Hah! VDB.
Habt ihr diese Geschichte im Tour-Forum letztens gelesen? Köstlich! Werde ich ab morgen genauso handhaben, mein Nachbar freut sich schon!
Aus dem Beichtebuch von Gaumont:
"We became inseparable. He'd often invite me to his place in Belgium so we could train together. He began to tell me how he wanted to build a team of friends around him that could get results but at the same time have fun. During the '98 season we talked about this a lot, he and I, along with Nico Mattan, another belgian.
When I'd go ride with Frank, Nico would often be there too. He treated Frank very delicately, almost too delicately, he'd give him everything. If Frank flatted, Nico would change the tube, if Frank was cold, Nico would give him his gloves."
"Very quickly, due to having spent time around him, I realized that Frank behaved like a star. I have to say that everywhere we went people recognized him. No matter which restaurant, no matter which gas station, he was recognized.
At home, Clotilde, his wife, did everything. For his training rides she would pump up his tires according to which route he was going to take. She would get up at 6 in the morning to make him fresh muesli and would lay out his riding clothes after having watched the weather forecast. Then she would go out and buy the groceries for the day, come home and wake him up. 'Come back in five minutes...' She'd come back. 'Another two minutes...'. After the third or fourth time his highness would see fit to get up. He'd go down to the kitchen without saying a word and then he'd read the morning paper while she buttered his toast. I saw all this and said to myself 'Okay, this is unbelievable'.
"After breakfast we'd head out to train. It was noothing like the 'Italian style' where everything was planned out with a certain number of intervals to do. We'd barely be out of the door and Frank would attack and we'd have to chase him. He would do this over and over.
We would break up our training rides by making idiotic bets like: 'If you can climb this hill riding with no hands, in your biggest gear, then you're going to win a classic this year'. We'd do sprints, and whoever won them was promised a beautiful victory that season.
On the way home, we'd pass in front of Frank's neighbor's house. The guy would run out and take VDB's bike so he could clean it for the next day's ride. Sometimes Frank would be crazy. At 11 at night he would decide that he absolutely wanted a special wheel, for example one with 24 spokes. So he'd call his neighbor and the guy would work late into the night so that Master
Vandenbroucke's bike would be ready the next morning."
Mein Plan war mich heute mal wieder auf die Rolle zu setzen un dzu kurbeln, bis ich dich eingeholt habe. Aber das wird wohl nichts, wenn ich mir deinen Punktestand anschaue. Ich probiers auch mit DVD gucken, aber ich hab immer das Gefühl mein Gehirn wird zu Brei, wenn ich lange auf dem Hamsterrad sitze.
:geschenk: 
