Dammit, report ended up as last post on the previous page

And yeah Ian. Usually I kind of enjoy TTT's but this time around I just didn't feel like doing all the micro-management needed to get as good a result as the team deserved

winning

Great to see Hushovd in pink, I doubt the medium mountain cobbled stage will break up the peloton as much as a pan flat cobble stage would (as the cobblers present may tear up the race) but you never know.

Also could you remind me of how Erik McDermott get his name, which is a strange name for a Dane! I'm pretty sure you explained it before.

Off to a good start.

I personally loved this Giro route. It's demanding, offers great variance in the stages and I'm sure Fuglsang has a shot at the GC. I think the route ends in Brescia, and there's also a 50 km time trial along the way before the last 4-5 decivise mountain stages, if I'm not mistaken?

I mostly look forward to the cobbled stage though. Playing it with Lampre back then (in PCM2012), this was just really too good to play. Back then, I had several cobble experts with my riders and we managed to break away and snatch veeery important time to the other riders (+2 minutes I think) and in the end, my rider won by 29 seconds, so this can be really a important step to securing victory again, or lose the Grand Tour. Anyway, just sharing some thoughts.

Good luck for the Giro!

What a Great TTT the guys put in, lets hope this is a sign of things to come

Great start to the Giro

Hehe, I wonder if Novo Nordisk likes it that the former sponsor, Volvo, is still on Fuglsang's jersey? Well, he'll be riding in the pink jersey for the next 3 weeks anyway hopefully.

Great to see that the team still have the Maglia Rosa within their ranks

Wearing Pink is both a gift and a curse. I hope the team can work with it

After his win in Paris – Roubaix this year people have become increasingly interested in the story of the 23-year old Dane, who broke Cancellara on the cobbles.

It all started on New Year’s Eve 1990/91. A young woman, Marie Meineche, had followed her ancestors across the North Sea (or Western Sea as it’s called in Denmark) to the wild and harsh Scotland. And believe me Scotland is very wild and harsh in January!

She had been over there for a 3-day seminar about sheep farming. See she grew up in mid-west Jutland where the land wasn’t really suitable for anything. Except sheep. At least so she thought one day, so she had gone to agriculture school with the ambition of starting her own sheep farm. Since Denmark have mainly focused on pigs and cows for the last few hundred years she had to go overseas to get some real expertise on the field.

And that brings us back to the story. Marie was supposed to go back to Denmark the morning of the 31st, but her plane couldn’t get a lift-off due to some mechanical problem and then when it became after noon the airport decided to close down for the year.
So there stood a 25-year old Danish woman outside Aberdeen Airport with nowhere to go. So she started walking towards the town, but soon a young man pulled up and offered her a ride.

He was going towards town where he were to celebrate the new year with his (much older) brother John, who incidentally had moved to Canada, in one of the local pubs.
Or that is his brother’s band had to play so in reality William (as his name was and still is) had to go there and clap and cheer on his brother alone. You can probably all guess how it went from there…


To make a long story short Marie somehow managed to convince William that the flat Western Jutland was even more beautiful than the mighty hills of Scotland. At least close enough to get him to come with her to see. Then it was no disadvantage that William himself wanted to be a sheep-farmer, but had just seen his father sell the family farm to the neighbour since the oldest son John had no interest in it.

Things go as they do when a young man and a young woman become fond of each other and the 14th of May 1992 young Erik was born.
Only a year later his grandfather died and his grandmom moved to Denmark to be closer to her son and grandchild, so Erik never got to spend enough time in Scotland to get familiar with the hills.

At that time his parents farm was well established and Erik soon became part of the work. And when he got his first bike he started riding with his dad out over the bad roads to check on the animals. He loved the animals but even more he loved the biking.
As he described himself earlier this month those roads became his home and after watching Paris – Roubaix on TV the first time there was never really any doubt as to what his future should be.

Fortunately the combination was great. He could go to school in the day hours, but each afternoon he took his bike and rode on the gravel roads checking on his parent’s sheep. And as Erik grew older the farm grew bigger and the route longer.

When he was 14 the daily route was close to 100 km in order to get to all the pastures. On top of that the trips to and from school.

With Grand Prix Herning going past these roads Erik started taking part in the annual amateur race on these parts and it quickly became obvious that he had some real talent. He joined the local club Herning Cykle Klub and went on from there to do very well in the hard flat races, but lacked every time he came to more hilly terrain than he was used to.

At 18 he started racing the U23 races and did well in Ronde van Vlaanderen Espoirs. Of course with the hills and his young age he was nowhere near winning the race, but he was one of the only rider almost looking revealed when the hills were cobbled and every one struggled to follow him on the flat cobbles sections.
That was spotted by the manager for Falcon – Norheim (now Novo Nordisk – SAS) and he was offered to join the team as stagiaire already in the fall 2012.

The manager was enthusiastic and so where the fans with comment like:



On a side note John McDermott went on to be fairly successful with his music and even included a small reference to his brothers (Erik’s dad) new life in Denmark on his version of the traditional Scottish song “Scotland the Brave�.

Nice edition!
Parents at New Year's Eve, sheeps, bad roads and Paris-Roubaix... seems to me John McDermott could easily write a song about his nephew one day, all the ingredients for a sweet hymn.

Brilliant. What a great article.

Marie Meineche used to be a fine looking woman back in the early days and no doubt all Scotland was interested in her!

A Scottish folk music connection as well. If only you had a rider with American connections then there might be a link with Lead Belly .

Nice little in-between.

He can always make that song himself when he retires as a cyclist and becomes a folk-singer

Great article, I really liked it alot