Season 2014

[Bierzo Baggie]

Glaconman, it sure was a great battle between Contador and Froome this year. But Contedor blew him away at the end of the penultimate stage (which finished right on the border between Galicia and Bierzo).
Froome will be in the road race on Sunday, more than 250km around a hilly 15 lap circuit. Contador has decided to take a well-earned rest.

West Brom matches aside, this is the first major sporting event I have ever witnessed live.

5 minutes after writing the above I realized that what I’d said wasn’t completely true. I’d seen a couple of stages of the Tour de France when Greg Lemond won in 1989. I’d been to a couple of England games at the old Wembley. I’d seen Beefy Bothem, Viv Richards and big Joel Garner in a couple of one day matches at Somerset. Geoff Boycott even told me to fuck off once. Nice man.

All this feels like a lifetime away though and modern sport is a different place too.

And the UCI World Cycling Championships in Ponferrada are extra special in that they were so unexpected. Five days after the first official competition it still feels unreal when you wake up to carless streets while helicopters buzz overhead as if we were suddenly in the midst of some Hollywood film set.

The main time trial route bisects my daughters walk to school and on the way home last Wednesday we waited patiently to cross the road while Irish veteran Nicholas Roche whirred past and was seconds later a speck of green on the horizon. On the way to the shops you may cross with Team USA out for a stroll or Cadel Evans checking his bike before a training run. Both the American and the Australian teams are in what was until recently Ponferrada’s only 4-star hotel and which is just up the road..

Nobody had expected the audatious bid from El Bierzo to come off and it has indeed been a bumpy ride which may well bankrupt this town in the long run if certain forecasts are to be believed.
What a week though!

Elite women’s race tomorrow.
Elite men on Sunday.
Both are live on BBC2. Worth watching...