Cobbled Comparisons

What’s left to write about Tom Boonen (Quick.Step) winning cobbled classics? I don’t know, really. He has the power, the skills, and the head, and he puts them together with remarkable consistently, rendering him very hard to beat. And, as we saw on Sunday, when it comes down to the sort of blunt, teamless, rider vs. rider fistfight that Paris-Roubaix tends to be, he’s very, very hard to beat.

Boonen has long since won all three of the biggest cobbled classics – 1 Gent-Wevelgem, 2 Rondes van Vlaanderen, and 3 Paris-Roubaixs – and he’s won most of the smaller races over the pavé, too. It must be those palmares, combined with his riding style and his allegiance to the teams of Patrick Lefevere, that gives people the irresistible urge to constantly compare him to Johan Museeuw. It’s a fair comparison, of course – they’re very similar riders. But when, as of yesterday, people were still posing questions like “is Boonen the next Johan Museeuw?” I just have to shake my head. It was a valid question three years ago, but now?

Let’s have a look at how they stack up win-wise in the races that are best suited to the basic characteristics that both men share. (The selection of races shown is purely at my discretion – feel free to argue about it.)

To my eye, though the numbers break out a little differently, Boonen has already at least drawn even with the retired Museeuw, though you could probably score it either way if you tried hard enough.

There’s no denying that Boonen lacks wins in some of the races Museeuw conquered, like those “classic” victories in the Zuri-Metzgete and HEW Cyclassics that Museeuw gained while chasing the old World Cup title (which he won in 1995 and 1996). But those races are far less important now, and not worth focusing on like Museeuw did in the World Cup years. In the big cobbled classics, Museeuw is still one Tour of Flanders win up on Boonen, though he lacks a Gent-Wevelgem title. The older Lion can boast an Amstel Gold win, which doesn’t seem to be on Boonen’s wish list and may be outside his abilities with the changes to the course since Museeuw's win in 1994. Museeuw also owns one Paris-Tours, which should be well within Boonen’s skill set. Museeuw and Boonen both have one World Championship title to their credit, but Museeuw also owns two Belgian national champion’s jerseys, and you have to believe that Boonen would like at least one of those. Finally, Boonen has somehow failed to yield a Het Volk/Het Niewsblad title yet, while Museeuw collected two.

So considering the above, how can I score them equal in stature? Well, two reasons. The first is that classics riders have to find something to do all summer, and that’s usually trying to bag stage wins. In that capacity, Boonen has far, far exceeded Museeuw. On the biggest stage, the Tour, he’s won six stages to Museeuw’s two, and bagged a green jersey as well. While Museeuw’s other stage wins were mostly in smaller Spanish stage races (e.g., Ruta del Sol, Tour of Valencia), the Four Days of Dunkirk, and a couple stages of the Tour de Suisse, to be fair, many of Boonen’s have been captured in ProTour stage races, including the Vuelta a Espana, Paris-Nice, the Eneco Tour, and the Tour of Belgium. And, particularly if you exclude criteriums, Boonen's overall palmares are just much longer and of higher quality.

My second reason is simpler, and involves less fuzzy math and conjecture. Museeuw retired at the age of 38, with many of his biggest victories coming after his 30th year. Boonen, on the other hand, is 28 and very much an active rider. So, in short, Boonen has reached this level of success in a far shorter time. Will Boonen's palmares soon definitively exceed those of his mentor? Almost certainly. A Milan-San Remo, Paris-Tours, and additional cobbled classics are still available if the cards fall right. The question now is how long Boonen will continue to ride – after his amazing 2005 season, he floated the idea of stopping at 30, saying he didn’t want to linger into old age. As someone over 30, I’m trying not to take offense to that, but we’ll have to see if the ensuing four years have changed his mind. After all, the job pays well, and the kid has some expensive habits…

So why, after each of Boonen’s big cobbled victories, do people continue to reflexively ask whether he “stacks up” to the legendary Museeuw? For me, the answer is simple – weather. Boonen’s Flanders and Roubaix wins have all come in pretty fair weather, and Boonen crosses the line bathed in late afternoon sunshine, teeth and jersey glowing white, maybe a little dusty. Museeuw, on the other hand, was a rain and mud magnet – just Google for pictures of his 2002 Roubaix win, and you’ll see a textbook on how to forge your legend.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not calling Boonen a fair weather rider, and I think that when the rains do return to Flanders and Roubaix, Boonen will still be there at the kill. Like Museeuw, Boonen wins hard races against hard competition and whatever nature provides. It’s just that Boonen needs to make it look harder, and for that, he needs a little cooperation from mother nature. One or two mud-encrusted Boonen wins, and the comparisons should take care of themselves. And if not, time will do it for him – everything looks harder when us older folks are doing it.

Race Radio

• Silence-Lotto finally made it into the move that mattered, putting both Leif Hoste and Johan Vansummeren into the royal breakaway that also contained Boonen, Filippo Pozzato (Katusha), Juan Antonio Flecha (Rabobank), and Thor Hushovd (Cervelo). Man, I’ve been waiting weeks to type that. Unfortunately, they got caught out a bit when Flecha elected to auger himself into the ground, but what can you do? Next step: win something. I think the Grote Scheldeprijs this week is calling their name.
  


• Pozzato may not have brought home any trophies this week, but he’s inserted himself into the list of cobbled contenders in a way that he hadn’t before. Maybe it’s his fashion choices, his manner, or his palmares, but he’s never really shouted “nails” the way a Boonen, a Van Petegem, or even any number of Flemish kermis specialists do. And though he’ll probably continue to have a better off-bike wardrobe than his competition, nobody will take him for a harmless pretty boy in the cobbled classics from here on out. Even better, the Flemish fans gave him a hell of a hard time in the finale, giving him a coating of spit and beer and closing the road down on him, and he gracefully brushed it off in the post-race interviews.
  


• Those cobble-level TV shots they like to get at Roubaix are good at showing a peloton shape that’s pretty unique to the race: the trident, formed by one line of riders coming up the crown, and one line in each gutter.
  


• Is it just me, or did the Garmin car seem to wait for George Hincapie (Columbia) to get on the bumper after his flat and awkward tire change?
  


• Speaking of George, I like him, I really do. And I know that Versus is aimed at the American audience, many of whom are familiar with Hincapie from his support of Armstrong at the Tour de France all those years. But could Versus please dial back the Hincapie love a notch or two? Call the race, make note of the local favorite and get a quote, but don’t be the cheering section.
  


• Speaking of Versus, remember last year when Phil and Paul were crowing and clucking and harumphing at every opportunity about Astana being excluded from some ASO races based on events that transpired the year before? Not so much vocalization now that Fuji-Servetto (formerly Saunier Duval) is the team getting the door slammed on them for the same sorts of issues, eh? I mean, sure, it’s not All-American Leipheimer and Horner getting screwed this year, but Ivan Dominguez is an American now. Can’t a former Cuban get a little jingo love from the home broadcaster?
  


• It wasn’t a big attack, but 2001 Roubaix winner Servais Knaven gave it a dig, anyhow. Always a team man, Knaven led Domo’s (another Lefevere team) sweep of the podium that year, getting away while everyone kept an eye on Museeuw. Romans Vainsteins (Remember him? And his rat-tail?) was third. Knaven may not be a star, but his move was the first time I remember Milram doing anything notable, or even visible, this classics season.
  


• With his third Roubaix win, Boonen enters some pretty elite company, including late model legends like Museeuw, Eddy Merckx, Francesco Moser, and Rik Van Looy, as well as old-timey heroes Octave Lapize and Gaston Rebry. Again, with time left on the clock, equaling four win record of Roger "Mr. Paris-Roubaix" DeVlaeminck doesn't seem to far out of reach, does it?
  


• My longshot predictions from Friday proved to be just that -- longshots. Manuel Quinziato (Liquigas) was able to follow the early splits, but fell out of contention come crunch time. Still a career week for him. Kevyn Ista (Agritubel) did arrive in Roubaix eventually, but at more than 17 minutes behind, he finished hors delay. At least you still get the famous shower at the end.
  
  
• Seeing some new contenders emerge this week has me looking forward to next year. With Alessandro Ballan (Lampre) and Fabian Cancellara (Saxo Bank) hopefully back from injury and illness, Pozzato possibly supported by a strengthened second-year Katusha, Thor Hushovd and Heinrich Haussler (Cervelo) improving and back for another crack, Sylvain Chavanel (Quick.Step) making things interesting for the French again, and Boonen, Stijn Devolder, and Hoste still flying the Belgian flag, it should be a vintage year.
  

Paris-Roubaix Tech MadLibs

This time of year, cycling magazines and web sites turn their considerable attentions to cranking out article after article about the myriad little equipment changes that teams make for tomorrow’s Paris-Roubaix classic. But why should credentialed journalists have all the fun? Thanks to modern MadLib and internet technologies, we can now give you all the opportunity to create your very own Paris-Roubaix tech article the same way the the pros do.

Though MadLibs are usually a free-form exercise, we’ve inserted a few multiple choice selections (separated by an "/"), since we can’t have every team riding “Boob” wheels and “Farty” forks. You know the drill – when you see the underlined sections, insert the appropriate words of your choice, or pick your favorite selection from the list of options.

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Team Name Verbs New Solution to Roubaix’s Unique Challenges
Your Name
Compeigne, France

Scanning the team trucks as the squads do their pre-Roubaix reconnaissance always yields some interesting equipment choices, and this year has been no different. Many teams rolled out under sunny / threatening skies to survey the cobbles, revealing special touches for star riders and domestiques alike, all in hopes of improving their chance at glory in the storied / infamous / epic Hell of the North / Queen of Classics.

Team name has benched the team bike model they usually ride in favor of something a little more suitable for the treacherous cobbled farm roads of northern France. And with wet and slippery / dry and dusty weather forecasted, they’re likely to need all the help they can get. This year, most riders will roll out on bike sponsor’s new cyclocross / “Roubaix” / “all road” / “geriatric dentist” frames. In addition to substituting ­aluminum / carbon / a different carbon layup in key areas, the frames also feature extra rear wheel clearance along with ­long reach caliper / cantilever brakes. Out back, the chainstays are 1 centimeter longer than the team’s standard bikes and have been reshaped to provide more tire clearance / room for the 44 tooth inner chainrings. The seatstays have also been given the Roubaix treatment – bike sponsor team liason sponsor press flack name points out that the usual seatstay shape has been flattened / curved / fitted with elastomers to increase vertical compliance over the jarring pave.

All that extra clearance allows the team to squeeze in boutique maker’s / Vittoria’s beefy / plush / cushy 25c tubulars, which allow riders to drop the pressures a bit and provide a little extra comfort / relief / solace over the course’s 50+ kilometers of stones. And while they’re made by boutique maker / Vittoria, they’ve been relabeled with wheel sponsor’s logo using a Sharpie marker / thermal transfer.

Those tires are wrapped around / mounted / glued to the old school / classic / bulletproof combination of Dura-Ace / Record hubs and Ambrosio Nemesis / Mavic Reflex tubular rims. Leaving the low spoke count and carbon hoops for the more forgiving classics, team name opts for 32 spokes and brass nipples, tied and soldered by hand to give a bit of extra strength and keep everything in place should a spoke break.

Steering duties are handled by bike sponsor’s cyclocross / second tier fork. While the fork weighs more that the squad’s usual setup, it offers a steel steerer / an aluminum steerer / more tire clearance for a little extra insurance on rough roads. Team’s star rider will maneuver that fork from gutter to pothole with handlebars bolstered by a layer of extra bar tape / rubber under the tape / sponsor’s gushy tape product. While well known domestique forgoes the extra padding on the bars, he does use a ‘cross top lever for quick braking from the tops should the need arise. Domestique's bike also sports a handwritten / typed piece of paper taped to the stem / top tube with the location and length of each cobbled sector, as well as an extra seat clamp to ensure the seatpost stays put when the impacts come.

While team name spares no detail in it’s Roubaix setup, not everyone is going with such tried and true techniques. Bucking the trend, other team name rolled out on wheel sponsor’s new carbon hoops. It's hard to tell by looking, but team mechanics tell publication name that the wheels have more carbon / a modified carbon layup where it matters to give the squad a bit more forgiving ride / better strength over the cobbles, while still providing the aero advantage for a solo ride to the velodrome. The brake surface on the new wheels is carbon / aluminum, which should be a decided advantage / disadvantage if the weather turns wet / dry.

Which strategy will prove to be the right one? That might just depend on Sunday’s forecast.

*********************************************************************

So, kidding aside, who is going to win Roubaix? Hell if I know, but there are plenty of places to read the list of favorites, and those guys are favorites for a reason. But outsider-wise, I’m looking to Liquigas. They don’t have a marquis Roubaix rider, but Manuel Quinziato and Aleksandr Kuschynski have been riding above their heads all week.

For a way-long shot, I’ll look for Kevin Ista from Agritubel. At 24, he’s way too young, and he’s mostly a sprinter at this point, but why not? The 5th year pro from Auvelais, Belgium (about 16k northwest of Charleroi) has had good showings all spring. He was there in a few long breaks in the semi-classics, and bagged a shocking second place at Het Nieuwsblad/Het Volk behind Thor Hushovd. He was also second overall at the Dreidaagse van West-Vlaanderen, and won the points, sprints, and best young rider titles in the process. He also took Stage 3 of the Med Tour over former French sprint hope Jimmy Engoulvent. Agritubel wasn’t on the guest list for Flanders and Gent-Wevelgem, so his form’s a bit of a mystery at this point, and there’s no telling how he’ll hold up against ProTour competition, but you have to jump in sometime.

Hope everyone enjoys the race.

No Returns

A couple of weeks ago, I finished a book called “Over the Edge of the World” by Laurence Bergreen. It documents Ferdinand Magellan’s circumnavigation of the globe, a voyage that started in 1519 and completed its lap in 1522. The book’s title is a nod to the prevailing wisdom at that time that if you sailed far enough, you might just fall off the end of the earth, never to be seen again.

So why the hell am I talking about this on a cycling site? Well, Magellan’s voyage (which notably returned sans Magellan) proved that there was no literal “edge of the world” to sail over into some inescapable void. This year’s Gent-Wevelgem, on the other hand, proved that there are still plenty of figurative places to drop out of existence, never to be seen or heard from again. At least in bike racing.

Gent-Wevelgem, perhaps more than any other classic, seems driven by the wind. Changes in direction relative to those prevailing winds can crack the peloton into desperate, suffering echelons for kilometers. Then suddenly, a single turn is rounded, and the first echelon is blown out to an insurmountable gap by a howling tailwind. The Kemmelberg does its work, and another loop around the hills allows the process to repeat itself, smashing a lead group into even smaller pieces.

Combine that wind-and-hill cycle with the tricky politics of big-split team tactics, and the underlying message of this year’s G-W was clear – miss a single move, get a badly timed flat, and there’s no coming back. Lose the front group, and you’re off the edge of the world. No chasing back on, no teammates dropping back, no bridging, no regrouping. Three key splits occurred throughout the race – one at 20k that broke 36 men free, one after the first descent of the Kemmelberg that split that group in half, and one when the winning two-man break went clear. Each time, anyone who didn’t jump quickly enough or had a bit of hard luck might as well have turned up the side road and ridden straight for Wevelgem and the showers. It may be a "sprinter's classic," but anyone sitting in and waiting for the regroup hasn't been paying attention.

