From Pave to Pavement

I’ve never really been a “season” person. You know – some people are “winter people,” full of talk about snow and brisk air and the smell of wood smoke, and others are “summer people,” constantly pining for warmth, long days, and short sleeves. Not me. By the time the end of any given season is near, I’m ready for it to be over – tired of freezing, tired of sweating, or tired of being in between the two. I’m not sure what that says about me, or my ability to dress properly for the conditions, but that’s how it is.

And as it is with the calendar year, so it is with the cycling year. I love the cobbled classics with all my heart, but after the crescendo of the Ronde and Paris-Roubaix, it’s time for something else. Something a little less bleak. Something to appeal to the other parts of our psyche and that, when it’s done its turn in the limelight, will leave us yearning for the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad again come February. After all, even Christmas would lose its appeal if we had it all year round. So, I don’t mourn the yearly passing of the cobbles.

That said, we can’t just leap straight from the cold, flattish, and brutal affairs we’ve just witnessed to warm Italian sunshine, rolled-up jersey sleeves, and grand tour stages barreling up winding mountain roads. That would be far too jarring a change for any normal person, and perhaps more so for those with fragile cyclist sensibilities. So to ease us gently into the days to come, professional cycling, too, has its transitional period – its own weeklong spring – the Ardennes classics.

The grand tour riders start to pop out at the Amstel Gold Race like the first buds on barren trees, lending a bit of fresh foliage to the last damp remnants of the cobbled classics squads and creating hybrid lineups that likely won’t been seen again until this time next year. Rabobank, for instance, adds the willowy Robert Gesink and Laurens Ten Dam to tiring Flanders mainstays Boom, Langeveld, Nuyens, and Tankink. While some team’s grand tour squads will just be showing their first green shoots at Amstel, Saxo Bank will almost be in full bloom, replacing its entire cobbled roster with a fresh one that contains at least half of their likely Tour de France lineup, complete with two Schlecks, a Voigt, and a Fuglsang. As the week wears on into Wednesday’s Flèche Wallonne and the next Sunday’s Liege-Bastogne-Liege, the last dried out husks of the cobbled specialists will fall away, replaced with riders more suited to the longer côtes of Wallonia than the sharp cobbled bergs of Flanders. And once that’s done, there we’ll be, staring squarely at the first grand tour of the season. Though they’ve already ridden myriad weeklong stage races since January, the GC riders’ appearance in Belgium is as sure a sign of the approaching Giro d’Italia as the replacement of Nemesis rims with deep section carbon.

All of that isn’t to say that the coming Ardennes classics – in which we’re including the Amstel Gold for convenience sake – are simply some temporal bridge to be crossed between Roubaix and the Giro d’Italia. Far from it.

For whatever reasons, the Ardennes classics just don’t get the respect the cobbled ones do in the United States. Maybe it’s because the cobblestones deal out much more obvious and dramatic punishment than their more evenly tarmac-ed brethren to the east. Maybe it’s because of the extent to which the fetishized Flemish cycling culture seems to dominate one-day racing, or it could be some lingering cross-cultural confusion over why they speak French in Liege, even though it’s only a half-hour drive from Maastricht and in the same country as Gent. Or maybe it’s because, as we discussed above, the Ardennes classics draw so many of those faces we hear about all through July. And with so many familiar players, maybe the Ardennes just don’t feel as special or different as the cobbled races, so they don’t attract quite the same cult following. Don’t get me wrong, they’re not totally off the radar here – I’m sure there are Americans who have made special pilgrimages to visit the Ardennes classics. But I also bet those who do have already been to see the Ronde or Roubaix.

Not getting respect and not deserving it are two different things, though. A look at the saw-tooth profile of Amstel’s 31 climbs, one drive up Flèche Wallonne’s iconic Muur de Huy, or a read down the list of men who have won the 95 editions of Liege will show that, though the roads may not be quite so endearingly crappy as those in Flanders, the Ardennes hold their own unique spot in cycling history, present their own unique challenges, and create their own champions. And they are very, very hard. So, classics lovers, I say, rather than lamenting the passing of early spring cobbles, look forward to this week's soft transition to the pursuits of summer.

Broomwagon

• Ronde/Roubaix winner Fabian Cancellara (Saxo Bank) politely declined director Bjarne Riis’s public invitation to try to stretch his scorching form through Liege. Did you hear the giant sigh of relief coming out of Luxembourg?
  
  
• Sebastian Rosseler (Radio Shack) salvaged a small bit of Belgian pride by winning Wednesday’s Brabanste Pijl, held on the smooth roads just south of Brussels. After a rough classics season for the home public, it’s no Ronde win, but it’s something. Of course, that’s still no consolation for his former team, Quick Step, or the still scoreless Omega Pharma. In fact, it may just make things worse.
  
  
• Speaking of Rosseler, he’s about to get to race on his home turf as one of a rare breed of riders – the non-Flemish Belgian professional cyclist. Rosseler hails from Verviers, just a bit southeast of Liege, as does Omega Pharma’s big hope for the week, Philippe Gilbert. Gilbert will get support from Liege-born veteran Christophe Brandt; meanwhile, HTC-Columbia’s Maxime Monfort hails from the southern turnaround of the LBL course, Bastogne. Be on the lookout for inspired -- if not ultimately victorious -- rides from the locals in Flèche and Liege.
  
  
• And speaking of Gilbert, together with 2009 Amstel winner Sergei Ivanov, he’s one of a select few riders with good chances in both the cobbled and tarmac classics. (Ben Delaney has a piece on just that in the most recent VeloNews, so I was fairly and squarely beaten to the punch on that. Damn you, Delaney.) To that list of potential pave-to-pavement crossovers, I’d add Ivanov’s teammate Filippo Pozzato, who may have some form to use after sitting out the Ronde due to illness; Oscar Freire, who sat out Roubaix due to common sense, and who is always a threat at Amstel for home-team Rabobank; and Quick Step’s Carlos Barredo, who does donkey work for Boonen and co. in March before getting more of a free hand for himself in the Ardennes.
  
  
• It’s a matter of alphabetical fate that Lars Boom as been assigned the 121 number plate for Rabobank in the preliminary Amstel start list, but it could just as easily be the cosmos pointing Rabobank towards its future. With memories of Michael Boogerd and Eric Dekker factoring in seemingly every Amstel finale fading fast, the Netherlands’ defacto national team needed a new homegrown hope for its homebrewed classic, and Boom seems to be making the transition from ‘cross just in time to step into the role. While everyone tends to assume cyclocross riders will make great cobbled classics riders, Boom’s early successes on the road could indicate that he’ll be more of a threat in the Ardennes than in Flanders. It’ll be hard to tell for a few more years, but with his ample and flexible talents, could Boom be the next Adri van der Poel – winning on the cobbles, on tarmac, and in the mud? The Dutch have to be hoping so.
  
  
• Finally, in a nod to our namesake, here’s a link to cyclingnews.com’s tour of the Team Sky service course in Mechelen, Belgium. The photo gallery will be interesting to bike geeks and fans of luxury motorcoaches, as well as Nutella fetishists such as myself.

Stone Free

Like many people, I’ve been struggling with just what to say about the 2010 Paris-Roubaix, beyond presenting the same postcards of the hanging that can easily be found elsewhere. Dominant performances like Fabian Cancellara’s (Saxo Bank) ride on Sunday tend to present the same paradox whenever they surface – they’re either mind-blowingly amazing or mind-numbingly boring, depending on how you look at it. Or maybe they’re both those things rolled into one, I don’t know. But frankly, neither interpretation lends itself particularly well to words, since close battles make far better fodder than blowouts. With the latter, you either end up with an overly wordy version of “holy shit, did you see that ride!?” or a longer, more specifically plaintive rendition of “well, great as it was, that was 40 kilometers of pure monotony. But here are some time gaps and stuff.”

Whatever your opinion on Sunday’s action though, history takes its snapshots with a hell of a lot of Vaseline smeared on the lens, and when you read about this year’s race in the next inevitable Roubaix coffee table book, it’s going to sound amazing. And it deserves to, because Cancellara’s was a historic ride. What you’ll read in that book years from now will be the story of a guy who attacked an assembly of the strongest classics riders of the generation, solo, about 20 kilometers before it was fashionable to attack at the time. Then he stretched that advantage into a victory margin of two minutes, a yawning gap back then, especially considering that the deficit would have been nearly three minutes if he hadn’t spent two laps of the velodrome shaking hands and kissing babies. Add in a nice shmear of the emerging rivalry with Tom Boonen (Quick Step) for historical context, some boosted-contrast ground-level-perspective pictures of red-clad Cancellara pounding the cobbles against a grey sky backdrop, and there you go. More than likely, even those of you who thought that Sunday's finale was a little short on competition will lean back, smile, and bore your kids with a meandering "ah, I remember it well" reminiscence. So at least we have that to look forward to.

Anyway, beyond the big picture – which was a display of power seldom seen even in the punch-in-the-mouth world of classics racing – what else was worth noting at Roubaix? Countless stories, no doubt, but here are a few things that stuck out for me.

Not Much You Can Do About That

I love being right, even if I was only stating the obvious at the time. From this cyclingnews piece, the great Sean Kelly on the usefulness of tactics in the face of Cancellara’s overwhelming strength: "You can only do so much with tactics, but when you’ve got a guy so strong you can have all the tactics in the world but it can be no good. The power and the form he’s in no one can touch him."

Shut Out

It had been percolating for awhile, but here we are, finally at the end the cobbled classics without a Belgian win in any of the big name events and no Quick Step or Omega Pharma-Lotto win from any nationality. That’s not going to play well in the home press.

While they’ll have to improve their spring classics campaigns next year no matter what else they do, look for both squads to try to sign dedicated, capable sprinters over the off-season in an effort to bump up their win totals and boost their grand tour relevance. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Andre Griepel (HTC-Columbia) wearing either jersey next year.

Chasing the Club of Three

Speaking of the Belgian press, Sportwereld quotes Saxo Bank chief Bjarne Riis saying he’d like to send Cancellara to the Amstel Gold and Liege-Bastogne-Liege next week, based on thinking that’s basically along the lines of, “the guy’s hot, why the hell wouldn’t I?”

Can I tell you how much I love that? As I’m sure I’ve harped on before, specialization in cycling reached an almost absurd peak over the last decade or so, with riders pursuing paper-thin specialties with laser-like focus. (Remember when Brad Wiggins was a “prologue specialist”? Remember watching him ride the 2007 Tour de France prologue in London, and the commentators talking about how, at 7.2k, the distance was a little much for him? Seriously?) Now that absurd level of pigeonholing seems to be breaking up a bit, and a number of riders seem to be stepping a bit outside their comfort zones from time to time. No, Cancellara won’t be a favorite for the hillier classics should he choose to go, but why not give it a shot and see what he can do? If he falls short in Limburg and the Ardennes, nobody with a clue about cycling will think less of him, and many, the Service Course included, will think more. Of course, after the couple of months he’s had, I also wouldn’t think much less of him if he spent the time between now and the world championships drinking cheap champagne and shouting profanity on some Bernese streetcorner.

But if Cancellara does start next week and puts in a promising showing on the côtes? Look for him to start thinking about how to shed some weight and take aim at Liege and the Giro d’Lombardia next season, where winning would give him the elusive distinction of having won all five of the sport’s Monuments. He’s said in the past that winning the same races repeatedly doesn’t really interest him, so he may be willing to give up a little something for Flanders and Roubaix to be more fit for the eastern races in late April.

Winning all five monuments would put Cancellara in a club of just three, together with Belgians Rik “the Emperor of Herentals” Van Looy, Roger “the Gypsy” de Vlaeminck, and, shockingly, Eddy “the Cannibal” Merckx. Despite the difference in nationality, Fabian “Sparticus” Cancellara would seem to fit into that lineup pretty well.

The last guy to seem like he had a shot at (and the interest in) winning every monument was Michele Bartoli, who won the Ronde in 1996, Liege in 1997 and 1998, and Lombardy in 2002 and 2003. He never quite had the raw power for Roubaix, though, especially up against riders like Johan Museeuw, Franco Ballerini, and Andrea Tafi in their prime. And Milan-San Remo would have taken some special circumstances for him to win – a feat unlikely 2008 San Remo winner Cancellara has already pulled off.

There Can Be More Than One

Speaking of things people have said in the past – Tom Boonen said long ago, like back when he was 25 or so, that he wasn’t one of those guys that was going to hang around the pro peloton forever. Back then, his plan was to make his name, cash out at 30 or so, and enjoy the good life. Guess what time it is, Tommeke?

No, settle down, I’m not saying Boonen should retire based on getting scalped by some Swiss freak a few times on his own turf, or based on some statement he made at age 25 (an age at which, based on my careful research, none of us should be taken at our word). And if he tried to hang up his wheels this October, I think he’d be pretty likely to get a visit from the (living) ghosts of De Leeuw and De Peet, who might remind him that there is indeed life after 30. Maybe not disco-and-blow, two-Monuments-a-year life, but a productive professional cycling life nevertheless.

What I am saying is that, in the coming weeks, Boonen is likely going to be doing some thinking on just where he fits in now that he’s not the dominant player in the classics, a role he’s played for the last five years. No, he didn’t win them all, but he was the prime factor. For instance, when his teammate Stijn Devolder lifted two Rondes in 2008 and 2009, it was partially on the strength of Boonen being in the group behind. Boonen’s defeats then were honorable, understandable, and tactical, and he came roaring back at Roubaix the next weekend to prove just what might have been had the chips fallen differently. But this year, he’s been bested twice by a rider who was just plain stronger, just as smart, and just as capable on the cobbles, and Boonen isn’t terribly used to that in the cobbled classics.

What will come from any thinking he does? Who knows. But what I hope he realizes is that every great cyclist needs a great rival. Otherwise, there’s no frame of reference, no yardstick by which to measure a rider’s true merit. Boonen needed his Cancellara. And Cancellara needs Boonen. And if both continue to ride as they have been, we could be in for another great five years.

Bike Change Blues

As he did at the Ronde last week, Cancellara did another picture perfect bike change at Roubaix on his way to another victory. And as it did at the Ronde, a bike change seems to have possibly cost his Saxo Bank teammate Matti Breschel a chance in the finale. This time, though, it wasn’t a botched race-day bike change that hurt Breschel, but apparently one he made a few days earlier when he switched over to bike sponsor Specialized’s new Roubaix-specific bike. The differences between that bike and his standard race bike may have been enough to aggravate a knee, forcing him from the race.

Cyclingnews.com doesn’t specify where Breschel’s knee pain came from, either because they know which side their bread is buttered on, or more likely because he didn’t mention it to them. But Breschel did mention the new bike causing him knee pain to his home country news source, Politiken.dk, prior to the race. Roughly translated courtesy of Google, he told that publication:

"I've got a new bike especially for (Roubaix), and after riding it on some occasions, I started getting pain in one knee. It made me really nervous, but I have not wanted to talk about it because I hoped it would pass. "

At that point, he was still optimistic that he’d adjust to the bike:

"Fortunately, it now seems to be the case. During the last workouts it's been much better, and I certainly can not use knee injury as an excuse if my expectations about being at the forefront of Paris-Roubaix will not be honored."

Whether Breschel’s knee pain and subsequent retirement from Roubaix were due to switching bikes, I’ll probably never know with any degree of certainty. He hasn't brought the bike up post-Roubaix, and he's said in other interviews that he thinks he has an infection. But if he does think his problems have to do with the bike, he’d probably be well served not to let anyone know it. Knee pain due to switching to a different bike doesn’t indicate a “bad design” – only one that’s different enough from what a given rider is used to – but you can be sure that certain elements of the buying public will interpret it that way. And that’s the last thing a bike sponsor wants.

The wisdom of switching to a different geometry for one day a year for dubious benefit has always been debatable at best, but Roubaix is such a headline-grabber equipment-wise that sponsors feel the need to put something special underneath their star riders. If you’ve ever wondered why some of those super “Roubaix specials” you see teasingly propped against the team bus during the pre-ride sessions never see the start line, well, there you go.

From the Media Desk

Like a lot of you, Sunday morning saw me busy stuffing up the cyclingfans.com site as someone, presumably cycling.tv or Versus, shut down foreign feed after feed after feed. Look, I know how the game works, and I know they own the internet and television rights, respectively, to show Paris-Roubaix in the United States. They’re well within their rights to defend what they’ve purchased. That’s just good business, and though it made trying to watch the race exceptionally frustrating, I can’t argue with that.

But please, media outlets, if you’re going to black out all foreign feeds, have some respect for the U.S. viewers you’re trying to harness and do the races right. What do I mean?

Versus – show it live, not as some compressed, delayed dinner-hour theater seven hours later. Grand as it is (to us), Paris-Roubaix does not have even the modest amount of everyman recognition that the Tour does, and the arrangement is just irritating the very core, very key-to-you group of people who not only watch faithfully themselves, but also tell their friends – “Yeah, it’s a really exciting sport. When the Tour is on this summer, you should really watch it.”

I’m not asking for grand production values here, no Craig Hummer in custom embroidered shirt and whitened teeth, or even Phil and Paul doing blatantly after-the-fact editing booth commentary. In fact, though I know you’ll never do it, I’d prefer no “talent” at all – just give us the feed. You already own it. It’s practically free. The cat’s long been out of the bag that Versus does not, in fact, have a crack team of motorcycle cameramen jetting around Europe. We know you’re not the ones putting in the “tete de course” or “kop van der wedstrijd” graphics in, listing the riders in the break, counting the kilometers, or timing the gaps. Don’t worry, we don’t care, and for people who care enough about cycling to watch the classics, that information and a start sheet are all we need. Save your commentary cash for the Tour de France when you’re bringing in the fresh viewer meat. To be honest, I kind of like the audio backdrop of dopplered shouts from the crowd, motorcycles, and the helicopter. So please, just show the races. Live. A lot of us will watch. The rest of us will Tivo it. How about we start with the Amstel Gold Race?

And while you’re at it, Versus, please buy the internet rights to the classics races, too. You have a pretty flashy website now, and it worked pretty well during the Tour de France. So let’s use it – I bet you could get a good price with a television+internet package deal. Then, run the whole four hours of the feed on your site. Put commercials in it, put ads around it, or do it as a pay-per-view event. Whatever. Anything to get the internet rights out from under cycling.tv. Now, I fully admit I haven’t tried cycling.tv in awhile, but when I paid for a subscription several years ago, it was so terribly unreliable, and the pricing structure changed so frequently (effectively going from an allegedly inclusive subscription service to pay-per-view format every time they needed to raise a few quick bucks), I can’t imagine ever trying it again. I know many others feel the same. So, cycling.tv, fix it, step aside, or let my people watch Sporza.

10 Things About Paris-Roubaix

Paris-Roubaix gets more attention than any other classic on the calendar, with the assembled press examining the race from every angle -- from rider form, to bikes, to stones, to cars, to the fans and watering holes along the route. I'm about 3,800 miles too far west to examine much of anything right now, but here are 10 things I'm thinking about Roubaix:

1. Within minutes of his victory in Wednesday's Scheldeprijs, Tyler Farrar (Garmin-Transitions) was already telling the assembled press that he wouldn’t be among his team’s protected riders for Paris-Roubaix. When asked why, he noted that the team has two proven leaders for that event – Martijn Maaskant and Johan Vansummeren. Indeed, both have done notable rides in the cobbled classics, with Maaskant finishing fourth at Roubaix on his first try in 2008, and Vansummeren doing incredible support work for Leif Hoste at Lotto. But despite those riders solid record in past years, I still have to ask again – why is Farrar not a/the protected rider for Garmin at this year’s Roubaix?
   
