The Tweets of the week: what happens in the Tour of Oman ...

Wednesday 23 February 2011 at 00h03

... doesn't stay in the Tour of Oman!

The third edition of the Tweets of the week could of course not ignore the magnificent Twitterfeed of the Tour of Oman 2011 because of the interesting information given about the race but more importantly about all what happened around it.

Via Patrick Chassé and his analysis of an article in the French sports newspaper L'Equipe and the way an iPhone can influence the life of a professional rider like Russell Downing and the Team Sky bus with Alex Dowsett up to Taylor Phinney's love life. Of course I don't forget the use of two-way race radio by Tejay van Garderen who doesn't like rain, Ted King's activities outside cycling and Robbie Hunter's ideas about the first edition of the Tour of his country.

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The Tour of Oman: information about the race with lots of humour!

Last week the Tour of Oman 2011 took place and this race which lived its second edition and is organised by ASO (the organisor of the Tour de France among others) created a Twitter account where we could follow live updates about the race.

Not only the Twitterers of the Tour of Oman 2011 allowed the average cycling fan to get interesting information about the race from their BlackBerry, they also allowed us to have a good laugh from time to time ... a (not so) random selection! (in chronological order)

First of all we could discover that in Oman the UCI rules are even more strict than the official rules. According to the first Tweet of the week I chose from the Tour of Oman Twitterfeed the riders should apparently thank the organisor for having the right to ... finally drink something after 35 kilometers in the first stage!

The truth is a bit different ... fortunately riders have the right to drink right from the start. The rules however state that the teams can not proceed to feeding during the first 50 km. It was probably this distance which was reduced after a decision of the commissaires of the race:

2.3.027 Feeding is prohibited on climbs, descents and during the first 50 and last 20 km.
The commissaires panel may reduce the distance of 50 kilometres mentioned above, depending on atmospheric conditions and the category, type and length of the race. Such a decision must be communicated to interested parties before the start of the race.

The next day we see that after retirement 2.0 by Lance Armstrong, another former rider makes his comeback in the peloton ...

Well, not really actually! At 54 years old, chances are quite limited that Sean Kelly, the Irish rider who currently mainly works for Eurosport, makes his comeback in the professional peloton. This Tweet was most probably about a rider of the team which was created by the former rider who attacked during the 2nd stage of the Tour of Oman ...

Coming up next were the more serious topics ... we can for example read that a certain Marcus Bernhardt stopped to pee. Or was is Marcus Burghadt who frightens a child by handing him/her ;-) his water bottle?

Maybe this was all simply about ... Marcus Burghardt of the BMC Racing Team?!

After Marcus who leaves a child with a life long trauma, it was time for the helicopter of the Tour of Oman to ... frighten the riders! Apparently they were flying around in the peloton ...

The same day we discover that there's lot more dangers in the Tour of Oman! Apparently a rider doesn't have an easy life in this race ...

All on one day? Let's just hope the goats are fine ... By the way, was it them or the riders of the leading group they were talking about when they said All members safe!?

The next day we got much more interesting information about this extraordinary race!

Indeed, apparently Pieter Serry (Topsport Vlaanderen-Mercator) is using ... real wheels in this Tour of Oman! That's what I call breaking news! Unfortunately even with those real wheels you can get a puncture :-( ...

We also read that, and apparently that's quite unusual for most men, Tom Veelers of the Skil-Shimano team can do several things at the same time! Yes, that's true! He pees and rides his bike at the same time ...

Fortunately several other riders are capable of doing so. Otherwise, this would give him quite a big advantage over the other riders!

After all those happy Tweets it's not a surprise that the Twitter team of the Tour of Oman has to replace the battery of their BlackBerry! Not a bad idea by the way to take an extra battery instead of using a car charger which doesn't always work. I have to think of it for the next Tour de France and Tour du Limousin!

Fortunately changing batteries doesn't take too much time. 6 minutes later the Twitter team of the Tour of Oman is back!

And I think we should be happy they were back because otherwise we would never have known that cyclists are like ... hum, monkeys in the zoo ... You can feed them only when you have the authorisation to do so! And ... only hand feeding please! Don't bite my hand!

