Letter from Philadelphia

I went up to the Philadelphia International Cycling Championship on Sunday, more to look for feature story inspiration and catch up with some contacts than to do any on-the-scene reporting, though I did grab some quotes here and there for use by other parties. But by far my most surprising and sort of scary contact came well away from the press tent.

A couple of laps in, I decided to pay a visit to Strawberry Hill, the course’s neglected hill, which sits between the ascents of the Manayunk Wall, the party hill, and Lemon Hill, the race connoisseurs’ hill. Trying to stay in the shade as much as possible, I was having a look at the long, wide-open descent that takes riders off Strawberry and back down to Kelly Drive, the main artery of the course. I was the only person there until a middle-aged man and his two young sons came from the opposite direction. The kids were water bottle hunting, so I tossed them a couple from my side of the road. The father thanked me in a thick Australian accent and, spotting the badge around my neck, asked me my affiliation. I told him, and we fell into talking about where we were from, the race, the heat, and assorted other pleasantries.

He explained that he lives in the area, and that through various twists and turns he’d become familiar with High Road assistant director Andrzej Bek. We talked about the team being a class act, and he noted how Bek was so friendly he had just called him during the race to try to arrange a meet-up. And then he dropped the bomb: “And they’ve rented my RV from me for the week.”

Here I was, in an isolated area, with no witnesses, face-to-face with a man whose recreational vehicle I’d openly mocked on this site for my own self-glorification just days ago. A hundred thousand people at this race, and this is who I run into? I wasn’t sure whether to scream and run away or go buy a lottery ticket. Being a pretty good distance from anywhere, and neither a runner nor a gambler, I decided to just act casual.

But Philly is a long race, and that was just one of any number of semi-notable things. Here are a few more.

DNF

Perusing the full results back in the comfort and air-conditioning of my own home, the final accounting was striking in two ways. The first was the number of finishers – 81 out of 180 starters. Yes, that’s less than half of the starters making it to the far end, but given temperatures that started around 80 degrees at the 9:00am start and rose to over 95 degrees by the finish, coupled with high humidity, I went in expecting maybe 40 or so finishers. Granted, it was one of the slowest editions of the race, with plenty of riders being more cautious than usual with their efforts due to the heat, but that’s still a hell of a crowd after 156 miles, however you cut it. Remember when Manayunk was a race-shattering climb? Now, not so much.

The second striking aspect of the results came in the less auspicious section below the final finisher (for the record, David Guttenplan of Time at 14:41 back) in the DNF section. Every team was represented down there, and the guys watching the finish from the sidelines included notable names like former winner Henk Vogels (Toyota-United), Paris-Roubaix champions Servais Knaven (High Road) and Magnus Backstedt (Slipstream), and Giro points jersey winner Danielle Bennati (Liquigas). But that wasn’t the interesting part – after all, everybody has a job to do, and anyone can have an off day.

The interesting part was that two teams – Jittery Joe’s and Rite Aid – managed to lose their entire 8-man squads. With 81 guys making it to the finish, it has to be pretty hard to explain why not-a-one of yours could get there, heat or no heat. It also has to make you wonder about next year’s invitation – without the Philadelphia race serving as the USPRO championship, a spot in the lineup isn’t as safe as it used to be.

Coping Strategies

Who can blame those Rite Aid and Jittery Joe’s boys for packing it in, though? It was hot out there. Damn hot. Africa hot. So teams were making a special effort to make sure their riders kept cool enough to go for the win, or at least not die. For water bottle and musette hunters, it was a banner day, and thank god for them, because if it hadn’t been for the scavengers, we’d have been wading knee-deep in bottles by the midpoint.

But giving more liquids is basic, and this sort of heat and humidity called for a bit more effort. Soigneurs in the team tents were busy all day, stuffing ice in ziplock bags and team socks to hand up to riders, who would stuff them down the back of their jersies. It seems to me there are upsides and downsides to that method – on one hand, you’ve got a bag of ice down your back. On the other, you have to zip up the front of your jersey to hold it there.

I don’t know if it’s because they didn’t pack any spare socks or plastic baggies, or just a preference, but the Symmetrics riders seem to disproportionately prefer the full chest unzip in comparison to the rest of the peloton, and if you paid attention you could see why. Those Canadians are damn hairy.

Another minor notable was that Toyota-United and some other squads were using oversized water bottles. They’re commonplace in amateur racing, of course, where you’re more-or-less on your own for your feeding needs, but in the pro ranks they’re rarely seen. At that level, caravan vehicles passing up bottles and competent feed zone help eliminate some of the need, and the small bottles weigh less are less apt to bounce out of the cages. But on a day like Sunday, those few ounces of extra capacity were likely well worth any associated negatives.

Still other teams were handing up ice-water soaked kitchen sponges, which now cover a colorful 5 mile stretch of Philly riverfront. So be on the lookout for extra-clean homeless people storing their urine in Slipstream-Chipotle bottles in the coming weeks. If any of the teams had gone truly retro and used damp cabbage leaves under their helmets, they could have had a meal as well.

Get it Right

At the finish of the Liberty Classic, the women’s race that does four laps of the full course, the announcers were going apeshit about the late solo move by U.S. champion Mara Abbott (High Road) on Lemon Hill. She held her small gap all the way to the line for the win. I must have heard her name at 100 decibels at least 10 times in the seconds it took the race to pass the press tent, loop around Logan Circle, and get back to the line, including a great big “MARA ABBOTT WINS THE LIBERTY CLASSIC!” as she crossed the line with arms raised.