Race Radio

1. What do Silence-Lotto’s pre-race meetings sound like? Do they have them? As I’ve noted before, they seem to always miss the move that matters, and this G-W was no different. You’d think the local boys would know to keep an eye on the wind and look for the big split, but they managed to place just one rider in the definitive 36-man move. Was it one of their grizzled vets? Cretskens? Hoste? No, it was third year Dutch pro Michiel Elijzen.
   
   
2. We’ve come to expect that sort of thing from Lotto, but Quick.Step? Boonen made the first split as the sole representative, then flatted out of it, leaving the team entirely without representation. It happens, but what I can’t figure out is how Boonen was all by himself just 20k into the race.
   
   
3. Silence-Lotto isn’t the only team with bad timing. Cervelo Test Team knows how to make the moves, but it seems they’re still trying to figure out how to spend their energy once they’re there. Of their strong representation and aggressive riding in the split, Dominique Rollin told cyclingnews.com, “We had a good gig going, but that actually turned to our disadvantage. When we hit the hills we paid for our efforts early on.” Indeed. Kind of like at the Ronde van Vlaanderen last week, when they were crushing the front of the race on the Oude Kwaremont with 84k to go, but were nowhere to be found on the Bosberg with 12k to go. Maybe we all settle down a bit at Roubaix, eh?
   
   
4. It would be incomplete to talk about the effect of the hills and wind on the G-W outcome but not mention the impacts of the race’s UCI rank and calendar. With one man in the break between them, shouldn’t home teams Lotto and Quick.Step have been able to bring back that first group? Maybe, but those folks and many others have their eyes firmly on Sunday and Paris-Roubaix, and while a chance at a semi-classic win is nice, it’s not that nice. Columbia, on the other hand, turned up to win G-W, and it showed.
   
   
5. Boassen Hagen’s win is a big step for him, and he deserves all the recognition he’s getting for it, but someone has to point out Kuschynski’s riding this week. After grinding out the long break at Flanders, he bounced back to ride a very aggressive G-W, trying several times before cracking the winning move free. Bad luck for him that the guy he finally drew out was a sprinter of Boassen Hagen’s caliber.
   
   
6. Though I wrote above that anyone who missed any of the key splits might as well have fallen in a hole, there was one, single notable bridge. Robbie McEwen (Katusha) wrangled his way from the second group to the first after the split on the Kemmelberg descent, proving that if you leave any rider, even a sprinter, in Belgium for long enough, they come out nails. Chapeau, Robbie.
   
   
7. In the grand tours, we get used to seeing riders flat, surf the bumper for awhile, and then catch back on to the break or the peloton. I find the classics are a refreshing change from that. While I don’t wish it on anyone, it’s reassuring to see an environment where even stars like Cavendish, Boonen, and Cancellara can get screwed by a flat just as badly as us amateurs. And I’m not sure what Cancellara did to deserve the season he’s having, but it must have been bad.
   
   
8. They call G-W a sprinter’s classic, and predictions and prognostications beforehand tend to focus on who among the big fast-twitchers can best get themselves up and over the two ascents of the Monteberg-Kemmelberg combination. Inside tip: in the modern era, that’s pretty much all of them. Though the race does break with some regularity, picking the fastest sprinter is still the safest bet, because when G-W does break it’s a crapshoot.

Flanders Fragments

Damn near every cycling news source will be barraging you with Ronde Van Vlaanderen (Tour of Flanders) news this morning, including detailed blow-by-blow descriptions of the race, close-ups of the equipment, and several forms of minutae that haven’t even occurred to me yet. And with good reason – Flanders is simply one of the best races all year. While yesterday’s contest doubtlessly deserves all the attention it’s receiving, I’m in no position to add to the din of details and firsthand accounts, so instead I’ll just throw out a few things that occurred to me as I watched it. Since I followed the race via Versus’ insanely fragmented and hard-to-follow coverage, I’ve tried to replicate that feeling here…

1. First, we have to address the winner, Stijn Devolder (Quick.Step), who took his second consecutive victory in fine fashion. Another perfect execution of strong-team tactics, another well-timed and committed attack on the Eikenmolen, another powerful and unrelenting solo ride to the finish. Devolder doesn’t get a hell of a lot of airplay, but at the last two Rondes at least, he’s been the rider everyone wants Boonen to be. Of course, next year he won’t even be able to sign in without Pozzato and three guys from Lotto running into his back wheel.
   
2. For me, the strongest rider coming into Flanders looked to be Filippo Pozzato (Katusha), and if there were no such thing as teams in cycling, I would have called him the outright favorite. But there are teams, and Pozzato knew that Quick.Step was strong and his Katusha squad wasn’t, and that he’d have to spend his day cuing off them. It looks like Adri Van der Poel, Pozzato, and I are all on the same page, judging by this Van der Poel quote from the cyclingnews.com live coverage: "To me there's one top favourite and that is Pozzato. If he's smart then he's just staying on Boonen's wheel all race long. They have other riders in the Quick Step team but the sponsor will most likely prefer Tommeke to win it." Pozzato did just that, likely using the same logic, and as it turned out, he bet on the wrong Quick.Step horse. I don’t think that makes it the wrong decision on his part - when you're just one guy, sometimes you just have to stick to the plan and hope it all comes back together again, and this time the cards just fell the other way. But when he and Boonen were jamming up the Koppenberg side-by-side, there was a taste of what might have been. And Pozzato looked better.
   
3. Silence-Lotto held true to its signature move of missing the moves that matter. They did look strong during some of the shenigans just after the Paterberg, putting Leif Hoste in the move that also contained Sylvain Chavanel (Quick.Step), Manuel Quinziato (Liquigas), Daniel Lloyd (Cervelo), and Frederick Guesdon (FdJ). Behind that move, Lotto was able to respond to Boonen’s aggression with Philippe Gilbert and Staf Scheirlinckx. Unfortunately for Lotto, by the time the finale was being played out, only Chavanel and the surprising Quinziato were left from that group, and Lotto had nothing at the front or in the half-assed chase. Gilbert saved the day by grabbing the bunch sprint for third.
   
4. How about Chavanel and Quinziato? A career day for both of them, right to the bitter end. Chavanel was particularly remarkable - all race long, he did the right thing, at the right time, in the right place. Just perfect. How did various directors let this guy waste almost 8 years on Tour de France dreams when the classics are clearly what he’s meant to do?
   
5. Fabian Cancellara (Saxo Bank) is typically one hell of a professional – he proved that again by sucking it up and showing up to the start of the race he’d targeted, knowing that injury and illness had him far below where he wanted to be. That said, professionalism-wise, he slipped up a little today. Last week, his team signed a new component sponsorship deal with SRAM. Today, Cancellara snapped his (presumably SRAM) chain on the way up the Koppenberg, a failure of one of the company’s bread-and-butter products. You know, shit happens, and professionals break fine equipment all the time for a variety of reasons. And when they do, the protocol is to not make a big deal out of it and get the broken material into the truck and out of sight as soon as possible. But on the Koppenberg, Cancellara first did a little ‘cross-style hike, then performed a weak bike toss, then picked it back up, and then pointed out the problem to the crowd, a trio of waiting photographers, and the TV cameras. Then he turned around, picked up the offending chain, hung it around his neck, and coasted back down the hill, much to the delight of even more photographers. The only way he could have drawn more attention to the equipment failure was if he used the chain to lasso Tom Boonen and hitch a ride to the top. Not the best way to welcome a new sponsor to the team. From VeloNews.com: “We always joke that when you have full power you’re going to break everything, but now it happened,” Cancellara said, referring to his SRAM Red chain, which snapped midway up the Koppenberg when he was at the front of the peloton…While Cancellara turned around and retrieved his broken chain — maybe the SRAM technical whizzes may learn something from it…”
   
6. I need Heinrich Haussler to win something big, soon. The Australo-German grabbed a well-deserved second place today with a well-timed late attack (and aggressive racing all day), a nice match for his second place at Milan-San Remo, but I can’t imagine that has him feeling overjoyed after an early season filled with near misses in big events. Amstel? Fleche? Probably longshots, but the guy’s gotta get lucky at some point.
   
7. I don’t know what Martijn Maaskant’s (Garmin-Slipstream) contract looks like, but it’s going to be tough to keep him out of Lotto, Quick.Step, and Rabobank hands if he keeps turning in these rides in the big classics. I’ve only seen him work in good conditions – it’ll be interesting to see what he can do if things turn sloppy.
   
8. What’s up with the special Quick.Step podium jersey? Looks like they might have tried to debut a new look, complete with black shorts, but it was a no-go from the UCI. Good thing, too – I think one of the first ten commandments of cycling is that Belgian teams should never be flashy. Leave all the wardrobe changes to the Italians for godssake. I do kind of like the new look, though.

Finally, just for kicks, let’s see how well my little pre-race spiel jived with reality:

• We pointed out that the Quick.Step trio of Boonen, Devolder, and Chavanel would be hard to stop, and that was right. But that’s sort of like predicting that the Ronde will be held in Belgium, so I won’t break my arm patting myself on the back for that one.
  
• In the Katusha camp, Pozatto did end up looking a bit lonely when the deal went down, and Sergui Ivanov did manage to show himself at the end, mounting a late chase behind the Devolder-Chavanel-Quinziato-Van Hecke group.
  
• Just like they did at De Panne, Silence-Lotto made all the moves, except the ones that mattered. Despite what Greg Van Avermaet may think, that still isn’t as good as winning.
  
• I thought Flecha and Nuyens might do something for Rabobank. Even though they got some camera time, they did nothing of consequence. Likewise, Columbia failed to really materialize, capping things off with George Hincapie’s crash in the final few hundred meters. If it weren’t for bad luck…
  
• Frederick Guesdon (FdJ) did his best to make me look like a genius for naming him as a possible spoiler. It didn’t work out, but I appreciate his efforts.
  
• As for my final predictions: The winner was not a member of Euskaltel-Euskadi, though two of them did finish: Koldo Fernandez in 51st and Markel Irizar in 65th. So I’m good there, but nobody with a surname beginning with Van was in the early break, so my second prediction failed to become reality. Aleksandr Kuschynski (Liquigas) and Wim De Vocht (Vacansoleil) made up that move, but really, for an early break in Flanders, it’s a toss-up between betting on a “De” or a “Van”, and I picked wrong. Ah well, there’s always next year.

De Ronde Abhors a Vacuum

It was getting a little fuzzy there for awhile as to who, exactly, was going to mount any sort of challenge to the Boonen-Devolder-Chavanel Quick.Step combination for this Sunday’s Ronde van Vlaanderen (Tour of Flanders). With Fabian Cancellara (Saxo Bank) slipping into a domestique role after an early season plagued by injury and illness, and world champion and 2007 winner Allessandro Ballan (Lampre) out altogether, it was starting to look like serious challengers to that cabal could be few and far between.

But someone has to fill that void, and it turns out that’s Filippo Pozzato (Katusha). The fashion-sideways Italian tends to bag a decent win or two every early season, make a lot of promises, then go cold come Flanders-Roubaix week. This year, though, it looks like he may have timed things a little better, staying pretty quiet until this last week, then nailing the E3 Harelbeke semi-classic in a surprising sprint over Boonen on Saturday and winning the first stage of the Dreidaagse De Panne on Tuesday.

Assuming he’s not burning too many matches screwing around at De Panne, the world’s best classics stage race, Pozzato’s chief problem come Sunday would look to be support. The woefully out-of-date start list at the RVV web site sheds some light on the issue. Considering Gert Steegmans is now out with some sort of leg/nerve issue, Pozzato could have a lonely day at the front on his hands. Mikhail Ignatiev is certainly good for some grunt work, and Serguei Ivanov can have the staying power to be there at the end, but the roster is no who’s who of classics racing. He does have Andre Tchmil in the car directing, so that has to be good for something.

That’s not quite fair, of course – Katusha has a roster better than two-thirds of the teams in the race. It’s just that there are four squads between Quick.Step and Katusha that really stand out. First comes the mostly hapless Silence-Lotto squad. Sure, their early season has been crap, with just one win by Cadel Evans in Coppi e Bartali last week to its credit, but if things start going their way, there are some hard hitters on their list. There’s Leif Hoste, who’s been second three times at the Ronde and very motivated to win, if only to avoid having “second three times at the Ronde” carved on his tombstone. He’s likely to share protected status with Philippe Gilbert, who’s been flirting with greatness for several seasons, racking up some Omloops Het Volk, a Paris-Tours, and a bunch of stages in the process. Greg Van Avermaet gets a lot of hype too, though I don’t quite understand why, so I guess they have that going for them. Those three are backed up by Vansummeren, Cretskens, Scheirlinckx, Delage, and Lang, a group I’d put up against any classics supporting cast.

So if Lotto comes around, they’re as good a bet as any. Van Avermaet, putting out some hype of his own, thinks that the team has lifted its game and turned a corner, telling cyclingnews.com of the first day of De Panne “We made the race today; that was the first time that I see that and I think this is a change for us." Sure, they helped force the split that shed Boonen 70k from the finish, but if Van Avermaet defines “making the race” as “leading the second group in a minute behind the guy who won, and missing what was likely the defining break of the race,” I may have to rethink my assessment.

Who’s there besides the home teams? Rabobank, always teetering at the edge of classics greatness without quite managing to fall in, has high hopes for Juan Antonio Flecha, who will hope to shake his reputation for getting the best view in the house of other guys winning bike races. Belgian import Nick Nuyens has been quiet this season, but seems to be coming around OK, if not in a headline sort of way, and relative youngin’ Sebastian Langeveld could be a viable option as well. Backed up by the cobble-friendly De Maar, Hayman, Posthuma, Tankink, and Tjallingi, they should be capable of having decent representation when the race hits the Muur and the Bosberg.

Cervelo Test Team and Columbia should factor in the finale as well, and are both split about half and half between grizzled veterans and talented newcomers. On the Columbia side, there’s Hincapie, always Hincapie, supported by an international smorgasbord of pretty talented folks, including Bernhard Eisel, Marcus Burghardt, and Bert Grabsch. Cervelo has this spring’s nearly man, Heinrich Haussler, along with 2009 Het Volk and 2006 Gent-Wevelgem winner Thor Hushovd, Belgophile Briton Roger Hammond, and 2003 Gent-Wevelgem winner and Belgian resident Andreas Klier. Those four are backed up by a sturdy group of rouleurs, including Canadian Dominique Rollin, who everyone believes fits the profile for these sorts of races.

So that’s a quick rundown of what the favorites, Pozzato now included, will have to deal with, but that’s the breaks when you’re trying to win a classic. If you look at the draft roster for Ballan’s Lampre squad, you’ll see he would have been in a similar situation, with the squad now looking a little headless without him. And just as guys like Pozzato and Ballan can be considered favorites despite a lack of lauded support, there are guys scattered throughout the start list with the potential, on a good day, to upset the whole apple cart for the stacked squads – guys like Frederic Guesdon (Francaise des Jeux), who sneaks away to win another classic just when everyone’s forgotten about him again, or a Karsten Kroon (Saxo Bank) who could finally manage to slip his domestique label once and for all.

