Jalabert's last reported attempt to train was yesterday (March 25). He managed only 5km before the pain overcame him. "There's a pocket of [excess] liquid in my knee, and just turning the pedals causes a rubbing on the kneecap. Things are better only when I do nothing."
They are a pretty amazing dynasty. Not only was Gabriele Colombo's father, now a garage/filling station owner, a pro but also his grandfather. There's a great pic of the trio today in L'Equipe. Gabriele perched on his bike with his arms round papa and grandpapa. While Ambrogio was Gianni Motta's (Giro winner in 1966) special gregario (domestique), sharing a room with him in two Tours de France, so Gabriele's grandfather, 83-year-old Luigi-Macchi Colombo, was Alfredo Binda's room-mate and road help-mate in five Giro d'Italia between 1933 and 1937 (Binda won the first of these). His own best result was to win stage one of the first Tour of Switzerland in 1933. When the press visited the Colombo home in Varese at the weekend Luig-Macchi was ready to give them a blow-by-blow account of that victory -- until he was warned off by his daughter-in-law Angela who pointed out that they were there to talk to her son.
Gabriele remembered that it was his father who had introduced him to cycling. "There was a bit of conflict between him and my grandfather who didn't want me to even touch a bike. It was difficult to convince him, because he'd suffered an awful lot as a gregario. In those days, he threw himself into the sport to make a living; me, I did it for leisure."