The only problem was it wasn’t Mara Abbott. And everyone who knew a bit about bike racing knew it wasn’t. The announcers apologized to Chantal Beltman, the young Dutchwoman who’d actually delivered High Road the win, several minutes later. They blamed the mix-up on a last minute switch in numbering within the team that wasn’t noted on their start sheet.

Is it easy to innocently misidentify riders in bike racing? Yes, it is. Just ask Phil Liggett. Does the press occasionally get a start sheet that’s less than accurate? Absolutely. But a few things make this incident especially troublesome. First and foremost, it’s pretty easy to pick Abbott out from her teammates – as the announcers noted, she’s the U.S. road champion. Meaning she has a different kit from the rest of the team, including Beltman. Second, I picked up my start sheet a good hour and a half before the start, and Beltman was number 4, plain as day, just as she was at the finish, so somebody wasn’t doing their due diligence. Furthermore, this was no tight bunch sprint – Beltman’s number was clearly visible at the head of the race from Lemon Hill onward, ample time to figure things out. And even if their start sheet was actually wrong, they should have known it wasn’t Abbott by the jersey alone. It’s just sloppy, and this race is better than that.

It’s Not A Car Show

Finally, a safety note. Every year, the organizers find a way to let some Philly gearheads drive whatever overpowered creation they happen to own at the tail end of the race caravan. This year, it was one guy in whatever the new version of the Porsche 911 body style is, and a guy in an Acura NSX. The organizer, Threshold Sports, should give some real consideration to whether this is in everyone’s best interests, including their own.

Both vehicles were covered in some slipshod vinyl graphics, so I have to believe Threshold got some relatively small amount of money or in-kind services from those represented companies in exchange for the relatively minor logo placement. Even without knowing the value of those ads, I’m going to go ahead and tell Threshold it’s not worth it.

Race caravans themselves are dangerous, but they’re also loud, spend most of their time at 25 miles per hour, and due to generally good organization at Philly, you damn well know when its coming towards you. And the guys driving in the caravan are typically experienced and know the patterns and implied rules of the road during a bike race.

Not so with the gold-chain and wife-beater crowd piloting these extra vehicles. These guys were occasionally dropping well off the back of the race, then goosing it to about 60 mph up Kelly Drive. It would be bad enough if they hit a rider, a moto, or a mechanic stopped for service or a crash. But it will be even worse when they run over some kid who, with the peloton and caravan well past, steps out in the road to retrieve that High Road musette they’d been eyeballing since it left the rider's hand.

In addition to the primary concern of injury or death, trust me, after that happens, there will be no more Philly race, 24 years of history or no, and anyone trying to run any other race on public roads will face a lot of questions. Whatever they’re getting from the companies plastered on those cars – whether it’s money or services – the mighty Threshold Sports can acquire it some other way, or find a safer way to provide the same exposure value. A few hundred bucks saved won’t mean much if the scenario above comes to pass.

Reading Reading (or Vice-Versa)

I did not see that coming.

Oscar Sevilla (Rock Racing) won the second race of Philly Week, giving his polarizing domestic team what has to be the biggest victory of its short existence. While the Reading, PA course does feature a substantial climb in the last three laps, it’s hardly one that would look to favor a guy who made his name by riding well in the high mountains of European stage races and by having the face of an eternal 13 year old. As the two previous winners, Bernhard Eisel (then T-Mobile, now High Road) and Greg Henderson (then HealthNet, now High Road) would indicate, it tends to favor strongmen who can ride the hill as a power climb and still sprint afterwards. But according to reports, the little Spaniard not only read the race and timed his move perfectly, but was also just plain stronger than everyone else. That’s a hard combination to beat.

Jason Sumner’s VeloNews report can give you all the details, as can Mark Zalewski’s on cyclingnews.com, but basically, Sevilla had a free hand to play, which he did to great effect in the final two laps. Had that failed, the team was banking on Fred Rodriguez to take out the field sprint. Simple as it was, that little tactical discussion was somehow striking. I haven’t exactly been scavenging the media for the latest Rock Racing news, but it's hard to avoid, and it seems to me that the contents of those two articles are probably the most in-depth discussion of cycling tactics and actual racing to have occurred in relation to that particular team. Amidst all the discussion about persecution, Cipollini, lawsuits, tattoos, chrome rims, and fashion, it’s easy to forget that there’s an actual group of guys out there racing. And the team knows it. Director Mariano Friedick told VN post race, “No matter what other people may think, we are just a bike racing team trying to win bike races.”

But it’s hard to deny that the team has given people plenty to talk about besides winning bike races. In fact, they’ve gone out of their way to do so. And, like it or not, this victory will continue to fan some of those flames, because it involves Sevilla. While I don’t have the time – as in, “enough time left on this Earth” – to recount the ins and outs of the whole Operation Puerto affair, suffice it to say that Sevilla was implicated, but never officially sanctioned, unless you count exclusion from the Tour of California as being sanctioned. So there will certainly be people both deep inside the sport and on the spectator level who will complain about his victory and the “message” it sends, despite the fact that he’s always held a valid UCI license.