In light of all this, I’m sure not making any predictions as to who the winner will be. I will go out on a limb and bet that the early break will include at least one rider whose surname begins with “Van,” and that the winner will not come from Euskaltel-Euskadi. Mr. Bookmaker, here I come.

Yes, He is That Good

And he's getting better.

Besides collarbones, their associated maladies, and Silence-Lotto’s shocking and continued inability to win bike races, the big news this past week was Mark Cavendish’s (Columbia) allegedly unexpected win in Milan-San Remo on Saturday. The guy’s clearly the fastest sprinter out there, so the win was really only a surprise because popular wisdom dictated that Cavendish wouldn’t make it over the late climbs in any shape to unleash his remarkable sprint. After all, that much-vaunted wisdom holds that San Remo can only be won by a veteran mountain goat – you know, like Alessandro Petacchi (2005) or Mario Cipollini (2002). So much for that…

Now, I’m not claiming Cavendish has the best history when the road goes uphill, but he’s hardly another incarnation of Ivan Quaranta, that other trackie-turned-road-sprinter who continually paid homage to his roots by being unable to ascend anything with more altitude than the boards of the Vigorelli. Cavendish has never come close to that lack of climbing prowess, except for possibly his first year in the big leagues, so some of the more vocal criticisms of his climbing that circulated in the past weeks seemed a bit overstated. That said, you can’t discount Cavendish’s history in the hills entirely. He did need things to break his way to have a shot at the Milan-San Remo title, and they did – the ascents of the Cipressa and Poggio were markedly more sedate than they have been in recent years, with fewer hard-hitting attacks to unship the faster-twitch members of the group, Cavendish included. But many, if not most races are won by riders who just happened to have things fall their way. Just look at last year’s San Remo.

Despite the fact that races are always won partly by virtue of the cards dealt by others, some observers will doubtlessly use this year’s lack of aggression on the climbs to denigrate Cavendish’s San Remo win, and I’ve already seen a few instances of the “come on, is he really that good?” and “well, he’s no Boonen/ McEwen/ Cipollini/ Abdujaparov/ Kelly/ Altig/ Van Steenbergen” thrown out there. To be honest, I’m not quite sure how Cavendish got off on the wrong foot with so much of the public. Sure, he’s made some bold statements regarding his abilities, but he is, after all, 22 years old and very, very fast. And it’s tough to ignore the fact that he hasn’t made a statement yet that he hasn’t lived up to.

I do think that people, particularly older people, fail to fully or accurately account for his age when observing his off-the-bike words and deeds, which seems to weigh heavily and unfairly on their ability to judge whether he’s a good bike rider or not. Simply put, not many of us in our 30s, 40s, and beyond hang out with people just cracking open their second decade, and there’s a reason – it’s just too hard to relate. Many of the defining contexts of our lives are simply too different, and even if we could have, in our younger years, related to that person, we've long since forgotten how. So it's not surprising that he's rubbed some people the wrong way, but in the post San Remo press conference, Cavendish sounded downright reasonable, even to those of us in our dotage. I suppose some will find passing Cipollini while pedaling one-legged in the Tour of California prologue offensive, but that was last year, and c’mon, that’s pretty damn funny. Almost Cipollini-esque, if you will.

It’s too bad if old folks don’t care much for young Cavendish, because it’s that very age issue that really made Cavendish’s win on Saturday something special, not the fact that he got over the hills. At 22, he’s the third youngest winner of the race, after Ugo Agostoni in 1914 (when most people were four feet tall and only lived to be 26, anyway) and a young standout named Merckx, who first won it during the years when an iPod was called a hi-fi, and then a few times later when it was called a stereo. That young men make better sprinters than old men is no secret, so it might seem that San Remo should play to a younger demographic. But what young men don’t often do well is cross the 200k mark, that invisible line that separates stage victories and semi-classics from classics and monuments. Granted, Boonen seems to have been born with the ability to do, but Philippe Gilbert just broke through it last year at Paris-Tours, and he’s 26. Sylvain Chavanel just got there last year as well at 29. Some guys never get there. So for Cavendish to cut from stage wins and semi-classics straight to muscling through San Remo’s 298k is remarkable for such young legs.

Another important distinction Cavendish shares with Merckx and few others is that that he won San Remo his first attempt. As numerous pros have pointed out in countless pre-race interviews over the years, experience counts in the classics. Knowing every little twist, turn, up, and down is a decided advantage, and it usually takes a few years of run-throughs at race speed to get the combination down. Again, some guys never do. There are, however, several things you can do to help mitigate a lack of experience – listening to people that have the experience to help you, and maintaining a laser-like focus on your target and what you need to do to reach it. Neither of those are activities that come naturally to the young, but according to Columbia teammate Mike Barry, Cavendish did both on his way to his first classic win. He also proved that he can keep his head when things don’t go down in clockwork bunch sprint fashion, like when Haussler (Cervelo) inadvertently gapped his own sprinter and the field, forcing Cavendish to jump a bit earlier than he usually does. All of which point to a maturity, on the bike at least, beyond his years.

So will Cavendish ever have the breadth of wins of a Sean Kelly, or ride the cobbles like Boonen? Maybe not. But if you’re talking about winning bunch sprints, which is what he’s really trying to do, there’s no better bet for your money.

Is he better than Cipollini? Better than Jalabert? Who gives a shit – they’re retired.

Does he have their style, their grit? Do you like him? Well, those are all judgment calls, and I can’t make them for you.

Is he good? That good? Yes, he is that good. Especially if you remember we’re talking about professional bicycle racing, not whether you want to have dinner and a snuggle with him.

_____________________________

All the above is old news, of course, and I probably should have posted it earlier in the week. Anyway, on to this weekend's Belgian fun -- the E3 Prijs Vlaanderen (a.k.a., E3 Harelbeke, a.k.a. GP E3) on Saturday and the Brabantse Pijl (a.k.a. the Brabant Arrow) on Sunday. One's on the Flemish end of things, the other's in the more neutral territory around Brussels, but they're everyone's last chance to grapple for protected status at the Ronde Van Vlaanderen on April 5. My bet's on Heinrich Haussler (Cervelo) for E3 (since he doesn't look to be riding the Brabantse Pijl). I'm not sure I've ever seen someone ride as well in the spring with so little to show for it.

Flags and Emblems

Lots of people find cycling coverage available in the United States to be overly nationalistic – and with good reason. I, too, would rather read a first or second interview with a Ballan, a Chavanel, or a Gilbert rather than an eighth with Vande Velde, a tenth with Zabriskie, or a 300th with Armstrong. Extend nationalism to linguistic brotherhood, and we’re in an even deeper hole. Look, I have British and Australian friends. They’re terrific people, and after a few hours of auditory acclimatization, I can even understand them. But can we spring for a translator every now and then?

Nothing against our fellow Americans and friends from the Commonwealth, we love them dearly, but variety is good, no? Don’t get me wrong, this inward focus is not confined to our shores – read the Belgian papers, and you’ll get far more coverage of Nico Eeckhout than Fred Rodriguez. That’s just the way the world works. But there are occasions when even I would actually argue for flying the flag a little higher, and this is one of those: Cole House wins the U23 GP Waregem. (Results sheet here.)

Photo courtesy USA Cycling

That Wisconsin native House made the 20 man break in the classically Belgian (read: cobblestones, cold, wind, rain) race in the heart of Flemish bike racing country is impressive on its own. After all, of 220 starters, only 38 made it to the finish of this mess at all. House’s victory, taken in a sprint over a final selection of 13 riders, is even more notable when you look at the composition of that break. For one, he was the only non-Belgian of the bunch – for an idea of how tough a situation that can be, look at Heinrich Haussler’s plight in Dwars Doors Vlaanderen, or read Joe Parkin’s excellent A Dog in a Hat. Suffice to say we ain’t the only ones with some nationalist leanings.

Second, House was the only representative of the U.S. Development team, which wouldn’t be as much of a concern if the break wasn’t stacked by the PWS Eijssen team (four riders), Wielergroup Beveren 2000 (three riders), and a couple of guys from WC Soenens-Yawadoo. To win in that situation takes more than great legs – it takes a good, calm head, a valuable asset that’s much harder to train than power or endurance. So if House has the wherewithal to keep his head during the late-race fireworks and uncork the sprint at the right place and time, he may indeed be the next U.S. classics contender in the making, as noted in his trade team’s (US-Swiss ProContinental BMC squad) dispatch. Even better, House is only 20 years old, meaning he’s winning tough races when he’s not even in his waning years of U23-dom. BMC is understandably excited about having snapped up that prospect, especially given that they’ve recently shoved their foot firmly in the door of Paris-Roubaix, which I’m told has cobblestones and occasionally unfavorable weather.

"House's victory is a big satisfaction and it confirms all the confidence we had in him and his abilities," BMC director John Lelangue said, adding that he has a few other young’uns in the spring classics hopper as well. "I am very happy with the way Ian McKissick has been fighting to improve on the cobbles, even though it might not be his particular area of specialization. And what we have seen from Chad Beyer and Brent Bookwalter all year is also very encouraging; these three riders along with Cole House will definitely do some very good things not only in the next years, but in the next weeks."

Photo Courtesy BMC Cycling Team

Finally, House has one other thing going for him – his name is Cole. And if you have a name that could conceivably be attached to a male soap opera lead – like, say, “Lance” or “Levi” – you’ve got a good shot at making it big time.

All that said, it’s probably not a good idea to hang too many hopes on a U23 win – there are plenty of guys who have those trophies on the shelf at home, but are working in offices or painting trucks instead of winning classics and grand tour stages. But having a look down the list of previous winners at Waregem, you’ll see some pretty familiar names, like Dirk Demol (1981), Marcel Wust (1994), Stijn Devolder (2000, 2001), Leon Van Bon (2002), Andre Griepel (2003), and Wouter Weylandt (2004). For House, what will be, will be, but that's not bad company to be in now, is it?

Openingsklassieker

As an invalid, I’ve been able to take in quite a bit of Tivo’ed Tour of California coverage over the past week – far more, in fact, than anyone who is not heavily medicated should be allowed to endure. Through the haze, mine mental and the race’s meteorological, it seems like a nice little race they have going there – right spot on the calendar, good course, exceptional organization, and a strong field. But as much as I want to see the ToC continue to thrive (and avoid the ambition overdose that kills so many good events), it’ll still always be a preseason game to me, because on my calendar, the road season begins with Het Volk.

I know, I know – last Saturday’s Belgian season opener isn’t called Het Volk anymore. The sponsoring newspaper that gave the event that name struggled for a few years before finally stopping the presses for good in 2008. Het Volk (the paper) was already a property of Het Nieuwsblad, the paper whose name now adorns the race, so the transfer was seamless and the race itself never appeared to be in any danger. In today’s sponsorship climate, that sort of security is a rare thing indeed – the bank shenanigans in the U.S. have already shrunk “Philly Week” to “just Philly,” and the newspaper business isn’t exactly the picture of health these days, either. Of course, Het Nieuwsblad also publishes Sportwereld, the Flemish sports paper that naturally has a heavy cycling bent, so Het Nieuwsblad coming in and killing off the region’s revered season opener wouldn’t have been the most sound business move, regardless of the sponsorship financials. Good will counts a lot sometimes.

While last year’s Het Volk was the last to be run under that historic name, that edition also marked a return of one of the race’s fundamental elements – the finish in the center of Gent. From the inaugural edition in 1945 until 1995, the race started in Gent and looped south through the hellingen of the Flemish Ardennes before returning north to finish in Gent (logically, the alternate name for the race was always Gent-Gent). In 1995, the organization moved the finish to Lokeren, a small town 19 kilometers northeast of Gent. Usually, organizers make changes like that to combat issues like increasing frequency of bunch sprints (we looked at Milan-San Remo’s battle with the bunch back here). I don’t know the details of all those pre-1996 Het Volk finishes well enough to know if that’s what sparked the move to Lokeren, but a cursory look at the list of winners shows a good number of notably fast finishers. However, it really could have been anything – maybe the Lokeren chamber of commerce was handing out more cash, or maybe Het Volk’s accounting department was located there, I don’t know. But if you’ve been to both Lokeren and Gent, you know they didn’t switch for the ambiance.

That said, if trying to move the finish closer to key selection points – hills and cobbles – was the goal of the Lokeren move, then the organizers seem to have achieved an even greater victory to that end with the move back to Gent. Using the 2001 course as a representative of the Lokeren years, we can make a few comparisons to this year’s course. Both courses use the Molenberg, a nasty 463 meter climb with 300 meters of cobblestones and a max gradient of 14.2%, as the final climb before the stampede to the finish. (The 2009 edition also featured 11 climbs to 2001’s nine. However, the inclusion or exclusion of climbs in the hill zone has little to do with the finish location.) Measured from the top of the Molenberg, the distance to the finish line shrunk by 18 kilometers, from 57 to 39 kilometers, theoretically giving a well-established breakaway a better shot at survival.

Though shorter than before, the new final dash squeezes in 400 more meters of cobblestones than the 2001 version. The new course also serves up the stones in larger helpings, dishing out its 7,100 meters over 5 sections, whereas 2001 chopped its 6,700 meters into 7 portions. Cobbles aside, the final 15 kilometers in 2009 also presented additional difficulties to riders compared to 2001 – the approach to Lokeren was a wide, straight speedway, but the run-in to Gent is significantly more technical, weaving in and out of the city’s myriad street furniture and tram tracks as it snakes toward the town center. Finally, the new finish straight on Charles de Kerchovelaan street features a tough uphill grunt, a marked contrast to the pannenkoek-flat Lokeren straight.

So, has the objectively harder finale thinned the herd coming to the line? Not really. In 2001, a break of 11 (helped by a well-timed freight train) came to the line, with Michele Bartoli (then Mapei) taking the win. This year, Thor Hushovd (Cervelo) led home an 18-man front group, with the bulk of the field arriving 45 seconds later. On the other hand, Philippe Gilbert (then FDJ, now Lotto) soloed in for the win in Gent last year. So while some careful course planning can certainly help shape outcomes, as the saying goes, it’s the riders (and sometimes the weather) that make the race.

But really, whether the win comes from a big sprint like this year or a great late race solo move, Het Volk/Het Nieuwsblad is always a great race, because it’s the first real race of the year – for me. Why Het Volk? Why not the Tour Down Under way back in January? Or the GP Marseillaise in France, or the Trofeo Laigueglia in Italy, big one-day races that both precede Het Volk on the calendar? Pure personal bias, that’s why. Because I love the classics, and in the spring that means Belgium. And because, in 2001, when Bartoli rolled across the line, I was there, floundering my way through my first international assignment. So for me, it starts with Het Volk.

The Weight of Being Sven Nys

With Lars Boom’s (Rabobank) victory in the most recent round of the cyclocross World Cup at Pijnacker coming hot on the heels of Niels Albert’s (Palmans) win in the Tabor round, many are wondering if Sven Nys’ (Landboukrediet) iron grip on the ‘cross World Cup is coming to an end. The Belgian has dominated the sport’s premier series since 2003, and when he won the season opener in Kalmthout over Albert, it looked like this season could be more of the same. But with the strong, consistent challenge Albert and Boom have brought over the first three rounds, tongues are starting to wag.

