Velochimp: Astrochimp on Cycling

Perhaps Rock Racing is going through tough times as they ride bikes from bikesdirect.com and have graffitti over all their clothes and equipment. Chris Baldwin was in the heat of the stage 7 breakaway when a funny thing happened, he stole Hincapie’s water bottle. The bottle never made it to Hincapie or Baldwin, but fell on the ground.

Here is what Hincapie had to say:

pretty funny moment at toc stage to pasadena. http://tinyurl.com/da3jye At the time not that funny..

and

PS, he did not do it on purpose, was just not paying attention i guess. He’s a good guy, and a buddy of mine.

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.

cycling news

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.

George Hincapie has spent the majority of his career on the US Postal/ Discovery Channel Team. Since Lance Armstrong’s streak of seven straight Tours, George was one of the only men to be on each of the Tour winning squads. With the structure of the Disco/Postal squads George was allowed to go for wins in races that suited him most. Paris-Roubaix was the big race that George always set his sites on but never quite seemed to have the luck or the killer instinct to win. If you were to knock Hincapie for anything it would be the lack of killer instinct to go for a win during a bike race or know when to make the killing move to win. For all of the talent that he possesses he would always miss out.

Read the rest of this entry »

Levi from ToM Gallery

The Discovery Channel Team continues to dominate the Tour of Missouri with Levi Leipheimer winning the Stage 3 time trial while George Hincapie keeps the GC lead coming in fifth place. The two teammates have been on the opposite sides of luck since Leipheimer came on board. Levi is enjoying a career best year with a Tour podium and the win at The Tour of California and US National Championship. Levi is a happy man despite not having a contract for next year. Meanwhile Big George has a contract with T-Mobile for 2008, but not because of his stellar results. Despite being US National Champ for 2007 Big George has been having troubles. Curiously, George and Levi seem to not be so buddy-buddy as they seemed to be last year when Levi sacrificed himself to allow George to win the US National Champs in his hometown.

(AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Today’s stage proved to be an almost all Discovery showcase. Leipheimer lit up the course which he described as:

A lot of big rollers, I would call them. Middle climbs that required a different kind of rhythm. I had to punch it on all the middle climbs and recover on the downhills.

Tour of Missouri website

Hincapie was feeling the effort from the previous day, but still faired well with a sixth place finish that allows him to extend his lead.

“The legs weren’t great, I definitely felt my effort yesterday. Coming into the circuits yesterday was basically me against 10 guys, I had to control every attack. So I think I paid a little bit for it. But it was good, I was better than everybody in the break, and that’s all I had to do today.”

Tour of Missouri website

Stage four will probably be the toughest stage of the Tour with lots of hills and the longest distance of the race so far. Disco does have the strength to defend George’s title, but don’t count out all of the 12 breakaway men. David Canada and Will Frischkorn are close enough to George where they could still be dangerous.

(AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

George Hincapie could have already delivered the death blow to the Tour of Missouri. Hincapie won Stage 2 of the Tour of Missouri from a group of 14 men who are all Continental Pros. No other Euro based racer was in the break meaning that Hincapie can most likely defend the race lead all the way to the end. Discovery Channel has the strongest team at Missouri including such notables as Levi Leipheimer and Alberto Contador. Each of these races and others has brought top results to Disco over the course of this year. So it is only natural that it is George’s turn to win.

Tomorrow is a time trial in Ned Flander’s version of Las Vegas, Branson, Missouri. Hidely ho neighborinos, George Hincapie will be trying to shake off the 14 breakaway men that helped him to a 14 minute lead so he can have some more breathing room going into the next stages. But, George has not had very good luck in races. Last year’s ENECO Tour fiasco with Stefan Schumacher and the broken forks/stem of Paris Roubaix among some of the misfortunes that have beset Phil and Paul’s favorite racer after Lance Armstrong.
Maybe there could be some magic in Branson Missouri, or maybe George will go see Yackoff Smearnoff and get really agitated and stomp out a storming TT as a result. Either way the Tour of Mizzou could be over only two days into the inaugural race, but at least the fans are getting a known name to be the winner.

AP Photo/Bas Czerwinski

The order of the top three in the Tour did not get shuffled, but everyone is closer in time. This will probably not matter as Levi has already declared he will not challenge Evans for the number to spot and pull a “Vinokourov” on him. The reference to Vino is from two years ago when Alexandre Vinokourov took fifth place from Levi Leipheimer by sprinting for bonus times on the final day. This is a day that is usually considered an off day for overall GC contenders. The sprint seconds are really meant for the Green Jersey contenders.