I won’t be among them though. Why? Not because I don’t think Sevilla was involved in at least some of the illicit practices at the center of Puerto. I’m no fan of guilt by association, because if that were the norm, I probably wouldn’t be a free man today, but Sevilla’s resume is a listing of the teams of the damned: Kelme (1998-2003), Phonak (2004), and T-Mobile (2005-2006) take him up through the Puerto case, after which he rode for Relax-Gam before landing stateside with Rock Racing. But in the years since that whole mess blew up, the acronym soup that claims to govern world cycling has failed to work in concert to do anything about it, other than point fingers at various cyclists and each other. In the meantime various riders, including Sevilla, have been caught in purgatory, and for someone just trying to get on with their life, that’s a pretty stiff punishment. At least when you get sent to heaven or hell, you know what you’re in for.

So while Sevilla would have likely sat out a couple of years had various people pulled their acts together, the time for the UCI and all other Puerto concerned parties to fish or cut bait has long since passed, and at this point they're stuck firmly below deck hacking the heads off a tub of shad until the next boat comes along. Or at least they should be, but most of these parties have never been constrained by the pursuit of a proper course of action. Maybe you can blame Sevilla and all of the other Puerto riders (including Sevilla’s teammates Tyler Hamilton and Santiago Botero) for not fessing up if you think they’re guilty, and that’s fair enough, but it’s the governing bodies’ job to police this stuff, and they failed miserably. At some point, in the absence of any credible sporting or legal process, we all have to move on, and I'm trying to do my part. Which is not to say that we shouldn't look to improve the processes -- clearly, there's plenty of work to be done. But we need to do so by using the past as a lesson, not by dwelling in it and letting it siphon off resources that could be used to improve the future.

Though it’s not directly related to Puerto, which has been pretty quiet of late, there’s ample evidence of the sport’s mismanagement floating around these days anyway. If you want to dig into the depth of just how bad it is, check out VeloNews Editorial Director John Wilcockson’s interview with UCI boss Pat McQuaid. The primary subject is the UCI vs. ASO issue hovering noisily over the upcoming Tour de France, but it’s pretty indicative of the state of the sport as a whole. It’s also pretty dense stuff, and frankly, it made my head hurt. But despite the pain, it reveals some disturbing issues, like the fact that the McQuaid interprets (at his convenience) requests made by a confounding number of (sometimes redundant, sometimes conflicting) teams associations to the UCI as steadfast rules to be applied to races, and that the UCI is both the enforcer of and at the mercy of those same rules. My headache comes back just thinking about it.

Though this particular interview only gives a peep into the UCI’s absurd mental gymnastics, the ASO really isn’t contributing any better logic on their side. In fact, it would be sweet relief if there were anybody involved in the whole UCI vs. Grand Tours flap who was more-or-less right. But there isn’t, and the fact that they’re all making a mess of things in their own unique way is just plain frustrating – there’s really no interest in creating a unified, cohesive structure for the sport, only in forwarding the individual goals of a slew of organizations. I don’t claim to have the answers to all of the overlapping jurisdictions and responsibilities and ambitions that are hog-tying the sport, but then again, it isn’t my full-time well-compensated job to think about such things. It’s my part-time, poorly compensated job to bitch about them sometimes, though, so there you go.

Haves and Have Nots

Here in the United States, we’re one race into what’s affectionately known as “Philly Week.” I believe it’s officially dubbed the “Pro Cycling Tour” by promoter Threshold Sports, because there aren’t already enough permutations of “pro,” “cycling,” and “tour” in circulation. (Interestingly, I was going to link to the UCI ProTour rankings back there, but mentions of the allegedly prestigious series and its snazzy logo seem to have gone missing from their site. But that’s another story.)

The Philly Week races are sponsored by Commerce Bank, so some people – mostly from the Commerce Bank PR department – call it the "Commerce Bank Triple Crown of Cycling." Long before Commerce took over the sponsorship, no doubt encouraged by irritating spokesperson and deadly lead-out man Regis Philbin, the races were sponsored by CoreStates, another bank. Those were long and memorable years, so some people still call it the CoreStates series as well. But they’re usually old, and still wearing stretched-out lycra from that era, so they’re easy to spot. Wachovia took over for a few years there in the middle, but I don’t think anyone calls it the Wachovia series. At some point, Thrift Drug was in there as a sponsor as well, but at this point, that seems like a poor pairing with the sport. Anyway, that’s all confusing and a bit obtuse, so let’s just go with Philly Week. I’m sure that’s what the sponsors would want.

One of the big selling points for Philly Week has always been that a number of European squads make the trip over to race, which was far more rare before the rise of the Tour of California and Tour de Georgia. Sometimes the trip is for sponsorship reasons – Bjarne Riis’s CSC team has been a mainstay over the past several years, feting bigwigs from the government contractor in huge hospitality tents, and Liquigas is making the trip this year, likely at the behest of bike sponsor Cannondale. (Saeco also made several appearances during their long Cannondale tenure, with Stefano Zanini winning in 2003.) Suanier-Duval has made a few trips recently as well, giving then-cosponsor Prodir pens top billing on some special jerseys as they made a push in the U.S. market. (Full disclosure: All us media hacks got free pens that year. Ah, the perks.) Back when Philly was the USPRO championship race, some of the Euros came to support a U.S. title contender in their ranks, as Mapei, Domo and various Lotto permutations did for Fred Rodriguez over the years, while for U.S.-registered but European-focused squads, it’s a good chance to stoke the affections of the home crowd. Still other teams just come for the appearance money, a free stay in a nice Philly hotel, shopping, and maybe some prize money if they’re feeling frisky.

