Bjarne Riis feels very confident in Ivan Basso and is riding a wave of success in the Classics. With all this good fortune despite a beat up team, the former Tour de France winner decided to throw some smack Ullrich way after seeing his poor form up close an personal in Tuscany.
“It’s clear that he doesn’t like riding his bike, and for that reason I don’t understand why he wants to be a cyclist, it’s a waste of his talent,” Riis stated. “He needs to wise up right away. My belief in him is dwindling.”
Some very harsh words from the former mentor of Der Kaiser. Could this be frank talk from a former mentor? or a psychological mind game? Probably a little of both. With Ullrich’s constantly delayed season start and recent knee troubles, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Ullrich is very bad form so far this year.
Procycling
The Spring Classics this year have been a tale of two teams so far with Quick Step and CSC each getting back-to-back victories. Quick-Step started proceedings with victories in Milan San Remo and the Tour of Flanders. By Flanders, Quick Step worked over the competition to submission as they controlled most of the race much like a Tour de France sprint stage. Since then, Boonen has gone home to Manco to relax, but Bettini is still hopping like his nickname of “The Cricket”. “Il Grillo” however, will have to face a strong CSC team which is on a roll since Fabian Cancellara’s Paris Roubaix victory followed by Frank Schleck’s Amstel gold win.
To make things more difficult, CSC will welcome Ivan Basso onto the roster. The Giro favorite is scouting out some of the early Belgian Giro stages and will test his form in Fleche Wallone and Liege Bastogne Liege. With the Giro only a few weeks away, Basso has already shown good form in the Criterium International and other races.
“They are two key steps in my build-up for the Giro in May.” Basso told Reuters. “I’ve always done well in these two races and if I’m up there I’ll have a go myself.
“But we have plenty of strong guys in my team and I would be proud to help any of them to win, too.”
Plenty of strong guys are on the team with Carlos Satre and Jens Voight joining the squad for the Ardennes. Many of the CSC men have featured well in recent races meaning that the domination could continue well into this weekend.
Yahoo News: Italy’s Basso bullish about Belgium cycling classics
The Giro del Trentino started today with a tough climb that brought out the climbing sprinters.
Damiano Cunego looks to have good form going into the Grio D’Italia as he was just beaten by winner Luca Mazzanti in the final sprint. The day was marked by a crash involving Franco “Porno hair” Pellizzotti
and Gilberto Simoni. Pelli sustained a puncture type wound to his knee while Simoni bruised his hip. Both look to continue for tomorrows stage.
Gazzetta Dello Sport: Trentino, primo acuto di Mazzanti
Bici Race Preview
The Tour De Georgia starts tomorrow, but nobody could really tell since there is not much buzz about the race this year. Maybe everyone got too excited by the Tour of California and the Classics?
The Tour de Georgia comes at a time when many US riders are injured and thankfully on the mend. Saul Raisin is recovering in France from a coma. Late word on his recovery is that it is going well.
George Hincapie is taking time to recover from injuries sustained in a dramatic failure of his fork steerer tube in paris Roubaix.
Bobby Julich and Christian Vande Velde will stay in Europe as they prepare to help Ivan Basso win the Giro D’Italia. Vande Velde is coming off some injuries to his clavicle and is trying to get enough racing in his legs to be ready for the Giro.
Levi Leipheimer is still training stateside, but the Tour de Georgia website does not list Gerolsteiner as starting the race.
Chris Horner is not listed on the Davitamon-Lotto roster, but teammate Fred Rodriguez will be there.
With all of these absences there are quite a few riders that will help to animate the race as they did in 2005. Tom Danielson and Floyd Landis will be back and hopefully duel out for top GC placings. David Zabriske will be there and could be a contender for the overall too.
Official Tour de Georgia Site
Velonews Preview
CSC seemed to be a team in serious trouble this early season as several riders were injured so early in the season. Despite riders such as Stuart O”grady and Christian Vande Velde being out and Bobby Julich delaying his form, the CSC men have been producing better results than previous years. This year CSC won some major Classics with Cancellara taking Paris-Roubaix and now Frank Schleck taking Amstel Gold.
Nice work for a team that has much larger ambitions later in the year, but Ivan Basso already looks to be in great form just in time for the Giro next month.
