So the circus that is the Tour de France has been rolling into towns across Holland, Belgium and France for the past week with all the thrills and excitement you’d expect and, as with any circus, a couple of shifty looking travelling folks:

This year’s race got off to a predictable start with Fabian Cancellara winning his 5th prologue in imperious style. Camcellara had hoped that this win and subsequent x-raying of his bike would finally kill the rumours about his *mechanical doping* (the asterisk is the blog sarcastic air quote) at this year’s Flanders and Roubaix:

Sadly for Fabian, the results proved inconclusive:

In a further attempt to dispel “the rumours” Cancellara quipped to journalists: “After they checked my bike, I said, ‘You should also check the motor: Me!’”. Despite this evidence to the contrary, Cancellara has had to develop a pretty decent sense of humour in recent months as surely as his years of hard work have developed his *bionic* legs. And any sane person believes that to be true – Cancellara’s victories are thanks solely to his physical abilities and hard work. Although some – those nearer the Gazza end of the sanity continuum – might suggest his similarity to the Six Million Dollar Man doesn’t stop at bionic limbs. For this Tour has revealed that he switches his team radio to “transmit” by tweaking his right nipple:

The simple act of squeezing together his index finger and thumb enables him to both send updates to the team car and a frisson of excitement to himself. By all accounts by twisting his left nipple, Fabian can control the speed of his Gruber electric assist.

His motor was put to good use over the cobbles of the Ardennes as he successfully guided Andy Schleck through the treacherous cobbles (insofar as cobbles are capable of treachery) in the final 30kms of stage 3. Of course, Fabian’s guidance of Frank was less successful but 1 out of 2′s not bad. That stage also produced the shock of the week if most commentators are to be believed. They all professed that feather weight Contador would cross the cobbles of Paris-Roubaix with all the grace, and ultimately success, of a drunk clown crossing a tight-rope. I can only guess at the number of complementary croissants were spat onto keyboards as Contador crossed the line just behind the lead group.

Crash! Bang! Wallop!

As with every Tour there’s been no shortage of crashes in this opening week. Stage 2 in particular, as the riders descended the Stockeu, turned into a decidedly disastrous dress rehearsal of “Le Tour on Ice”. La Grosse Chute – in which every rider was obliged to fall off at least once – put an end to Christian Vande Velde Tour with broken ribs and Frank Schleckt’s was over the next day with a broken collar bone but the “Bad Luck of the Week” award has to go to Armstrong. His legendary bike handling skills appear to have deserted him to such an extent that Denny Menchov has been giving him some tips on staying upright. In fact, so far in this Tour Armstrong’s been on the floor more times than an MP waiting to vote. For someone with GC aspirations that’s bad enough but let’s not forget that Armstrong’s approaching an age where having a “nasty fall” could leave him hospitalised for months. Finally on stage 8 to Morzine-Avoriaz, Armstrong’s bad luck put an end to his challenge for an eighth title – he came off his bike 3 times and lost nearly 12 minutes to the day’s winner Schleck. It was sad to see that the days when Armstrong was able to make his own luck are well and truly gone but at least he can use the bad luck as an excuse as a crutch for his failure to win. And if he keeps falling off at this rate, it’s crutches that he’ll need.

Just as Armstrong’s luck seems to have gone, so too has the dignity of QuickStep’s Carlos Barredo and Caisse d’Epargne’s Rui Alberto Costa. For there are few more pathetic sights than that of a grown man dressed in lycra scrabbling around on the floor with another grown man also dressed in lycra:

The fight reached its climax at the end of stage 6 as Costa removed his front wheel and set about Barredo’s head and neck. As bicycle sourced weapons go, a front wheel isn’t going to do much harm to your opponent – unless you throw it like Odd Job’s bowler hat – but I suppose, save an empty bidon, it was all he could removed while he was still in a rage. Costa must be cursing the day bike manufacturers introduced the integrated seat post.

Responding to the Tourmalet-sized cynicism that’s developed in all of us since it was decided drug taking was bad for bike racing (despite the fact that everyone – inlcuding the soigneurs – were apparently doing it) and manifests itself as an endless moan, Bradley Wiggins was forced to release his blood test values.

Garmin-Slipstream put out his blood values for both haemoglobin count – the concentration of oxygen carrying protein in red blood cells – as well as, what’s becoming the de facto measure of cheating, his “Off Score”.

Now calling it the “Off Score” makes it sound a little more Terry Thomas – “Your Off Score’s really not on, you absoulte scoundral!” – than it probably is. Here’s how Garmin explain it:

The Off Score, which takes into account the relationship between haemoglobin and reticulocyte concentration is currently used as the reference point for assessing an athlete’s blood profile. Since reticulocytes tend to decrease when haemoglobin is artificially high, the combination of a high haemoglobin and a low reticulocyte raises the Off Score.

Not quite as funny as it first sounded, I think you’ll agree. Maybe closer to some of Thomas’ later work but certainly not up there with Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines or Monte Carlo or Bust.

Anyway, much was also made of Bradley’s weight loss in the build up to the Tour – in the 9 months prior to the Tour he lost 7 kilos. Which although might not win him the crown of “Weight Watchers Slimmer of the Year” it’s no men feat for someone who’s not actually a fatso. Of course, for the anti-doping cynics out there this is a hard fact to believe – and Bradley’s partly responisble for this. Judging by the account in his autobiogrphy Bradley used to be an almost Flintoff standard drinker and his cake consumption is estimated to be the same as that of a single woman in her early 40′s.

Which is why Garmin have been forced to release Bradley’s cake and beer intake levels for this year’s Tour:

At first glance, you might think that this is simply a pathetic attempt at humour, very badly done in Microsoft Paint – you’d be wrong, though. It was actually done using Adobe Photoshop.

As you can see, during the whole of the Tour both his beer and cake intake were very low. There’s only a slight blip plotted on the cake line when Bradley accidentally ate half a croissant. No-one is quite sure how this happened, although it’s currently believed that a member of Saxo-Bank may have spiked his porridge with it. His consumption levels stayed constant until he hit Paris and, as clearly shown above, beer imbibment rose markedly and he Katona’d it on the cake front before returning to a more normal level.

There we have it, categoric proof to support Wiggins’ weight loss based performance increases. We can only hope this will be enough to satisfy the doubters or, at the very least, stop them moaning on and on and on for a couple of weeks.