The arrival of the overseas teams, particularly the big budget ones, can lead to a bit of role reversal. Suddenly, it’s the traditionally hardscrabble domestic continental teams that are better equipped and on their home turf, while the usually pampered ProTour teams have to work out of rented Ryder box trucks instead of the custom-built DAF rigs they’re used to. Sure, Ryder can arrange to get you shipping blankets and a dolly, but they’re sure as hell not going to install a washer/dryer and a mini-fridge for you. And just try to find good muesli and Extran in Fishtown.

But between those extremes – the suddenly posh-looking continental squads and the rental-car driving European ProTour teams – there is some middle ground. The U.S.-registered squads like ProTour High Road and pro continental Slipstream-Chipotle keep a bit of heavy equipment over in the states, enough to look professional when they hit the bigger domestic races, but still lacking all the comforts of a safe European home. Slipstream has a nicely appointed and appropriately Euro Sprinter van, as well as a nice BMW wagon to terrorize the caravan with. But when you’re ProTour, like High Road, people expect a bit more, and you can’t just go turning up to the races without a team bus.


As evidenced by these (poor) shots taken at the CSC Invitational in Arlington, VA on Sunday, the High Road lads are a resourceful bunch. Shipping buses overseas is apparently crazy expensive, so they’ve suckered some Florida-bound Pennsylvania retirees into lending them one heavily armed recreational vehicle for the week, including an inspirational airbrushed mural on the back.


“Rocking Years” indeed. I mean, have you seen the number of wins these guys have racked up this season? Little do Bob and Janet Kowalski (retired and loving it!) of Phoenixville, PA, know, but that thing is going to reek of embrocation and ham when they get it back.

Though they’re one scant stop short of an “I’m Spending My Kid’s Inheritance” bumper sticker on the team bus side of the equation, the High Road boys pull it all back home with the caravan vehicles. While most stateside teams are content to piece together a suitable Yakima or Thule system for hauling bikes, High Road goes for the pure Euro solution – custom welding and hydraulics. No, not the kind of hydraulics that probably grace the undercarriage of the Rock Racing Escalades, allowing a range of suspension motion that would make the late Tupac blush, but roof rack hydraulics, which let everything fold down nice and tidy and flat when you want it to:


After all, if you think gas is expensive here, you should go to Europe. What’s more, they have the extra-special Y-shaped spare wheel mounts that let you hang nearly twice as many spare wheels off the back of a Passat (or a Skoda, or an Audi, or any other VAG product). Given the choice of vehicles, the fact that it’s U-bolted to the factory rack, and the limited supply of such fixtures in the U.S., I have to wonder if this is the exact same system that used to grace the roof of the VWs that Discovery Channel used stateside during their tenure.


Recycling of that sort is actually pretty common, both in Europe and here in the United States. For instance, Team Type 1’s flashy equipment truck was originally purchased by Tom Schuler for the powerhouse domestic Saturn squad of the day. When Saturn shut it’s doors, it was sold to Discovery Channel for domestic use during their tenure. With Discovery out, and Schuler back in the sport and managing Team Type 1, he repurchased the idle rig and, $6,000 worth of vinyl graphics later, she’s back. I’m headed up to Philadelphia on Sunday, so we’ll see what else we see there, on these and other life-and-death, thrill-of-victory-or-agony-of-defeat issues. In the meantime, I’ll try to throw out some other cutting-room floor material from CSC last weekend.

Open for Business

Sports Illustrated has the “cover curse.” Here at the Service Course, we have the “blog blessing.”

A pattern seems to be developing, whereby if I poke a little fun at a rider, he will stand on the top step of the podium in a matter of days. Make a few snide comments about Spanish classics riders, and Oscar Freire (Rabobank) wins Gent-Wevelgem. Imply that mighty Jens Voigt (CSC) is a little girly man, and he takes out a gutsy Giro stage win a couple of days later. And sure, Mark Cavendish (High Road), who I may or may not have accused of being the heir to David Millar’s whiney-limey throne, tried to ruin my streak by gifting a sure stage win to teammate André Greipel, but I’m counting that one anyway. I can only do so much for the guy – if he wants to throw the fruits of my largesse back in my face like that, it’s his business.

Based on this scientifically peer-reviewed and undeniable correlation, hang on to your goofy backwards hats, Slipstream fans, because David Millar is about to bag a stage. Maybe the final TT? And congratulations Gilberto Simoni, you’re about to win your third Giro d’Italia.

I know the media is supposed to be unbiased, but to hell with that. As of this post, I’ll be accepting payments from any riders who wish to be made fun of on this site in the name of securing a victory in short order. Prices will correspond to the magnitude of the victory desired. A win at this weekend’s CSC Invitational criterium will be relatively affordable, even for a domestic pro. Obviously, a Giro di Lombardia win will cost a healthy bit more. Just shoot me a line though, I’m willing to negotiate.

