The Cycliste Moderne, April 9, 2006

Today was going to be all about Paris-Roubaix, but it isn’t. As Kristin and I watched Cycling.tv’s live webcast of the race we got the call from my father that we had been expecting all week. My grandfather died early this morning, three days short of his 94th birthday. Kristin and I were married on my grandfather’s 79th birthday and as a result, spent our first anniversary in 1992 traveling from Salt Lake to Boise with my family to celebrate his 80th birthday. As such, our relationship has always had a personal link to my grandfather.

When Kristin and I started Cyclista.com, we had an image in mind that captured our love of bikes. That is the photo of my grandfather that we display on our website. Although he had spent much of his life as a teamster or a hard rock miner, as a young man my grandfather was a Western Union delivery boy in Nampa, Idaho. We took this picture from the mid 1920’s of grandpa on his bike, added our logo, and Cyclista.com was launched. I am eternally grateful for his example of hard work that has affected us all during our lives.

Heamer Wayne Wardle
April 12, 1912 - April 9, 2006

Paris-Roubaix Recap

Sunday’s Paris-Roubaix was certainly epic and certainly what you would expect from the “Hell of the North.” However, it reaffirmed for me why, for me, it is second to the Ronde Van Vlaanderen in significance. To win the Ronde a rider has to be the strongest. To win Paris-Roubaix a rider has to be strong and lucky. Certainly, weak riders cannot win Paris-Roubaix. However, the role that luck plays in the race is just too significant to claim that Paris-Roubaix is proof of who is the strongest rider in the peleton. I love Paris-Roubaix, but watching it is like watching a car wreck.

Fortunately, this year Cycling.tv arranged to provide live race coverage for North American subscribers. Friday night I whipped out my credit card and became a premium subscriber. Even though my DSL service typically only runs at about 400kps, not the 1.5mbps that I pay for, Cycling.tv’s free race coverage typically comes through just fine. I was concerned, however about the effect that all the demand for the greatest one day race in the world from the cycling starved masses of North America would have on the service. So when Kristin and I woke up at 6AM Sunday morning to fire up the laptop and watch the race from our bed (isn’t wireless technology great?) and the stream immediately worked, I was a very happy man. It has been about 4 years since OLN last offered live coverage of the race and I have been without OLN since Dish Network removed its programming last fall.

We picked up the race about 15km before the Arenberg Forest, which is section 17 of cobbles. Last year the Arenberg Forest was removed from the route because it was considered too dangerous due to damage to the path and subsidence caused by coal mining in the area. After the local government rehabbed the 2km segment, it was returned to the race. The “new” Arenberg Forest certainly had more cobbles as the path had been widened, but it is not clear if it is any real improvement. Tom Boonen complained before the race that the improvements had actually made it harder by eliminating the dirt path that many riders would typically take along the main cobble road. Others had complained in years past that the Arenberg Forest played too important a role in deciding the outcome of the race. Needless to say, as the peleton approached the Arenberg Forest the race speed increased, the riders got nervous, and it was clear that, as is usually the case at Paris-Roubaix, any rider who was not in the top 25 coming out of the forest was probably through for the day.

Just as he had done last week at the Ronde Van Vlaanderen, Tom Boonen went to the front and attacked on the most difficult stretch of the race course. Boonen showed why he is one of the strongest riders in the peleton as the peleton shattered once the road narrowed and the riders entered the forest. By the end of the Arenberg Forest, Boonen had ended the race for such teams as Milram, Credit Agricole, and Gerolsteiner, which had failed to stay at the front and make the break.

By the time the carnage was done, Boonen had shown he was strong but probably cost himself the race in doing it. A leading group of fifteen ended up with Boonen with a 30 second gap to the chasing group behind. The leading group contained all of the pre-race favorites. In addition to Boonen, past winners Frédéric Guesdon of Francaise de Jeux and Peter Van Petegem of Davitamon-Lotto was in the break as were past Paris-Roubaix top ten finishers Lars Michaelson and Fabian Cancellara of Team CSC, Juan Antonio Flecha of Rabobank, Steffan Wesseman of T-Mobile and George Hincapie of Discovery. Spring strong men Alessandro Ballan of Lampre, Leif Hoste and Vladimir Gusev of Discovery also made the final selection.

Boonen found himself isolated without a single teammate in the leading group with Team CSC, Francaise de Jeux and Discovery all with multiple riders in the lead. Quick.Step immediately sent its entire team to the front of the chase group to try and bridge up to their leader but even with seven riders on the front of the chase, the motivated leading group managed to increase its lead as everyone worked to make sure Boonen got no more help. And with that, 90km from the end of the race, it was clear that the quality of the leading group was so high that they would stay away and the winner would come from that group.

As the race wore on the leading group was gradually reduced in size to the point that there were just a dozen riders left and it looked like George Hincapie would become the first American to win Paris-Roubaix. Paris-Roubaix is Hincapie’s favorite race. He has come very close to winning the race before with numerous top ten finishes. US Postal Service and Discovery Channel have ridden the race for Hincapie and over the past three to four years have sent strong teams to support him in the race. Last year Hincapie matched Boonen’s moves the entire race but was unable to get past his former teammate in the closing stretch of the race on the Roubaix Velodrome. Boonen is simply faster than Hincapie.

However, even though Discovery had ridden the perfect race to deliver Hincapie his first victory at Paris-Roubaix, it was not to be. With 45km to go, Hincapie was thrown to the ground as his steering tube failed, causing his handle bars to collapse and Hincapie to go over the handle bars on his uncontrollable bike. He crashed at full speed having no way to slow down and no way to steer and landed hard on his right shoulder. Hincapie’s day was over and although he did not appear to have broken any bones, Belgian press is reporting that Hincapie is going to require surgery on his shoulder.

