Slow Play

 

A pretty solid recipe for Saturday dirt Nirvana:


Just a few showers intermixed with some sunshine and cool temps at night to keep 'er tacky.  Fast corners for one and all. 

You know what's not tacky, though?  Winning.  And winners who know they can win.  A quick gander at the registered team names for the Paranormal duo category, and you'll probably be able to make a pretty quick assessment about who has 12 laps of confidence. 

Then again, it's well known in the professional peloton and poker tables everywhere, that sometimes it's the guy that slow plays his pocket aces that really comes out on top. 


slow play?

Pick your strategy. 
Fill your bottles. 
Tap the keg. 
We'll find out who's serious soon enough.

Up, up, up.

"Stage Fourteen took Marco to his favourite terrain.  Low on the final climb to Piancavallo, with thirteen kilometers still to ride, he headed out into space.  Tonkov tried to match each change of pace, against the advice of his team director Giuseppe Saronni.  Zulle sensibly took the climb at his own pace and recorded the fastest time for the final six kilometers.  Marco won the stage, but his margin of victory, thirteen seconds, was narrow considering the energy he had spent, and Zulle won back the pink Jersey.  It was Marco's first Giro stage win since Aprica, four years earlier, yet his reaction was irritation.  'The game is clear:  I attack.  The others react, or try to.  It takes courage and willpower to ride the way I ride.'  He complained the Giro was designed for Zulle.  Looking back, Orlando Maini recalls: 'But when he began to complain, to get nervous, it was always suggested he was coming into form.'"

-Rendell, The Death of Marco Pantani