On that note, I’ll be doing some coverage work at the CSC Invitational this weekend in Arlington, VA. Say hello if you make it out there, which I recommend doing if you’re in the vicinity – it’s always a good time, and there are some interesting names on the start list. Otherwise, enjoy the finale of the Giro, and after you have, check out Joe Lindsey’s feelings on the race. I don’t necessarily agree with all of his points, but he’s a voice that warrants substantial consideration. He takes a good look at some of the unfortunate issues that are surrounding the sport these days, subjectively as well as from a straight governance standpoint.

David Millar is Contagious

Winning clean in Europe? Taking a second division team to grand tour success? Making the hipsterized dandy look all the rage in director sportif fashion? No, these are not the criteria by which the success or failure of Slipstream-Chipotle director Jonathan Vaughters will be measured. Rather, his impact will be defined by whether he can break David Millar of being such a whining sissy-boy.

With two straight days in the Dolomites followed by an uphill time-trial on the unpaved Plan de Corones climb, you could almost feel Millar’s dyspeptic ramblings approaching from a distance, like a looming thunderstorm or a slow-moving sneeze. The anticipation was palpable. So when VeloNews’s Andrew Hood sidled up to the tall Scot after the TT stage, he had to know he was about to hit paydirt. And he did, according to his article:

“This race is just insane!” said Slipstream’s David Millar as he climbed into a cable car to take him down the mountain. “Taken individually it’s a good idea, but on a total, it’s not a good thing after the two mental days we’ve just had and the two hard weeks we’ve had before that. This race is just ridiculous.”

Maybe it’s unfair to pick on Millar. If the press are looking for an overdramatic quote to emphasize how hard a stage is, they know damn well who to go to. It’s the press that opens the door; who can blame Millar for throwing a bicycle through it? Well, I can, because it’s so predictable and so frequent and because he’s getting a little old to play the role of the brash Brit upstart who whines about everything. I’m not sure Millar has heard, but Mark Cavendish (High Road) has assumed that mantle, and he’s doing a damn fine job of it.

I suppose Millar should be further exonerated by the fact that many other Giro riders are reportedly whining about the difficulty of the stage. But to that I’d add that this is Italy, with a largely Italian peloton, so finding someone to gesticulate wildly and complain ain’t exactly backbreaking work. Asking an Italian if the stage is hard is like asking Gilberto Simoni if the world is out to get him. Of course it is.

So what’s a reporter to do to get the real story? Well, to try to get some balance, why not talk to legendary tough guy Jens Voigt? Surely the veteran German will slide seamlessly into the old Udo Bolts role, telling the peloton to “suffer, you sow!” just as Bolts did to a young and whiney Jan Ullrich. But after years of gaining a reputation (and legions of fans) as a hardman and long-break specialist, it seems Voigt’s ovaries are finally starting to hurt. As told to Hood:

“It’s a stupid race - I don’t like it! We are at a ski area! Leave it to the mountain bikers!” said an angry Voigt. “I don't want to sound like an old grand-mother, because I know cycling is hard. But this Giro is too much. It’s like a machine that missing some oil and needs a tune-up. With a few small details, it would be so sweet. But today, for 45 minutes of racing, I have to miss an entire day. And tomorrow is four-hour transfer. Where is the time for recovery?”

That’s a lot of material, so let’s parse it out a bit.

“We are at a ski area.” A ski area? No shit!? What will those crazy Italians think of next? I mean, what respectable race would run a mountain stage to a ski station like Plan de Corones? Or Sestriere? Or Alpe d’ Huez? Or Superbagneres? Or La Mongie? Or Ax 3 Domaines? Or Plateau de Beille? Or Courchevel? Yeah, that’s mountain biker crap alright, and best left with the fat tire set, if you ask me.

“But today, for 45 minutes of racing, I have to miss an entire day.” Miss an entire day of what? Vacation? Yardwork? Time at the office filling out TPR reports? Hey Jens, missing a whole day for a 45 minute time trial, a road race over 5 mountian passes, or even a crappy criterium in some godforsaken backwater burg is your job. It’s what you’re supposed to plan on doing the entire day.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, angry Jens fans, what he means is he’s missing time for recovery. Says it right in the last sentence of the quote, and don’t think I missed it. To answer Voigt's question about time for recovery, let’s have a look at this handy schedule. Today, the very day after Plan de Corones, is apparently reserved for "riposo," or some such nonsense. Yes, a rest day, just like the one last week, which makes a grand total of two, just like the Tour de France. Yes, there’s a four-hour transfer, just like there is on some Tour rest days, or at the Vuelta. No, driving four hours isn’t a great way to recover, that is if you’re actually driving or are stacked 3 wide in the back seat of your clubmate’s 1987 Honda hatchback. But here’s a tip for the ProTour boys: don’t let the soigneurs talk you into driving - it's their job, and the clever wretches are just trying to pawn it off on you. Ride in the team bus. It’s nicer than most of the hotel rooms you stay in anyway – air conditioning, recliners, a TV, and probably an espresso maker. Sure, there are fewer opportunities to shop for brightly colored athletic shoes and casual sunglasses on the bus than in town, but we all have to suffer for our art, whatever our art happens to be.

