I’m awake for this sleepy race!

Afternoon, everyone
Afternoon, eh?

Where are you? It’s coming up on 4am for me (USA West coast)

Chapeau for getting up! Let's hope for your sake it's as absorbing as yesterday!
Oh?

I missed the last two days.

Peloton split to smithereens yesterday and it was won from a small group of classics guys. Exciting stuff.
Yeah I just looked at the GC

Boonen has 31 seconds on Farrar?!?!? Must have been kerr-azy.

Farrar flatted with 4 km or so to go.

Also, bonus points.

and..psssst

I’m not up already, I’m up still ;\

I'm in Qatar.

So it’s right about 3pm here.

Oh really? Wow.
Yeah

I hope to get out to the race this weekend. Last year I had a blast out there and got some decent pics, including one of Wouter Weylandt, oddly enough.

7am and still pre-dawn in Indy.
Camels! Racing!
so, just the two are left out front
Liiiiiiiiiiiiiiive \o/
Can't join you until I go on lunch. How far do they have left to go?
22km
Thanks
Any splits?
bodnar and kuchynski have about a minute
Right, and pelo all together?
22-ish km on my feed.
i thought chicchi hadn't started? not per harmon & smith
who to believe ES or QPQS

Hmmm…

Time gap back out to a minute

They’re letting ’em dangle

Minute and a half

Interesting

reports that pozzato abandoned after a crash
It is aggravating that these commentators don't follow the same rules we do :p

Here.

So we're discussing today's news there too?

It wasn’t in the OP.

Evening :-)

Following races from the antipodes is much more challenging. Respect for Seahorse!

Nope, I can't think about anyone I found more annoying now that Harmon

He’s personality is so damning and just annoying to listen to. P+P are idiots and buffoons but they’re not condescending p…. like this guy

Is that the main guy on Eurosport?

The non-Irishman?

Yeah, not Brian Smith

and meant *than not that

Smith=Scottish ;)
Is it OK to say "potayto, potahto"

Or will the Irish be very upset?

The Scots wouldn't be too happy, either.
I was thinking that perhaps potato jokes don't fare well on Ireland

Great famine and all that

Yeah, that's when my Irish ancestors showed up over here.

But it’s not like the Irish stopped eating potatoes, so I don’t think they’re sensitive to the mention of them.

Hooray now I know their names! :)
Commentators hyping Blythe
Talking him for VDS ;\
talking him up* I should say
he will be on 220 teams
bugger, he was on mine until 10 secs ago

Think I should keep Veelers?

No. Dump him and pick someone at random.
OK - now I sooo going to keep him.
If the FanPosts section ever comes back, I'll post the unicorns for help.
Do it now!1

http://www.podiumcafe.com/fanposts

Not until they show up on the front page.

(Yes, I know I could FP the post, but I don’t like to do that for silly fun stuff.)

Oh right

(I must confess that I never open the front page.)

How does that work?
My favourites is set to go straight to archives.
Start with the 'Archives' page

http://www.podiumcafe.com/posts/archive
then use the orange navigation bar to go to FanPosts, FanShots.

Cool. Never tried it that way.
Caveat: sometimes I miss recent FanPosts

because they don’t immediately show up on the standard sorting (partly dependent on number of comments, I think). But there is a link on the FanPost page to sort by publication time.

When things are quiet, I have found some utterly bizarre things about a couple of cyclists,

so I thought perhaps we could have a fanpost where people contribute the most odd factoid about someone who is currently riding.

Sounds like fun
It's been accidental, whilst trawling for VDS stuff. One seriously odd youtube floating round :)
Yes, go for it.
My best 'fact', with proof, involves colonics :( Anyway, it would be just for fun.)
Don't give it all away here--get busy!
My computer seems to have developed the problem that um's used to have with double posting.

I’ll wait until the doping stuff has died down. It will be a perfect ‘happy hour’ topic at some stage.

May not be your computer--the site's been screwy.

Some of my posts show up double to me, but not on the board. That might be happening to you, too, as I haven’t seen doubled posts from you.

So strange. i also close the page, see new comments, come back

and find they’re mine. So strange.

I've had that too
+1

Refreshing the page helped.

Sounds good! Do it!
I had him last year

Not a huge success. Though he was a 4-pointer.

4 points last year? Incredible.
Scored 160 VDS points in 2010

Though 150 of them came from Franco-Belge.

Hmm, I was feeling really happy with my team

I knew I shouldn’t have come in for a coffee.

Time gap coming down quickly now
aaand just as I say that it goes back out another 3 seconds

Whatever!

NOW it's coming down
Whew, made it in.....Hi, everyone!!
Just in time for the leadout :)
was Farrar penalised yesterday?
he was at least parodied
I love it when guys in a failing breakaway shake hands. So civilized.
Farnese Vini there in numbers...wonder how Guardini's feeling?
Crash
Smukulis
Amazing he didn't take anyone down with him
Definitely

crashed in the middle of the bunch with less than 8k to go, and nobody ran over him.

Smukulis down.,
"The Pillock"

according to the pillock in the commentators box

I guess I get what that means from the context

But…is that a common thing to say?

