Black Fish at the 2012 TDU: a pictorial essay

"Pro-Cycling Addiction Disorder" has many diagnostic criteria in the DSM-V, allowing psychiatrists considerable flexibility in making the diagnosis (according to prevailing beach-house-repayment conditions. Incidentally, it is little-known outside of the psychiatry inner sanctum that the entire DSM is a construct aimed at promoting beach-house ownership among psychiatrists. This may explain why Dicky keeps offering to treat my "Reverse Koro", but I digress).


The sine qua non of PCAD, however, is a compulsion to muscle one's way to a prime position at the start line of every stage of a pro-tour race and take a photograph to prove it.

Cycling: greatest sport on Earth

Psychiatric diagnoses aside, it is my abiding hope that these photographs serve as a fitting memorial to my love of the sport when I succumb to the aggressive skin cancers that simultaneously formed during the long hours I spent securing my position at the start line of every stage.

The 2012 Tour Down Under faced a number of challenges: no Lance, no Cadel, no Contador, no Schlecks. No Mike "Go Panthers" Rann. Rolling hills dotted with clenbuterol-intoxicated cows. Adverse publicity from tragic Fat Cat-impersonator and owner of the worst pun in the Australian Business Register, Ralf "Life is a Cabernet" Hadzic.

But against the odds, this year proved to be perhaps the greatest TDU ever. Not only were the Black Fish at their fittest ever, resplendent in their new race kit, but the race itself was in the balance until the final few laps of Stage 6, and Australia's second-favourite cycling team, the Black Fish feeder squad GreenEDGE, were able to win the GC and set themselves up for an incredibly exciting year on the Pro Tour.

Above all, the weight of expectation fell most heavily upon the broad shoulders of the mighty Black Fish. Who could forget their heroic exploits in the 2010 TDU where, on the sector from Milang to Finniss that became no longer a bike ride but instead an apocalyptic scene that was equal parts La Divina Comedia and one of Cormac McCarthy's nightmares, the Fish prevailed where most failed, powered only by a Snickers bar and an enormous (and fortunately metaphorical) team set of cojones.

Alessandro "Pinky Tuscadero" Petacchi:
snubbed by the Black Fish

Or indeed the 2011 TDU, where the Fish were so confident that they voluntarily gave the peloton a 30-minute head start, and then caught up with such rapidity that they were soon involved in rear-end collisions with cars.

So it was little surprise that so many members of the professional peloton slipped away from their team managers in order to speak with BF00 about the possibility of riding in the black, white and red in 2013.

Sprinting legend Alessandro Petacchi was the first to make an approach. Although disoriented by the bling-induced blindness, I still had the presence of mind to mutter "Troppo grasso. Troppo lento. Troppa rosa". Sorry, Sandy.

Andre kindly, but fraudulently, completes 
the set of autographs on my 
commemorative "The Princess Bride" poster

Widely regarded as the funniest man in the peloton, German sprinter Andre Greipel was quick to offer his services to the Fish - indeed he grabbed a contract out of my hand and began signing it without even bothering to say hello. I was forced to whip it out of his hands, however. Despite a magnificent TDU, with several stage wins, Greipel is simply not Black Fish material.

First, we already have a hulking giant with rippling thigh muscles (see comparison below).

Second, his absurd Powerbalance wristband.

And finally, his bizarre obsession with the movie "The Piano", which has led him to tattoo "Anna Paquin" on his left forearm. I will spare our readers the graphic detail of where he has tattooed "Harvey Keitel" (or the revelation that it awkwardly contracts to "Heil" in cold weather).

Indistinguishable

And so the procession of pro riders continued, each hoping against hope to be able to leave their sorry little European teams for the majesty of Thursday night Dicky Spin, Sunday morning Lofty, and random Tuesday night cobblestone-pilfering. And each one, rejected, hobbling sadly back to their 'carbon' bikes. No BF00 aluminium super-heavy beast for you, my friends.

Jens Voigt was rejected when it became apparent that he is not actually Angelina Jolie's father.
He also demonstrated an alarming capacity for standing between the camera and the podium girls.