Eurosport: Schleck’s golden gift
My next race is Perinton which is located in a suburb of Rochester. Yup, I am heading back out to Rochester for another race. Hopefully everyone on the team will be AOK after the race. This Saturday we finally get the team jerseys. I’ve been wearing my Black Castelli Simple Jersey on all of my rides out of respect for the new team. Plus, it looks better than wearing a Discovery Channel jersey in a race.
Matt Howey of spokepost.com has been posting previews of many local races lately and today he posted the Perinton Preview.
full preview
Furman hill looks to be the big challenge at 100ft of climbing in only a 1/4 mile, ouch.
Hopefully these shorter hills won’t slow me down to much and I will be able to stay with the pack. My climbing speed is not where I would like it to be at the moment. I need to lose about 10lbs to get up the hills a little quicker. This isn’t an impossible task, but it is definately not easy. Every year when I get back on the bike and start riding I immediatetly lose 5 to 10 pounds. I attribute this loss to longer efforts on the bike and less weight training in the gym. This year, the weight loss is happening, but I need to lose 10lbs more than usual since I did not ride much last year and gained a little extra weight.
This evening I rode my usual training route that traverses 91 which is a seven mile climb with about a 6% average steepness. I am working on getting my general climbing speed up and will do more climbing intervals next week. Later on in the ride, I was able to hammer up smaller hills with some significant speed, and I did pretty well in a spur-of-the-moment sprint, so training is working out well.
Gmap Pedometer Map of Course
Tom Boonen is going to rest up for the next month. He will make his return in time for the Tour of Belgium May 23rd with an eye to preparing for the Tour de France.
With the focus of the Classics moving to the hillier Ardennes region, Quick Step will now be under Italian leadership, with Bettini and Pozzato sharing the leading roles for the upcoming Amstel Gold Race. Joining them will be Serge Baguet, Kevin De Weert, Ad Engels, Jose Antonio Garrido, Bram Tankink and Cédric Vasseur.
http://www.tuttobiciweb.com/home.htm
Good news for Saul Raisin and cycling in general. Saul Raisin is recovering from the coma he was induced into. As for the long term prognosis, nobody can say if he will ever race professionally or not. The good newsis that because of the helmet rules he survived a crash that was similar to the one that killed Fabio Casartelli.
Hope Saul has a speedy and full recovery.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/cycling/4885622.stm
Now that the dust has settled… I am looking back at Paris-Roubaix with a few thoughts. Much has been written about this “epic” version of Roubaix that provided some memorable images and discussion to go on for ages.
Cancellara, D’oh
All of the pre-race hype centered on Boonen and possibly George Hincapie getting the win. It just seemed like a lock that the two would end up dueling for the top spot in some way. But Cancellara has been placing well in the last few years, he was the forgotten contender by everyone except former T-Mobile team manager Walter Goodefroot and of course Bjarne Riis. Cancellara used his time trialing skills to ride everyone off of his wheels.
Younger winners
It used to be that Paris-Roubaix was a victory that had to be earned. Riders like Franco Ballerini, Andrea Tafi, Gilbert Duclos Lasalle and many others had to pay their dues before they finally came into Roubaix to win. With this thought the sentimental crowd must have been wagering on a Hincapie victory.
With Boonen last year and Cancellara this year, the trend seems to be going down to younger, but experienced riders. We could possibly be seeing these two trade off wins in the next few years.
Read the rest of this entry »
It’s hard to bet against Tom Boonen doing a double-double (Win Paris Roubaix and Tour of Flanders back to back for two years) but it just seems so inevitable. It is a bit like Lance Armstrong winning the Tour de France between 2000 and 2005, you really could not bet against him to win, and you knew that the end would show Lance on top followed by two other animators. But this is Paris-Roubaix, “The Hell of the North” is not an easy race. Winning the HotN requires knowledge of the course and a healthy dose of luck. But Tom Boonen is not a superstitious guy. He is the World Champion and has defied the curse of the World Champ by purely dominating a majority of the races that he contested so far this year. He brushed off “The Curse” by explaining that there is no curse, there is just simply a great deal of pressure that some riders could not deal with. This is true, the World Champ gets burdened with lots of pressure and we have seen riders from Luc LeBlanc to Mario Cipollini succumb to some sort of misfortune, but the base of it could point to pressure.
Read the rest of this entry »
