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We're here at the start of stage five of the Giro d'Italia, and we thought it would be
a good opportunity to explain some of the things about the team cars. As you can see, we're
at Omega Pharma-Quickstep today, that's because we think that Mark Cavendish might be the
one taking the win today. As you can see, Omega Pharma have two team cars: team car
one, and team car two. The reason that they have two, is that this one follows
the top riders all day. Team car two, sits in the second half of the convoy,
except if there is a breakaway featuring and Omega Pharma-Quickstep rider, at which point
that one goes to the front of the bunch. In the mountains however, it's normally
team car two that hangs back with the riders in the groupetto at the back.
These numbers on the back dictate where the team car sits in the convoy. For example Omega
Pharma-Quickstep here are not very well up in the GC, so they're number sixteen in the
convoy, whereas the team with the pink jersey, the Magglia Rosa, will have team car one.
Team car two sits in 16th in the second part of the convoy so essentially it's team car
32.
On this roof rack is a full compliment of nine bikes, so every rider on the team has
a spare. They're not just put on in a random order, so as you see here, this is Mark Cavendish's
bike, and the reason it's there is because it's the easiest place for the mechanic to
get it off. The mechanic sits here in the back so he's got enough room for his spare
wheels. He can also get to the boot so that he can get to the riders wet bags, which is
where they keep their gloves, their gilets, arm warmers, things like that. So Mark Cavendish's
bike is there, the next most important rider on the team, Michal Golas, his bike goes there,
so that's the second quickest place.
Then it's the third lowest rank, the fourth lowest rank, and in the middle we've got Julien
Vermote, so unfortunately Julien is probably the lowest ranked rider the team. He's
not going to get a spare bike in an emergency, he's going to be the one that gives up his
wheels for Cavendish, he's the one who gives up his bike depending on who needs
it. If you come close, you can see that name there. 'Leo' is a Belgian guy that makes every
single roof rack for virtually every single team in the pro peloton, they all look exactly
like this. This is a particularly nice example of a roof rack, you can see he's embossed his name in there.
Leo's been doing this for a long, long time, and he actually has his own private museum
of bikes and jerseys from the pro peloton, so he's a pretty cool guy.
If you see in here, the mechanic sits over there on the far side and he keeps two pairs
of wheels there along with some tools and a toolbox. Those are the ones that he can
get to really quickly so he doesn't need to get anything off the roof. If there's a crash
and they're not too sure whether any of their riders were involved in it, every mechanic
from every team car will jump out with a pair of wheels just in case one of the riders needs
it.
So obviously this is where the director sportif sits - you can see in there they've got
a television so they can watch the race live as it happens. Potentially they can tell the
riders what's going on when the riders themselves don't actually know. You'll also see they've
got their race radio there. They will have two race radios: one to talk to the race referees,
the race commissaires, to find out what's going on in the race, then another one to
talk to the riders.
Finally, the boot. All these bags in here are the riders' wet bags. As we mentioned earlier,
inside these wet bags will be leg warmers, arm warmers, gilets, hats, gloves...each rider
has a wet bag, you can see Julien Vermotte - his bike might be on a poor position on
the roof rack but at least his wet bag is in pole position!
In a race like we saw at Milan-San Remo this year, those wet bags would have been empty
because the riders will have worn every item of clothing in there.