That’s a little unfair, really. After all, time waits for no man, and Nys is now 32 years old. And you can’t really expect one man to consistently dominate nearly every race of the WC for years on end, can you? Maybe not, but the fact that people see Nys’ failure to win two consecutive WC races as “faltering,” particularly when he finished fourth in Tabor and third in Pijnacker, speaks to the expectations he’s earned. What did Nys do to forge these chains? Let’s have a quick look at the five previous WC seasons:

• In the 2003-2004 season, Nys stormed the first three rounds of the WC, winning in Turin, Italy, St. Wendel, Germany, and Wetzikon, Switzerland. He faltered a bit in the second half of that six-race series, with the remaining victories going to Ben Berden (at Koksijde), Bart Wellens (at Nommay), and Richard Groenendaal (at Pijnacker). Groenendaal rode consistently all season and took double points in the final round to win the overall.

• The following season, Nys took out seven victories (Pijnacker, Wetzikon, Milan, Hofstade, Nommay, Hoogerhiede, and Lanarvily) in an 11 race series. The remaining four victories were distributed to four different riders.

• Nys surrendered just two WC victories during the 10 race 2005-2006 season, netting wins in Kalmthout, Tabor, Pijnacker, Wetzikon, Milan, Hofstade, Hooglide-Gets, and Lieven. Wellens won the round in Igorre, and Erwin Vervecken took the series finale at Hoogerhiede.

• The 2006-2007 season showed no sign of a letup, with Nys winning seven of the 11 rounds, this time in Aigle, Kalmthout, Pijnacker, Koksijde, Igorre, Nommay, and Hoogerheide. Vervecken and Wellens again accounted for two victories (in Hofstade and Milan, respectively), with Frenchman Francis Mourey winning in Milan and Radomir Simunek taking out his home-country round in Tabor, Czech Republic.

• In 2007-2008, Nys won half the races in the eight race series.

All told, from the 2003-2004 season through the end of the 2007-2008 season, Nys accounted for 29 victories out of 46 WC races. That’s 63 percent. And that doesn't account for all the WCs where, despite not winning, he was still on the podium. Sure, it’s not a very original nickname, but they don’t call him “the Cannibal” for nothing.

But while batting .500 in last season’s WC is nothing to sneeze at, it was also an early sign of possible chinks in Nys’ WC armor. During that season, Dutchman Boom became the first rider other than Nys to score more than a single victory in the series since 2003. In fact, he netted three, taking his first WC win at Pijnacker in his native Netherlands, then scooping the final two races in Lievin and Hoogerheide. And he picked up the world championship title in there as well. This year, in addition to his WC repeat at Pijnacker, he also won the Jaarmarktcross Niel round of the Gazet van Antwerpen Trofee series on November 11.

Obviously, Boom’s potential was realized last season, his first in the elites after already netting a U23 World Championship, and you can hardly be called a “revelation” when you’re wearing the elite World Champion stripes and have three WC wins on your palmares. So that leaves the 22-year-old Albert as the revelation of this ‘cross season. Similar to Boom, he clinched the U23 World Championship in his final year in that category, and marked his debut in the elite class with a win at the Erpe-Mere round of the Superprestige series the same season. Albert has been successful in the SuperPrestige this year as well, winning the Veghel-Eerde round ahead of Boom and Nys on November 2.

By winning the WC at Tabor and finishing second to Nys and Boom and at the Kalmthout and Pijnacker rounds respectively, Albert is sitting in the driver’s seat of the WC competition, with 1065 points to Nys’ 965. It’s far from an insurmountable lead, and there are six races left in the series. But at least in the early season, Albert is showing a consistency rivalled only by Nys over the last several years. Boom currently sits third with 668 points after a slow start, but is clearly on form now.

But before we trade the cowbells for church bells and announce the death of Sven Nys, there are a few other historical markers we should take into account. First, while Nys has been beaten at the last two rounds of the WC, he hasn’t dropped more than two WC races in a row since the 2003-2004 season. That bit of history tells us that when the gun goes off on November 29 in Koksijde, in front of Nys’ adoring home crowd, the Cannibal is going to looking for dinner again.

It’s also worth noting that, as he’s long proclaimed when defending his Є8,000 start fee, Sven Nys races every race to win (and yes, I believe he does use the third person when he says so). That season-long focus on victory has often cost him some form late in the season, and is the most often-cited reason for his relative lack of success at the World Championships, where he’s netted only one elite title, in 2005. While it may have cost some rainbow bands, Nys’ hunger for wins has led to plenty of wins in the sport’s other two showcase series, the GvA Trofee and the SuperPrestige, which he’s won on seven occasions. This year, he’s already won the SuperPrestige opener at Ruddervoorde and the GvA Trofee opener on the Koppenberg. Those wins and his win at the WC kickoff in Kalmthout have kept Nys well in the hunt in all three major series. That means that, while he’s facing new challengers and enduring a few recent injuries over the last several weeks, there’s still plenty of racing left for Nys to regain some traction and extend his dominance. And nobody rides a full season like Nys. Or maybe he’s finally keeping a bit in reserve in hopes of netting that elusive second World Championship.

Only time will tell, of course, and that’s what keeps things interesting. But whichever way things go, it’s clear that the generations are starting to turn in cyclocross. The old guard (which along with Nys still counts standouts Vervecken, Wellens, and Groenendaal among its active numbers) is starting to give way, and with both Albert and Boom having only 22 years on the clock, either may be on the way to launching a dominant streak of their own. But let’s hope not – this year’s three-way competition in the major series so far is far more compelling than another year of the Sven Nys show.

Sensation Association

When I finished up a cyclocross race on Sunday afternoon, I knew it was only a matter of time before my digestive tract reaped its revenge for the strain that I’d just put my body through. The pattern has been a constant throughout the years, and after races, when the grumbling begins, I always think back to sitting in a musty rider cabin with Freddy Stevens in Gent’s Kuipke velodrome in 2001. I was there to do a story on the Six Days of Gent, and Freddy, a “runner” for 6-day legend Etienne DeWilde, was showing me what riders typically eat during these relentless affairs. One element of that demonstration was a half-eaten bowl of what he described as “baby cereal,” about akin to cream of wheat in these parts. “Easy on the gut,” he nodded, with the typical reverence that Europeans have for their digestive experiences.

Thinking about that on Sunday reminded me that, while we’ve pointed out that brief overlap between the road cycling season and the winter cyclocross season, we hadn’t touched on the “other” winter discipline: the 6-day track race. The sixes don’t receive the coverage that we see with cyclocross and road racing, mostly because they’re a pretty fringe element of the sport, but also likely because they’re harder to relate to. There are sixes in Europe for amateurs and espoirs, but by and large, they’re a professional show, and a form of cycling that exists only in competition. And as Peter Nye’s relatively recent book chronicles, the sixes were big in the United States once, but that was a long time ago. That experiential separation from the amateur riders that make up a vast portion of cycling fans here seems to make them a bit less accessible, and a little more mysterious and foreign than road or cyclocross have come to be. And that’s what made me pitch the Gent story to VeloNews in 2001.

Once I was on the ground in Belgium, I found the reason you don’t see more coverage of the sixes here, or anywhere, for that matter. They simply don’t translate. Not to television coverage, not to written race reports. There are simple reasons why that sort of coverage would be tough — there might be 8 different races covering 4 track disciplines on a given night, with overall leaders determined by a not-terribly-complicated but not-terribly-clear points system. But those issues are far from prohibitive.

The real reason coverage of the sixes doesn’t work is that you have to be there, plain and simple. They're a total experience, and just writing about guys racing bicycles doesn’t cut it. Like learning a foreign language, immersion is really the best solution, since it’s the crowd, the noise, and even the smells that make them what they are. And what they are is just about the most fun you can have watching bicycle racing. Recognizing the difficulty of translating that experience into words gave me a great deal of apprehension in writing the article, and the hangover didn’t help either. But I had to pay the bar tab, so I gave it a shot. An edited version of the article posted below was published as part of a track cycling special in VeloNews in February 2002.

Six Days and Six Nights

It's Night 5 of the event alternately known as the Zesdaagse Van Vlaanderen-Gent to the Flemish and the Six Days of Gent to English speakers, and the can-can is blaring from the PA speakers, a signal that French Cofidis pairing Robert Sassone and Jean-Michael Tessier are about to take the track for one of the time trial events that fill the space between the madisons, miss-and-outs, and derny races.

Saturday is the last true night of the race, and probably the pick of the litter- one last raucous party that will see the enthusiasm inside the arena housing one fairly old, extremely smoky, steep and short 166 meter track mount to the fever pitch. This night is, in essence, the Fat Tuesday of the Ghent six. Sunday afternoon will see the actual final showdown, at a time convenient to and respectful of the county’s heavily Catholic population, which can roll in after church to see how the battle ends and still be in bed by nine for a good night’s sleep.

By now the show should seem routine, but even after four nights, the excitement that grips the race seems to renew itself while the spectators sleepwalk through the dreary Gent days. Each evening begins with a leisurely, rolling rider introduction at 7 or 8pm, with each two-man team coming to the front of the line as their names are announced, hugging the rail and acknowledging the applause of the crowd. Each early morning it ends with a mad, back-arching, bike-throwing dash to the line, either behind a roaring derny bike or ahead of a charging field in the final Madison.

As it has been each night has been since Thursday, when the weekend began for University of Gent students, it is difficult to tell that a sellout crowd is in attendance. At the six, the spectators, like the riders, are in constant motion about the arena — a vacant seat is not necessarily an empty one. Cafés line the outside circumference of the track, doing a land office business in a bit of coffee and a lot of the fermented staples of the Belgian bars — Jupiler, Stella Artois, and Hoogegarten wheat beer, as well as pricier champagne for the more distinguished corporate clientele who shuffle back and forth from the VIP areas. In total, Gent boasts roughly twice as many meters of bar frontage as bicycle track, including the octagonal center bar serving another local favorite — straight shots of regular or flavored gin.

“So this is our culture. What do you think?” asks Bart, a cycling writer for the local paper who has emerged from the Delhaize Supermarket-sponsored café for a bratwurst at one of the food stands before hitting the trackside seats. “The food, it’s all bad for you. We don’t really care. These races are just a lot of fun. You come, have some beers, talk to people. Maybe watch some bike racing.” Underscoring his point, he nods toward Nico Eeckhout (Lotto-Adecco) who is lounging against a column chatting with Jose DeCauwer, the Belgian national team coach. A few feet away, shaved-headed Geert Van Bondt, liberated from the Mercury debacle by a contract with home team Domo, stands a few feet away sipping an off-season beer with friends.

The transition from the relatively subdued conversation of the café and expo-area, through the tunnel under the track and into the Middenplien is striking. Here, in the proverbial cheap seats, it is 90 degrees and standing room only, all on top of a thin layer of discarded plastic cups, and it is the place to be for those who come for the racing. Perhaps as a result of that same floor debris, the spectators down on the floor tend towards the less subdued than those in the seats on the outside. A giant black on yellow “Lion of Flanders” flag swings from a constantly swaying pole passed between a flock of equally swaying Etienne DeWilde fans, who proudly and noisily sport their man’s Deschacht team colors on hats, sashes and jerseys. Whenever a Belgian makes a good move or takes a lap, be it DeWilde taking a flyer in a Madison or young Nicky Vermeersche’s remarkable effort to take a lap in a derny race, the infield erupts into the nation’s wailing, swaying soccer anthem, followed by “we’ve go the best damn team…in the land,” to the tune of “He’s got the whole world in his hands.”

Part of the charm of the six is that, for nearly every knowledgeable old-timer Flanders native on the infield, there are folks like Natasha Robertson from “just south of London,” who are there to take things in. As Belgian Lorenzo Lapage follows the wheel of derny driver Joop Zijlaard through traffic on his way to a close and much needed win in the 75 lap derny race, Natasha is ignoring the rushing wind and head splitting motor buzz to check out the infield action from the rail. “My mate’s really into the racing. I just came along,” she confides, nodding towards the cabins, “There’s good beer, and fit men in tights getting massages. It’s not a bad time, really. I‘m actually really starting to enjoy racing as well.”

To be able to look past the spectacle of the derny races takes a certain dedication of its own, as six competitors a time follow mostly portly middle-aged Belgians and Dutchmen astride what amount to reinforced, powered beach cruisers whose unmuffled 5hp booster engines and 80-12 fixed gearing combinations allow their pilots to provide a remarkably high-speed, untiring draft for their riders.

“You get to know the riders, what they can do.” says Bruno Walraaje, the man the other derny drivers call “the captain” for his 30 years as a professional. “Some you can do a sprint with at the end, others need to come around more steadily. The directors assign us our partners, but they know who we usually work well with.” As if to prove his point, Walraaje takes his regular partner Jimi Madsen, who he describes as, “a very strong rider, but not a sprinter,” to the victory in the last derny of the event on Sunday afternoon, leaving a final blue cloud of diesel to dissipate into the haze of cigar and cigarette smoke that pervades the arena.

While the can-can signals the arrival of the French, and for some unknown reason the Chicken Dance announces Dutch duo Robert Slippens and Danny Stam, Gerd Dorich, the big-jawed German rider, has heard his signature tune — the modern, thumping dance version of the traditional Austrian folk song “Anton aus Tirol,” — played all too little since Wednesday night, when partner Luc De Duytsche abandoned with an infection. Despite being out of the race unless another abandon left him with a new partner, he settles into a role which gets Anton some airtime regardless — band leader for the Supersprint. It is an odd name for an event that is not heavily contested and nets the winner only 5 points on the overall, but the Supersprint does get all 23 riders on the track in a single line behind Dorich. There, he conducts a hand-waving invitation to crowd participation as he leads the line through no-handed, swooping, and diving lines up and down the banks. Smiles cross the riders faces as bodies are bent low over bars, and then lifted in sequence in a rolling wave as the crowd follows along in the stands. For 18 laps, it’s a dance party between the riders and the crowd, before the pressure starts to build from the back, and a two lap scramble for position ends in a bunch sprint. This time, South African Jean-Pierre Van Zyl takes the first place points as a small consolation for an otherwise anonymous performance.

On Sunday, the afternoon program and impending end bring a bit of sobriety and desperation to the proceedings, as the final push to pick up or safeguard placings comes to a head. During the final Madison, bolstered for the finale by an extra 15 minutes and points sprints during the closing laps, local boy DeWilde continually hurls himself off the front in desperate attempts to gain a lap on first placed pairing Matthew Gilmore and Scott McGrory and Swiss duo Bruno Risi and Kurt Betschart. The stakes are high for DeWilde, as the 43 year old legend of Belgian cycling is racing his last “home” six day at the Ghent track before returning here a final time to end a career that has spanned generations of other riders. The roar of the crowd at his every acceleration is deafening, and for once everyone has returned from the bars and cafés to fill the seats and see firsthand if he can make it an even ten wins in Ghent. There is something sad in the effort, as DeWilde, seemingly running on pure desire, continually rips open gaps which his partner Andreas Kappes cannot help him hold or advance. Ultimately, they will settle for the same third spot he started the Madison with, but DeWilde, somewhat tellingly, is handed the microphone before the winners on the podium.