   This year, at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, Farrar was third. Vansummeren was 52nd and Maaskant was 121st. At Gent-Wevelgem, Farrar was ninth, Vansummeren was 21st, and Maaskant was hors delay. At the Ronde, Farrar was fifth, with Vansummeren 55th at 5:13 back and Maaskant 90th at 13:20. At all three days of DePanne, Farrar was also the top finisher of the three. Now, yes, I realize that on some of those days, particularly those most likely to end in bunch sprints, Vansummeren and Maaskant were likely doing the donkey work for Farrar, and at some point in that job, you get to pull the plug and coast in. Maybe even save a little bit for Roubaix. But if Farrar was the team's leader and top finisher for hardman’s hilly cobbled classics like Het Nieuwsblad and the Ronde, and for moderately hilly cobbled races like Gent-Wevelgem, and for flat “sprinters” races with cobbles like DePanne and Scheldeprijs, why turn around and start talking about how you have better guys for a flat, cobbled race a week later?
   
   Yes, Farrar has only ridden the race once before, and experience counts. But Maaskant has been given protected status for two years now based on his high placing on his maiden voyage to hell. And besides, everyone always talks about how experience counts, but then someone always comes along and proves it doesn’t matter as much as some people say it does – look at Mark Cavendish (HTC-Columbia) at last year’s Milan-San Remo. And besides, Roubaix’s been won out of a hardman’s bunch sprint before – think Guesdon and Backstedt – and Farrar’s as good a candidate as Garmin has right now from that perspective. So unless Farrar has quietly confided to his team that his form is about to come crashing down around him, or they’re just trying to take some heat off him by saying he’s just there to help out, I’m failing to see the logic here.
   
   
2. Filippo Pozzato (Katusha) quietly re-entered the classics peloton at the Scheldeprijs on Wednesday after having to scrap the Ronde due to illness. The Scheldeprijs doesn't really suit him, so it's hard to tell anything from his 67th place, but if he’s recovered, Pozzato should jump right back onto the favorites list for Roubaix. His gutsy ride there last year helped him shake some of the negative connotations of his carefully cultivated pretty boy image. He’s still pretty, of course, but he can take a punch, too.
   
   
3. With Philippe Gilbert (Omega Pharma-Lotto) taking the weekend off to reload for the Ardennes classics in his native Wallonia, Leif Hoste takes over leadership duties for Omega Pharma, which – as we’ve already beaten to death – really, really needs a classics win right now. I have mixed feelings about Hoste. I’ve had pleasant conversations with him at a team launch. I’ve also seen him shove a race official against a crowd barrier before the start of Philly for having the nerve to brush him as he went past. But that’s personality, which doesn’t matter very much at Roubaix, and I respect the hell out of his riding and his toughness. In addition to strong rides at Roubaix, he’s been a bridesmaid several times over at his native Ronde, which can draw you some criticism from the native press. One of the most memorable, steely-eyed responses I’ve witnessed was when a reporter asked him, after the 2004 Ronde, how he could dare chase down fellow Belgian Dave Bruylandts (then with Marlux) in the finale, bringing eventual German winner Stefan Wesseman (then T-Mobile) with him. Hoste’s response, paraphrased: “This isn’t the world championship. I get paid to ride for Lotto. Not for Belgium.” It wasn’t a popular answer given the venue, but it was delivered with such unflinching conviction and force, I don’t think anyone held it against him.
   
   Hoste has been fairly quiet this spring, mostly riding in Gilbert's shadow, but his form appears good and he's done his best rides when he hasn't been the center of attention.
   
   
4. Roubaix organizer ASO announced on Tuesday that 100 gendarmes will be posted at the Carrefour de l’Arbre cobble sector to clamp down on the hooliganism that went on there last year. In addition to widespread littering, drunkenness, and I have to imagine ample public urination, spectators sector spit at and poured beer on competitors and pounded on and threw rocks at team cars and other race vehicles. So good on the neighboring towns and organizer for doing something to address it this year --- the only problem is that they’ve announced their clampdown way too early.
   
   Look, those people are coming to this race no matter what, and organizers would have been far better off rolling their security force into the Carrefour unannounced on Saturday and Sunday. That way, they’d have most of the crazies in one spot where they could keep an eye on them, and the delinquents wouldn’t have had time to plan evasive action. But now that ASO's told them the plan on Tuesday, the hooligan crowd will know that the Carrefour won’t be the party it was last year, so they’ll move on. Yes, originally the Carrefour was popular because it’s the last decisive sector of the race at just 14k to the finish, but the racing ceased to be the primary focus for the undesirable crowd a few years ago. So I suspect they’ll easily abandon the Carrefour and move upstream to somewhere like Mons-en-Pevele. It’s still a 5-star sector and still within the decisive final 40 kilometers for those that have maintained some interest in the race, and at a yawning 3,000 meters long, it’ll be tough as hell to patrol. And even better, they'll already know most of the gendarmes will be hanging out at the Carrefour.
   
   
5. With wholesale Ronde DNF-ers Footon-Servetto not invited to Roubaix, which team is going to take the dubious prize of finishing the least number of riders? My money’s on Euskaltel. Sure, Caisse d'Epargne and Milram don't seem to have much of a taste for making the finale either, but for totally mismatched affinities, it's hard to beat a bunch of Basques on cobblestones.
   
   But let’s circle back to that Footon non-invite for a second. In the midst of all the recent kvetching about ASO’s Tour de France invites – which include the fairly unimpressive Footon – ASO's treatment of Footon at its classics shows just how much the organization is just grudgingly abiding by the 2008 agreement to invite then-ProTour teams to the Tour through 2010. While that document got Footon an invite to the big ball, that's as far as their love with ASO goes -- they won’t be attending Roubaix, Fleche Wallonne, or Liege-Bastogne-Liege. I have to admit, while it’s unfortunate that Footon is going to the Tour in a spot that could otherwise be used by more interesting teams, I’m glad that parties involved in the whole UCI/ASO ProTour dustup are finally bothering to read the agreements they’ve signed, and then go a step further and abide by them. What's next, reading contracts before we sign them?
   
   
6. With the jaunt down into France from Belgium, the overall flavor of the peloton changes a bit, even if the basic cobbled classic game stays the same. Gone will be the Belgian second division teams, like Topsport Vlaanderen and Landboukredeit, and in come the French second division teams, like Cofidis and Saur-Sojasun. With swaps like that being made along (understandable) national lines, it speaks to the strength of the Dutch Vacansoleil squad that they’ve stayed on the roster as the action’s moved south. Of course, so has BMC, but thus far they’ve done so with recruiting rather than results.
   
   
7. New observers of the Paris-Roubaix experience often have one of two reactions. Let’s address them right now.
   
   The first common reaction is, “Some of the roads I ride are bad like that! Why, after this bad winter, there are tons of potholes, and a bunch of gravel at the edges, too!” I get where you’re coming from, but no, your roads are not bad like that. It is not like riding a potholed road. Or a road with frost heaves. Or a gravel road. Or chipseal. Or your neighbor’s cobbled front walk. And chances are, you aren’t riding those roads at 45kph, so even if the road was the same, the experience really isn't. No doubt your roads are bad, but they are not like the ones at Roubaix. Have your Roubaix fantasies as you ride those roads – it’s fun – but don’t confuse them with reality.
   
   The second common reaction is, “Those roads are terrible. You know, they should use mountain bikes/suspension/bigger tires etc., etc., etc.” Yes, the cobbles of Paris-Roubaix are horrible – more horrible than those in all the other cobbled classics, as a matter of fact. But there are also only 53 kilometers of them. The other 200 or so kilometers of Paris-Roubaix are paved, and that makes a lot of the equipment suggestions from the peanut gallery pretty inefficient. There was a time in the 1990s when mountain bike technology made some inroads at Roubaix, when Duclos Lasalle was winning on a RockShox Ruby and Johan Museeuw started the race on a horrific dual suspension Bianchi, but that anodized nightmare died out pretty quickly. Now, we’re back to the adaptations that have been a constant since the 1970s and 1980s – slightly bigger tires and clearance for them, a bit of extra padding here and there, and wheels that can take a pounding. Though cycling is painfully and detrimentally resistant to change at times, these equipment choices have stayed constant for a reason – they help you a bit on the cobbles, and don’t punish you for the other 200k.
   
   
8. If you lurk around race caravans a bit, you get to see all the crap that gets taped to the team car dashboard to help directors and mechanics get their jobs done. Some are constants – start lists, kilometer numbers for climbs or cobbled sectors – but one of the less common ones is a diagram, usually hand drawn, noting where each rider's spare bike is on the roof of the car. For Sunday, Saxo Bank should look into that.
   
   
9. Want to know one reason I like Paris-Roubaix? Since the race’s name comes from two cities, English language cycling publications aren’t tempted to translate it. For some reason, English speakers have some contrary and irrepressible urge to both translate foreign race names into our own language, and give our own races foreign names (Tour de Georgia, anyone?). And in translating foreign language race names, we’re terribly inconsistent, which only makes matters worse. Why do we talk about the Tour of Flanders, but the Giro d’ Italia? For that matter, why the Giro d’Italia, but the Tour of Lombardy? I once read a sider in a popular American cycling magazine that discussed someone’s win in the Across Flanders Race. I had to spend a minute clearing my head of images of head-strap wearing RAAM riders before I could figure out they were talking about Dwars door Vlaanderen. Even city-based race names aren’t immune from the desire to translate – after all, there’s the perverse need to put an “h” in Gent for Gent-Wevelgem, despite how the Belgians like to spell it on their maps.
   
   But Paris-Roubaix? Nice and clean.
   
   So what’s the worse race-name mangling I’ve ever seen? A few years back, in some Armstrong-centric series on Versus (Road to Paris, Stalking Lance, etc.), they had a segment on the Ronde van Vlaanderen. But on the segment intro -- a nice white letters on black screen divider -- what spelling did we get? Not the native Ronde van Vlaanderen. Not the Americanized Tour of Flanders. Not the French Tour des Flandres. We got, instead: Tour de Flanders. Some mongrel mix of French and English, all slapped together for a Flemish race. Well done.
   
   That said, my hypocrisy knows no bounds – in this very post I mentioned Milan-San Remo, not Milano-San Remo. But the Italians write about Parigi-Roubaix, so serves them right.
   
   
10. Finally, disappointing to hear about Alessandro Ballan’s (BMC) provisional suspension by the team for his involvement in the latest blossoming Italian doping investigation, but good for the BMC management for acting quickly. There’s no sense in having things that happened while Ballan was at Lampre spill into their camp – they already have enough lingering baggage with the whole Phonak connection. At this point, I have to wonder at this point if Lampre will be at the start of Roubaix come Sunday. At just about this very time six years ago, Cofidis was busy packing up their things and slinking out of Compiegne as quietly as possible in the midst of a gathering dope storm. That scandal would cost David Millar (now Garmin-Transitions) two years on the bench. We’ll see where this one lands Ballan, Damiano Cunego (Lampre) and the rest of the parties in question.

Sometimes, It Is That Simple

As cyclists, we sometimes have a tendency to overstate the strategic and tactical aspects of professional cycling. Don’t feel bad about it – it’s a perfectly natural reaction to being surrounded by a general public that, at least in the United States, understands little about the intricacies of the sport we love.

On a daily basis ("daily" meaning “six times in July”), we face misguided commentary and indignant questions from those who, through no fault of their own, believe that bicycle road racing is an individual sport, that once the starter’s pistol is fired, every one of those 180 lycra-clad freaks pedals hell bent for leather to the finish line, and may the strongest man win. For those who know better, it can be tough to take.

And so we, those who’ve left skin on the road, those whose sympathetic hearts pound when the big attacks explode across the television screen, yearn to teach the lay public different. We long to open those uninitiated eyes to the all the careful thought and closely guarded knowledge that allows the racer to make most effective use of his muscle, ache to share the science that shows it’s oftentimes better to be a few men behind than boldly out in front, and dream of the chance to illuminate the topographical nuances that will dictate how and where a race will be decided.

In response to the slightest provocation from a non-cyclist, in addressing the most innocent dinner party question, we go overboard, sputtering through explanations of the roles of domestiques, the commercial concerns that drive the early break, the benefits and drawbacks of multiple team leaders, and the importance of a well-drilled lead-out train. As the inquirer begins to shift uncomfortably in their seat, we continue with increased urgency to try to impart as many of cycling's rock-paper-scissors nuances as we can before our victim feeds the family dog a chicken bone to create a diversion and facilitate an escape.

Usually, the effect of this deluge of mind-numbing detail is that the victims retain nothing at all, but if they somehow manage to digest some of our inane ramblings, they’d be likely to come away with the mistaken view that cycling is almost entirely decided by strategy and tactics. And that’s as untrue as thinking it relies solely on fitness. In fact, when it comes down to the finale of races like last Sunday’s Ronde van Vlaanderen, the average oblivious man on the street might have a more accurate impression of how things work than a bunch of overanalytical bike geeks. Sometimes – maybe most times, in fact – it all really does just come down to who’s stronger.

In the Ronde, both Tom Boonen (Quick Step) and Fabian Cancellara (Saxo Bank) rode tactically perfect races. Each had obviously picked the right man to mark (not a hard decision after last week’s E3 Prijs). Both stayed alert during the early sortings out on the Paterberg and Koppenberg climbs. Cancellara attacked on the Molenberg with 45 kilometers remaining to the finish – marking almost exactly the point at which the magical “final hour” of a bike race begins – and set the pair up to pick up a tailwind boost as the race turned southeast. Boonen followed with so little hesitation that many press outlets seem hesitant to assign the attack to one rider or the other, instead giving dual credit, and both favorites immediately began to work to build their advantage over the rest.

Everything from the start in Brugge up to that point of attack on the Molenberg – all that work to be in the right place, at the right time, with the right people? Though there’s a (high) minimum fitness level required to execute it, that’s all the tactics and teamwork of professional cycling. That’s all that stuff we like to rattle on about, entertaining each other and lulling outsiders into a dangerous state of combined boredom and loathing.

But past the Molenberg -- over the Leberg, Berendries, Tenbosse, Muur, Bosberg, and on into Meerbeke? That part of the race was all pure brute strength, the kind it doesn’t take a cyclist, a cycling fan, or a journalist to spot. Tactically, scientifically, and aerodynamically speaking, the larger group of very strong riders behind – names like Gilbert, Hincapie, Iglinsky, Langveld – should have been able to regain Boonen and Cancellara. But they couldn’t. Instead, Cancellara and Boonen continued to build their gap. And when Cancellara attacked again on the Muur, Boonen didn’t hesistate, didn’t let Cancellara go figuring his move was too far from the finish. Boonen didn’t make any sort of tactical or technical mistake, didn't misjudge or get caught asleep at the wheel – he simply couldn’t match Cancellara’s power. Nor could he recover and claw back anything on the Swiss over the Bosberg or on the flat run to the finish. From start to finish, Boonen rode a perfect race. Cancellara just rode a perfect race faster.

Sometimes, beaten riders subjected to press questions will cite little tactical issues that they credit with ultimately bringing about their demise – too far back on this climb, little team support here, followed the wrong wheel there. Again, it’s understandable. It is hard, and boring, to simply tell the assembled press that you just weren’t strong enough, and it’s easy and sounds more insightful to focus on all the times when a small mistake cost you. But those immediate post-race statements just tend to reinforce the poor but oft-stated metaphor that cycling is like a chess game. It isn’t. Nobody makes you get three quarters of the way through a chess game, and then arm wrestle to see who wins. So, tactics junkies, race analysts, and cocktail party bores, listen closely to what Tom Boonen had to say following his heartbreaking defeat at the hands of Cancellara:

“I was racing after him at 55 kilometers an hour, and he took a minute off me. What can I say? He was the strongest.”

Sometimes, losing is just that simple.

Broomwagon

• Want a second opinion on Cancellara’s strength? From Gent-Wevelgem winner Bernhard Eisel, on hearing the Cancellara/Boonen break behind him, from Cyclingnews.com: “I thought, I’d better let this motorbike come by, but when I turned around and looked it was Cancellara.”
  
  
• I don’t care if you’re a ProTour team or not, if you don’t put a single rider across the finish line of a monument like Flanders, you should receive a mandatory one year exclusion from that race. No hard feelings or griping from the organizer need enter into it – it would just be a sort of automatic, single-event relegation. This year, all eight of Footon-Servetto’s starters ended up on the DNF end of the results sheet. Under my plan, they’d be excluded next year, so David Gutierrez (Footon) can stay home where he wants to be, preparing for the Tour of the Basque Country or whatever, while someone like Jens Keukeleire (Cofidis) can be at the Ronde van Vlaanderen, where he wants to be. Another beneficial side effect: the second feed zone of cycling’s monuments won’t have more people looking for a ride than a goddamn Greyhound terminal on Thanksgiving weekend.
  
  Anyway, hot on Footon-Servetto’s dubious heels were fellow Spanish imports Caisse d’Epargne and Euskaltel-Euskadi, who each managed to send a single rider across the finish line (Joaquin Rojas in 37th and Javier Aramendia Lorente in 65th, respectively). Look, I know the classics aren’t a focus for those teams, and that only two of Footon’s riders were actually Spanish, but that’s a ridiculous attrition rate and the shared country of origin really makes it stand out. To be fair, home team Topsport Vlaanderen-Mercator also finished only a single rider – Gent-Wevelgem warrior Sep Vanmarcke, in 62nd position – but they’re a second division team focused on young talent, and with a budget that makes the constantly sponsor-challenged Footon look wealthy.
  
  
• Last week, I pointed out that if “classic specialist” ProTour teams Quick Step and Omega Pharma failed to win the Ronde, they’d be in the unenviable position of having to win Paris-Roubaix to salvage the part of the season that pays the bills for them. Well, they didn’t win the Ronde (or today's Scheldeprijs, either). That both these teams have failed to climb the top step of the podium at this year’s cobbled classics makes me wonder anew whether there is really room for such a high level of specialization at the very top of the sport these days. With teams like HTC-Columbia and Saxo Bank making an impact from February to October in classics, stage races, and grand tours, will even the most die-hard Belgian sponsor be willing to front ProTour money for two months of hit-or-miss classics specialization, followed by six months of chasing stages and glorified kermesse wins? For the sort of cash Quick Step puts up, they should at least have an Ardennes specialist that will give them a legitimate shot through late April. People wail and moan about Tour de France-centric teams like U.S. Postal/Discovery only really racing for 21 days a year, but if you count up the days of classics racing, are Quick Step and Omega Pharma (post-Cadel Evans) really far off that mark?
  
  
• Finally, how about that Tyler Farrar (Garmin-Transitions)? Somebody needed to start winning things for that team, and I’m glad he’s the one to do it. OK, that’s a little mean, considering David Millar’s stage and overall win in DePanne, but people have had a lot of expectations for this team for a long time, and those expectations were starting to wear pretty thin. Now that Farrar seems to be really getting his legs under him in the classics, let’s hope he’s allowed to put some energy into building on that promise, rather than spending a career getting overmatched in grand tour bunch sprints. Success (or, if not success, visibility) in grand tours means a lot to American teams in particular, so it’s understandable that Farrar gets highlighted in that capacity. And don't get me wrong, he’s very, very good in the bunch sprints – one of the best. But he could have a potentially better career as a classics man ahead of him, and I have to wonder if Garmin will be the right place to make that transition in the most effective way.

44 Hills

When the riders of the 94th Ronde van Vlaanderen scale the race’s 15 defining climbs on Sunday, they’re unlikely to be surprised by what they find there. Sure, there are the much-photographed team reconnaissance rides that take place throughout this week, but those are mostly a little extra media exposure, maybe a chance to give the punters a bit of a peek at some classics-specific equipment. At their most useful, those rides are probably a bit of a security blanket – a feeling of doing something, anything, to prepare for the chaos to come, a final cram session before the test, a last look at the angle of approach. But absent the race conditions that influence speeds and racing lines, those jaunts can tell only so much. No, the real recon rides for the Ronde have come during the string of Belgian classics that precede the Ronde: Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne, Nokere Koerse, Dwars Door Vlaanderen, and the E3 Prijs Vlaanderen. In addition to these UCI 1.1 and 1.HC single day races, a pair of 2.1 stage races, the Driedaagse West Vlaanderen and the Driedaagse DePanne also traverse much of the same terrain.

