Velochimp: Astrochimp on Cycling

Alejandro Valverde now has two Liege-Bastonge-Liege wins in his pocket. The Spanish climbing-sprinting sensation looks to be on track to be a contender in the Tour once again. Though he admitted that his form was not as good as in 2006 when he took his last win at Liege, he was able to use his sprinting ability and smarts to beat Frank Schleck and David Rebellin.

The Schleck brothers seemed to have the race to themselves. When the decisive breaks happened on the new climb of Falcon’s Rock 20kms from the finish the number favored the brothers from Luxembourg. The group of five that formed contained two the CSC brothers, David Rebellin and two Caisse D’Epargne’s (Valverde and Rodriguez). Rebellin was odd man out until Rodriguez could no longer keep pace. Andy Schleck launched an attack that everyone knew was a setup for brother Frank. Trouble is that once Andy was caught by a very attentive Rebellin, Brother Frank could not shake off two tough sprinters Valverde and Rebellin. As the break of three cruised to the end it was only a matter of ceremony for Valverde to take the top spot.

Too bad for Schleck, he came so close to wins and was beat out by little guys who can sprint. Last week in Amstel, Cunego came out from behind to beat Schleck in somewhat of a surprise. While this time he could not use his numbers to shake off Valverde before the sprint.

Meanwhile it looks like Valverde wasn’t even going to try for the win.

“I knew if I could make it to the sprint, I’d have my best chance against these two,” Valverde said. “This win means a lot because the spring classics weren’t even a goal this year. I came here with a lot of motivation to race because my goals come later in the season with the Tour and the Olympics.” — velonews.com

So Valverde was not intending to win? But won anyway? This guys must be on drugs… queue the Operation Puerto questions…

Inevitably, Valverde was questioned about his alleged links to Operación Puerto, but he said he’s racing with a clear conscience. Some believe Valverde is linked to the Spanish doping scandal, but he’s never been officially implicated.

“My link to Puerto only comes from the media. No judge or evidence has ever suggested that I had anything to do with it,” said Valverde. “I’m not worried about the Italian authorities. If they want to question me when the Tour goes to Italy, let them. No problem.”
–velonews.com

BTW, did you hear that Basso signed with Liquigas? WTF?

The more things change the more they stay the same. I thought we were moving on from the Operation Puerto stories and in one quick swipe we get two OP related stories in the headlines. Cycling cannot catch a break. Even as the exciting Liege-Bastongne-Liege race wraps up a drug scandal free spring season it all comes back just in time for the start of a major Grand Tour.

For a race with the good ol’ boys in Georgia there is a wacky list of recent winners. This year the new guy with a funny name (yes, my name is Marcello and it is funny too) is Kanstantin Sivtsov. Not yet a household name, but that is what you said when Jani Brajkovic won last year. Now Jani is sitting home recovering from over-training while the young High Road racers takes the top prize. In second place is American Trent Lowe followed by Levi (Let me ride) Leipheimer.

The Tour de Georgia seems to be stuck in a conundrum. It has relatively unknown winners for the past two years and falls within the most exciting time of the Spring Classics. After the Tour of California received daily coverage from the USA’s main cycling coverage channel Versus, the Tour de Georgia will have to wait a week for a one hour highlight show. If you were not a die-hard velochimp reading fan or in Georgia you would not notice such a great event happening. With the epic Brasstown Bald climb and the cool new Team Time Trial at Road America the race has lots to capture the imagination.

Sistov seems like one of those guys who you will remember when he first won a stage at the Tour de Georgia. His all round ability could make him more well know when the Giro starts in a just a few weeks.
I still remember the Tour de Trump and a young Slava Ekimov with his powerful track-sprint challenging the big boys. Its these lower key races in America when you can see a talent emerge. Could we one day be witness to a tongue twisting Brajkovic vs Sivtsov duel on L’Alpe D’Huez for the Tour win? We could hope as Phil Ligget wrestles with those names and just decides to end his career mid-stage.

So here is to the good ol’ boys in Georgia who are clinging to their guns and church as racers from former Eastern Bloc countries with funny names ride in funny shorts make a name for themselves.

The Jittery Joes team rides through the Road America race course in a preview of the Team Time Trial.

This video is just about as timely as Versus’ Paris-Roubaix coverage. You would think the Queen of the Classics would deserve minimally same day coverage. Yet Versus goes to the Lance well again to cover the Boston Marathon live to focus on the star cyclist in his post career challenges.

Seeing the schedule last Sunday showed that Versus was stuck with covering Davis Cup tennis and the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Couldn’t Versus at least show the coverage on Monday night or even dare we ask Live? Cycling.tv is simply too horrible to try and play. I like to use Firefox as my main browser and cycling.tv has a hard time dealing with that fact. Even if I use Internet Explorer 7 then I stil lget problems playing a video. Cycling.tv I love your concept, but can’t you make it work better somehow? Look at the video portions of the Tour de California Tour Tracker.