At the end of the day the people in Oman try to scare us off because apparently the Tour of Oman forgot to sign a sponsor contract with the local mobile network operator!

Fortunately they reassure us a bit more than an hour later!

This was of course a selection of the Tweets of the Tour of Oman which passed the filter for the Tweets of the week. I wouldn't dare to say anything negative about the Twitter team of the Tour of Oman because I have hardly ever seen a cycling race which provides live information in such an extensive way and that on a platform which almost seems to have been made for it, Twitter! I would thus like to thank the Tour of Oman for setting up this Twitter account and I hope we'll see them back next year!! By the way, if they're looking to add a Twitter member to their team, I hereby invite them to contact me!

Patrick Chassé and his TV project

On the day where the Tour of Oman almost fell of their mountain, Patrick Chassé (former reporter on Eurosport in France) shows a very particular interest in an article in the French sports newspaper L'Equipe. He doesn't particularly mention cycling but gives a few of the main ideas of the L'Equipe article about the TV-rights in different kinds of sports.

Why would Patrick Chassé be so interested in TV-rights? Would the French sports journalist be working on a new project since the end of his contract with Eurosport in August 2010? When you know that the Ligue Nationale de Cyclisme has started a development project which includes A TV chapter which corresponds to the expectations for the French stage cycling races, the link seems to be easy to make, don't you think?! We'll see ... in a more or less short future ...

Russell Downing and his iPhone

People who know me know that I'm not a fan of the iPhone. What? Yes, indeed, even though I work for a big operator, Apple's marketing has no single effect on me! Well, at least so far it hasn't ...

When you see what happens with people like Russell Downing (Team Sky), you might better understand why!

In the Tour of Oman Twitter feed I haven't seen any mention of a missing rider with Team Sky so I think Downing has managed to ask his hotel for a wake-up service!

Alex Dowsett discovers the bus of Team Sky

Alex Dowsett came over to Team Sky from the development team Trek-Livestrong in the interseason.

He probably heard a lot already about all the technical stuff which forms the interior of Team Sky's bus but this week he finally had the opportunity to discover it himself ...

Fortunately he didn't provide a photo with that:

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Taylor Phinney's love life

The only rider who really did something special on Twitter on Valentine's day was the young neo pro Taylor Phinney (BMC Racing Team). He warned us for the statements we would find when clicking on the link ... anyway, the article on his blog is worth the read! I must admit that I understand why Taylor does this because when you see pictures of his girlfriend I think no single man would ever forget Valentine's day anymore!

Oh, in case you're wondering ... her answer was yes!

The use(ful/less)ness of two-way race radio according to Tejay van Garderen

This debate around two-way race radio keeps coming back in the Tweets of the week. Not a big surprise actually because this really currently is the question that's creating quite some buzz in the peloton.

For Tejay van Garderen (HTC-Highroad) I must admit it's not quite clear whether he's poor or against it. Apparently he's most importantly missing the funny side of it!

However, anyone who's regularly making jokes can expect others to do the same with him ... In hje Volta ao Algarve some local people have tried to make him believe for the fourth time already that it never rains over there ... except when Tejay is around of course!

Ted King's occupations when he's not on a bike

When Ted King (Liquigas-Cannondale) is not on a bike, he not only designs I am NOT Ted King T-shirts (I would have loved getting one of this shirts in the package I received from him and Speedplay by the way ... unfortunately that was not the case) ... he also takes care of his garden!

Robbie Hunter and his new national Tour

This year the first edition of the Tour of South Africa saw the light (it's currently ongoing). Unfortunately the second stage was disturbed by the traffic on the Tour's race route. After having stopped the race twice for this race, the commissaires decided to cancel the stage completely for security reasons ...

Robbie Hunter (Team Radioshack), who most probably followed this from somewhere in Europe, said what he thought of this affaire ...

That's that, those were the Tweets of last week!

Did you know you can follow www.velowire.com on Twitter?

Did you see any Tweets which could be part of the Tweets of the week? Please send them to tweetsoftheweek@thover.com and you might see them in the next edition of the Tweets of the week!

door Thomas Vergouwen
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