Unlike road stage races which often end in a whimper, the Ghent Six comes to a close with three stacatto bangs from a .35 caliber pistol, signaling the final end with ringing ears and a puff of gunpowder smoke. “It’s a tough track,” says a tired but victorious Scott McGrory, who with partner Matthew Gilmore used strong, consistent Madison riding and blinding efforts in the time trials to take the race going away. “The short laps make it easier to take a lap, but for the same reason, it’s always attacking, attacking, attacking here.”

“In Germany,” he continues, “there are all of these oompah bands and entertainment and you get a break. But here, it’s just on-the-track-off-the-track-on-the-track all night long. Endurance and experience pays in the six day here.” As he says so, the crowds are filing out, past the hordes of Belgian press surrounding his partner Matthew Gilmore. And at that Sunday evening moment, it ceases to be the swansong of the 76th "Workingman's Six" and becomes 24 hours until the workingmen appear in Zurich to start the show all over again.

Overlap Season

Remember those times, back before city governments saw building sports stadiums as a springboard to economic revitalization and an excuse to try out cookie-cutter residential-over-retail new urbanism principals, backed by generous tax breaks and zoning workarounds for team owners and developers? Back when baseball teams and football teams actually had to, gasp, share a single stadium for a few short weeks, leaving early-season running backs to tear up late-season baseball diamonds, and outfielders hustling across the 40 yard line? That little visual reminder that summer was turning to fall seems less common today, though I certainly don’t watch enough of the TV news sports reports to really know. So maybe I’m making it up. But I do follow cycling, and we have our own seasonal markers – namely those few weeks when the late-season classics overlap the early-season cyclocross races in Europe.

That time is upon us, evidenced by this past weekend’s multi-disciplinary smorgasbord of Paris-Tours and the first round of the SuperPrestige ‘cross series at Ruddervoorde, Belgium. Thanks to a combination of Versus coverage and the generous decision of Belgian TV to webcast the SuperPrestige ‘cross series worldwide, those of us in the United States were able to take in the changing of the seasons a bit more than usual.

Paris-Tours

The French season-closer marked a breakthrough of sorts, with Belgian Philippe Gilbert taking his first bonafide classics win. The Walloon has been a big classics threat for a few years now, netting a couple of Het Volk titles, more than a few great but unsuccessful rides, and a bunch of little stages here and there. But the word inside cycling was that he couldn’t perform much over the 200 kilometer mark – the invisible line that helps separate full-blown classics from semi-classics.

By picking up the win in the 252 kilometer Paris-Tours with one of his typical late-race attacks, Gilbert appears to have finally broken the 200k curse. Granted, 252 kilometers of pan-flat French countryside are a bit different from the Ronde Van Vlaanderen’s 264 kilometers of Flemish hills and cobbles, or the 261 kilometers of Ardennes hills that comprise Gilbert’s “home classic,” Liege-Bastogne-Liege. But Gilbert seems to be coming into his own at 26 years old, and next year he’s bidding adieu to Francaise des Jeux and going to Silence-Lotto, where he’ll have a stronger supporting cast of classics men at his side. If he can continue his current trajectory and avoid butting heads with perennial Ronde contender Leif Hoste, he’ll be a solid pick for a Flanders win in 2009.

But Gilbert’s ascendance isn’t the big stateside talking point about Paris-Tours now, is it? Here, it’s been all about Dave Zabriskie’s (Garmin-Chipotle) fashion sense. Always a time trial powerhouse, DZ decided to spice up his Paris-Tours wardrobe and equipment with some contre la montre touches, including a long-sleeve skinsuit, super-deep section wheels, rubberized booties, and a not-so-subtle rearrangement of stem spacers. Short of reviving Cinelli’s mid-1990s “Legalize Spinaci” campaign and wearing an alien helmet, it was just about as much time-trial crap as you could break out in a road race.

But why? Clearly, DZ was intending to go on a solo mission, which he sort of did when he bridged up to the early break and did more than his fair share in driving it out to a 12-minute gap. It was an impressive display, and together with teammate and breakaway companion Lucas Euser, he did a hell of a job protecting the team’s sprinter Tyler Farrar, who rewarded the efforts by winning the bunch sprint for fifth place.

All that said, was it worth it? After all, the other guys in the break did pretty much the same thing wearing and using pretty standard issue stuff. And that stuff is standard for a reason. I’d be interested in hearing about any tradeoffs DZ experienced from his choices, like diminished ability to carry food and the severly limited ability to make a graceful pee-stop in a skinsuit. The Garmin-Chipotle site has a few different posts mentioning the choices, but doesn’t go much beyond “he was planning to go fast.” Of course, in racing, that’s pretty much the point of most things, so there’s not too much of a point in examining things too closely.

One final thing I wonder about though: In its continual quest for style, modern professional cycling teams often have a specific skinsuit design goes beyond a welded-together version of their standard jersey/shorts combo. Such is the case with Garmin-Chipotle – the difference in the design was even more evident given the presence of both DZ and Euser (in standard jersey) in the break. Traditionally, having riders in different clothes is a rulebook no-no, and could potentially land you a fine payable in Swiss francs. But it’s a little different from the Cipollini clothing antics of old, in that Garmin has the skinsuit design in regular rotation, so it’s kind of a gray area. Any UCI rulebook geeks out there that can clarify?

And one, final, final question: With a fair number of Paris-Tours wins in the past decade coming in breakaways, can we stop calling Paris-Tours the sprinter’s classic yet?

Ruddervoorde, SuperPrestige #1

I didn’t really get to watch enough of this to be able to comment on the race proper, but I was struck by the difference in watching professional road cycling and professional cyclocross on television/internet. With road cycling, it’s often difficult to fully realize the speed, to see in some real sense just how different the professionals are from your Sunday road race. You know they’re faster, but just staring at the screen it’s hard to tell how much faster, since you’re only looking at the relative speeds of a bunch of very, very fast men. Not so with cyclocross.

Even though the webcast was pretty jumpy, and the full-screen feature wasn’t working for me, I was struck by how clearly different the professionals ride from weekend hackers like me, and even some of the top guys in the United States, and how clearly that difference comes across on-screen.

If you’ve raced a few cross races yourself, and then watch a televised SuperPrestige or World Cup, you can almost feel the points on the course where you would lose your momentum, ease off the pedals, or coast through a turn. Quite simply, where most of us would slow down from a lack of power or technical skill, the top pros don’t. It’s not surprising, but it is striking. Hairpins are pedaled through full tilt, and that all-too-familiar submarining effect never seems to materialize when they hit the deep sand. I’ve never seen the equivalent of Ruddervoorde’s pump-bump section on a U.S. ‘cross course, but while I’d visualize many riders more-or-less coasting through, the limiting factor for Sven Nys et al. seemed to be keeping the back wheel planted well enough over the top to keep applying full power the whole way through the section – up and down. And, of course, there’s the almost imperceptible transition from riding to running to riding.

With a couple of local ‘cross races done and gone now, watching that sort of skill live via internet was a little disarming. I realize now how my mother must have felt sitting in the passenger seat as I was learning to drive – as we’d approach each curve, she would instinctively and frantically stab at a brake pedal that wasn’t there, anticipating a seemingly inevitable trip into an adjacent lawn or privacy fence. I’m proud to report that never happened, but that ingrained “he’s never going to make it going that fast” feeling is the same. Without the threat of imminent bodily harm, of course.

Something Almost Completely Different

We all know that Belgium is the holy land of cyclocross. But just how far does that country’s support of the sport go? Pretty far, as it turns out. One of the byproducts of being in the Washington, DC metro area is the proliferation of embassies, and the Belgian Embassy has stepped up to sponsor the kid’s race at the upcoming DCCX race at the Armed Forces Retirement Home in DC. It’s not a big thing, by any means, but it’s pretty cool that they’re making the effort, and really cool that it’s coming in support for the junior-est of juniors.

What the hell?

A National Championships Review

You have to admit – even though they’re only a single race, on a single day, ridden by riders from a single nation – national championships are a high-value target in professional cycling. Win one, and you get not only a snazzy new jersey, but a dramatic increase in recognition, on-air commentator chatter, personal sponsorships, and, if your agent is any good at all, a bit of a pay raise for providing all those expanded advertising opportunities to your team.

Yes, they’re a good value per kilometer – they’re also kind of a crapshoot, as the results of this weekend’s slate of European national championships will show. Even in the most cycling-crazy countries, the national championships are a combination of a few native international superstars, big teams, and legions of B-listers who ride mostly national events with occasional wild-card opportunities to mix it up in the home country’s classic du jour. On top of throwing unfamiliar riders together, there’s the odd tactics that can ensue when the country’s home ProTour team shows up on the line with two teams worth of riders, while a countrymen who rides for a foreign team may be all on his own. How much support could CSC have given Jurgen Van Goolen in the Belgian championship, compared to the 20 riders that Silence-Lotto sent?

Yes, Silence-Lotto started the Belgian championship with an astounding 20 riders, and they still managed to miss all the breaks. But 20 guys gives you a good bit of chasing power, and in the end, one of them did win. In this case, it was neo-pro college boy Jurgen Roelandts putting the blocks to a cast that included Belgian title specialist Nico Eeckhout (Topsport Vlaanderen), Silence-Lotto’s much heralded “next Tom Boonen” Greg Van Avermaet, and Quick.Step’s “current Tom Boonen,” Tom Boonen. Cyclingnews.com can tell you how.

As the cyclingnews.com article points out a near-insulting number of times, Wouter Weylant (Quick.Step) screwed up Boonen’s leadout a bit and brought some people down, which shook things up a bit in the finale. Boonen wasn’t biting on the inevitable, “would you have won if…” questions the press was feeding him though, giving young Roelandts full credit for a good win. Even after driving 180 kph and getting caught with a head full of blow, Boonen still manages to come across as a class act when he needs to. Momma must be proud.

Boonen was right in his praise for Roelandts’ win, but a look at the top 10 of this race shows how national championships can turn the expected order of things on their head a bit. Slipping in there at a solid 9th place is Iljo Keisse, who rides on the road for continental Topsport Vlaanderen, but actually makes the vast bulk of his cash on the track during the winter 6-day season, and 254 kilometers in the wind isn’t usually what those guys are all about. Another boy of winter also made good – standout cyclocross rider Sven Vanthourenhout (Sunweb Pro Job) sprinted his way through the mess to finish second, ahead of Eeckhout and the rest of the guys who make their living in the warmer months. Kevin Pauwels (Fidea), another member of Belgium’s dominating cyclocross contingent, was eighth.

The cyclocross crowd came up a tad short in Belgium, but north of the border in the Netherlands, Lars Boom, the current ‘cross world champion, showed who’s boss, probably leading to another round of the same lame “Boom Boom” headlines we had to endure after the ‘cross worlds. Though I have no idea how it went down, Boom’s win could bring up a touchy subject – collusion. Boom officially rides for the Rabobank Continental team, not to be confused with the Rabobank ProTour team. That’s been typical for Rabobank’s cyclocross riders, including superstar Sven Nys, over the past several years, as the management seems to want to keep the ProTour roster full of riders it can draw on for the road season, and the continental status fits the contractual structure of ‘cross racing just fine. Aside from playing host to the muddy set, the continental team also serves as a sort of development program to bring along young riders (think Thomas Dekker) until they’re ready for the ProTour squad.

But, at the national championships, you suddenly have the Rabobank ProTour squad, which features much of the prominent Dutch talent in the sport, riding the same race as the Rabobank Continental squad, which is technically a separate entity. From a sporting perspective, neither should be aiding or abetting the other, and they could probably be fined for doing so. (I believe the Lotto management had a problem with this around 2004 when they ran both the D1 team and the D2 Bodysol-Brustor teams, both bankrolled by Omega Pharma and both riding in the Belgian classics.) Again, whether or not any undue cooperation went down, I don’t know, because I haven’t seen any coverage I can read well enough to tell. Fifteen of the apparent 44 finishers (and god knows how many of the starters) rode for the big Dutch bank in some form, though, and you have to feel for the poor Skil-Shimano boys and all the scattered representatives of foreign teams in the face of that onslaught. In fact, I’d like to see the result if you asked everyone at the start line who had ever been a part of any Rabobank program to raise their hands -- it would probably look like a stadium wave.

Joining Belgium and the Netherlands in the “unexpected victor” category is Italy. Much of the pre-race talk there focused on Damiano Cunego (Lampre), who after winning Amstel Gold this year and a couple of Giros di Lombardia in the past was seen as a good bet for the classics-style course around Bergamo. Filippo Pozzatto (Liquigas) also rated some mentions, along with up-and-comer Giovanni Visconti (Quick.Step) and Ardennes specialist Davide Rebellin (Gerolsteiner). You know who wasn’t mentioned? Filippo Simeoni (Ceramiche Flaminia).

But the man best known for being chased down, shut up, and ordered back to the peloton by Lance Armstrong during the 2004 Tour de France came up with the goods, relegating Visconti, Pozzatto, and Rebellin to second through fourth, respectively, and delivering the best victory of his 37 years. The ugly little Armstrong incident that was Simeoni’s previous claim to fame allegedly took place because Simeoni was outspoken about drug use, with Armstrong arguing that he was simply using his yellow jersey power to enforce the will of the peloton in shutting Simeoni up. That may be true, but it’s also true that in doing so, Armstrong probably brought more attention to Simeoni’s prior comments than if he’d just let him go up the road and get dropped by the breakaway on his own, and through the media attention the incident generated, he gave Simeoni an even bigger platform to speak from. Whoops. That’s all old news, of course, but Simeoni has struggled since to find teams, and he’s always been thin on results, so it’s nice to see him get a big one that will let him retire on his own terms.

Not all national championships are upsets, weirdness, and surprises though. Frank Schleck (CSC) delivered in Luxembourg, beating fellow former title holder Benoit Joachim (Astana). Frank's brother Andy was fifth. The rest of the population of Luxembourg finished sixth through 109th. The German podium was a greatest hits list of that country's current pros, with Fabian Wegmann (Gerolsteiner) retaining his title by beating old Erik Zabel (Milram), young Gerald Ciolek (High Road/Columbia), scary Stefan Schumacher (Gerolsteiner), and respected Jens Voigt (CSC). France’s championship was hotly contested as always – unlike a lot of countries, there aren’t one or two superpower French teams to fight it out amongst themselves, just a slew of O.K. teams. It keeps their national championships interesting, but makes the Tour de France kind of sad, in a way. Anyway, Nicholas Vogondy (Agritubel) won for the second time in his career, so he’ll probably try to win the Tour stage on Bastille Day too. It’s a contractual requirement for the French jersey wearer – it’s stitched into the lining, along with a wedge of brie and a lingering sense of persecution.

And finally, there’s Spain. Oh what an electric day there – with the national soccer team facing off Sunday night against Germany in the Euro 2008 final, I’m betting the cycling championships weren’t getting terribly much airplay. After all, Spain was looking to erase decades of underperformance on the pitch, with its last major victory coming 44 years ago in the European championship. They managed to pull it off with a well-played 1-0 win. Speaking of long years of underperformance, Oscar Sevilla (Rock Racing) finished second to Alejandro Valverde (Caisse d’Epargne) in the Spanish road racing championships. That’s right – we came within a tick of seeing the horror of a Spanish national champion’s kit as rendered by the chief designers of Rock & Republic. So I think we should all join together and thank Valverde for saving us from that, and maybe congratulate him on his win as well.