It's british afaik for idiot

I’m Aussie and the first I heard of it was on Outnumbered (great tv show btw)

Originally meant 'penis.'
Looks like everyone else managed to avoid him
o/t: so, do i invest hubby's ira in gold? yes or no
Believe me, you don't want financial advice from me.
But from the unicorns?
Very trustworthy!
trustworthily unreliable those unicorns.

the white one’s cluelessly innocent and naive

and the black one lies strategically.

Too late. 5-7 years ago would have been great.
any suggestions?
It probably depends more on the intended length of your investment.

If you’re comfortable moving it around a few times over the next year or two, that presents different opportunities to sticking it into something and leaving it there.

15-20 years (for him), me 10-15. searching fidelity's mutual funds
basically just sticking the money somewhere and forgetting about it, more or less

it’s not as if, relatively speaking, it’s a large portion of our assets. mainly for tax purposes. (damn amt)

For that length of investment you're best finding a fund that's shown decent returns

over the last 5-10 years and that will allow you to apportion your investments according to risk-based strategies (low/medium/high). I’d suggest something along the lines of 30% low, 30% medium and 40% high and shifting from high to low incrementally every 5 years or so. That way you’re reducing your risk as you get closer to wanting to cash out.

Of course, PdC doesn’t guarantee any financial advice posted in the comments and recommends you seek professional advice before making any final decisions.

yeah. the high risk investments incompass the life insurance accounts.

looking at 10 year averages of btwn 8-25 percent

I'm sure you'll find something that suits your needs.

There are some good packages available that give you a high level of control over investment strategy without having to follow every investment in detail.

this is totally opposite from yesterday

Boonen must be satisfied.

Yeah, doesn't need to win, just finish safely (hope he does win though!)
sitting top in 10 now
Well, hello, Fabu!
Cav right on Boonen's wheel
Everyone looking pretty stressed
well, some teams haven't done anything yet.
Is that Aardvark in the dark green with yellow armbands?
Murilo Fischer

Brazilian champion

Nice kit - easy to pick him
McEwen with a mechanical

Sucks for him

well at least GE win something this tour

most flats

robbie mac flats
Lots of flats here. Is it the hot pavement?
one rider said something about the cat eye reflectors
Also lots of small sharp stones.
3k to go!! Rabo looking hungry.
Rabo riding for Brown in the sprint and not Renshaw?
hopeless
And way too early

for that small collection of non-Cance’s, to say the least.

Garmin massing nicely
First on the front through the roundabout
Boonen only has one mate in front
Cav goes...
Cav against kiddies.

Easy. No. Contest.

boonen boxed
Yeah, all a bit chaotic, not much he could do there

Still, safely in the lead, no stress

Cav by a country mile
Was that Viviani in second?
Oss, they say.
Viviani's not there. Oss.
thanks, I've got the sound off
Top ten on the stage

Mark Cavendish
Daniel Oss
Peter Sagan
John Degenkolb
Rudiger Selig
Allan Davis
Arnaud Demare
Andrea Guardini
Denis Galimzyanov
Greg Henderson

What happened to Farrar?

Davis was in poerfect position then

Maybe a few years ago he would have had the speed to at least take the front

o

I noticed him lose some momentum as he got squeezed by another rider
Garmin looked pretty good coming out of that roundabout

Then it went a little haywire, but for him to not even be top 10, that’s pretty damn haywire.

well he kinda blocked someone else coming through when trying to move forward but he was 1-2 seconds too late

The line was there for the taking but he just doesn’t look to have the speed anymore

Suppose Boonen just said fuck it and soft-pedaled it?

He could…afford to.

Got a bit boxed, too late to find a way through. No need for stress :)
Yup

He’s got his stage win, and barring a catastrophic mechanical, the race itself. No need to go nuts today.

*Two* stage wins

Even more so!

Chaotic sprint so no need to take risks trying to dive through closing gaps.

Tranquillo tranquillo :)

demare!
I just sacked him - where is that phone number
I am pleased :D

Selig up there again too, he’s no flash in the pan

Nice comment from Cav
Missed it--what was it?
F'ing nice job guys
Eurosport guy instantly apologising :)
Reports on Twitter that Pozzato's probably broken his collarbone, though not confirmed

:(

Ah, heck.
Well, if true. I've certainly learned to get confirmation of anything posted on Twitter...
Well yes...we'll wait and see
Doesn't the Tour of the Mediterranean start today too?
O/T: Hey, just discovered that they're showing that old 2007 Garmin documentary,

“Blood, Sweat & Gears” on the Sundance Channel now. Worth watching, if anyone here hasn’t seen it yet.

Thanks--I've seen it, but it's worth seeing again.
YW. Ugh, there's Magnus Backstedt breaking his collarbone at the ToQ again!

I remember watching that, ugly!

Funny that this is just 4 years ago, and it seems soooo long.

I…I wasn’t even on PdC yet!

Well, until July.
Tweets about Pippo's classic season maybe in jeopardy after the crash
So rubbish if true :(
Yeah, who's going to have Tommekes back?
"Rotta" = broken

“Tutto ok … O quasi

Video: Tour of Qatar 2012 - Stage 5 - Final kilometers

I’ve uploaded a video of the final kilometers

Lead out train for sale!

Looks like Sky doesn’t need it.
Bravo, Cav!

You must Login with your SB Nation account and be a member of Podium Cafe to post a comment.