Gerolsteiner update

Gerolsteiner had its share of problems yesterday, starting with a bus that wouldn't start. The battery "went on strike", as Fabian Wegmann put it. And where do cyclists change their clothes when there is no bus or dressing room around? Well, right there, wherever they are. "So we had to change clothes right there on the street. That surprised some of the fans looking on!", he wrote at www.fabianwegmann.de. "Most of the other riders didn't make fun of us - they've probably all been in that situation before, too."

The bus was working again by the end of the race, but Peter Wrolich may have had a problem sitting down in it. He got caught in the crash 3.5 km before the finish line. As he described it, "Isaac Galvez hit Boonen's rear tire and took me and Bennati with him. I had no chance to avoid the crash. Fortunately I suffered nothing but scrapes and bruises."

What he doesn't say is where he received those wounds - but you can always depend on a teammate to expose your most intimate secrets: "He got some really incredible scrapes, on his most honourable part: his bottom," said Wegmann, who also notes that the Austrian was able to joke about it on his way back to the hotel after the stage.