Crazy Train

There’s plenty of blathering online today about an extremely disturbing turn in Belgian classics star Tom Boonen’s career. That’s right: the 27-year-old Quick.Step standout has been caught holding contract negotiations with the French Bouygues Telecom squad.

He also apparently tested positive for cocaine, but as you can see, that’s the least of his problems. Sure, developing a taste for the Bolivian marching powder could potentially send his cobbled career off the rails, but signing for Bouygues is like hiring the Grateful Dead to drive your locomotive. I suspect there might be some sort of causal relationship between these two transgressions, but I’m not yet sure which way it goes: does the possibility of riding for Jean-Rene Bernaudeau’s band of loveable losers make you turn to drugs, or does bumping a few lines in the disco toilet make leaving the world’s most powerful classics squad for the basement of the ProTour suddenly seem like a good idea?

It seems that, like the cocaine issue, Boonen is not rushing to deny these vicious Bouygues negotiation charges. And that’s disappointing, because in the world of professional cycling, not issuing some sort of denial is just plain lazy. By now, some 24 hours after the news broke, any self-respecting American pro would have set up a web site that takes PayPal donations, completed a chart-filled PowerPoint presentation, started an online petition for something, and established a charity benefiting French gout victims. Where’s the work ethic?

But we can’t hold Boonen to our standards, cultural differences being what they are and all, so for now, we’ll just have to assume that he’s actually considering riding for the Tour de France’s charity of choice. That leaves us to ponder the question of why.

Money is the simplest explanation, and as some guy theorized, in so many words, the simplest explanation is usually the right one. But how much money does Bouygues have? I’d imagine that Bouygues would have to bring in additional sponsors to cover bringing Boonen over, which they might be able to do if they searched out the right (read: Belgian) ones. But then they’d also have to come up with the scratch to sign the 3-5 guys he’d likely want to bring along to secure some decent help up north in the springtime, and those guys can cost a bit more coin than, say, Erki Putsep. Sure, current Bouygues boys Stef Clement (a recent acquisition from Dutch Skil-Shimano) and even team poster-boy Thomas Voeckler can ride decently in the classics, and the team has a lot of promising young talent in that department. But they also benefit from shouldering none of the responsibility for making these races. When you sign Boonen, that all changes, and they’d need some significant, seasoned reinforcement to not be portrayed as the team that costs him victories.

Aside from money, there really doesn’t seem to be another compelling reason for Boonen to go to Bouygues Telecom. Some will probably speculate that he’s looking to foreign teams in order to escape the glare of the Belgian press, whose persistent attentions he’s had problems with ever since he came third in his first Paris-Roubaix. But that’s a hollow argument. Boonen’s big targeted races (e.g., Flanders, Roubaix, the Tour) will be the same, whether he’s riding for Bouygues or a Belgian squad, or an Italian one, for that matter. With Bouygues, he might spend more time riding French Cup races at the expense of the E3-Harelbeke or the Scheldeprijs, but it’s not going to save him much scrutiny at this point. And the pressure to perform at the Tour and Roubaix will only be higher, as both the French and Belgian fans look to him to supply results. Basically, Tom Boonen is Tom Boonen, and the media will continue to follow him around no matter what jersey he’s wearing, how bizarre he decides to make his personal life, or how distant he becomes from the talent that made him famous. Kind of like Michael Jackson.

The only other thing I can think of is that the French and Belgian governments have forced the teams enter into some sort of circuitous, NFL/MLB/NBA-style player trading scheme (you know – “we’ve traded so-and-so for these two guys, a second-round draft pick in 2011, and a box of Cheez-Its”). The signs of this system, which redistributes the wealth of Belgian classics riders, started appearing late last year, when Quick-Step (Belgian) traded Nick Nuyens to Cofidis (French). In exchange, Francaise de Jeux (French) is sending Walloon Philippe Gilbert back up north to Silence-Lotto (Belgian) next year. But Gilbert would have to be worth a hell of a lot if his return to the homeland cost Belgium Boonen’s services. That makes me suspect that Belgium has offered Boonen up to France in exchange for keeping a player to be named later -- longshot Tour de France hope Stijn Devolder (Quick.Step) -- riding for a home team. After all, Belgium’s on a bit of a dry spell in that department since Eddy retired.

Kidding aside, I have to wonder how serious these negotiations between Boonen and Bouygues might have been. After all, Bernaudeau’s teams (Bonjour and Brioches La Boulangere before Bouygues) have long had a stated mission of developing young, French talent. Though they have signed a few foreigners of late, bringing in big, seasoned, Belgian talent is pretty drastic departure their usual M.O., and that’s the M.O. that will guarantee them a Tour de France slot long after the imminent demise of the ProTour system. Time will tell, of course, and again, all kidding aside, here’s hoping that Boonen gets his personal act together and comes back stronger for it. It looks like he’ll have the time to do so – as I write this, ASO has announced that he is no longer welcome at the Tour de France.

Amstel Gold: The Italian Dilemma

Watching the Amstel Gold Race on Sunday morning gave me a bit of deja vu, somehow sucking me right back to 2005. It wasn’t just the race that triggered the flashbacks, but rather the combination of watching the familiar scenes around Maastricht and stepping out briefly into the weather outside my own front door.

Here in the mid-Atlantic United States, it was one of those grey spring days with twilight from dawn to dusk and drenching rain showers blowing through every hour. Even in those interludes when it didn’t look to be raining, I was greeted by those huge, soaking rogue drops that make me look above for a dripping tree, only to get a clear view of a cloudy sky hovering like a low ceiling over the horizon. They were the type of clouds you could have ridden up into if there were a decent hill around, but standing in the flatlands, you could only peer out through the mist sandwiched between them and soaked ground.

With the rain pounding the orange tulips flat out in the lawn and the scenes of the Cauberg playing out on the computer screen, it was easy to make the mental leap back to the grey Amstel of 2005. Back then, I was perched shivering on top of that nasty little hill in a press room located in a white, corrugated steel building. Sitting in a metal building on a wet 50 degree day is a bit chilly, but the facilities were a lesson in effective truck-based service provision. Out one side of the building, a pink and black T-Mobile truck was pumping out the wi-fi signal necessary to get text and pictures out of the Ardennes hills, while a trailer on the other side housed what must have been one of the world’s finest port-o-johns. It had everything: urinals, stalls, toilet paper, running water, soap, flowers, and a 60-year-old woman who would hop up off her stool in the corner to wipe down the urinal as soon as you stepped away, making you feel somehow guilty even if you’d been exceptionally careful. And, of course, there was the Amstel truck, keeping the assembled press in good spirits by continually restocking the in-suite bar. I’m not really sure where the sandwiches and coffee were coming from, but I was certainly glad they were there.

Not everything functioned as well as the press room in 2005 though. Unlike this year’s edition, that one was held in the same eternal twilight, chilly air, and rain that blanketed the mid-Atlantic yesterday, as well as an intense fog that grounded the TV helicopters, preventing the camera motos from transmitting any live television signals. By the time the fixed position cameras on the Cauberg kicked in, we were running from the press room to that bridge you can see in the coverage to see what the race looked like, since we’d only have three chances all day.

Yes, indeed, despite the similarities in weather, there were several differences between my Amstel Gold 2005 and 2008 experiences. I saw more of the race this year, made my own coffee, and the wi-fi signal was Verizon instead of T-Mobile. The plumbing is inside the house, and if there’s a need for wiping down the toilet, I’ll likely be told in no uncertain terms to do it my damn self. But as far as the winners, there were some similarities to be had.

In 2005, the winner was Danilo Diluca (then Liguigas, now LPR), an Italian who despite his classics success always dreamed of winning the Giro d’Italia. He went on to take Flèche Wallonne on Wednesday, but came up short at Liege-Bastogne-Liege, thus failing to repeat the incredible Ardennes sweep that countryman Davide Rebellin (Gerolsteiner) had achieved the year before. Though he failed to complete the triple that year, Diluca would return in 2007 to take his Liege before going on to realize his Giro d’Italia win, snapping closed the mouths of people like me, who always thought (and sometimes said) that he was just kidding himself.

Diluca’s Giro goal was easy to dismiss, if only because several other Italians with similar profiles and better results – Michele Bartoli, Paolo Bettini, and Davide Rebellin – had previously chased the same dream and failed. Further, once they finally cast off the shackles of grand tour expectations and surrendered to the idea that they were classics riders, and great ones at that, their careers leapt forward. Sure, we were dismissive, but we were just acting in Diluca’s best interests.

Despite the weight of history being against him, Diluca somehow (and many people continue to question just how) made it work, as has 2008 winner Damiano Cunego (Lampre), who now boasts the same Giro d’ Italia/Giro di Lombardia/Amstel Gold lines on his resume as Diluca. The difference between Cunego’s grand tour/classic equation, Diluca’s, and Bettini, Bartoli, and Rebellin’s, however, is that he’s approached it from opposite direction. Unlike his countrymen, who all notched classics before getting grand tour ideas, Cunego tasted his first big success at the 2004 Giro d’Italia, where he won four stages and the overall, and succeeded in pissing off Gilberto Simoni to no end (the former being much more difficult than the latter). He went on to take the first of his two Giro di Lombardia titles that fall, which capped off a year that also saw him win the Giro del Trentino and a host of Italian semi-classics: the GP Industria & Artigianato-Larciano, Giro dell’Appennino, GP Nobili Rubinetterie, and the GP Fred Mengoni.

But promising classics results be damned – you win a grand tour at 23, and you’ll hear only one whisper in your ear, the one that says “Tour de France.” Cunego did manage to capture the white jersey of the best young rider at that event last summer, but for someone with a three-year-old maglia rosa hanging on their wall already, that’s a bit of a hollow victory. He’s tried to recapture the magic at the Giro d’Italia several times as well, but to no avail.

So now more than ever, the whisperers are starting to go the other way on Cunego, telling him that, hey, maybe he’s a classics rider after all. And that’s really pissing him off, according to this post-Amstel article by VeloNews’ Andrew Hood. Frankly, Cunego can be irritated all he wants, but when you’re a 5’4” Italian with a good little kick, a pair of Lombardias and an Ardennes win under your belt, you start looking a hell of a lot more like Paolo Bettini than Paolo Savoldelli.

With Cunego mounting an all-out bid for the Tour this year, going so far in his mission as to buck the Italian dogma and forgo the Giro, July could hold all the answers for the 26-year-old. If he meets with success there, he’ll no doubt start developing insidious habits like showing up in low-speed wind tunnels and spending perfectly good spring classics seasons riding deserted Tour de France climbs with an unmarked car and a film crew behind him. He also will have pulled off something pretty unique in modern cycling – going from grand tour winner, to classics star, and back to grand tour winner. So far, even Diluca has only gone in one direction.

All of that, of course, would be phenomenal, and would make for a career profile not seen since Bernard Hinault (no, various combinations of Vueltas and Clasicas San Sebastian don’t count for entrance to the grand tour/classic pantheon). But if Cunego falls a bit too short in his Tour bid, that bit of failure could open up the door to a set of classics palmares that, with a good 10 more years yet to develop could put many of his predecessors to shame.

Parting Shots

• I watched Sunday’s race courtesy of free service on cycling.tv. The picture was pretty good, and the commentary has come a long way over the years – they’re no longer giving shoutouts to fans while the crucial attacks are going down. Chapeau. I’m not sure whether Amstel was supposed to be free, or whether they just opened up the feed as a result of the same subscriber login problems they had last Sunday for Paris-Roubaix. Obviously, as a non-subscriber, the free access works great for me. But if I had paid $100 for a subscription to access races that are now being aired for free, I’d be fairly irritated, to say the least. I wonder if they’re getting significant blowback along those lines or whether, in a state of lowered expectations, subscribers are just happy to be able to see the feed at all?
  
  
• During the final sprint, and well after it, the commentators were getting all riled up because they thought the caravan diversion along the left side of the straight was confusing for riders and affecting the final sprint. They were looking at the moto shot at the time and got themselves in such a fluff that they missed the overhead shot, which showed that Cunego, Schleck, and Valverde never really came close to going that way, and that the guys waving them the right direction were actually spread out over 100 meters or so. Easy to forget how the moto shot foreshortens everything, eh? I can’t remember exactly, but I’m pretty sure the diversion has been there for awhile – places to cut off on top of the Cauberg aren’t exactly plentiful.
  
  
• The shot capturing the left turn onto the Keutenberg on the last lap was pretty good. For me, that climb was perhaps the most shocking during a drive of the course. From a fairly main road, you turn onto one a hair wider than a golf cart path, more poorly maintained, and which tilts upwards like the driveway to Uncle Zeke’s mountain hideaway. When you hit the top, it’s still narrow, but dead flat and completely exposed to any hint of a breeze that may be stirring in the greater Netherlands/Germany/Belgium corridor, and the shoulders are mucky ruts. Fun stuff.
  
  
• It’s been noted elsewhere that this is the first time Cunego has ridden the Amstel Gold. That makes his victory more impressive, since making it to the finish line without getting lost is a viable goal for your first year here. There are actually points on the course with arrows pointing one direction, a second set pointing the other direction, and a third set below that pointing back in the first direction. Sure, it’s decipherable if you’re studying the map and moving at Florida-retiree-in-a-Cadillac pace, but when you’ve got other things on your mind, like racing your bike or getting to the press room to pee, things can get confusing in a hurry.
  
  
• I’d give the “know thyself” awards for Amstel go to Frank Schleck (CSC) and Davide Rebellin (Gerolsteiner). For differing reasons, both of them knew they wouldn’t be able to win a drag race up the Cauberg with Cunego and Valverde, and took their chances with attacks in the lead up. Schleck even managed to save enough to give it a go with Cunego in the sprint (though it turns out that was an order from the car), but the result would likely have been the same even if he’d tempered his aggression earlier on. It’s nice to see riders not just waiting for the bottom of the Cauberg and hoping for the best.
  
  
• Thomas Dekker put in a credible ride to finish in the break for home team Rabobank, which is always itchy for a victory in the only Dutch classic. But Dekker clearly wasn’t in the hunt for victory, a fact confirmed by the outstanding if unsuccessful ride put in by his young teammate Robert Gesink, who pulled extremely hard for a long time trying to get Oscar Freire into position for a Cauberg sprint. The look of effort on Gesink’s face was priceless.

Classics Interlude Update

With the cobbled classics in the books and the Ardennes classics yet to begin, it seems like a good time to look back at the last month here at the Service Course and see how some of the subjects we’ve explored have developed.

On March 21, we took a look at victory salutes, and pointed out that rule number one was to never, ever raise your arms until you were absolutely sure you’d won. Clearly, Tom Boonen (Quick.Step) did not read that particular article, because at this morning’s Scheldeprijs (a.k.a. the Grand Prix de l'Escaut), Tornado Tom threw the guns in the air just a bit early, allowing Mark Cavendish (High Road) to squirt by him. Feeling a bit invincible after Paris-Roubaix, are we?

