Cleaning up after the weekend's events.
Two stage races and two classics in one week, almost too much action. Can we take that much racing? Were there too many points up for grabs? Was it a good week or a bad week? Well, it depends who you ask.
This week was too hard: Greg and Bill are probably wondering why the other teams are gaining so many points this week. Gregario's best chance for points seemed to be the Volta Catalunya and the E3. LL Sanchez wasn’t a factor, again. Basso was embarrassing, again. Gilbert didn’t finish, again. Greg’s team has won some big races raking in a couple hundred points in a weekend so he shouldn’t complain too much. Bill the neo pro continues to struggle with the early season race schedule. His heavily loaded grand tour GC team doesn’t help him in Belgium and Andy continues to refuses to try in any stage race besides the Tour. No points for either of these teams this week.
This week was too soft: I'm sure Patrick will take umbrage with that statement because none of these races were “easy”. However, Team Volpe sure made it look that way. First of all, Catalunya was a bit of a debacle. The queen stage got cut short due to weather and we ended up with 15 riders with the same time at the end. I still don’t really know how “count back” works but it worked well for Patrick as he ended up with riders in 3rd, 4th and 5th. The Commish is kicking himself for adding the Criterium International to the schedule. This ended up being a walk in the park for Evans as he picked up some early season points while the other big GC guys were in Spain. Well, enough for the “soft” point. Volpe’s other big wins cannot be disparaged. Tom Blow-nen is on fire, E3 and Gent, a quick 160 points in one weekend. It’s hard to pick anyone other than Tommeke as the favorite for Holy Week. Well, maybe Cancellera. Shit, Pat has him too.
This week was just right: Mike and I had nice weekends. Nice, not crazy insano like Patrick, but nice. Good opening race for Mike’s first round pick, Sammy Sanchez. With everyone knotted at the same time someone had to try something. Samu came through, stealing 2 seconds on the penultimate stage thus securing second overall and 88 points. Team Wiskota Dynamic continues to chip away at the UCI points block, taking a few here and a few there. Once again Leipheimer did a ton of work only to come up empty. However, Cunego scored me a sneaky 44 points at Catalunya. Greipel and Farrar are nowhere to be seen, but Sagan is everywhere. He looked good on Friday, but he had to wait until Sunday to open his bank account. Second at Gent nabbed me 60 points.
Overall a fun week of racing, but we must move on to bigger and better things. Holy Week is upon us!
This week was too hard! The Volta sucked. Even with the queen stage this race was weak. Only one day to seperate the favorites. Not Cool. Albassini was awesome however.
ReplyDeleteThe classics were great but Gilbert continues to blame his teeth, fever, lack of form. What did you do this offseason? Collect a big fat check, spent money, ate waffles amd frites, and drank way too much Chimay! Come on Phil! Your killing me!
There will be plenty of points for Gilbert in the Ardennes. After the Criterium they interviewed Evans and he talked about how he is going to be Phil Gil's lieutenant in April. I remember watching Evans blow past Contador at Fleche Wallonne. Now he'll be launching Gilbert, crazy.
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