Les Vaches du Tour – Have you been paying attention?

After hearing the story about Tejay van Garderen (BMC) not learning Dutch at home even though he has a Dutch surname, @lesvachesdutour thought we were being prepared for a P&P quiz and tweeted;

How did Tejay learn his Dutch again? #therewillbeatest [ir]

This was soon followed up with;

There was a reminder to not let all the #TdF useless facts go to waste go to the #lvdt blog to take the 2012 quiz; and then the Les Vaches du Tour Have you been paying attention? quiz appeared.

Here at Chateau VP we read through the questions, waited for the blood:caffine ratio to return to the Tour optimum (way too high), balanced the snark levels to prime, and sent in our answers.

Today we were surprised by the We have a winner! post to see that we hadn’t mistimed the sprint for the line and came up with a stage victory.

Below are the Chateau VP answers so that we can argue about them next year The images are included below for your entertainment and were not in the original response.

Family

* What is the relationship between Radioshack DS Alain Gallopin and rider Tony Gallopin?
Alain would be Tony’s uncle

* How many kids does Jens Voigt have?
Jens has six mini-Voigts

* Why did Fabian Cancellara withdraw from the 2012 Tour?
Spartacus went home for the birth of his second child

~~ I thought that we’d see a Roche question here

Origin

* Where was Chris Froome born?
Born in Kenya, and if I heard Phil correctly it was Nairobi, Kenya. (Should we mention bilharzias in this story?)

* Where was Bradley Wiggins born?
The Wiggo was born in Ghent, Belgium

* What was the nationality of Wiggins’ father?
Brad’s Dad is an Australian (couldn’t make Australian rhyme with ad, though reading Wiggo’s comments about his father perhaps we can go with Cad?)

Age

* How old is Jens Voigt?
Jens is 40 (I may have heard that once, or twice, or …)

* How old is Peter Sagan?
Peter is 22, I do not think this is the case for @TweeterSagan

* Which Velits twin is older?
Wow, I have a brain fade on this.
I think Martin was older than Peter by two hours.

Tour History

* On which climb did 2010′s “Chaingate” occur?
The Port de Balès

* What happened to Sandy Casar on stage 18 in the 2007 Tour?
Stage 18, 2007 TDF – Sandy Casar crashes with a dog and goes on to win the stage. And as P&P continue to tell us the dog was ok after the crash.

* How many Tours de France has George Hincapie ridden?
17

* How many British riders have won the Tour de France?
One – 2012, Bradley Marc Wiggins

Strategy

* According to the wisdom of Paul Sherwen, where should you always ride in the peloton?
According to the wisdom of Sherwin you should always ride at the front of the peloton, in the first 30 riders. Unfortunately due to maths and physics this leaves 100+ riders with a spatial-temporal conundrum.

* Where in the peloton does David Moncoutié prefer to ride?
The Moncoutié paradox: this rider is always to be found at the rear of the peloton or off in the breakaway; never to be seen in the middle of the peloton.

* How many kilometres will it take the peloton to chase down a breakaway with a 4 minute lead?
Paul Sherwin constantly (a bit less this year for some reason) refers to Chapatte’s Law for this calculation – the rate of 1 minute per 10 kilometres travelled. A 4 minute break is 40km of chasing.

Gear

* What is the shape of the chainring on Bradley Wiggins’ TT bike?
An Ovoid – Asymmetric chainring

* Whose bike did Peter Sagan ride to win the Slovak championship?
From my understanding Peter rode a team Cannondale for National Road Race Championship — More importantly; in one round of the Slovak Mountain Bike cup he borrowed his older sister’s bike and won.

The burning questions

* What was the breed of the dog involved in the Philippe Gilbert accident in stage 18?
A big black … Pyrenean Mountain Dog? I can’t agree with P&P on this as the dog is clearly black and the Pyrenean Mountain Dog is white. It seems that we may have to settle with “large black dog”.

* How much did the dog weigh?
50kg (in comparative terms; more than Sammy Dumoulin)

* Which bone did Tony Martin fracture?
I may have heard, on the odd occasion, during the broadcast that it was his scaphoid. Drink!

* Name a mountain biker in the peloton.
“Descending like a mountain biker” we had Peter Sagan, but we were also hoping for a magic descent from Cadel Evans which never quite happened in the same way we saw in the 2011 tour

* How did Tejay van Garderen learn Dutch?
Not from his Dad, but from riding with the Dutch Rabbobank development squad

* Which syllable did Phil emphasise when saying “Vinokourov” in 2012?
VaNOOOOOkerov

* How many different pronunciations of Nibali did Phil and Paul use this tour? (Spell them out phonetically) Knee-bali, Nib-AH-li, Nib-a-LEA, … Toooo many! Let’s agree to just call him Nibbles shall we? P&P could pronounce that even if they are few bottles of wine into the stage.

* In what should you pack your courage?
That would be my suitcase of courage, but it still hasn’t been answered if this is carry on or check in baggage.