Even further back on March 10, the Service Course discussed the industry spat du jour, the Cannondale versus Specialized war of words, which played out in a highly discussed Cannondale advertisement. People seem to enjoy a bit of industry polemics, and the dispute gave us hits from a number of people Googling things like “Shannon Sakamoto Specialized” and “Specialized stealing Cannondale engineers,” so the ad did have some effect in raising awareness if not necessarily swaying any loyalties. That was all quite awhile ago now, but apparently the hurt feelings have yet to heal. Evidence comes in the form of this article on the Bicycle Retailer and Industry News site today. I say less whining, more designing.

Speaking of Google-y ways people get to this site, the most interesting search to lead to a hit last month was undoubtedly “Museeuw hair piece.” I don’t believe the Lion of Flanders’ follicular status has been addressed here, but I guess we had enough of the terms to make that little aberration happen. And if that wayward reader happens to stop back by, I’m pretty sure Johan has plugs, not a piece. The installation of said plugs may have lead to the regrettable do-rag incident at the 2000 Paris-Roubaix. Or maybe not, but it’s hard to imagine a classics specialist embracing Marco Pantani as his style maven unless there were extenuating circumstances. And besides, he’s retired – leave the poor man’s hairline be.

March also found us wondering if, after changing the name, the location, and the date of a race, you can still claim that it’s the same event. And on April 11, we got our answer: it doesn’t matter, because there’s not going to be a race anyway. Yes, the U.S. Open of Cycling, previously slated for late May in Rhode Island (previously known as the U.S. Open Cycling Championship held in April in Virginia) won’t be held anywhere, at any time, under any name in 2008. But we look forward to hearing the plan for 2009.

In a more recent entry discussing the plight of Spanish classics riders in the wake of Oscar Freire’s (Rabobank) Gent-Wevelgem win, I speculated that part of the reason Spain doesn’t turn out a great many such riders is that, after they’re forced out to foreign teams, the Spanish media doesn’t report much about their exploits. Freire’s teammate and fellow expat Juan Antonio Flecha (Rabobank) reinforced that theory the very next day in this little snippet on cyclingnews.com. Seems that his podium place at Flanders getting footnote billing under the daily results from Pais Vasco miffed Flecha a bit. After getting left for dead by his team at Paris-Roubaix, he’s not in any better mood a week later.

Finally, just prior to the start of the cobbled classics, I offered some suggestions on what to drink as you enjoyed whatever coverage you could squeeze out of the internet and Versus. There was some wiggle room in those suggestions, depending on whether you wanted to go for an authentic spectator experience or go a bit more upscale. With the coming of the first Ardennes classic, there is really no choice. It is, after all, the Amstel Gold Race. But apparently those wily Dutch don’t think that Americans will tolerate a fully caloried beer, so unfortunately, our only choice stateside is the ubiquitious Amstel Light. I’m not sure if that means that news of the American obesity epidemic doesn’t make it to CNN International, or that it does, and the Dutch are trying to do us a favor. Either way, the combination of a beer sponsorship and a race route that looks like it was laid out by a drunk trying to find his house after last call just feels right.

Paddling Toward the Waterfall

So, that was Paris-Roubaix 2008. What more can you say about it? Plenty, and the cycling media will be busy cranking out those stories for the next week (web) or month (print), resulting in a volume of words eclipsed only by the Paris-Roubaix discussions already raging in online discussion forums. Whatever the venue, expect suspect answers to such questions as:

Why do people who should know better insist on using deep carbon wheels for Roubaix?

Who is Martijn Maaskant, the least talked about but most effective member of Slipstream's classics squad?

Now that he has undeniably good team support, can we switch to “mechanical problems” as the official George Hincapie post-Paris-Roubaix discussion subject?

And, most importantly…

Was Cannondale secretly behind the de-cornrow-ization of Pippo Pozzato? Because that hairdo was a PR nightmare.

Yes sir, the implications and speculations will be flying around for a week or so, until the Ardennes classics come along and give people something else to think about.

In an effort to not get caught up in the rampant over-analysis that inevitably follows Paris-Roubaix, I’ll offer just one observation: You know that Fabian Cancellara (CSC) and Alessandro Ballan (Lampre) had to be riding those last 40 kilometers thinking, “Seriously? We’re just going to rotate through like we’re on a well-oiled training ride, and bring Tom Boonen into a sprint on the velodrome?”

We’ve all had those moments, both on and off the bike, in which we’ve actively played a leading role in our own demise, gallantly paddling the canoe towards the waterfall while the natives look on expectantly from the banks. We know what’s going to happen if we don’t stop doing what we’re doing, but for any number of reasons, we’re powerless to change course.

If bicycle racing occurred in a pain vacuum, Ballan would have attacked Boonen over the waning cobbles at the Carrefour de l’Arbre, Hem, and Gruson, and Cancellara would have mustered his resources for one of his late race, 4-kilometer dashes to the line. But it doesn’t, and they didn’t. Ballan and Cancellara (and Boonen) would have known that Boonen would eat them alive in the sprint, but without the strength to try one more attack, to dig deep one more time, all the tactical savvy in the world doesn’t mean a damn thing. So there was little to do but keep moving towards the velodrome, hand Boonen a fork and napkin, and get on with it. And if they went straight to the table like good little boys, maybe they get to keep their podium places.

Those who have to wait until the Versus coverage next Sunday to see Paris-Roubaix should be sure to stick it out to the sprint, even though the results will be stale news by then. The resignation of the two men to their fate as they roll toward the velodrome is both frustrating and beautiful. You want the attacks to come, for Boonen’s competitors to fight for their lives, but Ballan and Cancellara have already done what they can. There isn’t an attack left in either, and they’re left to wait for that dinner bell that signals one lap to go. And when Boonen starts his sprint before the last corner, it’s like seeing a starving man enter the Old Country Buffet – he goes in, jumps the whole line, and five seconds later there’s not a crumb left.

And that’s what keeps bicycle racing interesting – it takes time-tested tactical dogma and then complicates it by introducing human strength and weakness to the mix. People say professional cycling is like chess, but that only covers one part of the equation. It’s a game of chess that you can actually lose because you don’t have the strength to move your piece.

Parting Shots:

• For the past few decades, prevailing wisdom was that old guys had an advantage at Roubaix, with riders like Museeuw, Tchmil, Tafi, Duclos-Lassalle, and Van Petegem winning well into their 30s. No so this year. In fact, this is a podium you could conceivably see for the next six years or so. Seems like the generational shift is finally complete.
  
• It looks like George Hincapie had a special Giant ready in case of mud, but didn't have to use it in light of the dry conditions. Maybe he should have - it had normal wheels. Here's a tip for the High Road mechanics: the cobbles are still hard and terribly uneven whether it's raining or not.
  
• I have to wonder if, throughout Italy, cycling discussion forums are ablaze with empassioned arguments bemoaning how Ballan could have won Paris-Roubaix if he only had more team support. Or can they really be that different from us?
  
• After having even more login problems than usual, cycling.tv apparently opened the feed up for free. Good on them for that, at least. Fortunately for those of us who just don't bother anymore, the fine folks at cyclingfans.com had also identified another feed that worked well.
  
• Versus's decision to run Paris-Roubaix coverage a full week after the event is strange at best. I guess they've found that a starving man will eat what he's served, when it's served to him. And they may be right. But you have to suspect that someone who understands cycling has left the network. The Tour of Flanders is undoubtedly a great race, the paramount classic in some minds, like mine, and was shown on the same day it ran. But for pure name-brand power in one-day races for the American audience, you can't top Paris-Roubaix, so it's hard to understand the decision to delay coverage. Must be the hockey playoffs.

Marlin Fishing and Paris-Roubaix

When I worked at a bike shop in high school, there were a few years when the owner took the staff on a deep-sea fishing trip as an end-of-season celebration. At 4:00 am, we’d show up bleary-eyed at the marina, where the charter’s diesel would already be rumbling, then cast off towards the Gulf Stream in search of mahi-mahi and marlin.

Those trips are always a long day out, but conditions and events always conspired to make ours even longer. Our charter was an older, single engine boat. That made the trips to fishing waters slower (thus the early departure), and a few hours after we left the dock the newer twin-engine boats would roar past us. But that was expected; other things weren’t. Like the time we broke the rudder linkage about 60 miles offshore as we backed down on a 300+ pound blue marlin. We landed the fish, but a rudder rigged by bike mechanics with hose clamps and bungee cords--on a single-engine boat--makes for a less-than-direct trip home. The next year, we were caught in a storm and Gilliganed our way home over 15 foot swells while half the staff puked below decks.

After 20 hours of diesel engine drone on a rolling boat, standing back in the parking lot of the marina felt so quiet, so still, that it was disarming. As I stepped off the boat and walked towards the car, it was like someone had stolen my senses. Everything was suddenly muted. The sensation was almost the opposite of what I’d expect – the absolutely solid ground under my feet made me feel like I was floating.

I found myself thinking of those trips 12 years later as I pedaled along the roads around Denain, just after I'd hopped my bike (or, rather, Specialized's bike) over the asphalt lip separating the end of the Haveluy cobbles from the pavement beyond. Marlin fishing and riding bicycles on cobblestones don’t have terribly much in common, except maybe getting wet and the distinct possibility of hurting yourself. But on this occasion, they collided in my mind for a single, unifying reason – while both are extremely vivid experiences in the moment, they produce perhaps their most striking sensation by simply being over.

After having my eyeballs rattled in their sockets, my hands jarred, and my posterior hammered by an unfamiliar saddle for the 2.5 kilometers of Haveluy, the ordinary, unremarkable French asphalt felt bizarrely smooth. Almost pillowy. The vibration that hd made its way into my ear canals and manifested itself as sound was gone, I could fully close my hands around the bars again, and everything was quiet and smooth. Hitting that first sector of the day, without warning and at speed, was pure sensory shock-and-awe in its own right, but the exit was far more memorable. It was almost exactly like stepping off the fishing boat onto the midnight docks of Rudee Inlet – suddenly silent, unsettlingly still, and somehow surreal. Like floating.

That feeling – which I would experience three more times as we exited the Trouée d’Arenberg, Wallers, and Hornaing sectors – got me thinking about the odd, unspoken paradox of Paris-Roubaix. Namely, that after some 250+ kilometers, this anachronism, this cruel, jarring, dusty, muddy, jackhammer of a course crowns its winner not on uneven cobblestones or bog-standard asphalt, but on cycling’s most sublimely smooth and sanitized surface, the velodrome.

Absent a solo escape, victory at Roubaix requires winning performances on two almost diametrically opposed surfaces. To heft that most weighty of trophies, competitors have to endure and excel on 52.7 kilometers of cobblestones (this year) that are nearly pancake-flat. That much is well known.

What’s often forgotten is that, at the end of it all, they must push the mud and stones from their minds, and try to conjure up a few long-ago memories, if they have any, of track racing. Then they have to adapt them to account for riding a geared bike. Better to sneak through the inside in the final turn? Or take the high line and use the trip down the banking to accelerate? Who is the strongest in the group? It’s a good thing the velodrome is smooth – that kind of thinking is harder on the pave when your brain is rattling around in its casing.

The new Paris Roubaix book from VeloPress (which damn near everybody has reviewed already) draws heavily on the race's “Hell of the North” nickname in order to talk about it in religious terms. The authors fittingly dub the first sector of cobbles at Troisvilles “the gates of Hell,” and go on to tell the stories of the race lightly couched in the language of Christian theology. That they manage to string these metaphors together pretty smoothly throughout the book to create an engaging and not-religiously-offensive narrative is a testament to their skill and experience.

But that narrative focuses almost exclusively on the descent into Dante’s inferno, with riders sinking a circle deeper with each successive sector. Only when riders reach the famed concrete showers do they find salvation. That fits fine with the structure of the book, but I’d argue that redemption begins a bit earlier than that.

When the riders have crossed the last truly hellish cobbles at Hem, they begin their ascent, crossing the 300 meters of even ornamental cobbles of Roubaix’s main street, then riding the tarmac once more, and finally making the right-hand turn onto the blessedly smooth concrete track. Having taken far more of a beating than I did in my brief cobblestone experience, I'm not sure if they notice the floating sensation that stuck in my mind. But if being on a velodrome rather than some Napoleonic washboard of a road doesn’t make them feel like they’ve sprouted wings for the trip to see Saint Peter, they can listen to the cheering chorus of angels ringing in their ears as they do their one-lap-plus and pause in the grassy infield to take it all in.

By the time they get to the showers, they’ve long since left hell and passed through the gates of heaven.

Un Rey de los Adoquines? ¿Por qué no?

Make a few cracks about Spanish classics riders on Tuesday, and Oscar Freire wins Gent-Wevelgem on Wednesday. That’s just great. Though in my defense, I did intentionally exclude Freire and his key man Flecha from that discussion to guard against just this eventuality. But, even though it was Freire taking out the win, it does mark the first Spanish victory in Gent-Wevelgem, and the first Spanish victory in any of the cobbled Flanders-Roubaix week races. Have the floodgates opened to a string of Spanish classics victories?

Probably not.

Freire may be the first Spanish winner to net one of the three biggest cobbled classics, but he missed out on being the first Spaniard to win a big Belgian classic. That honor goes to Igor Astarloa, who became the first Spanish winner of the mid-Ardennes week Fleche-Wallonne in 2003. I guess the Spanish ride better on Wednesdays than Sundays? Maybe it’s a religious thing. Astarloa has another point in common with Freire in that he’s also worn the rainbow jersey, earning his in Hamilton, Ontario, the same year as his Fleche win. Of course, Freire has won an astonishing three of those fancy shirts, some Milan-San Remos, and a host of stages to go along with them. Astarloa, not so much.

Regardless of their career trajectories, probably the most telling similarity between Freire and Astarloa has been their choice of teams during their respective 11 and 9 year careers. With the exception of Freire’s first two seasons with the Vitalicio Seguros squad, at the conclusion of which he won his first world championship, neither has since ridden for a Spanish team. With the rainbow stripes boosting his market value, no home team was willing to pay Freire his worth, so he went off to the Italo-Belgian Mapei-Quick.Step for three years, and then to Dutch team Rabobank ever since.

While Freire opened his career at home, Astarloa didn’t even do his stagiare ride for a Spanish team. Instead, he did his test run with the Swiss Riso Scotti-Vinavil squad in 1999 before signing his first pro contract with Mercatone Uno in 2000. After two years there, he stayed in Italy, signing for Saeco-Longoni Sport, where he had his fantastic 2003 season. For 2004, Cofidis was stocking up on world champions, and signed both David Millar and Astarloa, but Astarloa quickly jumped ship to Lampre when Cofidis pulled its team from competition on the eve of the 2004 Paris-Roubaix. The Cofidis scandal would eventually cost Millar his jersey and a couple of years on the bench, while Astarloa would spend an anonymous year with Lampre before moving on to the allegedly South African Barloworld squad during its modest early years. After a couple of years in the hinterlands, a win in Milano-Torino was enough to gain him a ride with Milram, where he remains today.

So here we have two riders who, in the scope of the last 9 years, have given Spain four world championships and some of its biggest professional victories. And in that time, neither has ridden for a Spanish team. Why don’t Spanish teams want classics riders? I think it’s due to Miguel Indurain Disease (MID). MID is very similar to the malady known on this side of the pond as Lance Armstrong Disease (LAD). The common thread is a nation having one rider so dominate the collective consciousness for so long that people begin equating that rider’s specialty with bike racing itself. And in both cases, that means stage racing, not winning burly one-day classics. MID, which is principally tied to GC victories, is rendered far more potent by the long Spanish legacy of spindly climbers who, despite their inability to win the grand tours, make a good living genuflecting across their mountaintop finish lines.

