Amstel Gold Recap

Amstel Gold Recap

Steffan Schumacher of Team Gerolsteiner won the 2007 edition of the only Dutch classic, the Amstel Gold Race. On yet another unseasonably warm day, the peleton rode under clear sunny skies as the peleton raced through multiple laps and turns in the southeastern region of the Netherlands, in and around Maastricht, finishing in Valkenburg on the famed Cauberg.

Once again the mild weather changed the race a bit as most of the peleton stayed together far longer than had occurred in the past. An early break of no-names went away early and with about 50km to go, Jens Voight of Team CSC and last year's second place finisher Stefan Wesemann of Wiesenhof, who was also fresh off his Paris-Roubaix podium, attacked in what looked like could have been the decisive move of the day when they bridged up to the early break. However, they did not stay away even though Voight and Wesemann certainly are strong riders who have shown strength in these types of races.

The peleton ulitmately shook things up and the final move came on the Eyserbosweg which was the twenty-eighth climb of the day. In the decisive move was an elite group of former winners, including Gerolsteiner's Davide Rebellin, Rabobank's Michael Boogerd, Liquigas' Danilo Di Luca as well as Paolo Bettini of Quickstep, Matthias Kessler of Astana and Alejandro Valverde of Caisse d'Epargne in the group. However, this group of strong men spent the last 20km watching each other and riding defensively with Gerolsteiner's Rebellin and Schumacher in the group.

As the potential victors watched each other as they raced towards the finish on the Cauberg in Valkenburg, Schumacher attacked with about 3km to go and road away from the group and to the win. Dutch favorite, Michael Boogerd failed in his attempt to win as he was left covering the riders in the chase group and finished fifth on the day. Boogerd has had an impressive career at home with one win, four second places and two thirds over the last ten seasons at the high point of the Dutch season. Boogerd has announced his retirement.

The "ride" of the day may have to go to last year's winner Frank Schleck of Team CSC who crashed hard with about 50km to go but managed to ride hard back to the peleton to finish the race in 10th. Cyclingnews.com's account of the race does to provide some detail of the amount of "assistance" that Schleck received from his team car, but the video stream covered his chase back closely and even the race commentators had to note that Schleck seemed to be getting an inordinant amount of assistance. The race commissars did not sanction Schleck but probably could have for improper assistance.

Tour of Georgia Recap

Discovery Channel showed dominance again this week at the Tour of Georgia. The race was over on GC after a thirteen man breakaway put twenty nine minutes on the peleton. Discovery won three stages with Gianni Meersman won Stage 3, Levi Leipheimer won the individual time trial in Stage 4, and the climb to Brasstown Bald, Georgia's highest point on Stage 5. Discovery's Slovenian all arounder, Janez Brajkovic, was in the Stage 3 breakaway, had a strong time trial in Stage 4 and spent the rest of the race marking Team CSC's Christian VandeVelde ultimately winning by 12 seconds. Discovery's Tom Danielson also looked very strong on the climb to Brasstown Bald, finishing second to Leipheimer.

Like occured in the Tour of California, only Toyota United was able to steal a stage win in Stage 2 away from the European based teams with Discovery, Predictor-Lotto, Team CSC and Tinkoff Credit Systems getting the rest of the stages. The gap between the european teams and the domestic US teams is still very large. The Stage 3 gap created a somewhat distorted GC with thirteen riders gaining 29 minutes on that stage, including many of the smaller domestic teams. However, the reality is that the domestic teams are still far removed from even the weaker teams that Saunier Duval, Tinkoff and Predictor-Lotto sent for the race.