All told, from Het Niewsblad in February through the Ronde in early April, the Flemish Ardennes, a.k.a. the hill zone, is a beehive of activity. A small section of a small country, this hilly little patch of woods and farmland bordered roughly by Kortrijk to the west, Gent to the north, Ronse to the south, and Aalst to the east, becomes the epicenter of the cycling world for two months a year. So dense is the racing activity in the area, so intensive the use of its indigenous climbs, both cobbled and paved, that if you overlaid the winding routes of all the spring races on a single map, it would look like the Spirograph work of a drunken madman.

This Year’s Debutantes

Come Sunday, the most battle hardened classics men lining up for the Ronde will likely have seen, in competition, all but five of the race’s featured hellingen.

The Ronde’s first two climbs, both paved, have yet to be used in top level competition this year. At only 450 meters, the Den Ast climb (km 131) tickles the minimal requirement for listing in the roadbook, while the Kluisberg (km 165) is more formidable at 925 meters at an average gradient of 6.8 percent and a maximum of 14.5 percent. Both fall early enough in the race that absolute intimacy with their contours is unlikely to be terribly important.

Not so with the legendary Koppenberg (km 189), the climb that lurks in a steep trench in the farmland outside of Oudenaarde, a spiritual center of Flemish cycling that's home to the Ronde van Vlaanderen museum. The 600 meter cobbled climb averages 11.6 percent and maxes out at 22 percent, and though still early in the race, presents a danger for several reasons. To apply the cycling cliché, you can’t win the Ronde on the Koppenberg, but you can lose it there. Shaded and little used for the rest of the year, the Koppenberg has had issues with moss growing on the cobbles, adding to the slickness that already abounds with smooth stones, rain, and the region’s abundant use of manure as fertilizer for its fields. Combined with the grade, the slickness causes, if not outright crashes, an ample number of bobbles and dabs, with the ensuing loss of momentum bringing trailing riders to a screeching halt. The same factors make restarting on the climb difficult, and as the front of the race accelerates over the top, several riders will see their chances of making the finale evaporate.

Lack of mechanical support on the Koppenberg also poses a danger. After the legendary commissaire-running-over-Jesper-Skibby incident in 1987, the Koppenberg was ejected from the race for a number of years, deemed too constricted for the safe passage of the race. Forgiveness and reinclusion in 2002 were predicated on both a re-laying of the cobbles, as well as an accompanying race caravan diversion. As a result, riders who suffer mechanicals between the Koppenberg’s turf walls won’t receive help quickly, and for front runners, any delay at all here could spell disaster. Just ask Fabian Cancellara.

All of that makes a good position at the front of the race crucial as the Koppenberg looms. Obviously, being near the front means less riders to potentially bog down in front of you, but it also means more teammates behind you to hand over a wheel or a bike, or to give a starting shove if need be. With that in mind, previewing riders will be examining the approach just as much as the hill itself, looking for landmarks to warn of its approach and stretchs of road where they can pick up a few spots.

Hot on the heels of the Koppenberg comes the Steenbeekdries (km195), which also hasn’t seen use yet this spring. Compared to its predecessor, it’ll feel like a picnic. While longer than the Koppenberg at 700 meters, and just as cobbled, the Steenbeekdries rises at a comparatively modest 5.3 percent average and 6.7 maximum.

The final first-look climb at the Ronde is also its final hill – the Bosberg. At 980 meters long, with intermittent cobbles and an average of 5.8 percent, the Bosberg isn’t as distinctive as the Koppenberg or the Ronde’s signature climb, the Muur de Geraardsbergen, but it makes up for its milder character with an impeccable sense of timing. Coming at kilometer 250, several key selections will have already been made, and the Bosberg will provide one final chance for a rider or group to shed their companions before the flat 12 kilometer drag race into Meerbeke. While last year’s winner Stijn Devolder (Quick Step) seems to prefer an earlier launch pad, Edwig Van Hooydonck proved the effectiveness of the Bosberg several decades ago, attacking on the hill on his way to winning the Ronde in 1989 and 1991, and earning his nickname “Eddy Bosberg” in the process.

Green Hills of Flanders

So what of the other 10 hills of the Ronde? All of them – including the iconic Muur de Geraardsbergen and Oude Kwaremont hills – have already been used in competition this year. By the finish of the Ronde on Sunday, the classics specialists will have scaled 44 different hills in the region during the top-flight spring races (if we include the three French hills introduced to Gent-Wevelgem this year). One hill, the one alternately known as the Tiegemberg and/or the Vossenhol, stands above the rest this year, getting five races worth of action, while many are used just once. It’s worth noting that Belgium has one of the densest road networks in the world, allowing organizers to create almost endless combinations of hills and routes between them, so in any given year, the prevalence of any single hill can shift. For instance, had the Oude Kwaremont factored into the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad this year, as it often does, it would have also received 5 visits.

Here’s how use of the various bergs breaks down – so keep this in mind if you’re looking to buy a vacation home in Flanders. Remember -- location, location, location.

Key
HN: Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, February 27
KBK: Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne, February 28
WV: Driedaagse West Vlaanderen, March 5—March 7
NK: Nokere Koerse, March 17
DDV: Dwars Door Vlaanderen, March 24
E3: E3 Prijs Vlaanderen, March 27
GW: Gent-Wevelgem, March 28
DP: Driedaagse DePanne, March 30—April 1
RVV: Ronde Van Vlaanderen, April 4

5 Races (1 Hill)
Tiegemberg/Vossenhol: KBK; NK; DDV; E3; DP

4 Races (5 Hills)
Berendries: HN; DDV; DP; RVV
Eikenberg: HN; DDV; E3; RVV
Knokteberg/Cote de Trieu: KBK; DDV; E3; RVV
Leberg: HN; DDV; DP; RVV
Oude Kwaremont: KBK; DDV; E3; RVV

3 Races (7 Hills)
Kemmelberg: WV; GW; DP
Kruisberg: HN; KBK; DP
Monteberg: WV; GW; DP
Nokereberg: KBK; NK; DDV
Paterberg: DDV; E3; RVV
Taaienberg: HN; E3; RVV
Valkenberg: HN; DDV; DP

2 Races (6 Hills)
Edelareberg: KBK; DP
La Houppe: KBK; E3
Molenberg: HN; RVV
Muur de Geraardsbergen: HN; RVV
Rodeberg: WV; GW
Tenbosse: HN; RVV

1 Race (25 Hills)
Baneberg: GW
Berg Stene: E3
Berthen (FR): GW
Boigneberg: E3
Bosberg: RVV
Den Ast: RVV
Eikenmolen: HN
Goeberg: WV
Holstraat: DDV
Kanarieberg: KBK
Katteberg: DDV
Kalkhoveberg: DDV
Kapelberg: E3
Kluisberg: RVV
Koppenberg: RVV
Kortekeer: DP
Mesenberg: DP
Mont des Cats (FR): GW
Mont Noir (FR): GW
Oude Kruiskens: E3
Pottelberg: HN
Scherpenberg: GW
Stationsberg: E3
Steenbeekdries: RVV
Wolvenberg: HN

Broomwagon

• Yes, I do have a flashier chart version of the information above, but it’s not cooperating well with the blog format.
  
  
• It’s important to note that the information above only counts the number of races that have visited each hill, not the total number of times they’re climbed. For example, Gent-Wevelgem scales the Kemmelberg twice during the race, but Gent-Wevelgem is still counted as a single race visit for that hill.
  
  
• Hill-wise, I have to admit to being partial to the Oude Kwaremont. It’s long, cobbled, and there’s a pretty good restaurant near the top, and if you sit in the terrace area you can see the riders coming from far enough off to get back out to the street for the live view. And though the climb is tough, the locals will tell you the sting is in the tail – once you’re over the top and through the tiny town, you pop out into an open field where you get flattened by crosswinds. Fun.
  
  
• The number of riders who could win the Ronde seems to be dwindling quickly, doesn’t it? With Heinrich Haussler and Andreas Klier (Cervelo) and Edvald Boassen Hagen (Sky) out with injuries, Filippo Pozzato (Katusha) apparently under the weather, and riders like Alessandro Ballan (BMC) and Stijn Devolder (Quick Step) showing little form of note lately, it feels like a diminished field. Fortunately, we started the season with a wealth of riches, so we still have Tom Boonen (Quick Step), Thor Hushovd (Cervelo), Juan Antonio Flecha (Sky), Philippe Gilbert (Omega Pharma), Fabian Cancellara (Saxo Bank), Nick Nuyens (Rabobank), Matti Breschel (Saxo Bank), and a host of other riders in with a shot at carrying off the victory. I’m not too worried.
  
  
• Enjoy the race on Sunday. As for how you enjoy it, that’s up to you. If you’d like some pointers, though, I start seeing hits on this beer post and this frite post again, so there they are.

Pressure Drop

Patrick Lefevere and Marc Sergeant, the public faces of top Belgian squads Quick Step and Omega Pharma-Lotto, respectively, have both been around long enough to know that you should never let the public see you sweat. So after last weekend’s new E3 Prijs Vlaanderen/Gent-Wevelgem double header, they’ll either have to stay out of the media glare and wipe their brows in private, or get Alan Lim to jimmy them up a cooling vest that fits smoothly under a sportcoat.

What was so bad about last weekend that the two of the most experienced managers in the business should be glistening with nerve juice? Nothing, really, at least not viewed in isolation. To whit:

Tom Boonen (Quick Step) initiated the winning break at the E3, looking dead relaxed while attacking over the Paterberg, drawing out Fabian Cancellara (Saxo Bank) and Juan Antonio Flecha (Sky) and creating a move with more horsepower than most teams’ buses. The trio rode through several other groups to arrive at the finale, where Boonen fell victim to one of Cancellara’s final kilometer attacks and had to settle for second place. That’s OK – that move is a tough one to counter. It happens. First or second, Boonen showed he’s rising to the form he’ll need coming into the Ronde van Vlaanderen and Paris-Roubaix next week.

On Sunday Omega Pharma put not one but two strong candidates – Philippe Gilbert and Jurgen Roelandts – in the final group of six. Bernhard Eisel (HTC-Columbia) was clearly the most fancied sprinter in a group that also contained George Hincapie (BMC), Daniel Oss (Liquigas), and Sep Vanmarcke (Topsport-Vlaanderen), so it was no great surprise when he waited out Hincapie’s early jump and came around for the win. As for Omega Pharma, well, even with a man-up advantage, you don’t always win. And after a pretty anonymous E3 the day before, the team showed their boys can sniff out the right move and get there in force, a good sign for next week’s mega classics.

That’s the positive reading of those two teams' performances last weekend. The negative reading?

In the E3, Boonen, who all eyes say is on screaming form right now, should have known Cancellara’s late move was coming roughly since the neutral rollout ended. In fact, I think Cancellara actually has the details of his signature attack printed on the back of his jersey, with a map, just in case anyone had any doubts about the plan. If Boonen couldn't anticipate that attack and roll with it last Saturday, is another eight days before the Ronde van Vlaanderen going to make the difference? Tom – Cancellara is NOT going to willingly go to the line with you. You have to make him take you to the line. To do that, you need to stick to the red kite attack until things get back on your own terms. Easier said than done, I know, but most things are.

And Omega Pharma? Two guys in a group of six? That’s 33 percent of the break. A third. Yes, Eisel is a damn good sprinter – and probably an underrated one due to the company he keeps at HTC-Columbia. But the two guys Omega Pharma had in the break weren’t exactly their second string, or neo pros getting a first look at the big time. Roelandts has some serious power, and Gilbert is an excellent late-race attacker and pretty handy in a small group sprint. So how did Omega use those strengths and numbers? Roelandts brought Vanmarcke's late attack back for everyone, then spent a few kilometers calmly dragging the whole group, Eisel included, to the sprint. There are some good cases to be made for altruism in competitive cycling, but that was a pretty weak headed example. A better one? Back when the leading group still numbered nine riders, the other team with two men in – Liquigas – used up one of its riders to kindly escort the most dangerous rider in the group, Oscar Freire (Rabobank), off the back. That I can live with. But just being the mindless derny that takes everyone to the line? No thanks.

All that said, yes, anyone can blow a weekend’s worth of racing pretty easily. Countless teams do it every weekend, and sometimes other people are just stronger. Again, it happens. But where Quick Step and Omega Pharma will run into trouble in the home press this week is that they’ve failed to bag a classic thus far, and it's getting late. And as those teams go, so goes Belgium in the springtime.

This spring, Belgian fans have watched as a Spaniard riding for a British team lifted Omloop Het Niewsblad. The next day, in abominable conditions, a Dutchman riding for a second division Dutch team carried off Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne. A Dane on a Danish team outfoxed the natives at Dwars Door Vlaanderen; his Swiss teammate snatched up the E3. An Austrian on an American team claimed Gent-Wevelgem.

Previously little-known neo-pro Jens Keukelaire has been the country’s only classics winner this year, bagging the Dreidaagse van West Vlaanderen stage race, the GP Samyn, and the Nokere Koerse. He rides for Cofidis, a now-second division French team that didn’t even get an invite to Gent-Wevelgem or the Ronde.

Getting schooled by a local kermesse kid riding for Cofidis (particularly now that it’s a long way from its days as home to hardened classics riders like Jo Planckaert, Nico Mattan, Chris Peers, and Frank Vandenbrouke) is bad enough, but the fact is that there are a multitude of teams performing better in the northern classics than the two big teams that allegedly specialize in these races. It’s Saxo Bank executing the perfectly timed attacks. It’s Liquigas splitting the race in the crosswinds at Gent. It’s HTC-Columbia winning the hardman’s small bunch sprints. And yes, it’s mighty Quick Step putting its top finisher in the 22nd spot at Gent-Wevelgem (and that was Sylvain Chavanel, a Frenchman).

So all of that leaves Quick Step and Omega Pharma in an unenviable position. Yes, the whole cycling season is important in their native country. Yes, knowledgeable fans appreciate good rides that don’t necessarily end on the top step of the podium. But the fact is, if you’re one of the big Belgian teams and you’re not bringing home the big cups in the spring, you’re not doing your job. Fail to gain the top step in March and April, and there’s not much you can do the rest of the season to make up for it in the eyes of their core fan base. Make no mistake, these aren’t the sunshine boys of stage racing, where every race but the Tour de France or maybe the Giro is passed off as being “for training” or “a test.” Het Nieuwsblad matters. The E3 matters. Gent-Wevelgem matters. So after not nabbing any of the lesser classics to take the pressure off a bit, the big home teams need to win at the two hardest cobbled classics, the Ronde and Roubaix, to save face. And that’s a tall order, especially when you’re not going in with a rock solid confidence base. It feels a little like going 0-10 in the regular season, but planning to save it all by winning the championship.

The kicker for Quick Step and Omega Pharma? If one of them does take the big one on Sunday, it takes every last bit of pressure off that team’s shoulders….and heaves it directly onto the shoulders of the other. If one of them takes the win at the Ronde van Vlaanderen, look for the other to be throwing everything but the kitchen sink – and maybe even that – on the road the following Sunday at Paris-Roubaix.

Do I think that Quick Step's slow start means Boonen won’t bag the Ronde or Roubaix? Not by a longshot. Boonen is Boonen, and he's hungry. And I still think Gilbert’s chances are good, too. But putting all your eggs in those Easter baskets is enough to make any manager sweat, no matter how experienced.

Broomwagon

• As Scott T. noted in the comments to the last post, I guess now we know how top riders will treat the E3 now that it’s the day before Gent-Wevelgem. Apparently, they go for the throat. Having Boonen, Flecha, and Cancellara driving the front, with Filippo Pozzato (Katusha) trying desperately to get across felt like what we expect a week or two weeks from now. After the first running of the E3/Gent-Wevelgem weekend, the lineup has seemed to draw E3 up a notch to put the competition at the same level as Gent-Wevelgem. This year, the latter race saw most of its action come from second-tier classics threats, but that's something that can happen in any given year and isn’t necessarily indicative of much. But the big boys coming out to play in the E3 rather than Gent makes sense. The E3 shares a lot more similarities and climbs (including the Paterberg where the key move went down) with next weekend’s Ronde than Gent-Wevelgem does, so it makes sense that the Ronde contenders were out in force on Saturday rather than Sunday.
  
  It is worth noting, however, that Gent-Wevelgem winning HTC-Columbia didn’t ride the E3 the day before. Neither did Gent strongman Matti Breschel (Saxo Bank), and E3 winner Cancellara hadn’t originally planned to ride Gent the following day. It’ll be interesting to see how teams play these two races as the arrangement becomes more ingrained in the calendar.
  
  
• Speaking of Pozzato, it’s not really fair, since I’m basing this on only this year’s E3 and last year’s Roubaix, but I feel like I spend a lot of time watching him chasing alone. Hey Pippo, how about we spot the break when it goes – I think it’ll work out better for you.
  
  
• You know (part of) why I like Gent-Wevelgem? It’s one of the only races that’s historically been capable of showing people that sprinters can really ride. Remember Mario Cipollini bridging up to the break in 2002 before taking the win? Yesterday, we had Eisel and Freire in the break, and Tyler Farrar (Garmin) and Baden Cooke (Saxo Bank) helping drive the chase. Most of the time, the big sprinters are hiding in the wheels until the last possible moment, because that’s the best way to win those races. But they get a bad rap for it, anyway, and people love to label them as hopeless climbers, one-trick ponies, or lazy glory-hounds. Gent seems to be their favorite chance to prove otherwise.
  


• Sep Vanmarcke, whoever that is, had a career day at GW yesterday. No matter how anonymous the Topsport-Vlaanderen rider was in the morning, by the afternoon we all knew who he was since he dutifully sat on the back of the break right in front of the TV cameras for the last 20k. Which, as the new guy in a group of bigger names in a huge race, is exactly where he should have been. Sure, Freire and likely a few other guys in the break hollered at him for it – if you can intimidate someone into working, why not – but they also knew exactly where he was coming from. While he was back there, Vanmarcke saved up enough gas to try the only real late-race grab at victory, then still mustered a second place in the sprint. Beats just plodding steadily to the slaughter…Roelandts.
  
  
• Matti Breschel’s (Saxo Bank) flat on Sunday was the heartbreaker of the race. The kid is absolutely flying right now, stomping everyone on the final climb of the Kemmelberg before (sensibly) easing up, and his presence in the finale could have drastically reshaped the race. It’s not quite to the level of the Boonen/Devolder two-headed monster, but with Breschel riding as he is, Cancellara’s chances at the Ronde are a little better than they were.
  
  
• Related: Shimano neutral support is going to have to spend this week practicing its wheel changes – if Boonen gets a change that slow next Sunday, they’re going to get lynched.
  
  
• Finally, think Omega Pharma-Lotto's current no-win season is bad? In 2005, the very talented T-Mobile went scoreless until Alexandre Vinokourov finally outsprinted Jens Voigt (CSC) to win Liege-Bastogne-Liege.

Tough and Tranquilo

Oscar Freire (Rabobank) isn’t an obvious candidate for cycling stardom, is he? Tom Boonen (Quick Step) is better on the stones. Mark Cavendish (HTC-Columbia) is quicker. Alessandro Petacchi (Lampre) has more horsepower. Alejandro Valverde (Caisse d’Epargne) is a better climber. Edvald Boassen Hagen (Sky) is, well, we don’t know what he is yet, but we’re pretty sure it’s good.

By comparison, Friere’s talents are a bit less obvious, perhaps even more mental than physical, and he doesn’t get as many chances to show off his specialty as the aforementioned riders do. That’s because there just aren’t too many races that cater to what seems to be Freire’s defining talent: being the best small bunch sprinter in the world in cycling’s death zone – distances beyond 250 kilometers. In fact, there are really only two races with that sort of distance that are likely to end in a bunch sprint: the occasional World Championship, and Milan-San Remo. But as of last Saturday Freire has won both of them three times, and I hear they pay pretty well.