Damiano Cunego surprisingly beat Franck Schleck up the final Cauberg climb to win Amstel Gold. The revenge must be sweet after losing to Schleck at L’Alpe D’Huez in 2006. Cunego now looks to be the favorite going into Liege-Bastonge-Liege since it is better suited to his abilities. Lampre has also announced the Tour de France lineup backing up Damiano Cunego which in all likelyhood is a bid to win the race.

Lampre will also line up their sprinter Danilo Napolitano, Marco Marzano, Daniele Righi, Paolo Tiralongo and ‘Patxi’ Vila. “We clearly aim at winning the overall classification of the Tour de France with Cunego this year,” directeur sportif Bruno Vicino said on the start line of the 7th stage of the Presidential Tour of Turkey in Antalya. Two other Lampre riders have yet to be chosen.

cyclingnews.com

Cunego has been slowly getting his ducks lined up to tackle the Tour as a GC contender. Since his foray into France in 2006 where he impressed with a Best Young Rider jersey win and 11th place overall. The key factor in his BYR jersey win was his much improved Time Trialing ability. This is a skill that is key to winning in France. Now that it looks like Damiano and Lampre are putting in a serious bid for the yellow it will be interesting to see how he lines up against other favorites such as Alejandro Valverde and Cadel Evans.

It’s that time again for the “Hell of the North” Classic. The race where bike are specially outfitted with all manner of cobble gobbling secrets and only the tough guy racers show up to battle it out.

Paris-Roubaix is a race where everything needs to happen almost perfectly. You can have a flat or two, but make sure they happen at the right time. You can go too fast and have to wait for a train to pass, which could pose a problem again this year.

Again, there will be several railway crossings on the course this Sunday, amongst which one with 95.5 kilometres to go, right at the entrance to the Arenberg forest sector. Using the fastest average time (42 km/h), the riders could arrive at the crossing at 2.54pm. But that is exactly the same time a regional passenger train is expected to pass the road. And just a few minutes earlier, at 2.45, a French high speed train (TGV) is scheduled on the same crossing.

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Or simply bonk and not be able to stay upright on the slippery cobbles.

Paris Roubaix usually takes a racer several years to master. Gilbert Duclos-Lasalle finally found the combo in his late 30s to win. Peter Van Petegem was a little older as was Francesco Moser and others. Experience counts when racing over the cobbles. That is why this year things look to be ripe for george Hincapie to finally break through in the Roubaix velodrome. Now at the ripe age of 34 Hincapie is refreshed by a new team filled with young racers. Team High Road seems to be a good fit for Hincapie who seems to race with an aggressiveness that he never had in his career. Hincapie was out in front in the Tour of California with constant attacks and time at the front. A fifth place in Flanders last week behind former teammate Stijn Devolder showed a Hincapie with a new style of racing that seemed muted by the Lance years.

At Discovery/Postal it seems that the Classics were always for George. The ony problem was that it did not seem that the team put in the same effort as they would in the Tour de France. Postal/Discovery’s total focus on the Tour and Hincapie’s transformation to a better climber seemed to have muted his resolve to actually win at a race such as Paris-Roubaix.

Hincapie was also absent from Paris Roubaix last year after suffering a wrist injury that sidelined his Classics campaign for 2007. The last taste of Roubaix cobbles Hincapie had was left at the side of the road after a catastrophic fork failure.

So Big George paid his dues. He is older and on a new team that seems to give him a new lease on racing. His fifth place at Flanders shows that he is on form. The only thing left is for luck to allow him to not crash or get too many flats. The other problem is the amount of on-form competitors this year.

Juan Antonio Flecha is on form and looks to better his close calls of recent years. He too is experienced enough to finally take the top step. Tom Boonen is on form and has a strong Quick-Step team with riders such as Stijn Devolder and others who could jump into the top spot.

Team CSC has Stuart O’Grady and Fabian Cancellara the last two winners who both look to be on form. Cancellara could be coming down from a peak of form that saw him win the Italian Paris Roubaix Eroica, Tirreno Adriatico and Milan San Remo.

Francaise Des Jeux has Phillipe Gilbert who has finally broken through to be a top Classics contender.

Alessandro Ballan was hampered by an early crash at Flanders, but is on form for Roubaix. He could take the win, but may be hampered by the loss of sprinter Bennati who went over to Liquigas.

Pippo Pozzato is the other Italian hope with a fearsome sprint and finally who could forget another former winner and all round cool guy Magnus Backstedt. The big Swede on Slipstream is back from a broken collarbone in the Tour of Qatar. Look for Magnus to at least be in the mix somehow.