From Palm Sunday to Easter, Holy Week gave us some serious cycling action. The races this week really deserved their own articles, but spring break got in the way and thus I am a bit behind. Can’t take too much time looking back cause the Ardennes are just around the corner. I suppose I could just say Tommeke, Tommeke, Tommeke and be done, but he deserves more than that. And don’t forget we had a pretty big stage race in the Basque lands this week as well. But let’s start at the beginning, first on the calendar and first in our hearts, the Ronde Van Vlaanderen.
Flanders:
Waffles, bergs, trippels, cobbles, frites and Boonen. What can I say? Flanders remains the most fun one day race to watch. Boonen dominated, but that’s not to say it wasn’t close. I’m going to call out the boys in Argyle, as I like to do. Van Summeren's crash caused many riders to fall behind, or at least have to work extra hard to regain position. This is never a problem for Boonen as he stays at the front knowing not to get caught behind tall dopey riders from Garmin. The biggest bummer of the day was watching Cancellera’s spring season abruptly end with a nasty clavicle snapping crash. Damn feed zones. Even if that saved the rest of us some fantasy points it put a damper on the rest of the week. A few other riders stepped up to make a race of it. Pozzato and Ballan rode very well and for a second I thought Tom was going to get pipped at the line. My boy Sagan showed that he is super strong yet super young (closing gaps he doesn’t need to, trying to bridge solo) but still the effort is fun to watch. No other Wiskota fantasy director sportifs’ seem interested in challenging Patrick for points on the cobbles. Well, I’ll take the scraps and keep chipping away.
Tour of the Basque Country:
Like the piperada in a bocadillo the tour of the Basque country was sandwiched between the two weekend monuments. This race featured many of our racers and did not disappoint in action. Wednesday and Thursday’s mountain top finishes as well as the final day time trial would decide this race. Wednesday was touted as the queen stage with several mountains and a long mountain finish. Horner looked strong and pulled JRod away from the peloton only to be joined shortly thereafter by Sammy “gotta win in basque country for Euskatel” Sanchez. In the end Sanchez took the sprint, only to be upended the next two days by JRod. On Thursdays steep uphill finish Rodriguez’s rivals were left looking like a plate of Pintxos as JRod skewered the competition taking time out of everybody in the field. In the end it was, and always is, the TT that decided the race. Sammy looked brilliant and moved back into first. Rodriguez had one of the rides of his life hanging on for second. A sneakily fast Mollema snuck in for third. All in all we all got points, except for Pat (Jurkin’ couldn’t hold on to a top ten finish). Sanchez 1st 100pts, JRod 2nd 80pts, Mollema 3rd 70pts, Cunego 4th 60pts, Martin 5th 50pts, Scarponi 8th 20pts, Horner 9th 10pts. Also, many riders got a few extra points for high stage finishes. I feel this race tells us a lot about the coming Ardennes season, but I will save that for “On the Rivet”.
Paris-Roubaix:
Is it bad that throughout Easter dinner I had that gothic choir from “A Sunday in Hell” in my head singing “Paris-Roubaix, Paris-Roubaix” over and over? Well, before I get into the recap, first I must get my complaint against NBC Sports out of the way. I taped the morning or so called “live coverage” thinking I might get more action. Little did I know this deprived me of all the action. I basically watched Boonen time trial for an hour and a half. Ligget said blame the riders for going too fast. Come on. Anyways, saw the whole deally yesterday and it was an awesome race. That is if you are a Boonen fan. Or even if you are not I suppose, because either way it was very impressive. Best cobble rider ever? You decide. Boonen’s breakaway and the inability of Ballan or more notably half of Team Sky to close the gap was kind of unbelievable. I have heard that Ballan had orders not to chase because Thor was coming from behind. Don’t know if that’s true, but if it is it is yet another knock on the super teams. Speaking of super teams. What if I told you could have the top 4 members of your team in an elite chase group 30 seconds back from a solo leader with 50k to go? Podium Café had a nice article about how they bungled this advantage. I have to gripe a little bit about EBH. Sky kept waiting for BoDogg to make his “BoDogg move” but they should have made him pull at the front. Love him, but hasn’t done anything at this race before, no gifts, you gotta earn the protection. Flecha looked good, but not good enough. Very disappointed to see him get knocked off the podium. Still, he earned me 60 pts. bringing his cobbled season to a close earning me a cool 100 points. Not bad for my last pick, about what I was hoping for. But of course the story of the day was Boonen. His astronomical 436 points so far, for a 4th round pick nonetheless, make all of us look rather sheepish. Hopefully for us Boonen’s reign of terror is done for this season. I read he wants to make a go of it at Amstel Gold, that would seem a stretch, but really who am I to doubt the newly crowned “Lion of Flanders”. The once and future king of the cobbles has staked his claim to the throne.
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