In trying to explain those victories, it would be convenient to pin Freire’s long-haul prowess on age – to profess that his 34 years have given him the fabled “resistance” that comes from years as a professional and the tens of thousands of kilometers in the legs, the magical force that gives older riders the edge when the kilometer count gets beyond the norm. I’d like that to be true – it’s a theory that I’m fond of, more and more so as I get older, in fact. The truth is, though, that doesn’t seem to be the case for Freire. He bagged his first world championship (1999) in Verona at age 23, when he was a little-known rider on the modest Vitalicio Seguros team. His second title came in 2001 when he was 25, and the third in 2004 at 28. So Freire wasn’t boy-wonder young when he won those, but he certainly wasn’t shuffling off towards the rocking chair, either. His San Remo victories (which tack another 40k or so onto the typical World Championship distance of around 260k) fit the older rider theory a bit better, having been achieved at ages 28 (2004), 31 (2007), and 34 (2010). But after his earlier Worlds successes, those San Remo triumphs were hardly surprising. We already knew he could go the distance and still have a kick at the line.

Pure distance isn’t the only thing Freire seems to thrive on, though; there seems to be a level-of-difficulty aspect that factors into his wins as well. After all, if Freire’s turn-on was just rolling out the kilometers and having a sprint at the end, he would have stacks of Paris-Tours victories in his palmares. But he doesn’t, and my thinking is that’s because, while Paris-Tours is a hair over 250k, it’s also pancake flat, with a straight-as-an-arrow run in. There’s just not enough material there for Freire to work with, no obstacles to wear out the more conventional sprinters and their assistants or to sap the strength of the late-race breakaway heroes who have captured quite a few victories there recently.

While I certainly wouldn’t rule out Freire winning Paris-Tours based on that, his sweet spot does seem to lie somewhere between selectivity of a Ronde van Vlaanderen and the sprinter-friendliness of a Paris-Tours. For Freire to thrive, the race needs enough difficulty to shed the pure sprinters, but not enough to decimate the field entirely. (In short, a flatish World Championship course, or the capi of the Ligurian coast.) If that comfort zone seems familiar, it’s because it used to be the stomping ground of Eric Zabel, who’s probably at least part of the reason Freire doesn’t have more victories in races that fit the bill. (Although Zabel is at least partially responsible for Freire’s 2004 Milan-San Remo victory.)

Looking back over his victories, I can’t help but think that Freire’s advantage in long races is more between his ears than in his legs. He has a certain calmness about him, even when he’s flicking his bike over medians and through roundabouts to pick up a couple bike lengths in a hectic finale. Since he burst on the scene with his 1999 World Championship win in Verona, I can’t recall an instance of Freire getting in a media pissing match with another rider or with his team management. I’ve never heard him complain about a dangerous finish, or seen him upset after a narrow loss. While it’s become a verbal reflex for Spanish riders to tell journalists they’re feeling tranquilo ahead of a major goal or after some major disappointment, coming from Freire, I’d actually believe it. Though he undoubtedly has the same worries and fears we all have, in racing and in life, he doesn't seem to let any of it get to him. If you up all the worrying a typical rider could during the buildup to a big event and over almost 300 kilometers of racing, then by comparison Freire has to be saving some serious mental energy for the sprint. And that comes in handy when you’re looking for the right wheel, dodging toasted leadout men, and trying to spot the jump when it comes.

While the exact conditions that most favor his success are somewhat rare, Freire (again like Zabel), also possesses surprising versatility. Like most riders with a strong sprint as their most notable quality, he has a host of stage wins, including four in the Tour de France, seven in the Vuelta a Espana, and wins at a number of smaller venues. To those, he adds the Tour de France green jersey in 2008, and an overall win in Tirreno-Adriatico in 2005 – both feats seldom accomplished by pure sprinters.

More interesting, however, is Freire’s more recent affinity for the cobbles of northern Europe. It first showed with his win at the Brabantse Pijl Belgian classic, which he first won in 2005 before nabbing the 2006 and 2007 titles as well. For those who might have missed those gritty wins, his victory at the 2008 Gent-Wevelgem may have come as a surprise, if only because he’s Spanish and Gent has cobblestones. But looking closer, Gent is a perfect target for the Cantabrian. Though only a paltry 219 kilometers long, the relatively sprinter-friendly cobbled classic features two ascents of the Rodeberg-Monteberg-Kemmelberg triple before descending and flattening out for the remaining 28 kilometers to the finish on Wevelgem’s Vanackerestraat. In the absence of a quality escape like 2009's, that leaves the perfect recipe for a hard-man’s bunch sprint, and a potential Freire victory.

Gent-Wevelgem, of course, is coming up this Sunday in its new weekend time slot, and Freire is clearly on form. But, when the inevitable list of favorites come out, he’s likely to slot in around fifth or sixth on a top-10 list again. I’m guessing he won’t be bothered by that.

Broomwagon

• What do we think of Gent-Wevelgem’s move to the weekend? For the race itself, for riders, and for anyone living within striking distance of it, it’s a great move. Obviously, the race’s chances of getting a good crowd and live TV audience are better on a Sunday than they are on a Wednesday, even in Belgium, where people are willing to bag work for a bike race. Organizers are also likely hoping that absenteeism among the top cobbled riders will drop, since they’ll no longer be primarily concerned with recovering from Flanders and preparing for Roubaix, and bailing on Gent as a result. And, as big a win as everyone knows Gent is, being a mid-week classic still hurts your prestige a bit.
  
  Who might lose out from the move? Well, American and tourists from far-away lands, for one – you used to be able to take a nine day block and fit in Flanders, Gent, and Roubaix for your dime, but now you’ll have to mill around Flanders for an extra week to fit all three in. Granted, for bike racers, there are worse places to be stuck than Flanders in early April. I’m on the fence about whether the E3 Prijs Vlaanderen (a.k.a., the GP E3) the day before Gent wins or loses in this deal. Big riders might either double up on the weekend and get a last block of high-intensity training in before Flanders the following Sunday, or they might skip or sandbag the E3 in hopes of doing real damage in Gent. Probably a little bit of both, actually, but I’m guessing in the end it’s a net win for the E3.
  
  
• After dental problems set back his early season preparations, Mark Cavendish (HTC-Columbia) seems to be bouncing back, taking the stage win at the Volta a Catalunya today. Catalunya doesn’t exactly draw the cream of the sprinter crop, but with Cavendish feeling at least a bit better, Gent-Wevelgem just got that much more interesting.
  
  
• Yet again, the outfit currently known at Omega Pharma-Lotto is under the gun for failing to register a win with the thick of classics season upon us. I’ve always liked Lotto, at least partly because they’re always the lower-budget underdog at the top of Belgian cycling, if that makes sense. I was hoping that without Cadel Evans’ grand tour aspirations to look after this year, they’d be able to focus in on their core competencies and be fit, happy, and ready for April, but no avail. It’s worth noting that Evans’ current team, BMC, is also winless so far with a classics squad that’s been radically underperforming, particularly for a team that should be trying to make its name.
  
  
• Like a good Belgian classic? Don’t forget Dwars door Vlaanderen (“Race Across Flanders”) on Thursday. It has cobbles, bergs – you know, all that stuff you like. Looking back over the season so far, it’s hard to bet against riders like Jens Keukeleire (Cofidis) or Bobby Traksel (Vacansoleil) for races like Dwars and E3, but this isn’t early March anymore, and with the giants of the road tuning up their form, their odds may be getting a bit slimmer.
  
  
• On the track, Belgium’s Iljo Keisse broke his collarbone during a training session at the World Championships. That’s unfortunate for Belgium’s hopes in the madison and points race, but it's also now a loss for road racing fans. After dominating the Six Day races for several years, Keisse signed a contract with Quick Step for this year, where many were looking forward to seeing how he’d translate his ample skills on the boards to the road. Belgium’s last big Six Day star, Etienne de Wilde, amassed a pretty impressive road resume, including Het Volk and Tour de France stage wins. Looks like we’ll have to wait a little longer to see if Keisse can make a go of it year-round.
  
  
• One final Freire note – I had to include a link to this Bobke Strut post, which also gives a bit of insight into Freire’s relaxed personality. It features Freire with a mini pump duct-taped to the top tube of his Rabobank issued Colnago. That earned him the Strut’s “low budget superstar” title, and he did it the honest way, by not sweating the details (not by the Rivendell/Martha Stewart way, where you spend 12 hours on internet research and another 4 hours in the garage to make things look like they’ve “just been thrown together”).

Almost as Good as Homemade

Courtesy RCS

With the Montepaschi Strade Bianche, held last weekend over the spring hills of Tuscany, Italian organizer RCS has managed to pull off an almost unthinkable feat – they’ve managed to create an instant classic. In a sport that places a premium on history and longevity – a sport where, after 40+ years, the Amstel Gold Race still struggles to be taken as seriously as its older siblings – the Montepaschi is inching its way towards premier status after only four short years of professional existence.

No, victory in the Montepaschi won’t soon be held in the same esteem as a win in the Ronde van Vlaanderen or Paris-Roubaix. That part will still take time – a lot of time, if it ever happens at all. But a victory earned over the Montepaschi’s gravel white roads is fast becoming a desirable entry in classics riders’ palmares. That desirability comes from the inherent value of winning a tough, interesting race, but it also comes from the high profile that a tough, interesting race garners in the press. And the Montepaschi has garnered media attention in spades. To illustrate, we’ll note that despite its stature in the eyes of fans, the race is rated a 1.1 on the UCI scale. That’s nothing to sneeze at, but consider that this season Italy will also host 26 other UCI 1.1 races:

G.P. Costa degli Etruschi (2/6)
Trofeo Laigueglia (2/20)
Clasica Sarda Olbia-Pantogia (2/28)
Giro del Friuli (3/3)
Giro dell’Appennino (4/25)
G.P. Industria & Artigianato (5/1)
Giro della Toscana (5/2)
Memorial Marco Pantani (6/5)
G.P. Nobili Rubinetterie, Coppa Papa’ Carlo (6/19)
G.P. Nobili Rubinetterie, Coppa Citta di Stresa (6/20)
Trofeo Matteotti (8/1)
G.P. Industria & Commercio Artigianato Carnaghese (8/5)
G.P. Camaiore (8/7)
Coppa Agostoni (8/18)
G.P. Banca di Legnano – Coppa Bernocchi (8/19)
Trofeo Melinda (8/21)
Giro del Veneto (8/28)
Coppa Placci (9/4)
Giro della Romagna (9/5)
Giro del Lazio (9/11)
Giro di Sicilia (9/12)
Memorial Cimurri (9/18)
G.P. Industria & Commercio di Prato (9/19)
Memorial Viviana Manservisi (9/25)
Coppa Sabatini (10/7)
G.P. Beghelli (10/10)

Now, you’ve probably heard of a few or even most of those. You might even know the past winners of a couple of them, particularly those that precede the Giro d' Italia or those that the Italian national team uses as tune-ups for the World Championships. But how many of those races have garnered previews, team statements, tech features, and day-of coverage complete with photo galleries? Not many, and for English speakers at least, coverage is usually limited to a bit of AFP-esque text highlighting the need-to-know details and little else. And at home in cycling-rich Italy, domestic 1.1 races sometimes warrant only six or so column inches in the mighty Gazetta dello Sport. And a lot of those races are old enough to be your father.

So what accounts for the love-at-first-sight appeal of the Montepaschi, and why have you seen so much more about it than, say, the 64-year-old Trofeo Matteoti? In crafting their recipe for an instant classic – altering the usual classics ingredients a bit to adjust for the absence of leavening time – the Montepaschi organizers did a lot of things right. Obviously, there are the gravel roads, Tuscany’s ubiquitous “strade bianche” that make up 60 kilometers of the 190 kilometer route and form the backbone of the race’s identity. They certainly give the race an immediate leg up on some more conventional competition, but while including crappy roads might seem like an autostrada to instant credibility, if treated ham-handedly they could have just be seen as a gimmicky, overindulgent effort to manufacture enough uniqueness to get people talking. But the Montepaschi’s organizers handled their signature element with care. They didn’t overdo the number of gravel roads, and didn’t throw in anything eye-poppingly dangerous. (And if you’ve been to Tuscany, you know there are options available for that.) As a result, they ended up with a tough but credible race, not a circus act.

By using the strade bianche, RCS also embraced a course feature that’s native to the region the race traverses. They didn’t make the mistake of hunting down misfit scraps of cobbles to mimic Roubaix or venture out to some coastal capi to cash in on Milan-San Remo’s intellectual property. Like the rest of the Chianti region it passes through, the race recognizes the value of terroir and embraced the local flavors that the hills and roads of the region have to offer. Those flavors add an air of authenticity and timelessness to the race despite its youth, and having the finish in Siena's iconic Piazza del Campo, site of the Palio horse race, doesn't exactly hurt, either.

RCS also had enough confidence in their concept to let it stand on its own merit. Granted, I haven’t reviewed all the literature, but I’ve never seen them promote it as “Italy’s Paris-Roubaix” or “just as tough as Roubaix.” When you’re promoting a new race with bits of questionable roadway divided into sectors, it can be tough to avoid those words parting your lips, but RCS is experienced enough to know that those sorts of phrases just immediately admit (and advertise) inferiority and lack of confidence in your race. Of course, as the organizer of the Giro d’ Italia, Tirreno-Adriatico, Milan-San Remo, and the Giro d’ Lombardia among others, RCS probably isn’t lacking for confidence in their ability to put on a good race. But you have to believe that there might be just a bit of a chip on their shoulder when they know their events will be compared to ASO properties like Roubaix, Fleche Wallone, and Liege. Fortunately, they feel good enough about their efforts at the Montepaschi to avoid making overambitious comparisons. It's OK to reference Roubaix or Flanders for your rough-road ride with friends, but for a professional race with serious ambitions, it's a no-no (Hel van het Mergelland, I'm looking at you).

Finally, RCS scored the perfect calendar spot for the Montepaschi, slotting it in a week after classics riders really get their heads in the game at Het Niewsblad and Kuurne and a week before they tune up for Milan-San Remo by riding Tirreno-Adriatico. The Montepaschi does face some competition from the simultaneous Dreidaagse van West-Vlaanderen in Belgium – which could siphon off some of the considerable home classics talent from that country – but at this time of the year, many riders will still be eyeing opportunities to head south. The Vuelta a Murcia also overlaps, but that’s far more relevant to the stage race crew. So, like Het Nieuwsblad, while the Montepaschi might not be a primary season target for many riders, organizers will still get a motivated group of relevant riders on rising form to attend. Perhaps most importantly from a calendar perspective, RCS didn’t overreach by trying to insert itself in the heart of classics season – like between San Remo and the rescheduled Gent-Wevelgem, or just after Liege. Though it might look like a more prestigious spot to the naked eye, trying to gatecrash a late March or April time slot would likely backfire as top riders pick and choose their targets.

Besides all that, I suppose the fact that RCS also owns La Gazetta dello Sport doesn't do the race's publicity efforts any harm, either. Call it an unfair advantage if you will, but some pretty good races have been founded to sell newspapers.

Broomwagon

• Pointing out above that a large number of Italian UCI 1.1 races are relatively anonymous wasn’t a slight. In fact, I highly recommend them – and their counterparts in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Look, if you’re going to plan a whole vacation around watching bike races, yes, by all means go for the gusto and hit the Gent-Ronde-Roubaix week, the Ardennes week, or the Giro d' Italia. But if you just happen to be banging around Europe on other business, check out the UCI calendar and see what’s going on where you are. Compared with the top races, the UCI 1.1 races are like seeing a great-but-lesser-known band at a small venue instead of a superstar at an arena. The music is still great, you can get a lot closer to the stage, and you’re far more likely to meet the guitarist having a drink at the bar.
  
  
• In writing about the Montepaschi race, how many times has “Strade Bianchi” been typed, only to be corrected to “Strade Bianche”? Or not corrected, as the case may be.
  
  
• Word just came down that first and second place at the U23 Cyclocross Worlds just rang the doping bell at that event. Two brothers, both from Poland. This news manages to go both ways on the stereotype meter, and both ways manage to be bad. On one hand, the news chips away at the somewhat baseless “cyclocross is cleaner” feeling as well as the timeworn “the new generation will be cleaner” mantra, but it also does a hell of a job reinforcing the “Eastern Europeans are all huge dopers” stereotype. Ah well.
  
  
• This is old news, but Gert Steegmans (RadioShack) got blown over in the Paris-Nice prologue and broke a collarbone. Blown over. Now, I know the weather over there hasn’t been peachy lately, and that time trial bikes are a bear in the crosswinds, but at 6 feet 2 inches and 185 pounds, Steegmans isn’t exactly a waif by bike racing standards. So if Steegmans was blown over, I’d expect Frank Schleck (Saxo Bank) to be somewhere in Oz, surrounded by Munchkins and oiling up a tin man right now. Ewww, that sounded bad. Anyway, more bad luck for Steegmans, which is a shame. I was looking forward to seeing how he’d do riding in a leadership role at the classics instead of playing second fiddle.

Classic Classics

Sometimes – usually in years when there’s a clear blue sky in Flanders or it’s downright balmy at Roubaix – it can be hard to explain to people where the spring classics get their fearsome reputation. Other times, like last weekend, it’s fairly apparent how these races have become known as the crucible that forges cycling’s hardest men. Of professional cycling’s many and varied “season openers,” the start of the northern classics season is perhaps the most anticipated by fans. With always-questionable weather and courses that traverse some of the sport’s holiest ground, the early Belgian classics provide a more vivid, bracing awakening from the off-season than do the multitude of warm-weather events that now precede them on the calendar. So for those who like to expunge the depths of winter by plunging into a frozen pond instead of by easing into a warm bath, last weekend marked the true start to the cycling season.

While the home fans were likely disheartened by the lack of a Belgian winner, this year’s Omloop Het Nieuwsblad/Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne weekend didn’t disappoint viewers looking forward to some classic classics racing. Tough weather, fate, and the traditional fierceness of the competition ultimately produced winners who for years have hidden in plain sight. Both riders have been a steady presence up north for the better part of a decade but seldom topped the favorites lists, though for decidedly different reasons.

On Saturday, under cold but clear conditions, Juan Antonio Flecha (Sky) finally tasted victory at Het Nieuwsblad after netting the second spot in 2007 (when the race was still known as Het Volk) and a third last year. You have to wonder if Flecha felt a little dizzy at he scaled that last steep pitch to the top step of the podium, as he’s not exactly familiar with the altitude. One of a count-them-on-one-hand cadre of Spanish classics specialists, Flecha has consistently been near the front of the big classics for the past five years, scoring a second in Gent-Wevelgem, third at Flanders, and second, third, fourth, and sixth at Paris-Roubaix. Those are extraordinary results for any classics rider, much less a Spanish one, and they’ve been more than enough to get his name chalked on the bookies’ boards with some pretty decent odds. But even though it’s long been apparent that Flecha has the legs to contend, observers had started to wonder if he had the head to win a classic rather than just place or show.

With his win at Het Nieuwsblad, Flecha looks to finally have matched his own strengths with a sense of timing. Though he’s a big, powerful rider with extraordinary force, he’s never going to scalp Tom Boonen (Quick.Step) or Thor Hushovd (Cervelo) in a sprint on the Roubaix velodrome, or win a small-group jumping contest from Nick Nuyens (Rabobank) or Philippe Gilbert (Omega Pharma-Lotto) on the run-in to Meerbeke. If Flecha was going to bag a big win, he’d have to start his move far enough out to be able to grind away from riders with more punch, and in separating himself from Gilbert, Frederic Guesdon (FdJ), Roy Curvers (Skil-Shimano), and Jurgen Roelandts (Omega Pharma) some 20 kilometers from Gent, he finally got the formula right.

Waiting for the inevitable group-of-five shenanigans to begin in the final kilometers would have sunk Flecha, since despite his strength he doesn’t fare well when winning requires repeated jumps. That scenario would play more to Gilbert’s strong suits, even moreso when Gilbert had teammate Roelandts in the group to help soften things up and close down gaps. So instead of waiting for hesitation to deal him his losing hand, Flecha mustered a single, committed acceleration to create the gap, then relied on his greatest asset – force – to drive at a steady, relentless pace that the chasers simply couldn’t match.