Takashi Miyazawa: " これらの強大な黒魚は、ゴジラのような脚を持っている。私をファック！  "

Immense talent but rejected on the grounds of stupid sunglasses and name that rhymes with  'arse'

Kohler foolishly chose to tattoo a kangaroo and not a fish inside his boomerang

While Geraint Thomas has the physique (and pastiness) to be a Black Fish domestique,
his unpronounceable first name counts against him. And his lack of ticker.
Here, he is sobbing after his rejection by BF cycling.

GC winner and all-round champ, Simon Gerrans, wishes his jersey was a little tighter. 
And his cranium a little squarer.

"I'm warning you for the last time, give me back my fucking Paris-Roubaix pieces,
or I will fucking nut you like that fucker in the Fat Cat suit!"

Peter "you can never have too many rubber wristbands or
moustache hairs" Kogoy implores Turbo Durbo to sign with the Fish

Sorry, Marcel "Cameron Ling" Sieberg: no rangas

Oscar "The Cat" Freire: "Por favor, Pescado Negro, que me transporte para usted.
Estoy harto de esos rusos de mierda y su puta sopa de repollo. Es jodido."
Sorry "Cat", but I won't sign anyone who steals Clive Lloyd's nickname. Or even a lesser version of it.

So it was that the Black Fish retained their elite roster of five for the big day, supplemented by two outstanding domestiques from Queensland-based Team Vertullo.

Chris stands next to the official winner of the 
TDU 'sourest facial expression' award for 2012

 The stage was nominally 138km, but thanks to Weeks' 'shortcut' from the House o' Pain to the start line, the total distance covered for the day blew out to over 160km. Still, a mere trifle for athletes of this calibre.

Brushing past the likes of Eddie Merckx and Ironman Abbott, the Fish took their place at the start line, stopping only briefly for Dwyer to continue her pre-race tradition of riding over a bed of nails.

Grinning Fish encourage sour-man to new heights of sourness

Fin attempts to unload her nail-studded tyres by leaning awkwardly

Hey, Marcel Seiberg, I told you we don't want you on our team

Edwards' tenure as official team photographer was short-lived

The entire 8000-strong peloton looked resplendent in their red jerseys, although the organisers repeated their bizarre decision from 2010 in which they changed the sizes from 'race-fit' to 'New Romantic-fit'. For fans of puffy sleeves, this was a great moment. For the rest of us, it was a matter of attempting to endure the parachute qualities of this absurd garment.

Incredibly, the ride itself was almost completely incident-free. Either that, or the noise from Chris' rear wheel hub was so loud that it blocked out all other memories from the day.


Perhaps the most disturbing incident during the day was our official warning from the race commissaires regarding our failure to comply with the strict rules for team names.

Apparently it is an official requirement that all team names in the community challenge must contain at least one awkward cycling-related pun. 'Black Fish Cycling' - a name revered in cycling circles worldwide - simply didn't make the grade, despite the organisers' attempt to add some humour by printing the name as 'Black FishCycling'. Still not funny.

Indeed the array of jokey team names was most unsettling. Worst, perhaps, was 'New RAH', which (as most will know) has always been a joke.

The closest any pun came to raising a
chuckle was 'Team Milfram'. Super-domestique Weeks was in fact seen to audibly laugh - not surprising given that the pun includes his two favourite things: the pale blue milky goodness of Milram, and MILFs (although not to the extent that his brother-in-law appreciates a good GILF. Isn't that right, Helen Edwards?).

The award for 'least ironic team pun name' was given to the girls from 'Team Wolf' who managed to combine the aesthetics of a bearded Jason Bateman with the speed of Michael J Fox.

Anyway, it took only some trademark Black Fish charm and a few autographs to assuage the commissaires, and we were on our way again, dignity intact.


From there, only one tragedy was to befall the Black Fish. In a desperate, but ultimately misguided, attempt to preserve his glycogen stores, team stalwart Alex Rodgers began a force-feeding programme that even the French would disallow at a goose farm. By the end of the stage Alex had managed to avoid bonking, but had undergone an extraordinary Kevin Federlinesque transformation from svelte athlete to lumbering reality-show contestant. We wish him well on his journey with Ajay Rochester and the rest of the gang over the next few months, and in his class-action suit against the manufacturers of Cadel's Mountain Mix.