Am I denying that this Giro seems to have some pretty apparent problems? No. And Voigt’s little rant does include some veiled compliments and a certain objectivity that befits his senior status in the peloton. The well-documented transfer difficulties (particularly between Sicily and the mainland) are ridiculous, and better planning and execution in a number of areas are certainly called for. As he said, a bit of oil and you’d have a beautiful race for the riders, as well as for the fans, who seem to be enjoying it quite a bit.

As it is, the Giro is a little less slick, less mechanized than an ASO production, but that’s part of what creates a different and more engaging feel to the racing at the Giro. One that's less sanitized and closer to the tifosi. Unfortunately, that same earthiness shines through in some other aspects, like how long it takes to get riders away from the finish and on to dinner and a massage. Those things can sound trivial to those of us who have to cook our own dinners and almost never get a massage, but they are important at this level of bike racing, and organizers have to factor them in if everyone’s going to stay happy. On the other hand, the Giro awards actual cycling jerseys on the podium, not the ridiculously baggy, zipper-up-the-back evening gowns the Tour seems to have taken a shine to, and that’s worth a lot of hassle for the riders in my book. That’s details though, and there’s no arguing that, beneath the veneer of the mid-pack-amateur-esque post-race complaining, the distinguished gentleman from Germany has a point.

That said, some of the reason for the logistical rocky road this Giro is travelling is that the organizers are trying something different: they’re trying to make stage racing interesting again. Different stage formats, different climbs, and a less formulaic approach give this Giro a fresh feel (for spectators, at least), especially compared to the traditional grand tour role model, the Tour de France. Someone has to try to bring life back to a format where the principle tongue-wagger in recent years has been scandal rather than racing, and so far, it’s been the Vuelta (which debuted shorter stages several years ago) and the Giro that have stepped forward to give it a try. Meanwhile, ASO seems content to rearrange the ascents of the Telegraph, Galibier, and Marie Blanc each year and call it a new route. And will it be the Ventoux or Alpe d’Huez this year? Oh, the suspense. So if the Giro trying something a little different in the name of engaging spectators disrupts the flow a little bit for the insiders, maybe that’s worth it. Because without engaging those spectators, there won’t be anything for them to be inside of.

Anyways, maybe that Tour-like predictability is what Millar and Voigt want (who doesn’t like some stability in their workplace?) or maybe it isn’t; I have no idea. But you know what? Even though I've picked on Millar and Voigt for their comments after the Plan de Corones stage, I can forgive and forget the whinging. And I’d suggest that everyone else do so as well, at least until Millar has another relapse. I understand where they’re coming from, particularly when they’re just stepping off their bikes after a tough day like that. Some days my job is pretty unpleasant, and I certainly moan and complain about it when I get home. And yes, I even whine about the things that are well within the bounds of my job description. The difference is that right after I walk out of the office nobody asks me about my workday, except maybe my wife, and even then, she doesn’t record my answers and write a little article about it. Or maybe she does, and I just haven’t found the web site yet.

Stuck Inside of Florence with the Giro Blues Again

Back in the very early days of 2006, my wife’s parents invited us to join them on a trip to Italy in May, along with one of my wife’s many sisters and her husband. Her parents would be renting an apartment in the center of Florence, and our room and board would be taken care of in exchange for services rendered as tour guides and travel planners. (We’d been to Florence on our honeymoon, and the two of us had long since proven our ability to travel internationally without major, life-ending, limb-rending incident. I guess that made us qualified.) After five days or so in Florence, everyone would go their separate ways – my wife and I headed to Bellagio on Lago di Como, her parents down to Rome, and her sister and husband back to Tennessee. Back then, when booking a flight gave you at least a 50-50 shot of getting to your destination, who would pass up that offer ?

Of course, you mention “May” and “Italy” to a cyclist, and their eyes roll back, their vision goes pink, and their mind jumps to thoughts of somehow working a couple of stages of the Giro d’ Italia into even the most family-oriented of itineraries. And I’m no different. What fun-loving spouse wouldn’t want to spend 8 hours sitting by the side of some godforsaken road to see 39 seconds of action? What 33-year-old wouldn't want some snack food thrown from a truck?

I tried, I really did. I studied calendars and routes, scrawled out revised itineraries and hatched plans for daring solo escapes by train. And I am not a person who enjoys planning. I knew my sainted wife would understand, if not enthuse, and if I played my cards right, I could even make it pay by writing a little something for one of the usual cycling media suspects. But I ran into one undeniable, immutable obstacle: the 2006 Giro d’ Italia, the Tour of Italy, would be spending its first days in Belgium during our stay in Italia. A little dejected, I sat back to begin the process of accepting a May trip to Italy that would not result in the obtainment of a pink T-shirt.

And then I remembered that graceful acceptance of defeat is not a part of cycling. If there’s one thing amateur racing teaches you, it’s that if you’re getting beaten, you just haven’t found the right category yet. With that in mind, I started looking for that different category that would allow an on-vacation hack like me to achieve victory. And like any one of a number of cut-rate Italian pros, I came to realize that even though I might never make it to Il Grande Giro, that was no reason to surrender my dreams. After all, there were still a slew of available races once you got that idea of bagging stage wins and GC glory out of your head. They’re just a little more…quaint.