Now, with this season's cobbled classics in the books, we’ll need to wait a month to see if Flecha is able to apply his lessons learned when Boonen, Hushovd, Pozzato, et. al. reach top form for Flanders, Gent-Wevelgem, and Roubaix. It’s one thing to pull of that sort of move in the early season over just Gilbert, an aging Guesdon, and the others; it’s another to pull it over on a royal breakaway as you’re rolling up to the Bosberg full-tilt.

Like Flecha, Sunday’s Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne winner Bobbie Traksel (Vacansoleil) wasn’t many people’s top pick, if he was anyone’s pick at all. But unlike Flecha, it’s been a long time since Traksel’s even been considered at the bookie tables. Rabobank signed him to his first pro contract in 2001 at least partly on the strength of a win at the U23 Ronde van Vlaanderen. Traksel rewarded that faith the next year with a win at Veenendaal-Veenendaal, the Netherlands’ biggest home classic outside of the Amstel Gold Race. But after a quiet 2003 and 2004, Traksel was no longer looking like the Dutch heir to Michael Boogerd and Eric Dekker at Rabobank, and he moved across the border to the second division Mr. Bookmaker team in Belgium. He’s remained solidly in the second division from there, riding for various teams directed by Hilaire Van der Schueren -- Palmans in 2007 and the more anonymous P3Transfer-Batavus in 2008 -- and a stage victory and subsequent overall win in the 2008 Dreidaagse van DePanne ensured his place when Van der Schueren created the more fancied Vacansoleil squad in 2009.

While he hasn’t thus far turned out a classics star, Traksel has always been a classics specialist, appearing continuously in the results sheets of the biggest races, always battling, and doing the job in relative anonymity – the definition of the workingman’s pro. He’s been the guy in the early break who’s getting caught just as the TV coverage comes on. He’s been one of those four nameless teammates driving in a steady rotation at the front of the peloton. He’s been the guy getting spit out the back when he’s done with his work.

It’s something nice when things come good for a guy like that – a guy who just keeps plugging away – and maybe it’s that doggedness that let him persevere in the three-man break with Rick Flens (Rabobank) and Ian Stannard (Sky) through miserable conditions that cut the peloton down to just 26 finishers. Riding through a storm so fierce that it killed several people in northern France and earned itself a name, Xynthia, the peloton was split in two within an hour, with 50 riders, including a number of favorites, climbing off a the first feed zone. Once the race hit the hills, it was Traksel who made the selection, attacking with teammate Arnaud Van Groen, whom he later dropped. Fens and Stannard bridged up on the Oude Kwaremont – which is still damn early in that race – and the three fought off respectable chases from Hushovd and Dominique Rollin of Cervelo and Hayden Roulston of HTC-Columbia. Not rattled by the chance of tasting big success for the first time in years, Traksel stayed calm in the finale, jumped at the right moment, and stepped back out of anonymity.

On a final note, Rabobank has long been the classics squad that, while undeniably talented, couldn't quite seem to close the deal, at least not as often as they should have over their long history -- a few Amstel Golds with Dekker and Boogerd, a couple Nokere Koerse with Graeme Brown, and Gent-Wevelgem and a few Brabantse Pijl with Oscar Freire being the most notable. With Rabo alumni taking home both wins in fine stye this weekend, we have to wonder -- is the squad's short classics win column simply (bad) luck of the draw on race day, or is there something wrong in the car or the office?

Broomwagon

• Omloop Het Niewsblad, former Het Volk, holds a special place in my heart, as it was the first European race I ever covered. I freely admit that I was a little blown over at the time, but was saved by Marcel Slagman, then of the Dutch magazine Wieler Revue, who gave me an insiders’ lesson in covering the classics and a hell of a tour of the Flemish hill zone. Seems he’s with Wieler Magazine now, applying the same skills and hopefully continuing to assist the neophytes as they wander past.
  
  
• Tyler Farrar (Garmin) finished a great third place in Het Nieuwsblad, bringing the field sprint home behind Flecha and late escape Heinrich Haussler (Cervelo). Farrar, of course, is no revelation at this point, but it’s still great to see Garmin getting its biggest results with home-grown talent versus hired guns.
  
  
• Though they’ve publically declared their primary goal to be winning the Tour de France with a British rider within a few years, Team Sky has nonetheless recruited what might be, on a rider-by-rider basis, a much better classics team. Given their talent, well publicized budget, and somewhat embarrassing missteps at the Tours of Qatar and Oman, no doubt the pressure was on Flecha to get a big result early to clap some of the wagging jaws in the press and peloton firmly shut. That mission’s obviously been accomplished with his Het Nieuwsblad win, and reinforced by Stannard’s ride at Kuurne. But how much of those performances was due to the team versus individual grit? Has Sky been transformative for Flecha? Is he really getting better support? Or did he just need a change of scenery from Rabobank to anywhere else? Sky will obviously remain one of the major stories throughout the season, with Flecha and Edvald Boassen-Hagen both looking to figure prominently in the plotline of next several months.
  
  
• You have to love Frederic Guesdon. Well, maybe you don't have to love him, but you have to respect him. After winning Paris-Roubaix in 1997, only to have many dismiss it as a fluke, he managed to stay motivated through some lean years of scattered small stage wins before netting the 2006 Paris-Tours for his persistence. Now, at 38 years old and in his 15th year as a professional, he's back again and making the late break at Het Nieuwsblad.
  
  
• Like many, I’m excited for March and April. People will continue to speak of Quick.Step and Omega Pharma-Lotto as the heavy hitters for the classics, and rightfully so. But the truth is, there are more guys capable of a big win than any time in the last decade, and they’re more spread among the teams, ProTour and Pro Continental alike. There’s Boonen, Chavanel, and Devolder at Quick.Step, of course, and Hoste, Roelandts and Gilbert at Omega. Haussler, Klier, and Hushovd at Cervelo. Steegmans and Rosseler at RadioShack. Pozzato at Katusha. Nuyens and Boom at Rabobank. Kroon, Hincapie, Ballan, and Burghardt at BMC. Flecha and Boasson-Hagen at Sky. And others I’ve forgotten, but you get the point.
  
  
• How big a role could fate play in contests of strength and skill amongst highly trained athletes? In road cycling, plenty. Consider that Kuurne featured a course 20 kilometers shorter than intended due to a downed tree on the Cote de Trieu, and was subdivided not once, but twice by trains. Keeps things interesting, no? At least the trains in Flanders tend to be relatively short and quick, not like the 500 car coal trains that lumber through parts of Virginia.
  
  
• Speaking of Virginia, the Service Course spent Sunday at the North American Handmade Bicycle Show in Richmond. It was a very successful event by all accounts, mine included, and based on what I saw, there should be thousands upon thousands of photos available on the Internet within a matter of days in case you missed it. Since the photographic angle will be well covered, I’ll give a more text-based assessment a bit later in the week.

Lost in Translation

Word was said to be leaking out of Italy over the past several days that Washington, DC, had indeed landed its longshot bid to host the start of the 2012 Giro d’ Italia. Big cycling media reports, subsequently parroted and embellished in any number of places, said that organizer RCS had made statements to the Italian press indicating it was a done deal, with the announcement to be made this morning at the Italian Embassy in DC.

Now, in the fading light of Thursday afternoon, those reports appear to be not quite so accurate, and I’m not talking about the fact that the event is going to be this evening rather than this morning. An event there will be, it seems, but rather than a triumphant victory announcement, it will be a rah-rah session held by the Italians and the Mayor in an effort to convince area businesses (and likely the rest of the DC government) that a wildly misplaced Italian bicycle race will be a financial benefit to the city. In other words, get them to cough up some dough.

That's a substantially different story from those running yesterday, though most of those stories have now been "updated", or "corrected," or "retracted," depending on how you look at it.

I have to admit, when the idea of DC hosting the Giro initially floated out, I approached it with a feeling of acute skepticism, bordering on pessimism. And frankly, even though DC’s proverbial hat seems to still be in the ring, I’m still finding it hard to shake those feelings. I support the effort – this would, after all, bring the Giro d'Italia to my backyard, or five miles from it, anyway. And it's bold, risky, and a little bit ill-advised, and I like that. But hauling a grand tour across the Atlantic is a gargantuan undertaking, fraught with a number of logistical challenges that can’t be overcome with mere enthusiasm. Some can't even be overcome with money, and that's saying something. Among the challenges, monetary and otherwise, that will have to be faced down:

• For the past several years, the Giro has faced substantial criticism from riders about the length of the transfers between stages – and that’s when we were talking about a three-hour bus ride. Imagine the reactions to 14 hours in the air. I expect the riders’ association to weigh in.
  
  
• Beyond the travel time, riders will be fairly resistant to sitting in a flying, germ-recirculating aluminum tube just as they're hitting some of their lowest body fat levels of the year. Twice.
  
  
• Jetlag. Going east is worse, so expect a less-than-enthusiastic Stage 2 back in Italia.
  
  
• During the U.S. phase of the race, there would be a six-hour time difference between the Giro's primary viewing audience in Europe and the bike race itself. Organizers would likely mitigate that problem with early starts in local time, which in turn will piss off riders, soigneurs, and mechanics.
  
  
• Since DC would host at least a prologue and likely at least one additional stage, the cost and hassle of having to ship both a time trial bike (prologue) and a road bike (stage 1) and related equipment for each rider will have to be considered. Bike sponsors will not want to lose the time trial bike exposure of a grand tour prologue to the quaint "Eddy Merckx style" prologue rules often used for races in exotic (read: non-European) locations. This isn’t the Herald Sun Tour or Qatar. It’s the Giro.
  
  
• The price for a second set of infrastructure required will be substantial on its own. Things like a complete set of rental cars for teams, organizers, officials, etc. And box trucks. And vans. And campers. And motorcycles. (Plus insurance.) And banners. And barriers. And radios. And 42 sets of roof racks.
  
  
• By going transatlantic, the race would substantially increase the cost and hassle for the media and other assorted camp followers. If these outlets are forced to cut costs, coverage (and associated sponsor exposure) could suffer.
  
  
• By exiting the bounds of the European Union, race organization and teams may spend more time than they'd like dealing with visa issues.
  
  
• I would expect that RCS will likely incur some financial loss from the reduced value of a Giro sponsorship to Italian/European sponsors, who would receive lower exposure in their key markets for two or more days of the race, including the presentation and grand depart. Organizers would need to be able to make that up with cash from this side of the ocean, which is hard to come by these days.
  
  
• RCS would also likely experience sponsorship value loss (and subsequent income loss) from European sponsors paying to drive a giant, rotating fiberglass sausage or something in the publicity caravan. Assuming nobody intends to fly that circus here and back, those sponsors would see about 1/10 of their days on the road eliminated. Granted, this could theoretically be mitigated by creating a second, U.S. caravan, though the concept is a little more alien here, and that could present sponsors with a pretty hefty sunk cost for 2 or 3 days of use.
  
  
• I haven’t been able to confirm, but there were apparently issues with the National ParkService prohibition on advertising when the Tour du Pont went through Rock Creek Park awhile back, which could mean either not using the most obvious road in the city to use, or taking another hit to sponsor value by driving unlabeled vehicles on un-bannered roads, etc., for one of two days here. Again, unconfirmed, and I don't remember.
  
  
• In trying to compensate for lost sponsor money on the Italian side with funds from U.S. backers, organizers may face potential sponsorship competition with the re-scheduled Tour of California, if it's still around in 2012. That is, potential U.S. non-endemic sponsors big enough to cut the big checks for cycling will likely have to decide whether to support the "U.S. race" or the "Italian race", both of which would be in the United States at the same time. If those potential sponsors are after warm feelings in the United States via cycling sponsorship, ToC is probably a better choice. If they're after warm feelings in Italy/Europe via cycling sponsorship, they're probably better off supporting an Italian/European race that's actually in Italy/Europe.
  
  
• Outside of the race organizational aspects, I also suspect there will be quite a local outcry if the Mayor and City Council pony up any city money (such as police costs or road surface improvement) for some Italian bicycle race instead of paying school teachers, increasing police on the streets, feeding the poor, or addressing any of DC’s other myriad issues. And DC's usual sugardaddy, the Fed, is getting pretty strapped these days. Yes, most if not all of those costs could be recouped via economic benefit to the city as a result of the race, but few outraged citizens will get that far in their analysis once the shouting starts. Look at what happened to the San Francisco Grand Prix.

So yes, I’m skeptical. But I’m also hopeful. The people working on the bid are experienced, smart people, and they know cycling and event planning. I’m sure I haven’t listed anything above that they haven’t thought of themselves. And if they needed help, I’d sign up in an instant. Hopefully, tonight’s session at the Embassy will be another step on the road to success, even if it’s not quite the finish line people were expecting yesterday.

Waffle House Party

The UCI announced on January 29 that Louisville, Kentucky will play host to the 2013 World Cyclocross Championships, the first time the event will be held outside of Europe. Many insiders would have predicted the United States’ first major international ‘cross event would be held at one of the sport’s traditional stateside hotbeds – like New England, or Katie Compton’s parents’ house. But making the transatlantic leap could already pose such a mental hurdle for Europe-based athletes that it seems the UCI placed a premium on making everyone more comfortable with the unorthodox trip. So, in vetting the Louisville venue, I can only assume that the UCI considered such important ‘cross-related questions as:

UCI: Does your city have ample facilities for serving waffles to drunks?
Louisville: Yes, yes it does.

UCI: Everyone really likes the horsemeat when we hold the Worlds in Belgium. Do you have good horsemeat?
Louisville: Um, in a manner of speaking. You probably don’t want to eat it if you’re going to dope control, though.

UCI: You know, Tabor (2010) has Budvar, St. Wendel (2011) has Karlsberg, and we can only assume that Koksijde (2012) will have the usual Belgian pils and jenever smorgasbord. Do you have some sort of signature local drink that we can use to get well and truly schnakered?
Louisville: Why, yessuh! I say, I say, we DO!

And after one sip of sweet, sweet bourbon, I can only assume the decision was made. Now that I think about it, Louisville is practically just northern Europe transplanted. Kidding aside, congratulations, thank you, and good luck to the folks who made it happen – Bruce Fina and Joan Hanscome, who also bring you (or people like you) the USGP; and the city of Louisville, which is throwing a lot of support behind the event and ‘cross in general.

Anyway, we have three years to chew on this whole deal, but here are a few quick holeshot thoughts:

• In the USAC release, head honcho Steve Johnson states, “After more than a decade of working closely with American promoters and the UCI to grow our international calendar of cyclo-cross events, Louisville’s winning bid is a testament to the success of those efforts and to the extraordinary quality of ‘cross racing in the U.S.”
  
  Right on, Steve. Does this big payoff from all USAC’s “efforts” mean the fed will do something more for the 2013 cyclocross “national team” than give them a jersey and a slightly uncomfortable pat on the ass? Because you know, even most bike shop teams manage to get you a discount on tubes or something. I mean, I know it’s been hard, or apparently impossible, to scrape together the cash to buy riders coach-class tickets to exotic vacation destinations like Flanders and the Czech Republic right at the height of their bleakest-depths-of-winter high seasons, and those new baggage fees are a bear. But if you can’t manage to do better when the Worlds are in Louisville, on three years’ warning, then that’s pretty depressing.
  
  Look, it’s one thing to stiff the pro/elite folks, who actually make (some) money racing bikes and whose sponsors will help out since they’re in a position to capitalize on their athletes’ Worlds participation. But for the juniors and even the U23s? Come on, if you want to call it a “national team,” strip people of their committed year-long sponsors' clothes, and wrap them in the flag for a day, at least pick up the tab. If you really want results, those folks need to be training, racing, resting, or doing schoolwork in the months leading up to the race, not hosting bake sales and car washes to fund a ticket and a hotel room, only to have you issue another self-congratulatory press release if they manage to turn in a good performance.
  
  
• Folks have been working on bringing a ‘cross World Cup stop here for awhile, and recent thinking has trended towards building Cross Vegas into that event, which makes a lot of sense. It’s so early in the season the travel wouldn’t present as much of a problem, and the potential sponsor pressure for riders to show at both the race and Interbike could persuade more recalcitrant riders to make the trip. But bringing the World Championships here is far better, and not just for the obvious reason that “it’s the friggin’ World Championships, man.” With the World Championship, by virtue of the late-season timing as well as the prestige, you’re basically guaranteed a turnout of the top stars, and they’ll be shooting for top form. In contrast, if you’re simply the first stop (by weeks) in the World Cup, you’re likely to get a much smaller turnout if a good portion of the top talent chooses to collectively wait it out and start their seasons one race later and 3,000 miles closer to home. And even if you get a few of the heavy hitters at the top, the overall depth of the field tends to get watered down a bit – look at the results of North American MTB World Cups for examples.
  
  This is not to say U.S. interests shouldn’t continue to pursue a World Cup here – it’s an admirable goal, and I hope they achieve it. While the Louisville Worlds will provide a huge one-time impact, a recurring yearly World Cup stop would be a significant long-term asset. As the VeloNews article linked above cites, championship venues are typically tested with a World Cup first, but there are still some funding humps to work out for a stateside World Cup stop since 15,000 people won’t pay $20 a head to watch a cross race here. However, if there still isn’t a U.S. World Cup prior to Louisville in 2013, a good promoter/federation performance there could potentially help shake some sort of solution loose and set the U.S. up for some recurring role in top-shelf 'cross racing.
  
  
• In email chatter since the announcement, I’ve already heard some half-joking worry about the arrival of plane loads of drunken, abusive Belgian fans. I’m more worried about their inevitable drunken, abusive American imitators -- if you’ve raced ‘cross, you know they’re out there. I’m always wary of imitators, of course. No matter how unsavory you may find their antics, at least the originals are well practiced and know what they’re doing. As for their inadvertent and overenthusiastic spawn, let’s just say I’d rather have Didi “the Devil” Senft on my roadside, legendary B.O. and all, than some local who thought Didi’s brand of schtick looked pretty damn appealing, and I’d much sooner take fashion advice from a real member of Gwar than some guy at an Oakland Raider game. So please, I beg of you, though 2013 is a long way off – if you go, be yourself, whatever that is, and don’t try to cop to someone else’s act in the name of some ersatz cyclocross “authenticity.” If Americans waving Lion of Flanders flags in Louisville strikes someone as authentic, they're in need of a dictionary. Drink what you want, act like you normally would, speak your own language, and enjoy the racing. For more information, please consult Joe Parkin.
  
  
• I was glad to see through the various releases that the U.K.’s Simon Burney was on the UCI technical committee involved in selecting Louisville. I don’t know him, but like many riders in the United States (where, pre-internet, English language ‘cross info was scarce for a long time), older editions of his Cyclocross: Training and Technique book served as a valuable reference and introduction to the sport. So that’s two we owe him, I guess.

Been Caught Stealing

As a sport, cycling has come a long way towards acceptance in the United States over the last 30 years or so. The accomplishments of Greg Lemond and Lance Armstrong on cycling's biggest stage have had a lot to do with that acceptance, as have marquis domestic events such as the USPRO race in Philadelphia, the Red Zinger and Coors Classic, the Tour du Pont, and the Tour of California. Yes, desperate-for-attention sportswriters at half-wit newspapers around the country can and will continue to write their yearly columns about how cycling isn’t a sport since them gol’ danged, spandex-wearing, French-speaking nancy boys couldn’t hit a Roger Clemens fastball or a three-point shot if their lives depended on it, and they’ll continue to use the resulting reams of cyclist hate mail to prove their far-reaching influence to an underpaid editor who really doesn’t give a damn. But they'll be preaching to a smaller and smaller choir of likeminded souls since, aforementioned unpleasantries aside, the United States has mostly managed to grudgingly accept that riding a bicycle fast to beat other people is a legitimate athletic pursuit.

