The Hardmen Rule

Milan-San Remo Recap

The longest of the Classics celebrated its 100th Anniversary with an exciting and satisfying finish. Oscar Freire, Rabobank's Spanish one day rider once again showed that he is one of the smartest and most competetive riders in the world. I have sung his praises in the past because, when healthy, he is consistently one of the strongest riders there is today. He is not necessarily as fast as the absolute fastest sprinters and does not necessarily have the strongest team support. He consistently keeps himself at the front, picks the right wheels to follow in important races.

Freire has won three world titles, two Milan-San Remo titles, consistently wins Grand Tour stages and sprint stages in minor tours. But for back problems that have plagued him most of his career, Freire probably could have had significantly greater successes. Clearly he is the best Spanish classic rider of the current generation. While Feire rode an excellent race and beat an excellent field, the day was most impressive by some of the shows of strength by the peleton.

With Boonen, Petacchi, Zabel, McEwen and O'Grady all finishing in the top 10, it was a strong field and a strong sprint. However, Milram and Petacchi need to be concerned with his recovery from last year's freak accident during the Giro d'Italia where Petacchi broke his kneecap. Even "Ale-Jet" conceded after the race that he does not have the speed he used to have. Milram set everything up perfectly for their leader and he could only muster a top 10 finish.

World Champion Paolo Bettini got caught behind a crash on the Cipressa, the second to last climb, some 30km before the finish. Bettini is racing with broken ribs and has had a couple of rough weeks. Yet, he raced back to the leaders and animated things on the Poggio for his teammate Boonen.

Discovery Channel's Yaroslava Popovych attacked on the Cipressa, then attacked again when caught on the Poggio. It was the type of move that really showed how strong Popovych is this year. I think the jury is still out on whether Popovych can be a GC contender in the Grand Tours, however, he has shown himself to be a much more opportunistic rider this year than in years past.

Saunier Duval's Ricardo Ricco, is really young but has had a good week coming off of a good showing at Tirreno-Adriatico. He had told the press he would attack on the Poggio and after Popovych was caught attacked and nearly got away to the finish with Francaise de Jeux's Philippe Gilbert. They unfortunately were caught before the finish but made the peleton race hard to bring them back.

Nasty Crashes

Gerolsteiner suffered two nasty crashes in the race that put two of their riders in the hospital. The first, David Kopp, went down hard and suffered facial injuries. TV did not capture the crash, but any time you see a rider lying on the ground and his bike is nowhere to be seen you know it was a bad accident. The second, Andrea Moletta, suffered a broken leg. Moletta had been in the attack with Popovych initially, however, coming around a curve, he could not hold his line and ploughed directly into the concrete utility pole seen at the right of the linked photo. He took the utility pole head on ending up stradling it and being whipped around. Maybe if Gerolsteiner had more manly kits, the asphalt gods would not be so hostile to them.

Better Coverage?

Today's two hour broadcast on Versus gives me some hope for the future of cycling broadcasting in the United States. Phil Ligget and Bob Roll did the race commentary as you would expect. However, Versus ran a profile and interview of Paolo Bettini and also had an interview with Charlie Wegilius of Liquigas on what it is like riding for Filippo Pozzato. Next week is Criterium International which should have more Americans racing in it but if today's coverage is any indication, Versus may have realized that banking all of your cycling coverage on one or two Americans may not be the best way to build a long term audience.

This, That and the Other

I recognize it has been a while since I have posted. We spent last weekend at the Seattle International Bike Expo and that travel, together with work, has kept me away from the keyboard as well. So here we go:

Seattle International Bike Expo Recap

We took Cyclista and CyclingMovies.Com on the road to the Cascade Bicycle Club's Seattle International Bike Expo for the third straight year. Here is what we did and saw.

I rode a prototype of Kona's AfricaBike which Kona has built for distribution to NGO's and nonprofits in Africa. It will be available hopefully in April to consumers here in the United States and I have already gone to my local Kona dealer to tell them that I want one as soon as they get one. It is the ultimate in utilitarian commuter bike and it is a product which is making meaningful differences in people's lives in Africa.

I actually rode the Kona AfricaBike on E Motion Rollers built by Inside Ride. They build an idiot proof set of rollers as evidenced by the fact that they had people up and riding them on a Kona AfricaBike. Most impressive was the fact that Troy of Inside Ride spent almost two whole days riding on the E Motion Rollers. Their booth was next too ours and it was like being next too the freak show as Troy spent probably twelve hours over two days riding on rollers and Larry got everyone who was willing to try up and riding the AfricaBike in about fifteen seconds.

We met Brett Horton the foremost collector of cycling memorabilia in the world. You can find portions of his collection on line here. You can buy his book "Cycling's Golden Age" here. Mrs. Cycliste Moderne attended all three presentations that Brett made on cycling memorabilia and history. He even gave our business a pitch. Most impressive was the fact that he came and spent over an hour discussing cycling history and memorabilia with me in our booth on Saturday afternoon. Among the memorabilia he not only showed me, but let me handle and discussed with me were the original stopwatch from the Tour de France and the Tour de France Start flag both visible here. He also let me handle the winner's medal from the first Paris-Roubaix in 1896 and the winner's medal from the first Paris-Brest-Paris in 1891 both visible here.

Met the cool guys at Pedal Dynamics, a small shop in Seattle that has developed its business based upon serving corporate clients. They go on site to service bikes so the big companies can keep their geeks in their cubicles longer.

