Birmingham Mail

There was 'Old Woman' Chaplow, 'Sheikh' Phillips, 'no-hands' Albrechtsen and 'Yellow Jersey' Koren.
Welcome to the Tour de Slovenia - the shortest bike race in the history of bike races.
Tony Mowbray left the team bus in the garage this morning and ordered his players onto the saddle for the five mile journey from hotel to their training venue at Murska Sobota's stadium (which is surely the only stadium with a beer garden looking out onto the pitch - English football clubs take note).
The early minutes of the race were hard. Richard Chaplow, wearing his shirt wrapped around his head like a Babushka, raced into the lead while Jon Greening smiled, said 'this is the life' and free-wheeled past us, showing all the urgency of a Sunday-afternoon pensioner out on a bike ride with his grandkids. He was lucky. With the pack well ahead Jonno and Craig Beattie were left behind and almost ended up in Hungary. Thankfully Joe Corrigan was waiting to check on the stragglers. 'This way lads'.
Back to the front runners.
Martin Albrechtsen, who was obviously not new to his bicycle lark, took a chunk out of Paul Robinson's knuckle as he whizzed past no-handed while Kevin Phillips had transformed his training top into arabic headwear. Nice.
As the training ground came into view there was a sudden surge from Greening, showing that he's more Lance Armstrong and Louis Armstrong when he wants to be. But it wasn't to be.
At the finishing line - or the stadium car park actually - Robert Koren stormed through looking like a man who had had a lift all the way there. This man doesn't seem to sweat. But then he knows Slovenia like the back of his hand, which was hardly fair on the others.