That said, I’m betting that we haven’t reached the point of cultural acceptance where during, say, the Tour of Missouri, a flock of low-ranking domestiques could run into an Exxon Tiger Mart, clear out the Snapple fridge and the beef jerky display, and run out without paying, right under the nose of the owner’s giggling daughter. Being a Virginian, I’m no expert on Missouri mini-mart justice, but I’d venture that they’d get tasered or pepper-sprayed on the way out, and that’s if they hadn’t already pulled a groin due to the famously incompatible relationship between plastic clipless pedal cleats and linoleum gas station floors. At the very least, their larcenous hijinks would make the evening news, which would undoubtedly air a security video so grainy that not even the race numbers pinned to their backs would enable authorities to identify the suspects. (As with any petty crime committed by our kind, though, you can bet the news accounts would note that the perpetrators were cyclists, as well as whether or not they were wearing helmets at the time of the offense.)

But not so in Italy, at least not in the 1970s, when a standard antic in the Giro d’Italia was for riders to descend upon a roadside store or bar and pilfer all the orange soda, San Pellegrino, and light apertifs they could carry, often with the tacit or even explicit approval of the proprietor. This two-minute clip from filmmaker Jørgen Leth’s “The Greatest Show on Earth,” a documentary about the 1974 Giro, shows one such raid and captures a not-so-distant past that still feels worlds away.



[Film note: That anyone would attempt to open a bottle by pounding the cap against any portion of his bicycle’s steering apparatus speaks to the bike handling confidence of the rider. I’m not sure what finishing the job off with your teeth says, but it’s something.]

“Ah, but that’s a bygone era,” you say. “People are more litigious now, and computerized inventory and ordering makes wide-scale, willy-nilly looting extremely inconvenient and less endearing for modern retailers. No store owner would tolerate that nonsense today.”

The thing is, in Italy at least, I bet they would. The love and knowledge of the sport is deeper there, the traditions more closely kept, and in the grand history of Italian cycling, the 1970s aren’t that long ago. If Rinaldo Nocentini (Ag2r) wanted to pilfer some Orangina during a long, hot sprint stage, I’m betting not too many storekeepers on the route would begrudge him the loot. But the modern Giro, and modern racing in general, doesn’t afford riders the same chances at levity that it used to – the media and public scrutiny are greater and the stakes and money are bigger, or at least that’s how it feels. And it’s that upping of the ante and maybe a related loss of some peloton camaraderie that put an end to the bar raid, not a suspicious eye behind the espresso machine, a Carcano under the counter, or some heightened sense of fiscal responsibility. It’s just that, damn it, nobody takes time out of a bike race to rob a European convenience store anymore, and that’s a shame.

As far as U.S. cycling goes, however, it’s probably a good thing that the practice has died out. Ivan Basso (Liquigas) getting shot for trying to pinch a Fresca at a Bakersfield, California 7-Eleven due to a tragic cultural misunderstanding isn’t the kind of press we need. We’ve come a long way stateside, but cyclists and bicycle racing haven’t quite reached that level of cultural acceptance here. But it is achievable, my friends, and other sports have done it. In fact, I’d venture that the starting defense of the Indianapolis Colts could likely leave the stadium during the upcoming Super Bowl, roll up to the local Miami Chevron, clear out the Twinkies, the Gatorade, and the cash register, and be met with nothing but applause for doing so. Someday, maybe the likes of Quick.Step, Lampre, and HTC-Columbia will have the same luxury of status. It would sure help things along if they bulked up to 250 pounds and could bench press 435, though.

Broomwagon

- Speaking of the sport’s traditions, this article is sort of cycling’s equivalent of the swallows returning to San Juan Capastrano. When you see it each year, you know that spring is coming.

- Reports of Niels Albert’s (BKCP-Powerplus) non-contention for the upcoming cyclocross World Championship appear to have been greatly exaggerated, mostly by him. In all fairness, after getting yanked off his bike by a fan and cracking a rib at the Belgian national championship, Albert was right to be concerned about his ability to defend the rainbow stripes he’s worn this season. But after suffering through the World Cup round at Roubaix the following weekend, he roared back to win yesterday's final World Cup at Hoogerheide.

While it’s good to have Albert back, there’s no denying that World Cup overall winner Zdenek Stybar (Telenet-Fidea) is the odds-on favorite to win the World Championship on his home turf in Tabor, Czech Republic. Between his performances this year, the hometown crowd, Albert’s prediction that the Belgian team will return to being an every-man-for-himself affair, and Lars Boom’s (Rabobank) defection for the road, this has to be Stybar’s year.

- In lamenting how cyclists are treated on roads here in the United States, we often refer enviously to the perceived better treatment of cyclists in countries like Italy. Unfortunately, bad things happen there, too. Condolences to the Wilier family on the loss of its chief, Lino Gastaldello.

Tanking Up

Media outlets being in the tank for sports teams or individual athletes is nothing new, and it’s certainly not limited to professional cycling. In fact, just last week the Washington City Paper detailed the long, mutually profitable relationship between longtime NBC affiliate sports reporter George Michael and the Washington Redskins NFL franchise. It’s an interesting piece, but a little anti-climactic, both because Michael recently passed away, and because his Redskins bootlicking was so obvious you pretty much knew he had to be getting something out of it. Nobody would do that for free.

But unlike National Football League teams, cycling teams don’t typically have much cold, hard cash to throw at reporters to produce fawning infomercials about them. (At least I don’t think they do, though last year’s Versus Tour de France coverage occasionally made me question that theory.) Nor do most cycling publications have the resources or, thankfully, the ethical flexibility to pay riders for interviews (well, mostly). Nah, the currency that’s passed between the cycling media and its subjects isn’t cash, but rather the easily exchanged commodities of access and good press.

Once the initial contact and sniffing out between the reporter and rider are done, the access half of the equation follows a simple formula – write nice things (or wave your hands at the camera and mispronounce nice things) and we’ll keep talking with you. Disagree publicly, and we won’t. Do me an extra-special favor when I really need one, and maybe you’ll get that exclusive interview or insider tidbit later. Down the line, those interviews and tidbits get converted to attention-grabbing items that increase newsstand purchases, subscriptions, or page hits, thereby providing the media outlet with…cash.

In exchange, the media member that’s granted that extra level of access – the kind of access that goes well beyond dishing out a few post-race trivialities to the assembled finish line hoard or sitting for a 10 minute pre-season interview at camp – is expected to use their available pulpit to tell the rider’s side of whatever the story may be, and righteously defend him from his enemies when need be. Or at least not stir the pot in the other direction. Down the line, that lopsided coverage, if it’s done right, will result in a better and higher-profile image for the rider, which will lead to better sponsorships, endorsements, and other deals, thereby providing the rider or team with…cash.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like these arrangements hinge on some tedious written agreement that’s hashed out by contract attorneys. It’s a little more organic than that, and some outlets’ overtures towards riders are fairly aspirational – floating that over-positive story out in hopes it’ll be noticed and become the launching point for a closer relationship. It’s also worth noting that what a rider needs to grant access varies considerably. For some, just not being patently offensive to them is enough, and as long as you don’t remark repeatedly on how unattractive their mother is or the lack of intellectual prowess displayed by their girlfriend, they’ll be happy to talk. Others have to actually know and/or like you, and still others likely have to know in no uncertain terms what you’re planning to write. I’ll leave it up to you to figure out how those degrees of scrutiny typically correlate to the rider’s pay grade.

Beneficial as it is for both reporter and rider, if not for the media consumer, it’s an understandable arrangement. That doesn’t make it palatable, of course, but frankly, no matter whether you like the flavor or not, it’s unlikely to change any time soon. You can do bare-bones race reporting without much rider access, because that just takes an understanding of the game, a view of the TV, and a seat in the audience at the winner’s press conference if you want to go deluxe. But actual for-profit web sites, newspapers, and magazines need more than that – they need the inside skinny, the big interview when things are falling apart, that photo shoot of a superstar’s bike room, the ride-along during the final TT of a grand tour. In the age of streaming, on-demand video of races, that stuff is what sells magazines and gets hits on web articles, not telling the public who made the early break in the stage they all watched yesterday. So they get it how they can.

Like the City Paper, though, cycling’s media consumers are pretty willing to call the media out when they hop the border between press and press agent, only we're willing to do it while the reporter is still alive. Last year, the SC was critical of what I thought was a too-cozy and one-sided handling of Lance Armstrong by the VeloNews editorial department, and Patrick Brady of Red Kite Prayer is currently taking a bit of a beating for the same perceived offense in the comments section of this article on the “Contador bought his own wheels” scandalette. In the course of that piece, Brady, in turn, insinuates that Spanish daily Marca is deeply and irretrievably immersed in Alberto Contador’s bathtub. And he’s probably right. After all, if media outlets didn’t need to say nice things to assure continued access to their target markets’ top dogs, why else would cyclingnews.com have touted Michael Rogers as a Tour hope all those years?

Anyway, since we seem to be stuck with it, I say that media and pseudo-media outlets should band together to make the best of the inevitable game of media-rider kissy face. On the cusp of a new season, what we need to do first is expand our horizons a bit, go for the less obvious partnerships. Really, where’s the fun if we’re all in the Armstrong tank, or the Contador tank, or the Boonen or Nys tank? For godssake, someone snuggle up to some of these other guys: let’s pick a neo-pro and lock him in young, rock the sport with some unrelenting and unapologetic coverage of Frederic Guesdon, or sign up to be the official undercover media mouthpiece of anyone on Footon-Servetto. That way, readers can get some balance in coverage, even if they have to visit 16 separate sites to get it.

And media members, once you pick your tank, remember: no matter what salacious or despicable act your rider may commit, no matter how big the tactical blunder, no matter how apparent the lack of fitness may be, you must vigorously defend and even promote his position and interests to the public. You must, despite any well-reasoned and fully-cited arguments against him, despite any amount – mountain or molehill – of damning evidence that comes to light, rise to protect your selected rider from the slings and arrows of an obviously fickle, ill-informed, and ignorant public. And when called upon, you must refute, point by point, the arguments made by his accusers, slanderers, and various other malcontents.

What the hell, I’ll take Filippo Pozzato.

Afterthoughts

- Does Cadel Evans even have a tank? If so, who’s in it?

- Credit Peter Hymas, formerly of the excellent Bobke Strut and lately of the much larger but less endearing cyclingnews.com, for starting the unconventional tank trend by forsaking other more talented and visually appealing riders and throwing his love behind Ag2r’s hairless spider monkey, John Gadret. That’s the spirit.

- I know I said above that I’d take up Pozzato’s cause, especially with the coming Boonen-mania of the spring classics, but Liquigas is practically advertising opportunities to jump in their tank, and a trip to San Pelligrino sounds mighty good. I hear the water there is terrific.

- Somewhere in the cited RKP article above, Brady flatly states as truth that it is “standard practice” that riders are all provided the same equipment by sponsors, noting that Trek confirmed for him that that was the case at Astana last year. In the broad sense, it’s true that all riders on a given team do receive the same equipment (e.g., you all get a Felt with Dura-Ace and Mavic wheels), but let’s not pretend that the stars don’t get special toys, which is the matter at hand in the article. For instance, Trek famously developed a special extra-narrow TT bike for Armstrong during his Tour run. He didn’t like it, and Ekimov eventually ended up riding it, but as far as I know, not everyone in the team rank-and-file had access to one. Similarly, in 2007, Tom Boonen was issued a custom aluminum version of Specialized’s usually-carbon Tarmac to correct a fit problem he was having, and more recently had custom carbon bikes made up for his spring classics campaign. In 2004, after winning the Ronde van Vlaanderen, Stefan Wesemann showed up the next weekend for Paris-Roubaix riding a custom Giant carbon road bike with extra clearances and cantilever brakes. Nobody else on T-Mobile had one, and there were all of two made, or at least that’s what he told me. And those are just cases where the equipment actually came from sponsors – the big guns also tend to get away with playing it a little looser with the sponsor equipment rules. So, standard practice maybe, but with some considerable and relevant exceptions.

Johan Vansummeren Must Really Hate Cats

The Service Course hopes to get back to regular writing shortly, but in the meantime, we couldn't pass up the opportunity to present this Eneco Tour photo from today's Sportwereld. The wider version of the shot is here. Best LOL Cats-style caption in the comments wins...well, wins nothing except our admiration, whatever that's worth.

The Sportwereld caption notes that the condition of the cat remains unknown, but since I've seen squirrels recover from worse, I'll go ahead and assume that the cat shook it off and experienced only a little residual soreness the next day. That'll make me feel a little better about the gawking, anyway. And of course, since Johan Vansummeren (Silence-Lotto) was involved, I'll also assume it was Gert Steegmans' cat that was violated.

Cat-flattening aside, what else is up in today's paper? Well, it seems that Frank Vandenbrouke (who I am contractually bound by the cycling writers' union to refer to as the "enfant terrible of professional cycling") no longer finds himself in the employ of his continental team, Cinelli Down Under. The SC's official position is to be shocked -- shocked! -- by this development, because it's just more fun that way. Being without a team also means that VDB effectively doesn't have a racing license, so as the article quaintly points out, he might consider joining a club. Like I said, there's no new news in pro cycling, so it seems like we're just going around and around again.

Summer Reruns

There’s a pretty severe shortage of interesting things going down in professional cycling at the moment, aside from idle transfer talk that will all shake out in a few weeks time, anyway. And, with a long season behind us and a few weeks to go until the Vuelta kicks in, nobody's particularly interested in thinking up new things to do to make the news. In fact, new material is in such short supply that the sport and its associated media are being forced to air reruns. Sure, the advertisements are new, but the plotlines seem eerily familiar. For instance, many of this week's big stories are, in fact, from 2007. To wit:

1. Alexander Vinokourov

2007: Alexander Vinokourov, heading his nation’s Astana team, tanks in the Tour de France, losing buckets of time before rallying to a mountain stage win and a victory in the final time trial. Everyone begins to contemplate his inevitable run at the Vuelta a Espana, which he won the year before. On July 24, 2007, however, his positive tests for a blood transfusion hit the airwaves, putting plans for a Vuelta run on more ice than a blood bag. Vino’s exit has everyone wondering what will happen with the Astana squad next year. While it looks like the team will continue to exist, they don’t seem likely to be invited to any races.

2009: After another disappointing July, Alexander Vinokourov is coming into form just in time for the Vuelta a Espana, which he hopes to start as part of his nation’s Astana squad. Vino’s return has everyone wondering what is going to happen to the Astana squad next year. While it looks like the team will continue to exist, they don’t seem likely to be invited to any races.

2. George Hincapie

2007: With the U.S. Postal Service/Discovery Channel structure closing its doors, George Hincapie is looking to move to a new team. By electing to go with Bob Stapleton’s High Road-then-Columbia outfit, he stays with an ostensibly U.S. team that has plenty of European flair through its European schedule and international roster. With Columbia, Hincapie is assured support in the spring classics he adores and a mentor role with the team’s up-and-coming talent.

2009: With his Columbia contract at its end, Hincapie is looking to move to a new team, and is rumored to be joining the expanding BMC squad. By electing to go to BMC, he’d be joining an ostensibly U.S. team that has plenty of European flair through its increasingly European schedule, Swiss connections to BMC bikes and Assos clothing, and international roster. With BMC, Hincapie would be assured support in the spring classics he adores and a mentor role with the team’s up-and-coming talent.

3. Danilo Di Luca

2007: After a season of breakout performances, including his surprising Giro d’ Italia win, Danilo Di Luca finds himself afoul of Italy’s serpentine doping rules for his involvement with the Carlos Santuccione “Oil for Drugs” scandal. He’s sacked by his team and suspended for three months at the tail end of the season, forfeiting his UCI ProTour leadership and shot at the World Championship. [Incidentally, Giro dope tests reveal that Di Luca (then a 30 year old man) has the hormone levels of a little girl, leading everyone to suspect use of…ehhh…something.]

2009: After another surprising Giro d’Italia performance, this time finishing a strong second to Denis Menchov (Rabobank), Diluca finds himself afoul of pretty much everyone’s doping rules by testing positive for CERA. He’s sacked by his team and will certainly miss the last three months of this season, and likely all the months of the next two seasons as well.

3.5. Tom Danielson

Now, Tom Danielson (Garmin) getting back on track after a series of setbacks and getting in form for a Vuelta run? That’s the undisputed Gilligan’s Island of cycling reruns -- no matter what year it is or what time of day, if you surf enough channels it’s always on and it’s always entertaining. But I’m not touching it. And just to show you I’m not simply throwing stones here, I bring you one final 2007 rerun. So, in the interest of fairness:

4. Me

2007: Having welcomed a new baby to the world early in the year, the SC enters cyclocross season with a notable lack of any sort of riding mileage, fitness, or sleep. Relatively undeterred, the SC mounts an utterly undistinguished yet not-quite-embarrassing ‘cross campaign. On the upside, it turns out that beat-up, 2003 Fujis equipped with 105 don’t break nearly as often as a lot of fancier things, so at least I had that going for me.

2009: Having welcomed a new baby to the world early in the year, the SC enters cyclocross season with a notable lack of any sort of riding mileage, fitness, or sleep. Relatively undeterred, the SC intends to mount an utterly undistinguished but hopefully not-quite-embarrassing ‘cross campaign. On the upside, the Fuji rolls on, and once you have at least one child capable of yelling “Go Dada!” they automatically qualify you for the Masters class, so at least I have that going for me.

The Year of Living Dangerously, Part II

The second half of the Service Course interview with former Mercury-Viatel assistant sport director Whit Yost is presented below. You can read the first half here. Whit's observations on cycling can be found at Pavé.

SC: When the rumours about missing rider payments at Mercury-Viatel went public, were you still being paid?

WY: I was being paid at that time. I think Wordin realized, and we kind of made it clear, that if he stopped paying us the team really does just shut down. And keep in mind, my salary was such a pittance that I think he looked at it as, “I can fire Gallopin at whatever he’s making, and I can pay Whit Yost what he’s making to fill in the blanks long enough to get me through to October.” We still joke about the validity…I still have my “contract.” My last payment was October, and that was it. I didn’t received any of the final few months that I certainly thought I was entitled to.

SC: What stands out as the low point from those times?

WY: Certainly the end of that season. When Gallopin lost his job in July and it was announced that Eddy Borysewicz and myself would be responsible for picking up his duties, and Eddy B hadn’t set foot in Europe yet at that time. I was known as Gallopin’s number two man. And I think that certainly from Gallopin’s standpoint and from the perspective of a lot of his colleagues in the sport, there was this assumption that I had done something to stab Gallopin in the back so that I could have his job, which couldn’t be further from the truth.

I remember the night that Wordin called me and Stan [Barrett] and John Sessa, the head mechanic and said, “you guys need to meet at the office at 7:00. Gallopin’s coming to turn over his keys and hand over all his files, and I want all three of you to be there for it in case he tries anything funny.” I remember him coming in, and he wouldn’t even look me in the eye. I tried to talk to him, I tried to apologize, I tried to tell him that I thought this was unfair and I had nothing to do with it, and he wouldn’t even look at me. Several months later I saw him at Paris-Tours and tried to shake his hand, and he just walked right by me. That was the worst part.

SC: Have you had any contact with Gallopin since?

WY: No, none whatsoever. I hope that maybe one day down the road I’ll be somewhere and I’ll be able to talk to him about it. But I don’t know. The guy was really a father figure for me. He picked me up at the airport when I got back to Europe in October. I stayed with him and his family. I stayed in their guestroom. He drove me around. Everything I learned about being a director, Gallopin taught me. To this day, I really wish I will one day have a chance to talk to him about it, and make him see that I had nothing to do with it, and that I thought it was just as unfair as he did. But I was in a position where, if I fought it too much, I would have lost my job, too. By that point, Wordin didn’t care about who he fired, he didn’t care about breaking contracts or breaking promises. He was doing everything he could to save the program.

SC: You spoke earlier about Tonkov calling you his director from the outset, and that Van Petegem and many of the Europeans were very respectful of you. That, to me, speaks to the more ingrained professionalism of the sport in Europe. Do you think that the subsequent explosion of Mercury-Viatel affected European’s image of the professionalism of American teams?

