Velochimp: Astrochimp on Cycling

Tom Boonen was the King of the Hell of the North this year again. Tornado Tom earned the victory this year by powering into the Roubaix velodrome on his own. The decisive moment came at Carrefour de l’arbre when Boonen made a move with Thor Hushovd. Hushovd crashed into a corner which gave Boonen a 10 second gap over a chasing Pozzato. Pozzato could not narrow the gap and came in at around 47 seconds.

Juan Antiono Flecha’s crash which took Hoste and Van Summeran out of contention.

Highlights and crashes:

Here is an extended video of the ride through the Arenberg Forest one of the toughest sections of cobbles.

Final Km of Paris Roubaix

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.

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.

(AP Photo/Michel Spingler)

The prediction here last night was of a Fabian Cancellara repeat. The only repeat was that a CSC riders rode everyone off his wheel to win. This time the man in the CSC kit was Stuart O’Grady. The Aussie was in an early breakaway probably doing the work of setting things up for his teammate. O’Grady was able to keep ahead and counter attack when he was caught. He entered the Roubaix velodrome with over a 50 second lead which allowed him to comfortably take the lap and one half around and savor the victory.

Boonen looked stronger on the day, but could not do much to get away and catch O’Grady. Quick-Step is suffering a poor year for performance in Classics. The team is under-performing this year.

Juan Antonio Flecha gets a place on the podium again after missing out last year.

Fabio Baldato the old man of Lampre was in the mix for a while and finished in tenth place just behind Cyclocrosser Enrico Franzoi.

FRANCOIS LO PRESTI/AFP/Getty Images

Paris Roubaix awaits the tough men. My bet is for a Cancellara repeat this year. Cancellara has the form as he tried to get the action going at Flanders last weekend.

Others to watch for would be a very much on form Alessandro Ballan. He is on a hot streak after winning Flanders last week. He hung tough with Boonen last year and looks like he has the winning formula set. Ballan will be danergous but will be tough to mark since there are so man y favorites this year.

Tom Boonen does not have that extra gear this year. He was spoked at Flanders after a crash, but he did win several smaller races this year. Can Boonen make up for his lack of big results?

Magnus Backstedt is back and supposedly in great form, can he jump into racing and perform well enough to win? Or can it be Liquigas teammate Pippo Pozzatto? He has no pressure really and has already won Het Volk early in the season. He could be an outside contender. If he is near the front at the end, do not bet against the very cagey Italian.

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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.
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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.
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Dario Pieri was about to get his big return to Paris-Roubaix this year but he abruptly retired only one week before his main season goal. His retirement comes at age 30 after nine years of racing in the Professional ranks. He spoke with the newspaper La Nazione explaining his very abrupt retirement.

It was not worth it to keep getting up every morning to ride my bike when I just did not want to ride any longer. I am nauseated with the bike and cycling in general. It was a tough decision and I am sad to make it, but it is a mutual decision with the Team LPR management. I felt inside me that I could no longer honor my contract which is why I have to leave.

The past few seasons Pieri has suffered through weight problems and a team switch halfway through 2005.

It is true that in my career I have met many different people some that like me and have shown themselves to be my firends. But there are other folks that I am tired of dealing with that are not very nice. These people have also caused me great pain internally, therefore I had to say enough. I don’t want to get into details, but for this life, I am sick. I saw that cycling no longer gave me any satisfaction and I pressed with this decision to quit. I am tranquil because I reflected on this decision for a long time. I could still misss cycling, but I can say with certainty that this is the right move. I am sad because I still believed that I could succeed, but I could not do anything differently. I could no longer support living this life.

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Just as the Armstrong Era came to a close last year in July, the Tom Boonen Era is in full swing. The total domination of the Belgian rider and his team are THE story of 2006. Boonen’s path to a second consecutive Tour of Flanders looked easy. His Quick Step team formed a “Treno Blu” as if it were a Tour de France sprint stage. This time Boonen had the full support of recent Milan San Remo winner Pozzato, Olympic Champ Paolo Bettini and Classics specialist Serge Baguet. This trio gave Quick Step quite an advantage moving into the decisive kilometers.

The Koppenburg proved a race killer for many in the race who found themselves using the walking features of their cleats. Unlike Jessica Simpson, their shoes were not made for walking. It was an amazing site to see Pro Cyclist walking up the steep cobbled climb of the Koppenburg. This is what the Classics are all about.
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