All hands against his own

He found all hands against his own
Found all eyes were looking down
And the sun had left and gone
All his friends could not be found.
- The Black Keys, 2004

No you haven't stumbled into In The Worst Possible Taste by mistake - though the latest installment thereof is up, fresh 'n' tasty like, via the link to the right (*cough blatant plug cough*) - just borrowing the fine work of the Black Keys (before Danger Mouse fucked up their most recent album) to underline one of my favouritest things about le Tour de Fromage Mangeant le Singe de Reddition. No, it's not Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen, it's not the intrigue and backstabbing in the Astana camp, it's not even the slammin' hotties in the clingy frocks who plant sloppy wet kisses all over the lucky sweaty bastards on the podium.

OK it is that a bit. But mostly it's the oresome oresomeness of when a breakaway bunch of five to ten riders get out in the lead of the race from the first kilometre, and somehow manage to defy the entire peleton to bring it home for the win. You've got to love that. A couple of renegade nutters versus every decent professional cyclist in Europe. Nine times out of ten - nineteen out of twenty, if not more - they don't make it. They get shot down in the last five or ten kays - or even, cruelly, the last few hundred metres. But that just makes for even more oresome when they do make it. Like last night, when Thomas Voeckler of the perennially shit Bbox-Bouygues Telecom team - the clowns who stacked it royally in the team time trial the day before - led an all-day breakaway. With 120km to go their original 9min margin had been trimmed to 3m20 and falling and someone who will remain nameless Twuntered 'This breakaway has less chance of success than Bert Newton's next hair transplant, I'm off to bed'. Yet the original six blokes still somehow had a minute in hand with 5K to go - the gap had fallen to 30s and then blown back out to 90s while the teams behind hissed and farted and argued over who was going to coordinate the pursuit. At that moment Voeckler picked his chance and bolted, flicking out of a roundabout chicane and making a solo bid for glory. The rest of the breakaway were swamped on the line - one survivor from Katusha managed to outlast the Manx Mong (thanks v. much Lerm, I'm nicking that), gun sprinter and awowed retard Mark Cavendish - but Voeckler defied the peleton and claimed the win, on the fifth anniversary (give or take a few days) of him claiming yellow and holding it for 10 days in the 2004 Tour.

The only reason any breakaway survives is because the peleton fuck up, either because of ignorance or arrogance. In this case it was petulance. None of the other teams were interested in helping the Manx Mong's team (Columbia-HTC, in a previous life the Deutsche Telecom/T-Mobile team, later transplanted to the US) chase down the breakaway, because none of the other teams were interested in watching their lead sprinter getting duffed up in yet another Columbia-HTC sprint-train procession. With Zabel retired, Hushovd getting old, McEwen broken and Boonen mysteriously slower than the past couple of years (not sayin', just sayin'), Cavendish is the only game in town when the stage ends in a bunch sprint. I dare say the rest of the teams were delighted to have seen he and the Septics come up short in their bid to claim their third flat-stage win in succession. I certainly was.

Which leaves just a couple of Matters Arising from the overnight sporting feast:

- Is Peter Siddle the new Michael Kasprowicz? Not that much to him at first glance but tries his guts out all day, and the last ball of the day has the same zip and snarl as the first. That one he castled Prior with was case in point. An ideal new ball bowler... for the second new ball.

- Re the prominent billboard at Sophia Gardens compelling the stupid to 'READ KP ONLY IN THE NEWS OF THE WORLD', does he actually have a contract to write for them, or do they just bug his phone conversations and print the transcript as per standard practice?

- Can Nathan Hauritz throw? Or is he Scott Muller in disguise?

and finally

- Is this the most heroically gratuitous restaurant marketing campaign in the history of heroically gratuitous marketing campaigns?

There is a sporting context, honest. She's Nicole Begg, the inline world skating champion, whatever that is. She's from Timaru, 'cos someone has to be. She's sponsored by a South Island chain of Thai restaurants who are based here in D-town (and do a fairly stellar feed, particularly given the distance in space, time and culture from downtown Bangkok to the Deep South.) And she got so annoyed by her complete media anonymity despite being a World Champion and stuff that she decided to hold her breath and stamp her feet until someone paid attention. Failing that, she took off all her clothes and got photographed for Playboy. (That link's safe for work. Others weren't. Though you can Google those yourselves at your own leisure.) Now why can't Danica Patrick do that? More than she has already, I mean.

Menu looks good though. Anyone else wondering what their seafood course is like?

The Doctor is OUT.