WY: Yes, I think so. People looked at Wordin as this Californian, surfer-slash-cowboy character that no one really took seriously to begin with. In 2001, Mercury gave him enough money that he had to be taken seriously, financially. The team won a bunch of races at the beginning of the season thanks to Gallopin. That was all Gallopin and the talent of the riders.

But yeah, there wasn’t a lot of damage control, and I have no doubt that it hurt the credibility of American cycling. I’m sure that for a guy like Jonathan Vaughters there have been times where he thought to himself, “Jesus, if only this guy hadn’t made things so much harder for me, I might be even farther along than I am.”

SC: I can almost hear some readers saying that the success of U.S. Postal/Discovery should have no doubt countered that poor impression of American cycling. But those are basically European teams.

WY: Yeah, those were all European teams. If you go back, as I’m sure you know, if you look at U.S. Postal’s history in races, they didn’t become really successful until from a managerial and staffing standpoint, they cut themselves apart from their U.S. counterparts. It wasn’t until those changes were made that they really became the juggernaut that they were.

SC: The guys who were already big, experienced riders at that point – Tonkov, Van Petegem, Van Bon – do you have any insight into their perception of the situation? Did they let you in on their thinking at all as this was unfolding?

WY: I think they knew that we were doing everything we could to make the team successful. I would hope that if you were to bump into Pavel Tonkov or Peter Van Petegem and ask them what they think, I hope they would say that we were really good guys, and we worked really, really hard, and it’s unfair that they got caught up in this experience. [Wordin] got too big, too soon, when he didn’t really have time to learn the ropes. In fact, I know I said the opposite before, but maybe a guy like Jonathan Vaughters owes a debt of gratitude to John Wordin, because he gave an example of what not to do in trying to create a European professional team.

Granted, a lot of these guys have been through it before. There’s not a whole lot of regulation in professional cycling. If the UCI spent half the money they spend in regulating people’s blood values on regulating the management of the teams as businesses, we’d have a much stronger sport.

SC: The 2001 Mercury roster had a lot of riders who have since gone on to notable careers, like Baden Cooke and Floyd Landis. Was there a feeling back then of what those then-unknowns were capable of? And for all the other flaws, what does that say about Wordin’s ability to pick talent?

WY: It’s funny you say that. That was Wordin’s number one skill. Wordin knew talent. He took Floyd out of nowhere. He took Baden Cooke out of nowhere. And Floyd and Baden are two great examples. I knew, and said at some point during that season, “Baden Cooke is going to win a classic some day.” He didn’t win the major classics that I hoped he would. Part of that, I think, is that when he signed with Francaise des Jeux, FdJ wanted to market him in France. But the next year he went out and won Dwars doors Vlaanderen. And right away I said, this is it. Baden’s going to become the Baden that we all thought he was going to be.

Floyd? Everybody sort of saw the talent in Floyd if he could just keep his mouth shut and earn his knocks and sort of learn how to race in a European style. I think everybody saw that potential there, and obviously other people did too, because he went on to do what he did.

Matt Wilson was the same sort of thing. Matt never got as high as I think he could have, but he was a stagiare for us towards the end of 2001. He went on to sign with Francaise des Jeux and work for Baden and ride several Tours. So, yes, by far Wordin’s biggest strength was picking talent. Absolutely.

SC: We talked a bit about the team’s bike sponsor issues, but let’s talk a little about the equipment itself. At the start of Het Volk in 2001, some of the Mercury riders were chatting with the Aussies on Credit Agricole. When the CA guys asked how the new team bike was, the verbatim answer I heard was, “it’s shit.” What was the feeling about the equipment within the team? Mercury had to have been the last big team to ride steel frames.

WY: Yeah, we were sort of rockin’ it 1988 style for awhile there. You heard it from the horse’s mouth, and I can’t argue with that. The Lemond Zurich was a really beautiful steel frame, but it certainly wasn’t cutting edge in 2001. You could say whatever you wanted to, but a lot of that just came down to the late sponsor switch. We didn’t have time to get good bikes from the company, and even when we did, they were titanium frames that were as heavy as steel frames.

We also had a lot of issues with sizing. I’m not even positive we had full custom framesets for these guys. That’s one thing when you’re using carbon fiber monocoque, but when you’re making something out of steel or brazed titanium you should be able to make it to the riders’ preferences. And they weren’t.

So we had issues with that, we had issues with Spinergy. I remember right before Het Volk, we ordered 40 Ambrosio Nemesis rims without labels and we had some 32 hole spoked wheels build up for the classics. And I remember getting a call the day before Het Volk [from Wordin] saying, “you better make sure you guys don’t use those wheels,” and calling Gallopin to tell him what John thought.

The same thing happened with pedals. Peter Van Petegem wasn’t comfortable with the Speedplay pedals at first, which is a shame because Speedplay is a great company with great people running it. I remember before Milan-San Remo getting a call from Wordin saying to tell Van Petegem that if he doesn’t ride Speedplays he’s not doing the race. That obviously got smoothed over before the race started, but yes, there were a lot of issues with the European riders trusting the equipment they were given.

I think that a lot of them were let down. Every once in awhile I got this sense that they thought, “wait a minute, we’re riding for an American team. We should have the best stuff, because America is the country that’s always coming up with these innovations. Europe is old school and traditional, America should have all these great things.” So I think they felt let down by that.

SC: Cobbled classic choices aside, what did folks think of those Spinergy Rev-X wheels? They’ve gone on to garner quite an unfavorable reputation for, you know, exploding.

WY: I think in the more, for lack of a better term, generic races, I think the guys liked them a lot. But I remember later on in the season there’s that great photo I haven’t been able to find since of Pavel Tonkov in the Dauphine on a repainted C-40 with a set of Mavic Ksyriums with the labels peeled off. I think that kind of says it right there. These guys just weren’t that happy with it.

SC: So you’re not sitting on a basement full of Lemond Zurich frames and Spinergy wheels, then? Because the nostalgia value is only going to go up for that stuff.

WY: No, I wish I were. We didn’t have enough for our riders, let alone for the staff. If I ever found one, I’d try to jump on it just for the sake of nostalgia. I do have some old clothes and things. My favorite is a yellow jersey from the Tour of Malaysia that Jans Koerts signed for me, so I have that framed in my apartment.

SC: How did your tenure with Mercury wind down? Was there a point when you definitely knew it was the end? A goodbye of any sort?

WY: No, no. It ended not with a bang but with a whimper. We did our last couple of races. By then 9-11 had happened, so there was all that drama going on in the world. I just remember getting word that I was going to get my last paycheck at the beginning of October. I stuck around long enough to pack up my things. I think the last race I did was the Circuit Franco-Belge, a little four day stage race in Belgium and northern France. And that was really it – not a goodbye. Wordin obviously had bigger things to worry about than how his 25-year-old assistant sport director was feeling about the collapse of the team.

SC: So with you out of the picture, who was left there to terminate the leases, sell off the equipment, etcetera?

WY: That was Stan Barrett, who had since taken up residence in Paris. I think he was going to stay on in Europe just to live and maybe try to study French. Stan had been with Wordin since early on as a soigneur, so I think he felt a little bit more of a sense of obligation. And I think Stan knew that he was going to get paid as long as he was working – I think Wordin would have made sure to pay him as long as he needed to because they’d been together from the beginning. Stan is a great guy; he’s a good friend to this day, and I’m glad that Wordin took care of him until the end.

SC: Is there anyone from those days who you’re still in touch with?

WY: Yes, John Sessa, who was the head mechanic at the time, the guy who got me the job. He was just in my wedding over the weekend. He’s with Jelly Belly now.

SC: So, after everything you've described here, would you do it again?

WY: In a heartbeat. It was without a doubt one of the best years of my life. I just got married and I hope to have kids, so I hope that I’ll have other best years, but as cheesy as it sounds, I can honestly say that I got to live my dream for a year. When I was in college, my friends and I would watch those WCP videos of the classics, and the team directors would come up to the riders in the cars, and my buddies would say to me, “Whit, that would probably be a really good job for you one day.” Which was also a backhanded way of saying, “Whit, you’re really not that good of a rider.” But to actually be able to do that, and to meet those guys and to have those experiences has been fantastic.

The only regret I have, and I still say this to my wife to this day, was that I didn’t keep a journal. I wish that I’d kept a journal, because there are so many experiences, and places, and conversations, and stories that I know I’m not remembering right. I spent most of today trying to find the name of this hotel we stayed in after the Mont Ventoux stage of the Dauphine in 2001, and it’s driving me crazy that I can’t remember it

But that’s just a long way of saying, yes, absolutely hands down I’d do it again.

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Thanks to Whit for taking the time to share his experiences with the Service Course. Want to read what someone who's seen pro cycling from the inside thinks about the sport's current events? Visit Whit at Pavé.

The Year of Living Dangerously

An Interview with Whit Yost

With the financial storms battering Astana in May and June, many longtime cycling fans wondered if we were about to see another of cycling’s big teams take on water and sink rapidly to the bottom. Astana’s backers came through with the cash necessary to keep the team afloat, but had Astana sunk mid-season, it would have been, in a word, “precedented.” Le Groupement, which featured Graeme Obree, Robert Millar, and Luc Leblanc among others, went under early in 1995 when its main sponsor turned out to be a pyramid scheme. The 2001 season featured not one but two notable collapses. The vegetarian Linda McCartney squad overreached its budget and sank just after the Giro d’ Italia. And then there was Mercury-Viatel, the American domestic team that signed names like Peter Van Petegem and Pavel Tonkov, jumped to Division 1, and just as quickly found itself in choppy financial waters.

As a young assistant sports director with Mercury-Viatel during its turbulent 2001 season, Whit Yost got to get deeper inside professional cycling than most of us ever will. These days, he’s back stateside teaching English, but he continues to share his cycling insights via his excellent Pavé blog. In this two-part interview, Yost shares just a few of his experiences in the European peloton and gives us a firsthand look at what it’s like to be inside a cycling team in trouble.

SC: Let’s start with a little background. Where are you from, and how did you get your start in cycling?

WY: I’m from just outside of Philadelphia, born and raised. I rode a bike all the time when I was a little kid, but toward the end of middle school, I got a mountain bike and really just fell in love with it. By 1993, I’d started doing some races, and a friend of mine invited me to go down and do the 24 hours of Canaan.

That was the same weekend in June as the Corestates race in Philadelphia. At that point, I was still in the “roadies are geeks, they shave their legs, they wear tight clothes” mountain bike mentality, and it was something I was totally against. At the last minute, our plans to do the Canaan race fell through, and the guy who was going to take me said, “why don’t we go down to Manayunk and watch the bike race.”

That was the year that Armstrong ended up winning the million dollar Triple Crown, and we went down and rode our bikes around Philly, and I was hooked. Absolutely hooked. Just the scene, and the race itself. I basically went back that week and bought a used road bike, shaved my legs, and the rest is kind of history.

SC: Philadelphia got you hooked, but you ended up racing for awhile in Belgium before it was more common for young amateurs to do so. How did that come about?

WY: I went to Bucknell, raced at college, and my junior year I wanted to go to Belgium for the experience, for the culture, and especially for the racing. I found a study abroad program in Belgium, so I applied for that and was accepted. Basically, I spent my whole junior year living, studying, and ultimately racing in Belgium. I graduated in 1999 with really no idea of what I wanted to do other than that I wanted to be living in Europe and doing something involving cycling. I went back to the same institution [in Belgium] where I’d been studying as an undergrad, only this time as a masters student.

As I was doing that and racing, and really started to realize that I just didn’t have it to race at the elite level. I had a passion for it, but I didn’t have the talent, and I really wasn’t willing to do what probably would have been necessary to get to and sustain that elite level.

SC: So another year passed and you returned to the United States. How did your relationship with Mercury-Viatel come about?

WY: I ended up coming home in the middle of 2000. A friend of mine who was the head mechanic for Mercury at the time got me a gig as a jack-of-all-trades assistant with the team on a trip to Europe in the fall of 2000 because I spoke some French, I spoke some Flemish, and I knew the area. They gave me a plane ticket and paid me $500 a week. I flew over with the team and was just helping them out for two and a half weeks while they did some races at the end of the season.

I met up with [Mercury director] John Wordin one day and spent the day driving around with him in the team car following a race, and by the end of the day he offered me a job for the next year.

SC: What were your initial impressions of Wordin and his management style?

WY: At first, I was impressed. The gentleman that introduced me to John and got me the gig is a best friend and had been for years, so I’d heard stories about Wordin antics – this sort of non-traditional style that he had, showing up to directors’ meetings in his spandex, not making an attempt to really learn the language, being sort of brash, slightly arrogant and outspoken.

At the same time, I had to respect what he was doing. He had a great team of riders together. He had convinced Mercury to invest millions of dollars into taking the team to UCI Division 1 status [roughly equivalent to today’s ProTour level – ed.]. The riders seemed to like him, they seemed to trust him, and he definitely had passion. I used to joke that if VeloNews had a contest to give one of their readers $5 million to let them run a cycling team, he’s the kind of person it would produce.

But here I am, and I’m 24 years old being given the chance to be an assistant sport director for a European professional cycling team. I wasn’t going to be too critical of the opportunity.

SC: Speaking of your age, much was made of your youth at the time. There was even a feature in VeloNews that focused heavily on that aspect, as I recall. What was it like trying to be the boss for a group of riders that were, in many cases, older and more experienced than you were?

WY: It was certainly really hard. Ironically, I feel I had the biggest challenge convincing the American riders that I was someone to be respected. The European riders – I’ll never forget that from the first time I met Pavel Tonkov until the last time I saw him, he called me “diretorre.” He was always respectful and gracious, and he respected the title. He knew that this was the person who was in charge of this team, that this person was supposed to be the organizer and the manager, so he was going to show the respect that comes with the title. That lasted all the way through – Peter Van Petegem, Geert Van Bondt, Andre Teteriouk, all those guys, they always gave me the respect of a sport director.

With some of the Americans, they didn’t feel that I’d earned enough knocks, that I was the one who should be giving them their schedules, driving the car, etcetera. But they were still helpful. I remember the Tour of Malaysia was my first race, and I was thrown in at the last minute as THE sport director. I remember Chris Horner, Gord Fraser, Henk Vogels literally sort of teaching me on the job. You know, Horner coming back for a bottle and saying, “No, no, no – put your elbow here. Hit the accelerator just as I’m about to take it. Now I’m going to hold on…” Sort of coaching me through it as we went.

But it was certainly tough. There were moments when some of the other directors tried to intimidate me, but I just did what I thought was right, and made the decisions I thought were the best ones. It was what it was. By the end, I think I had earned the respect of a lot of my colleagues. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough at the time to give me a landing spot when Mercury began to fall apart.

SC: What was your life as a DS like when the team still looked like it had a bright future? Were you mostly in Europe, or did you do any domestic work? How did you spend your days?

WY: The only time I was stateside was for training camp in January/February. Then I flew right back. As Wordin put it, he needed people to help run his team in Europe. That’s really what I was entrusted with.

From those initial two weeks in August and September of 2000 when Wordin offered me the job, I was right back in France beginning at Paris-Tours in October. I pretty much stayed in Europe straight through the off-season to find the location for a service course, set up paperwork, sign leases, go to Italy to negotiate with the guy who was going to make our mobile home, go to central France to meet with the guy who was going to make our car racks, meet with the guy who was going to make our truck. I was working closely with Alain Gallopin, who was the head sport director in Europe, and another American named Stan Barrett. The three of us were responsible for getting the whole operation up and running overseas.

SC: What memories stand out from that time?

WY: I got to drive all over Europe. I got to meet with all the riders personally. One of the things I had to do initially was to drive around with a guy from Speedplay. He and I drove around meeting with the riders at their homes to take measurements, talk about shoe sizes, introduce them to some of the product, so that we could make our early season equipment order in time for training camp. So I got to go out to dinner with Pavel Tonkov and his wife; I got to have beers with Peter Van Petegem and Geert Van Bondt. I was able to develop a relationship with these riders early on, which I think was one thing that led to the level of respect they gave me later in the season – I was essentially the first face that they associated with the team from a management side.

I remember going to a little town outside of Florence to meet with the president of this mobile home company. I had a flight back to Belgium at about 2pm and this man insisted that he wanted to take us to this little local restaurant and buy us lunch, and he promised he would get me to my flight on time, which he did, albeit after finishing two bottles of wine and a couple of whiskey digestivos. So I still don’t really know how I got home that day, but he certainly got me on the plane.

SC: And that’s all you really asked him to do.

WY: This is true. I didn’t say what state I had to be in!

SC: Since the collapse of Mercury-Viatel is so inextricably tied with your experience with the team, we might as well jump into it. That implosion has gone down in the history books along with cycling's other great collapses. What was the view like from the inside?

WY: Well, I go back to the metaphor of “give a VeloNews reader $5 million and tell him to run a team.” He’s going to run it like a fantasy football team. He’s going to go out and spend all that money on riders, and he’s not going to take the time to think about infrastructure and the other things a team needs to run. He’s not going to think about money to put a metal shield on the bottom of the follow car the week before Paris-Roubaix; he’s not going to think about the number of oil changes the cars need; he’s not going to think about extra tolls for trucks on European highways; he’s not going to understand the ins-and-outs of the French legal system and creating a corporation, and how much money you lose by not having a corporation on French soil. I think John just had a great vision. He just wasn’t aware of all the things he would have to do to make that vision a reality.

We received some pretty reliable information in January that we weren’t going to get invited to the Tour de France. And then in April, I’ll never forget it, I was at the Grand Prix Denain in northern France and I got a phone call from Stan, who said that we just got our credit card bill from February, and that that bill was the entire budget for the entire year for credit card bills.

SC: The whole budget for general day-to-day expenses was spent by March?

WY: Just general day-to-day expenses. We were just bleeding money from the outset. Then it became apparent, and this is just what I gleaned from conversations, a lot of what the budget was based on were bonuses that we were to receive once we were invited to the Tour. And it was based on handshake agreements and promises that had been made if were were invited to the Tour de France. But once it came out that we weren’t going to be invited, these sponsors said, “Sorry, you’re not going to the Tour, that money’s not going to be there.”

SC: Was any of that bonus money to go to rider’s salaries? Or were the salaries taken care of by guaranteed funds, and the bonus funds were to go towards expenses incurred later in the year.

WY: I’m not sure. I believe the bank guarantee was intact, and ultimately the riders got that bank guarantee. This money would have just gone to, well, everything. It would have gone towards riders’ salaries, to getting to races, to getting extra equipment. It would have gone to the general budget of the team.

SC: So things were already starting to go south in early spring. As I remember, the financial issues became more public knowledge when Viatel went bankrupt and pulled out, and then there started to be bike sponsorship problems as well.

WY: Yes, and keep in mind there were bike sponsorship problems from the outset. Originally, we were just supposed to be Fuji. Wordin started out by flicking Fuji for Lemond when he realized he needed the money from Viatel just to get into the season. [Telecom firm Viatel had signed on with Greg Lemond in an effort to create a European-based team. Subsequent agreements combined the efforts of Lemond and Wordin to create the Mercury-Viatel squad, aboard Lemond bikes. – ed.] So Fuji got flicked for Lemond, and then when Viatel pulled out, we went back to Fuji on our hands and knees, and they graciously helped us out.

By then, I think the damage had been done. Wordin’s credibility was waning. We hadn’t been invited to the Tour. Lemond had pulled out. Everybody knew that Viatel as a company had gone bankrupt, but they still looked at Viatel and Lemond leaving as a bad sign. Laurent Chotard tested positive, which didn’t help. And by now the riders were talking. The riders weren’t happy. There were rumours the riders weren’t getting paid. You’d see things like Pavel Tonkov showing up to races on a Colnago C-40 that had been painted to look like a Lemond. Excuse the term, but it just kind of turned into a shit show.

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The second half of the Service Course interview with Whit Yost will be posted tomorrow. In the meantime, pay him a visit at Pavé.

