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Hauss of pain
While the rest of us have been going about our business this week, perhaps browsing fruitlessly for suitable podium sunglasses, poor old Heinrich Haussler has been caught in a time vortex, not unlike the one that sucked in Bill Murray in that one film.
Four times this week Haussler contested a sprint at the Tour of California. Four times Haussler came up narrowly short, and four times the man raising his arms at the line was Peter Sagan.
Asked ahead of stage two what it would take to stop him winning, Sagan replied: "I don't know, maybe it takes a natural disaster," which is not a line the Broom Wagon would be using within earshot of the San Andreas Fault, but to each their own.
Day of the Honey Badger
No two ways about it, it has been a big 12 months in Lithuanian cycling. First the mayor of Vilnius proved a point about obstructed bike lanes by driving over parked cars in a tank. Then on Wednesday, Ramunas Navardauskas became the country's first ever leader of the Giro d'Italia.
After Navardauskas clung on to Garmin-Barracuda's last wheel in the team time trial, much of the subsequent press conference was dedicated to a) establishing how to pronounce his name (Listen here, and then practice rolling your Rs), and b) finding out something, anything, about the new maglia rosa.
A farmboy who is 1.9m tall, Navardauskas found his way into cycling after growing up in one of the few areas of the country where basketball was unpopular.
Boom goes the dynamite
First things first, if you have managed to reach the weekend without watching the finish to stage seven of the Tour of Turkey, do yourself a huge favour and set aside 12 minutes and 33 seconds. It is racing and roadside chain repairs at their very best.
The bingle behind Iljo Keisse at the 7.28 mark might not look like much in the context of the mayhem unfolding elsewhere, but it is an historic bingle because it is one of the last acts you will see in the original (okay, second) GreenEDGE jersey. After a stellar beginning which has reaped wins in Milan-San Remo and two stage races, Gerry Ryan's team will begin their first Grand Tour on Saturday with a new kit and a brand new name.
New major sponsor Orica, as disappointed nature-lovers will already be keenly aware, is not a whale but a multinational mining company and chemicals producer head-quartered in Melbourne.
Winning the Vino way
Congratulations to Maxim Iglinsky, Kazakhstan and Maxim Iglinsky's mullet, all of whom can revel in what was a thrilling victory at Liege-Bastogne-Liege, made more so by the wildly inaccurate timegaps displayed by the host broadcaster as Vincenzo Nibali snuggled down inside his hurt box.
Although the victory is Iglinsky's first, it is the third by a Kazakh in the same race in eight years – making the landlocked Central Asian nation infinitely more successful in recent seasons than, say, Italy, which has won not one of the last 21 monuments.
The previous Kazakh winner at Liege was, of course, Alexandre Vinokourov, who won in 2005 and 2010. His political ambitions seemingly on hold, Vinokourov is set to take up a role as team manager at Iglinsky's team, Astana. Vino was several hundred miles away preparing for the Tour of Turkey as Iglinsky crossed the line on Sunday, but did not let that stop him claiming partial credit for the win.
Ghost riders, and the Ardennes lover
We may as well get this out of the way. The technology used to create Hologram Tupac (above, right) MUST be harnessed for one of this year's grand tours – and let's face it, if anyone is going to take the leap, it is going to be the Giro d'Italia.
In-car cameras can wait, banning race radios can wait. If we don't have the opportunity to watch Fausto Coppi hammering up the Stelvio come May, hotly pursued by Ghostly Gino Bartali and perhaps the Notorious B.I.G, then someone isn't doing their job.
In the meantime, with only the Tour of Romandie around the corner before grand tour season really kicks in, the Ardennes Classics are spring's last hurrah.
Besides thrones, crackingly good racing and podium girls with face towels, Sunday's Amstel Gold Race was marked by a mid-race dispute between riders over when to stop for a call of nature, spectacularly dubbed 'pisticuffs' on Twitter by the geniuses behind NYvelocity.com.
