In about one minute, you are going to wonder what this has to do with cycling.
Hopefully something, but potentially, nothing. Even I don’t know yet.
As is often the case, I don’t mind starting big and finishing small when it comes to blogging, it takes a lot to finish, and I don’t always feel as quiet and peaceful and inclined to writing as I do right now. However, I digress. Even more than usual.
For last night/yesterday in Italy, it was the first day of the Women’s International Tour – the Giro Donne. I have a belief in the “long tail” of the internet and apparently, one day people are going to discover that I made this blog post, which was proof that another person was interested in women’s professional cycling. We will be remembered and in having been remembered, we will ride in the future. Even if I know nothing terribly clever about cycling to say about it – Giro Donne was on folks. On.
My dear friend Sabra speaks reasonable Italian, after she fell in love with an Italian fellow. I will tag him in this post on Facebook, so that he can tell me what is happening here.
Perhaps they are saying, “this is the start of the Giro Donne, and these are the women riding, and they are in Naples, and boy it’s hot”. I learnt French at school and sometimes, if I close my eyes and listen, I believe I can understand Italian.
And, after a little bit of neutral roll out, and apparently some very hot conditions, there was even a bit of Specialized Lululemon action with Australian, Chole Hosking, getting amongst if for the intermediate sprint points. In the end though, it was last year’s winner, Marianne Vos who made Napoli to Terracina pink for Stichting Rabobank.
Biggest drama so far was most of the teams missing the presentation due to Naples traffic, as reported by Specialized Lululemon’s Clara Hughes, whose pic I am going to include here – so you know her face.
I include Clara’s picture so you can put a face to her wikipedia shizzle and feel like – yo mamma – this is an impressive athlete. 38 or something years old, Clara will be heading to the 2012 London Olympics (I think) in cycling, but it’s confusing because she has also been the Winter Olympics in speed skating, actually several times. No, in fact, she has medals from both the Winter and Summer Olympics, in fact she may be one of only five people to have one medals in both versions of the game and the FIRST AND ONLY PERSON to have won multiple medals in both.
And she keeps a sweet blog, and acknowledges that profesh ladies have to stop too. For natural breaks and workers strikes, and mad Italian traffic.
You can follow on the Twitter, or make like me and get confused online tv watching. Anyone know the English commentary link? Although, it be a Time Trial, arguably, even I can understand time in Italian. Like faster or slower. That much I can work out.
What I cannot work out, however, is the time difference and if I can watch Rai 2 on a Mac. #firstworldproblemifthereeverwasone
eleanor j jackson 