Prologue to a Nap

Could someone with more sway than this website tell Versus that, while we very much appreciate their coverage of cycling, and will continue to voice our undying support of mixed martial arts fighting just to get it, using that generous 2-hour Sunday slot to air 120 minutes of Dauphiné-Libéré prologue (ahem, “opening time trial”) is just wasteful? Just like the start house pictures that heavy set gentleman was taking, prologue coverage doesn’t really tell us much other than, “hey, look who showed up!” And after 120 minutes of guys riding alone for 16 minutes, the rest of the key points of the 8-stage race, some of which may actually be interesting, will then be shoved into a subsequent 2-hour show next Sunday.

While well intentioned, in showing such a copious amount of prologues and time trials, I believe Versus isn’t giving itself enough credit. With the help of the Armstrong bounce, the station has, over the past decade or so, built up an audience for their cycling wares. Even better, that audience has finally reached a point in their cycling education where their appreciation extends beyond, “Guys on bikes! On television! I can see them!”

Look, when you’re a kid, you just like ice cream, and you’ll eat as much of it as you can get your hands on. But once you’re older and know a little bit more, you start to appreciate quality and taste over volume. Similarly, with more than a couple years of cycling now under their belts, even those much-maligned Armstrong-era fans have developed tastes that are a little more nuanced, and they’re looking for coverage of the more substantive, tactical, and interesting parts of the race. That usually doesn't include time trials, and it never includes prologues. Sure, their results can occassionally have dramatic effects on the overall, but usually it's just guys riding bikes, one at a time.

I’m not one to lob criticism out there without offering constructive solutions, of course. That’s what message boards are for. In the spirit of cooperation and improved coverage, which will no doubt net Versus tens of dollars more in advertising revenue, we humbly offer the following suggested rearrangements of the 240 minutes of Dauphiné-Libéré coverage that Versus will provide via its June 7 and June 14 Sunday broadcasts:

1. A judiciously edited 30 minute recap show each day of the Dauphiné’s eight stages. Air it any time you want, we all TiVo it anyway, but again, in the spirit of cooperation, we promise not to tell your advertisers that.
   
   
2. Two 60 minute shows covering key stages, and a 2-hour block next Sunday. Everybody loves that “whole stage” coverage Versus does during the Tour de France, and it is a gluttonous summer pleasure for many. But from a practical standpoint, professional racing is all about the last hour, so you really don’t need much more than 60 minutes. So take this past Sunday's alotted 120 minutes, cut them in half, and use them to show two of this week’s key stages. (Just so we don’t get confused, this does not mean one show should be dedicated to the Stage 4 ITT.) Do one hour of coverage of Stage 5 to Mont Ventoux, and one hour of Stage 6 to Briancon. Then use the 2-hour BikeGasm broadcast on June 14 to cover Stages 7 and 8. (In the first ten minutes of each show, Phil and Paul can do a quick oral summary of what’s gone on in the intervening stages, preferably using the correct names and team affiliations along the way to minimize confusion.)
   
   
3. Five, 22 minute daily recaps Monday through Friday of this week, with a quick recap of Saturday and last stage coverage on next Sunday’s 2-hour BikeGasm broadcast. The 22 minute length does seem unwieldy, I’ll admit, but it will give longtime viewers a sense of nostalgia for the early OLN days, when broadcasts started and ended at all sorts of random times.
   
   
4. Just blow all 4 hours on the Mont Ventoux stage. Listen, being British, Phil Liggett will be obliged to spend at least an hour of the Ventoux coverage talking about Tom Simpson and his tragic and untimely death due to drug-taking. It being Versus, Phil and/or Paul will also be required to narrate a 45 minute video retrospective of the Armstrong-Pantani Ventoux finish, and, in the interest of national security, reassure American viewers that Armstrong absolutely, definitely, positively did give Pantani the stage win, and that if he really wanted to, he’d have wiped the floor with him. Add in another 20 minutes of prattling on about Eros Poli winning a stage over the Ventoux despite being an enormous beast of a man, and a few minutes of miscellaneous poetics about the Ventoux stage of this year’s Tour de France, and we’re left with a little over an hour and a half for actual coverage. That sounds about right.

In closing, while extended prologue coverage may be the Ho-Hos of professional cycling – fattening, kind of artificial tasting, and lacking almost any sort of nutritional content – they do give you a chance to have a closeup look at the riders and equipment, largely because there is no action to distract you. Here’s what we saw before we nodded off:

• Cadel Evans (Silence-Lotto) looks skinny. I couldn’t quite make out ribs through the back of his skinsuit, but I did see a few vertebrae, which should mean he’s right on track in his Tour de France preparation. The other way to gauge Evans’ form is to examine how erratic his outbursts in the press are. According to that metric, he still has some fine-tuning to do.
  
  
• Evans was showing off his usual crazy-low TT position, but what struck me were his wrists, which were significantly below his elbows. The position seemed to form a giant scoop into his chest, leading me to wonder how aerodynamically efficient it is, or what other fit, comfort, or power factors may have led to that position. That said, I’ve sniped at people for judging aerodynamics from photos in the past, so I best shut my trap now.
  
  
• Like Evans, Ivan Basso (Liquigas) looked to have a distinct downward slope from elbow to wrist, so for a second I was just wondering if "wrists-down" was just the "new level." Then I saw Basso yanking violently up on his extensions to pull them back into position, so I guess not. But I do hear that "torque wrenches" are the new “I go by feel.”
  
  
• Alberto Contador (Astana) had a new prototype time trial bike with some crazy white-on-black design on it. Trek’s big names having custom painted (usually horrifically so) bikes is nothing new, with Contador, Leipheimer, and Armstrong all getting the star treatment in recent past. But I don’t think this latest example was just a show of respect and shrewd marketing on their part. The design could be seen as decorative, but it’s also very similar to the intentionally eye-confusing designs car companies use when they put new cars on the test track – it makes it really hard to tell what the bike really looks like in any detail.
  
  
• So does Contador’s debut of the new TT bike show us that he’s achieved primacy from Trek and/or the team for testing new products? In other words, is it now Contador, rather than Armstrong, who gets “the shit that will kill them” of Coyle-book fame? It seems correct that he does, of course, given his record and his chances in July. But since Armstrong has returned to the scene, it wouldn’t be terribly surprising to see him return to his spot as the primary recipient of new material.
  
  
• David Miller (Garmin) was riding a regular road bike with clip-on aero bars and deep section rims instead of a disk. It was good enough to net him 10th place, but I still have to wonder what the reasoning behind the decision was. The way I see it, either Miller has had his nerves so frazzled by dropped chains, exploding disc wheels, and other time trial shenanigans that he’s sworn off TT bikes forever, or it was just a photoshoot for one of Felt’s aero road bikes. Look out for an ad shot of Miller’s ride yesterday with some variation of “Slick Enough for a ProTour Time Trial” in the Felt marketing copy.
  
  
• Speaking of Millar and Armstrong, what is it with English speakers and handlebars so wide you could drive a bus with them? I remember one shot of Tyler Hamilton with his hands on the hoods back when he was riding for CSC – it looked like he was reaching out to hug fat Aunt Patrice at the family reunion. I don’t know – Miller, Armstrong, Hamilton – maybe it’s a generational thing rather than language-based?
  
  
• Tom Boonen (Quick.Step) didn’t look high, but it’s hard to tell sometimes.
  
  
• The white world championship skinsuit is not doing Bert Grabsch (Columbia) any favors. He looks like he ate last season’s Bert Grabsch, resulting in a skinsuit that is now double stuffed with Bert Grabsch-ey goodness. That’s unfair, of course – white is not slimming, and he is a big, powerful rider – but the guy still looked huge. I think that to rake in a little extra cash, for the biological passport program or whatever new quagmire they see fit, the UCI should sign on separate sponsors just for the WC jerseys. And it should be Jet Puffed Marshmallows.

Bridging the Gap

Little light on the content here these days, eh? Well, that’s because the Daughter of the Service Course was born two weeks ago, and anyone who’s done that drill knows that newborns can really cut into your casual cycling commentary time. She and I get along just fine, though, because newborns are a lot like cyclists – they’re asleep most of the time, and when they aren’t, they’re eating, pooping, or crying about something. Kidding aside, we’re all thankful that everybody’s healthy, and we’re getting enough sleep to stay relatively sane.

At this point, there’s no way we can catch up to all that’s transpired in cycling over the last couple of weeks. But as we all know, when your team’s missed the break entirely, nothing reassures the director that you really are trying like an ill-fated, half-assed bridge attempt. So here goes…

Rebellin Lights It Up

I left a comment on Pave site right after Fleche Wallonne, wondering if Davide Rebellin’s (Diquigiovanni) latest win there would finally get him the recognition he deserved as one of the finest classics riders of his (aging, mostly retired) generation. Well, maybe it would have, except for the fact that a few days later, Rebellin’s legacy took an unfortunate turn in the other direction with the news that he lit the doping lamp for CERA after his bronze medal performance at the 2008 Olympic road race. Like Johan Museeuw, he has to be regretting his decision not to have hung up his wheels just a little bit earlier. And like Museeuw, we may be in for another “in the last years of my career…to try to remain competitive…etc., etc.” half-confession that does nothing but call the entirety of a career into further doubt. Ah, well.

Schleck Finishes on Time, Race Finishes 20 Minutes Too Late

Andy Schleck (Saxo Bank) took a really exciting win in Liege-Bastogne-Liege, or at least he would have if the race ended shortly after he made his winning move and established his gap. But it didn’t. And as much as I love L-B-L, watching Schleck cruise alone, however speedily, up that long, wide, dead steady, dead straight climb into Ans was just excruciatingly boring. L-B-L has a lot of beautiful, dramatic climbs – the Graham Watson special in Houffalize, La Redoute – but the Cȏte de Saint-Nicholas just ain’t one of them. Coupled with Frank Schleck (Saxo Bank), to hear the press tell it, single-handedly menacing an entire herd of about 35 certified Ardennes classics threats into a total stupor, it wasn’t the best finale the race has ever seen. I mean really, nobody could attack because Frankie was there? Cunego? Valverde? Anyone? Because you really weren’t going to win with Andy up the road, anyway.

Ardennes Specialists are People, Too

Despite his recent lighting of the lamp, Rebellin won a load of big races, including his legendary sweep of the Amstel Gold Race, Fleche Wallonne, and Liege-Bastogne-Liege in 2004. Yet when people talk about classics riders, he’s rarely mentioned with contemporaries like Michele Bartoli and the like. Why? I think the reason is two-fold. First, for whatever reason, Rebellin’s never gotten any respect – years of non-selection for the Italian World Championship team show that. I don’t know the guy, but I do know that some folks’ heads and mouths can rob them of opportunities their legs should have given them, and in a time when national coach Franco Ballerini was trying to build unity, Rebellin just didn’t seem to fit into the plan. So maybe Rebellin just rubs people the wrong way, but if he does, it’s never been in as public a way as some of his compatriots, like Gilberto Simoni (Diquigiovanni) or Filippo Simeoni (Ceramiche Flaminia).

The personality part of the equation is likely to remain a mystery, to non-Italian speakers at least. Besides, the second reason Rebellin isn’t regarded as a classics legend is much more broadly applicable and more important anyway: the misplaced perception that classics = cobblestones. Some classics do, of course, have plenty of cobbles, and the stones do add a certain something to the feel of the race and the legends of the men who thrive on them. But plenty of big classics are held over smooth roads as well – races like San Remo, Liege, Fleche, Amstel, Lombardy, and Paris-Tours. Despite that, it seems that unless someone wins Roubaix or Flanders, they aren’t dubbed a great classics rider, and that’s unfortunate. Sure, grand tour guys snap up some of the Liege wins, and if you win Paris-Tours or San Remo, they’ll probably still just call you a sprinter. But there has to be a place for guys like Rebellin in the classics pantheon, doesn’t there? Maybe if there were, guys who are clearly cut from the same mold as Rebellin, like Damiano Cunego, Alejandro Valverde, and Danilo Diluca, would stop chasing slim chances at grand tour wins and focus on the asphalt classics where their talents really shine. That said, they’d be stupid to ignore the financial incentive of the grand tours vs. classics equation if they have a reasonable chance of success over three weeks, so I can’t say I blame them.

Actually, It’s Three Blows

Speaking of cobbled classics, Tom Boonen (Quick.Step) has made a habit of winning them, and unfortunately, he seems to also have made a habit of knocking back some Bolivian marching powder afterwards. The news is everywhere you’d care to look, of course, including Monday’s revelation on cyclingnews.com that this is actually Boonen’s third cocaine positive, not the second. News coverage is great and all, but the week’s best contribution to the hubbub comes from this VeloNews.com article, where Lance Armstrong comments on the situation with a fantastic double entendre:

“It’s a blow for him, a blow for Quick Step, a blow for their sponsors and Belgian cycling.”

Well played, Armstrong, well played.

Pick a Winner

Hey, wait a minute! That last article we cited also noted that the Giro d'Italia has started, and admitted that there are people besides Armstrong riding it. I’ll be damned. Other than some arguably more spectacular scenery, what does the Giro have over the Tour de France? A shitload of former winners on the start line. Stefano Garzelli (2000), Gilberto Simoni (2001, 2003), Damiano Cunego (2004), Ivan Basso (2006), and Danilo Diluca (2007) are all in the mix this year. Why does the Giro seem to always have so many former winners on the line, when the Tour sometimes struggles to have even one?

The simple answer is that the last 30 or 40 years of the Tour have been dominated by a host of multiple time winners. In fact, from 1968 to 2008, only 19 men have won a Tour de France. When a few guys account for anywhere from three to seven wins within a ten year block, there just isn’t a hell of a lot of room to stack up a host of former winners on the line. Armstrong’s tenure alone saw pretty much every other active Tour winner retire or die.

The Giro’s recent history, however, has been dominated by fierce competition among the natives, hence this year’s presence of all those still active former pink jersies with surnames ending in vowels. Not all of them have a good shot at winning by any stretch of the imagination, but they all still have enough kick to make things interesting on those notorious uphill Giro finishes.

Thinking about the presence of former winners at the Giro got me wondering – does the Tour, by virtue of its status as the “premier” Grand Tour, just lend itself to dominance by standout riders more than the Giro? The answer is, in the last 40 years, as the Tour has risen to greater prominence and specialization has increased, yes. But comparing the Giro to the Tour over their histories shows less of a disparity. In 91 editions, the Giro has had 58 winners, for an average of 1.56 wins per victor. Over 95 editions, the Tour has had 56 distinct winners, for an only slightly chunkier average of 1.69 wins per victor.

Tifosi

Like a lot of people, I like the Giro because, well, it’s not the Tour. It doesn’t have that same over-scrubbed, made for television polish added to it to appeal to the uninitiated. It still manages to maintain the image that it’s about bike racing more than the “event” or the brand. The Italian fans, the tifosi, are, of course, already a legendary part of that feel, and you’ll see it again this year when the race hits the hills. But lest you think that the insanity you see at the tops of the climbs today is new, some sort of depraved reflection of the over-the-top society we live in today, watch this clip of the 1974 climb of the Tre Cime di Lavaredo.

And turn the sound on, so you can hear the thump when the motorcycle hits people.

In Soviet Russia...

Amstel Gold Race Wins You

When the Katusha cycling team, the biggest, most visible component of the “Russian Global Cycling Project,” became a reality this season, the formula looked familiar. While the team’s stated aim is to develop young talent from the home country, the Russian squad hired a healthy dose of mercenary foreign talent to keep the sponsors’ names in the papers until that young talent was sufficiently developed to provide the results on its own. Sure, the team lured some veteran Russian riders home, giving the team a little more authenticity and providing the youngsters with some native-language support and role-models, but most people expected that the first major results would come from Robbie McEwen racking up some stage wins, or Filippo Pozzato or Gert Steegmans bagging a big cobbled classic.

That’s not an indictment of the team’s methodology. Like I said, it’s a pretty standard format these days, particularly for young teams coming from outside the traditional Western European cycling nations. Think (post-Vino and Kash) Astana with Contador, Armstrong, Leipheimer, Kloden, or Garmin-Slipstream hiring Backstedt, Millar, and Wiggins. It’s also a good business strategy – by bringing in some foreign names with dependable specialties, the teams can secure the wins their sponsors demand without unduly burdening their more developmental riders with winning expectations right out of the gate. With the direction the sport is trying to take with regard to drug use, I’d call that a positive.

So Katusha set out this season looking for early wins from McEwen and Pozzato, home country interest from perennial Tour hope Vladimir Karpets, and some quality racing miles for its slew of younger riders, like Mikhail Ignatiev and Ivan Rovny. So when veteran Russian hardman Sergei Ivanov outsprinted the younger and much more fancied Karsten Kroon (Saxo Bank) to win the Amstel Gold Race, the team got something even better than it planned – the team’s first big classics win, gift-wrapped and delivered by a native Russian.

For a project that states freely and often its insidiously Cold War-esque mission of returning mother Russia to her “proper place” in the cycling world, it doesn’t get too much better than that. Yes, at just 40-plus years old, the Amstel Gold Race is no monolithic Tour of Flanders, no storied Paris-Roubaix. But for a team with Katusha’s goals, what’s better: your imported Italian playboy winning Flanders, or your Soviet-era, life-long worker Ivanov winning a pretty solid classic? I’d argue for the latter.

Race Radio

• At 34 years old, Ivanov hasn’t been a big winner over his career, and Amstel Gold is certainly his biggest trophy to date. His other wins include the 2000 E3 Prijs, stages in the 2001 Tour de France and Tour de Suisse, and stages of smaller races. He’s also a five-time Russian national champion.
  
  
• In the Service Course’s Tour of Flanders preview, I pointed out that Ivanov was one of the only riders on the Katusha roster that stood a chance of being there for Pozzato in the finale. He did the job at Flanders, and seems to have held his form pretty well since. That said, I don’t see him being a factor at Fleche Wallonne or Liege-Bastogne-Liege, where the climbs are a bit less suited to a puncher. (Full disclosure: I’ve already seen the result for Fleche Wallonne).
  
  
• The home team can’t catch a break at their home classic, can they? It’s been eight long years now since Erik Dekker’s 2001 win, and despite the presence of a second Dutch team in Skil-Shimano, it seems like Rabobank still gets to shoulder much of the blame for the drought. This year looked promising with natives Robert Gesink (Rabobank) and Karsten Kroon (Saxo Bank) both in the winning move, but you could feel the air go out of the crowd when Gesink fell back and Kroon never even reached Ivanov’s back wheel, much less came around him.
  
  
• It seems like the Dutch riders and teams should really have an advantage here – half the challenge of the Amstel Gold is not getting lost. But their true disadvantage, at least in terms of public perception, is the lack of any other top-tier events in the Netherlands. If an Italian wins Flanders, the Belgians still have Gent-Wevelgem, the Brabantse Pijl, and all those prior home semi-classics to fall back on. For the Dutch, Amstel Gold and Veenendaal-Veenendaal are pretty much the only chances for a home classic win.
  
  
• In our ongoing Silence-Lotto watch, Philippe Gilbert managed a solid fourth place at Amstel Gold. Together with fellow Walloon Christophe Brandt, Gilbert has his homecoming this week with Fleche Wallonne and Liege. Neither race suits him particularly well, but maybe homefield advantage will do more for him than it’s done for the Dutch at the Amstel Gold.
  
  
• This has nothing to do with Amstel Gold, except that they both involve Rabobank not winning, but as a cycling site, I’m mandated to address the Theo Bos (Rabobank) Tour of Turkey incident. The Service Course’s official stance is that Bos wasn’t actually trying to put out a hit on Impey. How can we say that, when it looks so intentional? Because if you’re really aiming to take someone down, dragging them across your own front wheel at 50 kph isn’t usually the way you’d choose to do it. That said, the UCI needs to at least issue a fine or moderate suspension for the simple fact that you’re not supposed to take your hands off the bars in a sprint, and I’d say within the 1 kilometer mark is close enough to a sprint. Bos is a trackie, and a big one at that – he should have been able to do all he needed to do with his head and shoulders.