By this point our two youngest children were awake and in bed watching the race with us on the laptop.

Although his teammates waited momentarily, Hoste and Gusev chased to get back to the leaders who were continuing to splinter into smaller and smaller groups. Boonen looked human without his teammates and Flecha and Team CSC continued to attack the world champion. Ultimately, Boonen cracked when Gusev attacked and only Cancellara managed to go with Discovery’s Russian rider. Cancellara and Gusev built up a thirty second lead and then Cancellara, a former Swiss time trial champion and Tour de France prologue winner, rolled off the front and away from Gusev. Van Petegem attacked next with Hoste and they managed to bridge up to Gusev. Boonen was now more than a minute behind Cancellara and more than thirty seconds behind the chasing group of three.

Then another twist of fate intervened to affect the outcome of Paris-Roubaix. With 10km to go, Van Petegem, Gusev and Hoste were forty seconds behind Cancellara and Boonen was another minute back. Cancellara passed over a train crossing only to have it close after him. The first chase group rode around the closed barriers to keep up the chase of Cancellara. They were followed by the neutral support motorcycles and the TV motorcycles. Boonen and his group arrived just in time for a freight train to pass through, losing even more time. Typically, train schedules are modified for the race so there is no possibility of the type of conflict happening that did today. The rules generally provide that if there is a temporary obstruction of the course that causes the leader of the race to stop, losing his advantage that the race will be restarted and chasing riders held to restore the advantage. However, if chasing riders are stopped at a train crossing, then they are to wait and no adjustment will be made to their times or to the race organization. Clearly, had the first chase group waited like they were supposed to and not cut through the closed barricades, Boonen would have caught them and they all would have been back together with Flecha as well.

Cancellara then raced in to Roubaix alone and circled the historic velodrome for his first classic win. Hoste, Gusev and Van Petegem began attacking each other over the closing kilometers and when they entered the velodrome Hoste and Gusev engaged in a classic track attack on their faster Belgian rival. In the end, Hoste came around Van Petegem to finish second just like he had last week at the Ronde Van Vlaanderen.

Boonen came in later and won the sprint for fourth. However, Boonen was elevated to second place as Hoste, Van Petegem and Gusev were all disqualified for cutting through the barricades.

Cancellara was a deserving winner. He has finished in the top ten each of the last two years and he is a strong rider on a strong team. He had focused all season on this race so it was not a surprise that he won. He was very lucky, however, as he was not taken down by Hincapie’s crash, he managed to avoid the train delay, and Boonen had destroyed his own team. Cancellara was one of the strongest riders today, but he was certainly the luckiest rider today.

Hincapie will most certainly come back and try to win Paris-Roubaix again next year, but you have to wonder if he has become like a golfer who is looking for that elusive major and manages to always been in the hunt but never quite win. Hincapie will go down as the best American classics rider ever, but he will always be shadowed by his inability to win the race that he loves. Discovery has built him a team focused on winning spring classics. He has the form to be competitive. However, there is always something that keeps Hincapie from winning the Hell of the North.

Don’t Be a Whiner

Spaniard Juan Antonio Flecha is the best classic rider in Spain. He has shown skill and ability in the northern classics, something that no other Spaniard of the current generation has done. Today he was very aggressive, almost too aggressive and that probably cost him the race. However, afterwards, when asked to comment on the train passage, the disqualifications of the Discovery and Davitamon riders, and the outcome of the race, Velonews.com reported Flecha commented that although it was good they stopped Boonen’s group at the train crossing because of safety, he was sure that they would have caught the Discovery/Davitamon group had they not jumped the barrier and that would have changed the race. Really, if you make somebody who has nearly a minute lead stop and wait for a minute, then yes Juan Antoino Flecha you probably would have caught the guys ahead of you. In reality, it sounded of Flecha’s sour grapes for not being able to beat Ballan in the sprint at the end. Boonen for his part has acknowledged that the train crossing should not have affected the outcome as the positions of the final seven riders were already set by that point.

Wearing Your Helmet

Young American talent Saul Rasin, who rides for the French Credit Agricole team, is currently in a coma, having crashed 2km from the finish of Tuesday’s stage of the Circuit de la Sarthe in France. Although he broke a collar bone and some ribs in the crash, Rasin was alert after the crash. However, by Wednesday his condition worsened, his brain began to swell and as a result of bleeding in his skull, doctors put him in a drug induced coma and operated on his brain. Raisin took the whole crash on the top of his head and would most likely have died from the impact like Andre Kivilev did a few years ago had he not been wearing his helmet. Raisin’s condition has stabilized but he remains comatose.

Cycling.tv

Cycling.tv launched a web based cycling station a few years ago. Initially, the content was quite limited: old mountain bike races, minor Belgian races, and the like. Over the last year, they have seriously improved the quantity and quality of their offerings. Additionally, they added a premium subscription service that offers some of the best races out there. With Dish Network’s elimination of OLN and OLN’s reduction in live coverage, Cycling.tv is a great resource. OLN and Cycling.tv have combined their resources to host OLN’s daily live coverage of the upcoming Giro d’Italia. Cycling.tv has also announced the development of a new channel of content which will include track events organized by the UCI. Cycling.tv has also added a daily news broadcast on cycling. It is short on actual race coverage but has timely information and interviews. If you have a broadband connection and you just cannot get enough cycling, you definitely should check it out at Cycling.tv.