"Must. Eat. More. Cadel. Bars. Energy....fading...."

The ride itself was, of course, no problem at all for the Fish. On the flat, the BF train was at its finest ever, and the hills presented no obstacle.

Edwards scoffs at the first KOM, while Weeks checks the live odds on a Black Fish stage victory

"I wish Richard would stop checking the fucking odds and just ride"

"I wonder if that guy would notice if I stole his energy gels?"

Even the fabled Mengler's Hill, a category 2 climb that proved to be the downfall for Andre Greipel's GC aspirations later in the day, was but a minor hurdle for a rampant Fish squad who, having emptied their bidons and consumed enough gels to cause dangerous hyperglycaemia and caffeine levels that would make even Alex Watson fibrillate, reached the summit with barely a gastrocnemius fibre out of place.

Sadly for brave polio-boy, the effort to finish
led to irreversible brain damage

Soon enough, the mighty Black Fish crossed the finish line, having created a lead-out train that would have brought a tear to Mark Renshaw's eye.



And so it was over for another year. All that was left was to re-hydrate and watch disappointed non-Fish Oscar Freire lead a pathetically-exhausted professional peloton to the line, narrowly avoiding one of Tanunda's finest exponents of the art of driving the wrong way up a closed road. Sorry Oscar, an impressive effort, but still not enough for the Black Fish.

Triumphant Fish ignore Edwards' distressing seizures

Impossibly, Rodgers' pockets were still stuffed with food

Little did the mighty Fish know, however, that Mengler's was a mere pimple compared to the hors categorie Col du Novotel which awaited them immediately before their first restorative beverage.

Little has been written about this terrifying mountain. And while my recollections are dimmed by the cerebral hypoxia that it induced, it would be no exaggeration to say that at some points the gradient was in excess of 85%. On and on it went, steep climbs interspersed with false flats, and blind corners leading to more vertical ascents. Possibly the perfect location for a hill-top stage finish that would put Alpe d'Huez to shame. A veritable Sufferfest transformed from mere pixels to the horrifying reality of baking sun and hard, unyielding bitumen.

But can a little HC climb after 160km of hard riding prevent the Fish from reaching their stated goal? Certainly not:

Brave attempt at a smile by post-ictal Edwards

Alex looking forward to dinner

Champions

This one's for the ladies

Pro Peloton continues to Pester Black Fish

Hot on the heels of the rumoured defection of Robbie McEwen from GreenEDGE to Black Fish, more members of the professional peloton have begun making furtive approaches to Black Fish management.

Earlier today, cycling great Jens Voigt floated the idea of his team joining forces with the Black Fish to form the formidably-named Mighty-Black-Fish-RadioShack-Nissan-Trek pro cycling team.

Thanks, Jensie, but we already have an Andy Schleck on our team.

Later, the world's greatest lead-out man, Mark Renshaw, was desperate to be photographed with the team he covets most. Tellingly, and in a major disappointment for Renshaw, the man he hopes to lead out in future,  star Black Fish sprinter BF00, refused the demands of the paparazzi to be photographed together.

Remember, professionals, it takes more than an implausibly-high VO2 Max to become a Black Fish.

Black Fish Ride Like Crazy

The full Black Fish elite cycling squad rode together in the new BF kit for the first time today when they tackled the "Ride Like Crazy" as a final hit-out before this week's Tour Down Under.

Disappointed commoners console each other after seeing the Black Fish racing kit

The etymology of this annual community ride is little known, but we can exclusively reveal today that the ride is so named because one would have to be crazy to pay $110 for two bananas.

Fortunately for Black Fish fans, the elite squad is currently rated as only 20% crazy.




Even better news is that the team has reached peak fitness and dominated the peloton throughout the day.