Operacion Puerto: No Smoke, No Fire

Spanish judicial authorities last week shelved the Operacion Puerto investigation for lack of a crime having been committed under Spanish law. Prosecutors have appealed the decision, however, it has become apparent that Spain's lack of specific doping laws at the time in question probably precludes further prosecution of the matter. The UCI, WADA and the French teams are all up in arms but the reality is that Operacion Puerto was more about meia attention than it really was about cleaning up sport. No other sport has had athletes named in the investigation even though the principal doctors have all been affiliated with some of Spain's largest and most important soccer and basketball clubs. Here is CyclingNew.com's recap of the status of Operacion Puerto.

Paris-Nice Recap

Sunday concluded Paris-Nice the first ProTour race of the year. It managed to go off after a last minute deal was struck between the UCI and the Grand Tours. What did we learn from Paris-Nice:

(1) Discovery Channel has no friends in the peleton. As evidence at the Tour of California, Discovery Channel has no friends left in the peleton and none of the other teams are willing to help them out. Obviously animosity over the signing of Ivan Basso runs deep and still lingers and Discovery cannot expect other teams to help them out. Case in point, during Armstron's last Tour de France, Team CSC with Ivan Basso clearly road defensively to protect Basso and second place in the final few mountain stages. That was great assistance to Discovery as it could count on Team CSC to assist it in marking T-Mobile's efforts. There is no love lost between the teams now and Team CSC will attack Discovery at every chance.

(2) Discovery Channel is still one of the strongest and most tactically savy teams in the peleton. Winning the race on a last stage attack on the final climb, Alberto Contador overcame Davide Rebellin's six second lead on the final climb after Discovery had put Leipheimer, Popovych and Danielson at the front as the peleton raced over the mountains above Nice ending on the promanade in nice. Contador won two stages, Popovych won another.

(3) If the French really believe that they cannot win because everyone else cheats, you have to think that the early part of the season is where they should have some success. Clearly, they cannot. Only JP Nazon of AG2R won a stage and there were no French riders in the top 10. You have to show up at home, especially in a race that the French teams had made it clear they would race in even if the UCI had forbade it.

Sprinters Cannot Count

Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico both showed this week what happens when sprinters and their teams lose count of who was up the road. Both Tom Boonen and Bernard Eisel celebrated what they theought were victories but were in fact sprints for second place and fifth place respectively after they failed to keep track of the number of riders in breakaways.

ProTour RIP: Unibet Gets The Shaft

The UCI and the Grand Tour organizers reached a "settlement" last week permitting Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico, the first two ProTour teams to go forward. Basically, the UCI sold out Team Unibet to ensure the season goes forward. The Grand Tours seem now to be parroting French officials that Unibet is an "illegal" sponsor and thus not eligible to race in their respective countries. Unibet was not offered a start at either of the ProTour races this week, however, Italian officials have now invited it to race at Milan-Sanremo this weekend.

Ironically, the ASO, the organizer of the Tour de France, Paris-Nice, Paris-Roubaix, and Liege-Bastogne-Liege had no qualms about inviting Unibet's predecessor "Mr. Bookmaker" to some of their races over the past few years as Mr. Bookmaker had a podium finish as recently as 2004 with Roger Hammond finishing third at Paris-Roubaix. It has also been reported that the ASO had attempted to recurit Mr. Bookmaker as the sponsor of the sprint jersey a few years ago for Paris-Nice. How Unibet can be an illegal gambling company while Mr. Bookmaker is a legal one that French race officials actively sought as a sponsor is beyond me. Maybe some one in the ASO's office failed to realize that "making book" is not the same thing as printing books.

The Real Season Begins

This needs to be a really short post because I am in the midst of multiple Idaho Supreme Court appeals and am getting ready to go the the Seattle International Bike Expo this weekend with Mrs. Cycliste Moderne.

The Real Season Begins

Saturday marked the begining of the real European season with the first major Belgian races of the year: Saturday's North-South traverse of Flanders, Omloop Het Volk, and Sunday's East-West traverse, Kuurne-Bruxelles-Kuurne. Fillipo Pozzato and Tom Boonen won the races respectively and both are worthy winners and will be in good form for the rest of the Spring Classic season, assuming we have any racing.

The Stand Off Continues

Friday's meeting of the council of ProTour teams failed to result in any action, other than for the teams to sternly announce their displeasure with both the UCI and the Grand Tours. Something will have to give by next weekend's start of Paris-Nice, otherwise the season will be thrown in to turmoil. Unfortunately, it will be the riders who suffer from this stand off. My prediction: the French and German teams disregard the UCI's warning and show up for Paris-Nice. The Spanish, Belgian, Italian and remaining ProTour teams hold out and boycott Paris-Nice. Ultimately, the UCI will blink and the ProTour will be dead as the sponsors will demand their teams race.

Boise Bike Swap

This year's Boise Bike Swap was something of a let down. Now, I have bought bikes at the event each of the last two years and in the years prior to that purchased a lot of parts. This year seemed to be poorly advertised. Additionally, the selection of bikes was not as good as in years past. Finally, even the selection of used parts and components was disappointing. Maybe my recent purchase of a Trek 5200 clouded my judgment but others I talked to were of the same belief. At least my parents managed to sell their older 5 speed tandem. They bought a brand new Raleigh road tandem at last year's event and decided to part with their old red tandem. Of course they only sold it in the parking lot after they picked it up after it failed to sell at the swap.