What makes MID even more dangerous is that the Spanish don’t build antibodies to it; instead, due to the nature of the disease, they just keep getting re-infected. Young Spanish riders watch the current Spanish professional squads, dream of success in the mountains of the grand tours, and focus their attention there. Young talent is groomed for the hills, not the crosswinds. The Spanish teams and their sponsors know that the Alps, the Pyrenees, and the Dolomites are where the fans will expect them to make their mark, so yet another “Next Indurain” is signed while proven classics contenders are exported to Italy and the north. And there they stay, because even if the Spanish teams would pay them, they wouldn’t have the support they need in their races, because everybody’s too busy preparing to ride five mountain passes a day. While they’re outside the Spanish border, their day-to-day exploits go underreported to their countrymen, and the cycle starts again.

If the next Oscar Freire is coming up through the Spanish ranks right now, I can guarantee you someone’s jabbering in his earpiece trying to make him the next Iban Mayo. Meanwhile, Flecha, Freire, Barredo, Reynes and others are dispersed among the northern teams, more appreciated by a host of Flemish lunatics than their countrymen until it’s time to hoist the flag at the World Championships. Venga, venga, venga.

(If you want to see the reverse, look at Belgium’s recent grand tour history versus their role in the one-day classics. I believe it’s called the Johan Museeuw Disease (JMD).)

But back to Spain. People like to use the phrase, “exception that proves the rule.” I’m never sure exactly what they mean, and I don’t think they are either, but in this case, I’m pretty sure that exception is Alejandro Valverde. Despite winning both Fleche Wallonne and Liege-Bastogne-Liege in 2006, he somehow still rides for Caisse D’Epargne and, in fact, has not ridden for a non-Spanish team in his career. I think that’s because, in spite of his sprint, his palmares, and his lack of time-trialing ability, he has just enough high-mountain staying power that people continue to whisper “Vuelta a Francia” in his ear.

God bless him, Valverde is doing his best to fight MID by winning sprints and generally being an exciting rider, but the disease just keeps recurring. Every half-decent time trial and second place mountaintop finish is like Miguel himself sneezing in his face. And like LAD, MID is a tough illness to kick. Over here, many in the competitive cycling community have hoped that a big win from George Hincapie (High Road) in the classics could provide the antidote to LAD, but so far, the results aren’t propitious. An unexpected win from Tyler Hamilton in Liege-Bastogne-Liege looked promising, but that research later proved to be flawed. However, if we learn from the MID work the Spanish have conducted with Freire and Astarloa, it looks as if Hincapie could win Paris-Roubaix three times this Sunday, and we’d still be a long way from finding the cure. I’m thinking of starting a charity ride.

Gent-Wevelgem

Doing the Triple

Sandwiched between two monuments, the Ronde van Vlaanderen and Paris-Roubaix, the mid-week Belgian classic Gent-Wevelgem would seem ripe for getting the short end of the stick when it comes to participation by the peloton’s big guns. Riders targeting Paris-Roubaix could justifiably head straight from the Ronde finish in Meerbeke down to Compeigne, begin scoping out cobbled sectors, and count on those recon rides and their Ronde kilometers to put them on the boil for Sunday in Hell. In the past, it’s an option that more than one cobble specialist has exercised.

And who could blame them? Last year, the larger of Gent-Wevelgem’s two hills, the Kemmelberg, caused havoc in the peloton, not so much on the climb as on the cobbled descent. Crashes split the peloton on both trips down the hill in 2007, causing injuries serious enough to interrupt the seasons of several riders, including Tyler Farrar (then Cofidis, now Slipstream) and Matt Hayman (Rabobank). Though last year was particularly notable for its carnage, it’s never exactly been a relaxing coast through the woods. This year, however, organizers have chosen to route the course around the most dangerous portion, substituting an apparently sketchy right turn at the bottom of a paved descent for the eyeball-rattling cobbled downhill. Tomorrow will tell whether the cure proves worse than the disease.

But despite the danger just days ahead of Roubaix, and despite the fact that Gent-Wevelgem has never carried the same World Cup/ProTour/UCI points or prestige as the weekend heavies, a few teams still come out on Wednesday morning loaded for bear. Witness High Road, for example, which will hit the start line in Dienze with not only 2001 winner and perennial classics favorite George Hincapie and 2003 winner Andreas Klier, but also 2007 runner up Roger Hammond, 2001 Paris-Roubaix winner Servais Knaven, Tour Down Under winner Andre Griepel, on-form sprinters Mark Cavendish and Bernhard Eisel, and Vincent Reynes. Hold on, Vincent Reynes? Can you tell who got the call-up to replace the team’s injured 2007 Gent-Wevelgem winner Marcus Burghardt? Even without Burghardt, though, that’s a team that should have every expectation of coming home with a trophy Wednesday evening.

Quick.Step isn’t pulling any punches either, with Tom Boonen attending despite his focus on bringing home a second Roubaix title. It’s worth remembering that Boonen had his breakout classics win at Gent-Wevelgem in apocalyptic conditions in 2004. Along with Boonen, the team is also bringing Ronde hero Stijn Devolder out for a curtain call, as well as Gert Steegmans, who could certainly take Gent himself on a good day. To that trio, they add their usual battle-hardened classics support staff of Steven De Jongh, Wilfried Cretskens, Kevin Hulsmans, Matteo Tosatto, and Wouter Weylandt. So, even at a 2-1 disadvantage to High Road in the previous winners department, they'll will be shouldering plenty of hopes for the home crowd.

According to the organizer’s provisional start list, a few Roubaix hopefuls are taking a pass, including Leif Hoste (Silence-Lotto, who gives up leadership for this sprinters’ classic to Robbie McEwen), Nick Nuyens (Cofidis), and Fabian Cancellara and Stuey O’Grady (CSC), and Philippe Gilbert (FDJeux) (*update - Cancellara, O'Grady, and Gilbert all ended up taking the start this morning). But many of the heavy hitters for the spring are manning up and making it a full week, including the aforementioned Quick.Step and High Road riders, Alessandro Ballan (Lampre), Filippo Pozzato (Liquigas), and defending Gent-Wevelgem champion Thor Hushovd (Credit Agricole). I’m glad they are. If only in a very small way, it harkens back to a time when the sport wasn't quite so specialized, when riders didn’t target a single race as the focus of the year, and when you got to see the same group of riders face off more than once or twice a year.

Southern Discomfort

Naturally, the media focuses on the favorites around this time of year – the Quick.Steps, the Silence-Lottos, the High Roads. And to a lesser extent, on those upstart teams that could make a splash, like Slipstream. Nobody tends to focus on the people that don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell. Or a Spaniard’s chance in the Hell of the North, as the case may be. And no, Juan Antonio Flecha and Oscar Freire don’t count, because they’ve been excommunicated from their own country and adopted by the Dutch.

As a result, we have stories out there about every Belgian on every team riding themselves into the ground all spring to make the team selection for the Ronde or Paris-Roubaix. We have stories of agony when they don’t, and of elation (and sometimes more agony) when they do. But what’s going on inside a Euskaltel-Euskadi or a Caisse d’ Epargne in those last weeks of March, when the decisions have to be made about who packs their bags for the flight to Brussels?

Somehow, I always picture them sitting around a table, maybe in the service course, under a bare lightbulb, shivering a bit from the chill as they draw straws. I know that’s not how it happens, but the image works for me.


That said, the Spanish did have three riders in the top 10 of Gent-Wevelgem last year, if we're kind and include Freire's 3rd place. Francisco Ventoso was 4th, and Joaquin Rojas was 9th. That's more riders in the top 10 than any other country.

The Media Note

It may be the “smallest” classic of this week, but Gent-Wevelgem has probably the nicest press facilities of the three. And by nicest, I mean the four things the media values most – free coffee, beer, and food, and indoor plumbing. Granted, the smell of the bathroom will probably be with me for the remainder of my years -- you couldn’t really tell if it came from urine or a cleaning product designed to eradicate urine, but the place seemed spotless, which probably indicates that it was, in fact, an exceptionally poorly thought out cleaning product. Anyway, it was pretty good living there in Wevelgem, a few steps from the finish line, the frites wagon, and the cheesy Euro-pop live show. Even better, there were surprisingly unguarded international phone lines in a back room. What more could you ask?

Primo Primavera

The 2008 Milan-San Remo is in the books now, with Swiss Fabian Cancellara (CSC) continuing his charge through the early season and adding La Primavera to a resume that already includes Paris-Roubaix, several Tour de France prologues and stages, and a couple of world time trial titles. Not too shabby.

The Cancellara Conundrum

The win at San Remo proved, yet again, what an unusually versatile rider Cancellara is. In short, there aren’t many riders any more that excel at both prologue and full-length time trials, yet still have the punch necessary to win the monumental classics. The efforts just aren’t tremendously similar – the time trials involve a hard but steady-state effort of maybe 40-60 kilometers. Certainly difficult, certainly painful, but not similar to riding at the front of a classic for 200-300 kilometers and maintaining the awareness and snap to make or follow the moves when it’s time. Also difficult, also painful, but different. Sean Kelly could do it, and sprint, too, but he came from a less specialized time in racing.

Where Cancellara obviously excels is in his ability to apply his time trial prowess to classics situations. Paris-Roubaix, which he won solo in 2006, is fairly good match for a natural time-trialist, since it tends to be a war of attrition with the selection from the back rather than from a succession of killing moves. It also seems that, after 200-plus kilometers, Cancellara can also call up a prologue effort to spring himself for anywhere from one to three kilometers in advance of the finish. It worked at the 2007 Tour stage into Compiegne, and it worked at Milan-San Remo.

But what makes Cancellara remarkable is his ability to respond to the repeated sharp attacks of the classics well enough to be able to hang in until those closing kilometers, where he can play to his specialties. Responding to attacks from guys like Davide Rebellin (Gerolsteiner) and Phillipe Gilbert (FDJeux) takes a decidedly different skill set from that of a typical time trial specialist. It seems, from looking at his performances, if not his power meter data, that Cancellara’s little secret is just pure, unadulterated power. After his previous wins, particularly his Compiegne stage win , other teams knew very well when he would play his cards. There just wasn’t anything they could do about it.

Who Did the Course Changes Favor?

Prior to the start in Milan, many were wondering what affect, if any, the revised course would have on the results. Would this year’s slight changes to the traditional course give a Milan-San Remo that continued to favor sprinters like Alessandro Petacchi (Milram), Oscar Freire (Rabobank), and Robbie McEwen (Silence-Lotto)? Or would the balance of power shift to the breakaway specialists who could break free on the Poggio and hold off the thundering herd to the line?

The first change to the course seemed to clearly favor the bunch sprinters. Construction on the traditional finishing straight on the Via Roma forced the finish seaward to the Lungomare Italo Calvino. More importantly, it added an additional kilometer from the bottom of the Poggio descent to the line – giving the sprinters teams a bit more time to run down any last-minute attackers. However, that kilometer came with an additional three turns to make any coordinated chase a bit tougher.

But what construction giveth to the sprinters at the finish, it taketh away as the race turned along the coast towards San Remo. Due to road closures and blockages, organizers routed the race over the Le Manie, a five-kilometer climb just south of Savona on the coast. Le Manie slotted into the course with a nice, round 100 kilometers remaining, and gave riders just 30 kilometers from the foot of its descent to recover before hitting the traditional coastal finale: the three capi (the Mele, Cervo, and Berto) followed by the 5.7 kilometer Cipressa and the 3.7 kilometer Poggio. The climb may have cost some of the supersprinters, like McEwen and Petacchi, a bit of necessary punch as the race hit the Poggio, but the more versatile Freire was still able to make the cut come crunch time.

So did the revised course favor sprinters or attackers in the end? Cancellara’s win on Sunday could be seen as an answer, but realistically, it’s only a single data point, and there have always been successful breakaways in this “sprinters’ classic.” So only time will tell, but in the end, the changes may favor the attackers. While the finish will almost certainly return to the Via Roma when construction is complete, there’s a chance Le Manie may grow on the organizers, who have been known to add climbs in the past to avoid guaranteed bunch sprints.

A Broadcasting Note

U.S. viewers who watched the tape delayed San Remo television coverage on Versus were likely left with a few questions. The race coverage was perfectly clear – the questions surround the English voice of cycling, Phil Liggett. First of all, is Phil getting some sort of paycheck from Astana or Trek for all the on-air griping he does about Astana’s exclusion and for his plugs for the fairly ridiculous Trek-owned “Let Levi Ride” site? If not, he should, because if you’re going to scrap your integrity as a journalist, you might as well sell it rather than give it away. Granted, there’s a time and a place for editorializing, but that time isn’t “constantly” and the place isn’t during the play-by-play of a race that Astana likely wouldn’t have factored into anyway.

Bob Roll was also doing some pushing for Let Levi Ride during the Tour of California coverage, and both he and Phil continue to refer to it as a grassroots effort by Leipheimer’s fans, which it isn’t. Either Phil and Bob aren’t doing their homework, or they’re being dishonest in trying to gather support for the organization that, admittedly, has helped ensure them gainful employment for the past nine years by playing to the nationalistic hopes of the U.S. audience. Sure, personal agendas are rife in the media, but the transparency of the Versus allegiances takes away from the coverage.

One of Phil’s grumblings about the Astana situation didn’t specifically cite that team, but was pretty transparent nonetheless. When Cofidis’ Tristin Valentin took a guardrail ride and crashed on the descent of the Cipressa, Phil commented on the fact that he rode for Cofidis, which “despite having drugs on the team” was invited to the Tour anyway. Well, I never! He does have a valid point buried in the harumphing, since Cofidis did have the whole doping blow-up the day before the 2004 Paris-Roubaix and did have Christian Moreni get popped at last year's Tour de France. But, like his darling Astana, Cofidis has addressed those problems, so what problem does Phil have with them besides sour grapes? Additionally, Phil’s little snipe is a bit intellectually dishonest, since one of the central figures of the Cofidis scandal of 2004 was David Millar, who he seems to enjoy quite a bit in his other commentary. Has Millar’s change of uniform confused Liggett? And without Cofidis handing out paychecks, how would he have been able to rattle on about Bradley Wiggins for stages on end during the 2007 Tour de France? After all, what TV coverage do track pursuiters get outside of grand tour prologues?

Phil’s call of Valentin’s crash also made it strikingly clear that Phil and Paul weren’t doing the San Remo commentary live. From a pretty fuzzy, overhead helicopter shot of a high-speed descent, Phil was claiming that the crashing rider “looked like the style of Valentin.” The difficult distance and camera angle, combined with the fact that Valentin basically entered the shot as a red blob and fell over, and the fact that most people, even Phil and Paul, would not know the “style” of a modest utility rider like Valentin if he rode over their toes, made it pretty obvious that the commentary team is boosting its powers of perception by pre-screening the footage at least once prior to recording. Again, it’s not a big deal, and they cover pretty well most of the time, but could we at least try to be a little discreet?