The tweets of the week, special Giro edition
Friday 30 May 2014 at 12h10

The Tweets of the week have been quite popular on velowire.com when they listed every week the best Tweets of the cycling world.

After a long interruption, you can find below a special edition of Tweets of the week, dedicated to the Giro d'Italia 2014. Indeed, the Italian Grand Tour seems to have given the inspiration to the twitter-riders, a reason for velowire.com to select the best out of them!

The Giro d'Italia, isn't that the Tour of Italy?

Yes indeed, the Giro d'Italia is the Tour of Italy, but that's not a reason for the Tour to stay in Italy and this year it thus started in Ireland, with 3 stages, one team time trial and two stages in line. In the same way, the Tour de France 2014 will start in the Yorkshire, and more precisely in Leeds ... no wonder why some cyclists get lost (that is, if they manage to obtain a visa to enter the UK).

The German rider Simon Geschke (Team Giant-Shimano) has traveled quite a lot since the start of his pro career at Skil-Shimano in 2009 (after having been a trainee with Milram at the end of 2008) but Ireland had apparently never been on his list of destinations:

Marcel Kittel's secret

Once the riders were used to the Irish start, it was time for Marcel Kittel, also of the Giant-Shimano team, to confess he had a secret. The German rider, who just won the second stage of the Tour of Italy 2014 before he tweeted that and who got the first red jersey of the points classification, said this ...

What do Conchita Wurst and Bernhard Eisel have in common?

While the Giro d'Italia 2014 really got on, several riders must have watched the Eurovision song contest. In some team this might even have led to animated discussions because when several nationalities are represented in a team, the opinions are of course often different ... One of the riders who watched the show was Bernhard Eisel (Team Sky). And what does this Austrian rider have in common with Conchita Wurst (actually Tom Neuwirth), except for their nationality? That's what we discover in his Tweets about it:

Adam Hansen anniversary gift .. and Marcel Kittel's?

In a 3 week long race it's not surprising to see several riders celebrate their anniversary.

Adam Hansen (Lotto-Belisol), one of the rare riders who do all 3 Grand Tours in one year (he does it since 2012 already), was one of them and as usual the Australian rider summarises things with his typical humour (you probably know Adam Hansen of his Tweets showing his fatigue during the early season training camps):

Marcel Kittel also celebrated his anniversary the same day and thus suggested to Adam Hansen to celebrate it together, especially because the Giant-Shimano and Lotto-Belisol teams were in the same hotel.

When Kittel abandons the race the next day with a fever, Adam Hansen thinks he knows why ...

A "selfie" which led to a big buzz

On the day of his anniversary, Marcel Kittel won the 3rd stage of the Giro d'Italia 2014, coming back from far away in the fiels. Following his huge force explosion, the German rider collapsed to the ground just after the finish line.

For David McCarthy, a young rider of the Nicolas Roche Performance Team, this seemed to be the perfect occasion to take a photo using the principle which has gained popularity in the past few months: a selfie. Having a look at his Instagram account David seems to be quite a fan of this and he thus probably didn't realise this wasn't quite the moment to do so and he certainly didn't expect to be exposed to all the critics he had on social media afterwards.

Indeed, the Belgian photographer Kristof Ramon published the photo he took of the boy when he took his selfie on Instagram, with the title another race, another moron:

... and that's where it all started with people saying that this was "not done", mainly on Twitter (with numerous illegal copies of Kristof Ramon's photo).

After one day of negative Tweets, David McCarthy realised that he did something wrong and decided to apologise, publishing a note on Instagram and on Nicolas Roche's Twitter account

Marcel Kittel decides not to make a problem of it but he does seize the opportunity to verify whether the kid learned his lesson:


Not sure though, looking at this discussion he had with Kristof Ramon:

Another photo, another child!

Once the Giro got to Italy we discovered another photo, this time with ... a young girl leading the peloton! :)

But what happened to respect?