Rodgers (@adrBF06) leads out

Weeks finds it so easy that he can mug for the camera; Dwyer is a picture of concentration

Edwards (@sedwardsIII) fends off an athletic attack

But the highlight of the day for all cycling fans was an almost mythical alignment of the cycling planets. As the fabled Black Fish train flew along Gorge Road at terrifying speed, the mighty greenEDGE squad shot past in the opposite direction (at noticeably slower pace). Despite the roar of the wind in our ears, one could still discern both the gasps of the crowds lining the road and the angry shouts of greenEDGE captain Stuart O'Grady demanding the return of the missing fragments of his Paris-Roubaix trophy.

You'll have to catch us first, Stuey.

In all, the perfect preparation for a big week for Black Fish Cycling.

Black Fish and l'Enfer du Nord

Question: 

What do you get when you combine:

  

The Black Fish Elite Cycling Squad    

Cycling Legend Stuart O'Grady

Former Special Forces operative Marty Edwards and his family 

World's wealthiest man, Claud Altin

Haggle Guy

And copious amounts of:

Blood of JC

?

Answer: 

One of the greatest nights in Black Fish history.

I wish I could provide a coherent narrative of the way the night unfolded. But such was the mystery and majesty of this amazing night that I possess only a confused melange of isolated memories, devoid of context and meaning. Even the chronology of events seems non-linear, like a dream. Perhaps the whole event was a dream, although if this were the case then I have the world's first confirmed case of dream-induced hepatitis. 

Anyway, what follows is a collection of reconstructed memories of the night the mighty Black Fish had dinner with Stuey O'Grady and his Paris-Roubaix trophy. Don't expect it to make any sense.

1. The warm-up

Weeks shows his disdain for capitalist 'fashion' by defiantly wearing a hoodie

If there's one thing that the Black Fish cycling squad does better than ritually humiliating "Mount" Lofty, it is strapping on a clean dinner hoodie and heading to a spectacular local vineyard for some carbo-loading. Thankfully, medical science has taught us that bio-available carbohydrates (or, in layman's terms, 'empty calories'), are best provided to elite athletes in the form of wine and other alcoholic beverages. So it was a team requirement that all members attend the Stuey O'Grady dinner at the Lane vineyard.

Cadel Mountain Mix, in liquid form

Soon, a large amount of carbo-loading had taken place. Clearly the Fish can be expected to dominate next week's Tour Down Under.

It was at this point that it became necessary to share some Black Fish wisdom with the captain of the fledgling Australian cycling team GreenEDGE (previously known as the Black Fish Development Squad)

2. The Main Event

Marty Edwards wonders who let his 'cousin' onto the guest list

Early in the night, the great man was happy to share an array of amazing anecdotes about the life of a professional cyclist (including out-running the Italian police at 320km/hr with Troy Bayliss, and riding his pushbike down a hill at over 120km/hr. This makes him the 6th-fastest human ever on a bicycle, after the 5 elite Black Fish each Sunday morning on the Mt Lofty descent).

If there are any positives that can come from having multiple episodes of significant brain injury in one's life (and there are), it is the development of a brutal form of honesty (or 'disinhibition', in more clinical terms). Unfortunately for Stuey, but much more fortunately for those of us in the audience, he does not suffer from Homer Simpson Syndrome. So each successive fall over a cliff, skiing accident or speed-induced seizure has incrementally enhanced Stuey's honesty. This was beautifully encapsulated in an anecdote about his tactics in bunch sprints as a young man, which was to target older sprinters who had children and attempt to head-butt them into roadside barriers, as he knew they would eventually yield to his suicidal behaviour. This is exactly why the Black Fish have tried for many years to bring him into the team. And watch carefully in Tanunda next Friday and you might see all five of the newly-inspired BF squad careering wildly across the home straight, smashing into pensioners and other vulnerable oldies, using heads as weapons of mass destruction. You're all mine, Eddie Merckx.

Many more anecdotes soon followed, facilitated by the Michael Parkinson of cycling-vineyard-dinner Q&A sessions, our very own Dicky Weeks. I'm sure many other paying customers had a question for Stuey. Perhaps they could send him an email.

