The forgotten classement

Backpedalling?

Yes

You bored?

Yes

Did doing this make you less bored?

Yes

Alright then, what have we got?

We have landed on Stuart O’Grady’s 2014 autobiography Battle Scars. This was around about the time when every cyclist in the world could have gotten a book deal if they wanted one. It was ghost-written by Reece Homfray, who I must admit I’d never heard of before looking at this book.

Look at Stuart O’Grady there looking very serious and battle scarred.

OK, so for the uninitiated, who is/was Stuart O’Grady?

Ah stop. I’m not explaining that.

What? Some people mightn’t know!

He fucking won Paris-Roubaix! A really really dusty version in 2007 when he was riding for Team CSC. And he won two Tour de France stages in 1998 and 2004. ANd wore the yellow jersey in 1998 and 2001.

Oh yeah! Hasn’t this book showed up doing this Backpedal thing before?

No, you’re probably thinking of the time I wrote about Giancarlo Ferretti getting hoodwinked by the guy from Sony Ericsson when he was trying to find a replacement sponsor for Fassa Bortolo. A story tinged with sadness now because Ferretti died last week, on his 85th birthday.

Never explain the joke

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Mar 13

This is the Giancarlo Ferretti story where he was fooled by a guy with a hotmail address.
Obviously finish reading the article you're reading first - it's about Stuart O'Grady now but it gets better I swear, ends up being all about Sean Kelly instead.

O’Grady was one of the riders affected by that fake team sponsor. He’d signed up to be part of it and thought he was great with his new team. But then like a couple of dozen other riders, he had to scramble in the winter to find another team.

He was a sprintery type without ever really being a full sprinter. Perfect for the green jersey, which he never won, he finished 2nd for the green jersey at the Tour de France four times - which is the most any rider has ever finished 2nd in that competition.

Go on then, what page did you land on?

Well it’s that famous 1998 Tour de France which visited Ireland when I wasn’t in Ireland. Pricks.

It is Page 62. Now I must admit I have never read this book. It does make me wonder what the chronology is like if he’s already on to 1998 by page 62. Seems a bit quick to have covered his entire childhood and early years and the first three years of his career.

What he’s focused on here is the day in 1998 that he took the yellow jersey and as he rightly says, he was only the second ever Australian to wear the yellow jersey after Phil Anderson did it in 1982.

Who is ‘Stevo’?

Stevo, using the complicated nicknaming conventions used by all Australians, is Neil Stephens. He wasn’t even on O’Grady’s team so strictly speaking shouldn’t have been helping him. This Tour would be a short one for Stevo though. A couple of days later, he was thrown out of the Tour along with his entire team before Stage 7. Unfortunately for him, he was riding for Festina, of the Festina Affair.