When Giampaolo Caruso (Team Katusha) crashes due to a slippery road with all the rain which fell on the riders earlier this Giro d'Italia 2014, we discovered that some people really don't show any respect anymore!

Indeed, when Caruso was about to be taken to the hospital in an ambulance, a spectator seized the occasion to steal his water bottle and his helmet! That's what Philippe Maertens, the Russian team's press representative, shows us here:

Apparently this incident has been solved as well ...

A rest day on your bike

Angelo Tulik (Team Europcar)'s Tweet doesn't need any further explanation ...

But where is Riposo?

In the mean time, others are looking for the start location of today's stage ... Riposo!

One day in the snow

When the organisor of the Giro d'Italia decides that the stage with the climb of the Stelvio and the Gavia can take place despite the bad weather on these high climbs, that doesn't suit everybody. I won't bother you with the discussion which sparkled due to the communication around a possible neutralisation in the descent of the Stelvio, but when you see the following image of one of the TV cameras during this stage, you can understand that it might have been a bit too dangerous for the riders to do the stage under these circumstances:

Nathan Haas (Garmin-Sharp) summarises his feeling about this stage as follows:

Simon Geschke's granddad?

Bernhard Eisel is not the only rider with a bear (see his Tweet about Conchita Wurst above), Simon Geschke (Team Giant-Shimano) also has a more and more prominent one.

When Daniel Lloyd (Global Cycling Network, GCN) sees this guy at the finish of the 17th stage in Vittorio Veneto, he thinks this is Geschke's granddad!

Celebrating .. nothing!

In the 17th stage, a transition stage, a big group of 25 riders got away from the peloton and since almost all teams were represented and since there were no riders in this group with a potential danger for the general classification, the peloton let them go and the breakaway thus ended off the stage. Well, that is, not the full breakaway group as a whole because after an attack by Thomas de Gendt (Omega Pharma-QuickStep), looking for some points in the King of the Mountains classification, a group of 5 riders gets ahead of the others and goes on to the finish. In this group Stefano Pirazzi (Bardiani-CSF) wins the sprint and thus the stage, and the other riders of the initial breakaway can only take up the 6th place of this stage.

Jussi Veikkanen (FDJ.fr) however forgot that there were 5 riders ahead and the Finish champion thus thought he won the stage, as we can see in the photo below:

This was thus similar to what happened to Filippo (Pippo) Pozzato (Lampre-Merida) at the finish of Roma Maxima in 2013 and we of course remember Luca Paolini (Team Katusha)'s joke in 2014 when he put up a red clown's nose when he crossed the line. And that's exactly what Veikkanen felt after the stage ...

When the Giro's official Twitter account mixes up pink jerseys ...

Do you see the mistake?

It wasn't me!

We already knew that Adam Hansen (Lotto-Belisol) sends out Tweets which often have their place in the Tweets of the week. This was again the case when he commented this photo in which we see him with an Italian police officer!

And what were those "special water bottles" he had on his bike during the mountain time trial?

Outside of the Giro

Other riders do not participate in the Giro d'Italia 2014 ... but some of their Tweets were worth a look anyway! Here are some which made the selection :)

CONTINUE READING AFTER THIS ADVERTISEMENT


Sagan has had enough of wheelies on a bike!

Peter Sagan (Cannondale) got an idea when he saw this zebra in the field. And what if he exchanged his bike for this zebra?

With a Lapierre bike ...

When the battery of your electric derailer is empty .. it becomes a bit difficult to change speeds. When that happens to Anthony Geslin (FDJ.fr) and he wants to use the big speeds, he finds a quite clever solution putting a small stone in it:

Just a stone? No of course not! As Jérémy Roy mentioned, this finally makes his bike a real Lapierre (the bike brand and "la pierre" is French for "the stone")!

door Thomas Vergouwen
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this publication is published in: Tweets of the week | Giro d Italia | Giro d'Italia 2014

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