I have a friend called Dan who is one half of a pair of twins. He once told me that some of his mum’s friends call him “the twins”.
What he means by this is not that these people call he and his sister “the twins”. He means that he can walk into a room on his own and someone will call him, on his own, “the twins”. Something similar applies to the Schlecks.
The Schlecks are Andy and Frank. Frank’s older; Andy’s technically won the Tour on a technicality because Alberto Contador was found guilty of doping. None of that matters. You don’t need to distinguish between them. In fact, when following cycling, you should NEVER distinguish between them. You shouldn’t even acknowledge that there are two of them. They are just ‘The Schlecks’. They race for the same team; they always ride near each other; they’re good at the same sorts of things (going uphill, not much else). It saves everyone time to think about them as being just one person.
Disappointingly, they actually are one person this year. Andy’s injured. However, I don’t believe this should have an impact on nomenclature, so in keeping with the practice outlined above, I will be referring to Frank Schleck as “The Schlecks” for the entire duration of the Tour.
Leave a Reply