When drinking, O'Grady would allow his conjoined twin to emerge from his jacket

Soon, O'Grady could no longer resist his desire to approach the Black Fish for a chat. In order to lure us in, he brought his most prized possession, the famous cobblestone trophy from his victory in the 2007 Paris-Roubaix. Take note of how Finola appears to effortlessly hold the trophy, despite its weight of about 300kg and the aggressive sleeper hold that O'Grady is employing on her neck. 

A long-time fan of the Black Fish blog and deeply impressed by our low skin-fold scores, O'Grady soon demanded that we each have a photo with the trophy. Even this guy was unable to haggle himself a photo opportunity like that.

So behold, the mighty Black Fish with one of the few major cycling trophies to have eluded them:

Team clown Weeks attempts to bring some zany to the serious sport of cycling

When in fact it is a deadly serious business

Or just mildly confusing

Conclusive evidence that cycling makes your hair fall out is still lacking

3. On the relative importance of wine and cycling

Everyone loves wine. The Black Fish more than most. And everyone knows that South Australian wines are superior. But fine South Australian wines may be considered to be ubiquitous, whereas South Australian winners of Paris-Roubaix are a scarce resource. So in a combined marketplace, demand for Roubaix winners will always outstrip that for excessive discourse on wines, no matter how fine they are. Unfortunately the logic behind this simple bit of vino/velo economics was lost on the geniuses at the Lane, who sought to supplant Stuey's (gold) cycling anecdotes with some wine talk. As expected, the Fish took refuge in the wine itself, but even they were surprised when O'Grady himself sought similar refuge and, on this occasion, had a clear victory over the Fish.

4. The Looking-Glass

At this point, we all went through the looking-glass.

We soon learned some valuable lessons:

i) Stuey doesn't know his body-fat percentage, and will tell you where to go if you ask him

ii) Nobody, least of all famous cycling celebrities, should be asked to 'interview' this clown about his vineyard, or indeed ask his opinion on anything at all

iii) When approached with food, this man will invariably say 'yes'; when approached with any other request or comment, he will invariably tell you to get fucked

iv) This man's wife, the lovely Helen Edwards has a passion for two things:

     (a) Pork    (b) Edwardses

v) Stuey still has a passion for cycling, much like a painter (or some other incomprehensible metaphor)

vi) Stuey doesn't think much of Bob Stapleton (but he can think of a pithy description of him)

vii) Stuey has never hurt on a bike (but he will hurt Sam Edwards if he asks him that question again)

viii) Stuey kindly offered BF Dwyer a private riding session (at least I think that's what he was offering)

5. The Aftermath

The Paris-Roubaix is without doubt the most gruelling one-day cycling event. 260km of cobble-stone riddled, icy wind-blasted, mud-stained pain (or no pain, in Stuey's case). Its trophy is both beautiful and deeply symbolic, and is coveted by every member of the professional peloton. 

Stuart loves his trophy.

Made from one of the famous cobbles that line the route of the Hell of the North, it looks indestructible.

It is not.

The good news is that no member of the Black Fish was responsible for the destruction of this beautiful monument. Indeed, it was Stuey himself who, shortly after posing for a bizarre photo with a member of the Hair Bear Bunch, vigorously returned his trophy to the Lane's portable card table which, unbeknownst to him, was constructed from Kryptonite. 

The smudge of rubble that remained was itself a metaphor; just as the intact trophy represented unimaginable hardness in the face of adversity - the triumph of man over the elements - the crumbly remains serve to remind us of the very human fragility of the cyclist, a condition to which Stuey's ribs, vertebrae, skull and clavicles (and Dicky's little toe) can readily attest.

Fortunately, John Edwards was able to remedy the situation by quickly placing the trophy fragments in a Lane-branded brown paper bag and returning it to the display table, where it was indistinguishable from its original state.

And never underestimate the innate scavenging ability of the mighty Black Fish, each of whom now possesses a small souvenir fragment of the most famous trophy in cycling.

Surely the totemic quality of these shards will propel the Fish to even greater heights when they tackle the TDU next week.

Don't miss it, cycling fans.

And watch out, Merckx, I'm coming for you.