In the end, I settled on the Giro della Toscana, a one-day Italian semi-classic that precedes the Giro d’ Italia start by a week and cuts through the heart of the Chianti wine country outside Florence. Still jetlagged and hazy on the day following our arrival, I drove to the start, got my press pass just as registration was shutting down, slapped the “Stampa” stickers on my rental car, and headed for the race’s biggest climb. What I found at the start, the finish, and at the top of the Badia Coltibuono was a race that will never, ever, ever be shown on Versus, but which was every bit as much a piece of the world of bike racing as a stage of the Giro d’ Italia. The result of that trip was the piece below. An edited version ran in VeloNews’s At the Back column in May 2006.

Il Piccolo Giro
Arezzo, Italy

If there’s one element that sums up the Giro della Toscana, it’s the publicity caravan. The little UCI 1.1 race through Tuscany’s Chianti wine region does have one, but there are none of the Giro d’Italia’s giant iced tea cups and motorized fiberglass contraptions. Instead, there’s a more reasonable fleet of four Fiat Punto hatchbacks, black, each fitted with a roof-mounted PA system. When the caravan reaches a group of spectators on the road – and a group could be defined as “five or more people” – a driver stops to deliver a brief promotional speech at top volume and maximum distortion, despite the proximity of his audience. Small green backpacks and umbrellas are then handed off to the newly deaf, and the Punto sets off for the next group of punters.

That’s the story of the Giro della Toscana, and a host of races like it across Europe each season. In many obvious ways—color, competition, sound—they’re very much like cycling’s major events, but just a little bit more modest, a little closer to the bone. The Giro della Toscana isn’t an important race anymore, though its list of 79 winners features the likes of Girardengo, Binda, Bartali, Coppi, Altig, DeVlaeminck, and Moser. These days, schedule conflicts with the Tour de Romandie and a slew of national races across Europe guarantee a field that is far from star-studded. But in an era defined by slickly marketed events with major sponsorship money at stake, Toscana feels refreshing for its lack of production values.

At the tiny start town of Terranuova-Bracciolini, it’s immediately apparent that this is no ProTour event, not “Il Grande Giro,” which is set to start in Belgium in a week’s time. The team area isn’t a maze of custom VanHool team buses, but rather a mish-mash of hastily parked team cars, with fans wandering between bumpers and bikes. The smaller Italian continental teams that make up the bulk of the field likely can’t afford much more, and Lampre and Liquigas’ rigs are up north at the big races. Only Acqua & Sapone and Naturino, medium-sized squads for whom these are the big races, have their wheeled homes on hand. The result is a start area that feels a bit more like the big races some 15 years ago, when even the most famous names had to greet their public and the press as the soigneur oiled their legs on the bumper of the team car rather than behind the curtains of the bus.

As for those famous names, there aren’t many here. The field is mostly solid Italian journeymen and a healthy complement of the Eastern Europeans that have continued to flock to Italian squads since the fall of the iron curtain. Dane Bo Hamburger plays the role of the old timer in decline, riding now for the modest Miche squad and a long way from his days of Fleche Wallonne and Tour de France stage wins. The lone bonafide star on the start list is Damiano Cunego, here for a final race ahead of the Giro d’Italia. In that great European cycling tradition of towns awarding riders they like with random things, he’s presented a matching pearl necklace and bracelet set at the sign-in.



Which is not to say that the other riders here lack their fans. In fact, they’re here in droves, but not because they’ve read about these riders in magazines or watched interviews with them on RAI. There are a healthy number of girlfriends and family members lingering, and plenty more familiar handshakes, slaps on the back from neighbors, and pokes in the ribs from amateur training partners. Those not personally connected aren’t here to see stars of world sport or be part of an event, they’re just here to see a bike race.

But maybe Toscana isn’t so different from the grander Giro after all, because any race that has RV people can’t be all that small. Granted, there’s only one RV rather than hundreds at the top of day’s principal obstacle, the twisting 20 kilometer climb of the Badio Coltibuono, but they’re there, and they’re cooking and drinking wine, waiting at the spot where they know the selection will be made.

On a signpost just beyond the RV crowd is evidence of the other way that Toscana directly channels the Giro d’ Italia—the route markers. They’re the same familiar black arrows on a Gazzetta-pink background—literally. A bit faded and battered from their use on last years Giro d’Italia, they’ve been efficiently spruced up with a red Giro della Toscana sticker to cover up their Giro d’ Italia markings. A few Euros saved, no doubt, and a few more to tack onto the day’s prize list.

The crowd on the Coltibuono grows steadily as the race approaches, eventually reaching some 40 or so, including the carabinieri, two nuns eating lunch in a Fiat, several families, and members of the Deux Chaveaux car club who have been trapped while trying to visit the monastery perched on top of the hill. A well-fed and painted blonde woman is working the crowd, singing the praises of local boy and 2003 Toscana winner Rinaldo Nocentini, “Vincitore del Giro dell’Appennino! Vincitore del Giro della Toscana!” She’s on the verge of explosion when her man comes over the top in a strong group of 25 that will decide the finish amongst themselves.

Nocentini is still in with a shot when the nine man remains of the break roll into Arezzo to complete two local laps before the finish, and the pace and the fervor of the crowd ratchets up as the candidates turn the screws for the win. The spectators, some familiar from the Coltibuono, grab their children’s heads and swivel them as they point out their local heroes in the peloton. In the peloton a minute down, Cunego makes his only mark on the race on the first circuit, throwing a theatrical arm up in futility and pulling out with a smile on his face.