Read the rest of this entry »

(pic from Flickr)

The second edition of the Tour of California is in the record books with another win by a hometown racer. Levi Leipheimer took the reigns over from Floyd Landis as the next Tour of California champ. The race proved very popular with fans though it did not break the record of most attended sporting event in California. It just missed by about 100,000 or so.

The race continued to attract record crowds, besting its own record of 1.3 million fans last year, and shoring its place as the most attended cycling race in the U.S.

Not that 1.3 Million is a shabby number at all. The race continues to grow and it is a good chance for domestic US Pros to rub elbows with Euro ProTour Pros who are just starting to find their legs for the season.

Read the rest of this entry »

The US Pro Championship Road Race was like a red carpet walk for George Hincapie. Riding in his new hometown of Greenville South Carolina the race was more of a George Hincapie party than a true US Pro Championships. Hincapie was basically escorted by future teammate Levi Leipheimer over a course that Big George rides on six to eight hours per day during the off season. Hmmm, was there some sort of favoritism in the mix when the venue was chosen? If Hincapie did not move to Greenville, South Carolina, would the US Pro Championships even setup shop in the small town of 50,000? The topper of this was that George’s wife Melanie was the podium girl which pretty much meant that the entire affair was a Hincapie party rather than a true race. I have no problem honoring racers of george’s calibre, but they should not have switched the US Pro Championships from a legendary venue in Philadelphia to the sleepy South Carolina town just to have Hincapie be honored.

Levi Leipheimer put in some early Discovery Channel team work as he helped pace Hincapie in the final laps. He sacrificed himself so that Big George can help Little Levi next July as Levi tries for another fifth place finish in Le Tour.

A dramatic finish in the ENECO Tour (Tour of Benelux) saw Hincapie hit the deck in a controversial finish. George Hincapie looked set to bring home the win after several attacks by Vincenzo Nibali were neutralized. Nibali was seen as the biggest threat even though he was 11 seconds down.

In the final sprint Philippe Gilbert took the win ahead of the pack which saw Stefan Schumacher hook Hincapie. The hook resulted in Hincapie crashing meters from the finish while Schumacher grabbed a four second time bonus that allowed him to take the lead from Hincapie and win the ENECO Tour overall.

Schumi says that he swerved to avoid a spectator, but pictures of the finish show Schumacher and Hincapie with enough room on either side. Schumacher must have swerved violently to cause Hincapie to crash. Regardless, Schumacher must face some sort of penalty for not keeping his line. Instead he was awarded the overall victory.

Schumacher afterwards explained “I started the sprint on the inside, and as I was going along, one of the spectators caught my left arm. I almost fell and my bike swerved to the right.”

Hincapie was upset with the result and almost refused to cross the line. He had some heated words with Schumacher after the finish. The judges ruled that Schumi’s move was OK and Discovery’s protests fell on deaf ears. Regardless of intention, it seems that if a rider does swerve violently in a sprint they should suffer some sort of penalty.

Discvoery will appeal the descision to the UCI.

Velonews: Discovery: We was robbed!

Eurosport

(pic from Yahoo! Sports)

Bobby Julich is writing for ESPN.com about the Tour de France. Since his crash in the Time Trial Bobby J has been healing up at home in Nice. He wrote about his Stage 11 impressions including some gentle words about George Hincapie’s GC intentions.

George Hincapie
I don’t know whether George’s injury from earlier this season is catching up with him, but it might have hindered his preparation for the Tour de France. It’s easy for me to sit here at home and make comments on his performance. I’ve known George since he was 12 years old and he will go down as one of the most successful riders in the world. I really think it was unfair at this late in his career to put all of this expectation on him. And he didn’t pick an easy race to go over the general classification!

When I first heard that he was challenging for a leadership role and the GC, I didn’t really believe it. I just don’t think it was fair to push him into that. It’s like going from 0-to-60 without shifting gears. He is taller and heavier than most of us out there. The fact that he is so successful with such a bigger frame shows you how talented and professional he is.

I’ve knocked on Hincapie because I simply did not believe that his GC intentions were serious especailly for a rider of his build. In some ways it is not fair to George to get that pressure placed on him late in his career and in the toughest race in cycling. Maybe I would have believed Hincapie’s GC intentions if he placed high in the Tour of California, Georgia, Suisse, Romandy or any other race. Just liek Danilo DiLuca should not be racing for GC in Grand Tours Hincapie should stick with what he knows best and dominate. So, hope to see George go for the win in Paris-Roubaix next year and not think about being the next Lance, but being himself.

Bobby Julich Diary