With a just kilometer remaining and a downpour on the way, Przemyslaw Niemiec breaks free and holds off Giuliano Figueras and the rest of the break by a slim two seconds for the win. Though he’s not Italian, a result that’s somewhat of an aberration in the Toscana’s 79 year history, he’s still a popular winner. A Pole by birth, he rides for Miche, a squad based back at the start town of Terranuova, so he’s a nice local boy after all. Monday morning, his victory will only warrant about 300 words in the Gazzetta dello Sport, but for the people of Chianti, he’ll do just fine.

Ace of Spades

You know I'm born to lose,
and gambling's for fools,
But that's the way I like it baby,
I don't wanna live forever

- Ace of Spades, Motorhead

They’re known in some cycling circles as headbangers, those lords of the long break, the kings of kilometer zero, so maybe it’s fitting that Lemmy and the lads recorded the anthem that seems to speak for them so well. That the fatalistic lyrics of a blue-collar British metal band could fit a bunch of skinny, shaved-legged professional athletes so well seems odd, but when you stare at it for long enough, the reason they do becomes more clear. Like many of the down-and-out fans that song was aimed at, riders in the early break are often the cannon fodder of their own dirty little corner of the world, and that situation tends to change your perspective on risk a bit.

Of course, being cannon fodder, cycling or otherwise, doesn’t necessarily mean you have no purpose – as unkind teachers often point out, the world needs ditch diggers, too. Cycling teams don’t need shovelers per se, but they do need a sacrificial lamb to save the rest of the team from chasing, to bridge up to when the heavy climbs start, and to fly the flag at the front when those TV cameras click on with 2 hours to go. Hence, the long move.

Sometimes, initiating or covering that move is just an assignment, a good teammate’s given role for the day. Might be the same thing tomorrow, might be different. Whatever the DS says. But for some riders, going away in the first 40 kilometers becomes a specialty, every bit as much as climbing or sprinting. Unlike those more glamorous skills, though, the long raid rarely brings it's practitioners victory, and usually the only real suspense in watching it comes from the ghoulish delight of trying to predict just how the break will meet its demise. Will cooperation fail as the finish creeps closer? Will they succumb to a chase, or just crumble under the weight of a hundred kilometers of fatigue? Will they go quietly, or struggle on awkwardly until the field rushes past and spits them out the back? Will defeat come with 5 kilometers remaining, or right on the line?

Regardless of how or when, it’s fairly certain that defeat will come. So why keep doing it? What’s the motivation? That’s where the true breakaway specialists distinguish themselves from their obedient coworkers and snuggle over towards the compulsive gambler end of the spectrum. They keep doing it not because they think victory is likely, but simply because they know it’s possible. There’s a chance, however minute, despite team radios and perfectly timed chases and GC battles and odds. For them, that’s enough.

And like the poker players and slot jockeys that haunt Atlantic City and Vegas, they know the big payoff is possible because they’ve seen it done. Jacky Durand, probably the sport’s best known headbanger, made a career out of it after parlaying an early move (at 42 kilometers) into victory at the 1992 Tour of Flanders. That little taste was enough to hook the Frenchman, and for the next 12 years, you could mark the point where the neutral zone ended by when Du-Du made his move. Durand is a legend, but if the headbangers have a patron saint, it’s Eros Poli, the Italian leadout man who, at 6’4” and 180+ pounds used a 170 kilometer solo escape to score an unlikely win on Stage 15 of the 1994 Tour de France, which passed over the fearsome Mont Ventoux. He got to the bottom of the Giant of Provence with 22 minutes in hand, and was still over three minutes to the good when he plowed across the line in Carpentras ahead of Virenque and Pantani. There are actual saints who’ve suffered less.

While Poli and Durand are gone from the peloton, a new generation of gamblers is sitting down at the table, hoping that if they play enough hands, they’ll get dealt the right cards eventually. One of the best is Pavel Brutt (Tinkoff), a 25-year-old Russian who seems to be in the early move of practically every race his second division team gets an invitation to. All those kilometers off the front haven’t provided Brutt with even the slightest hint of a tan, giving him even more common ground with British metalheads we started out with, but they did gain him a good win on Stage 5 the Giro d’ Italia on Wednesday. He out-rode and out-bluffed the rest of the 12 man move he’d been away with for almost 180 kilometers. You can read all about it here, but that's old news by now and besides, another early move has already managed to reshape the race since then. What’s more important about the Stage 5 article than nitty gritty race details are Brutt’s comments from the post-race press conference, which provide some good insight into the mindset of a pure, unadulterated headbanger:

“I didn’t believe we’d make it to the finish, but then I was with some very strong guys and it made the difference to pull clear. I like to go into breakaways. That’s my best chance and I’ve done a lot of them. I do that as often as possible.”

Brutt knows that, without a killer sprint or serious high-mountain chops, his odds of bagging stage wins are slim, so he plays the cards he dealt and gambles on the long move. He knows that 99 percent of the time, he’s not going to win, and he’ll be wasted for the next few days. But because a 1 percent chance is better than nothing, he does it anyway. Frequently and wholeheartedly. And there's something endearing in that. After all, who wants to live forever?

Italian Graffiti

The 2008 Giro d’ Italia is underway, marking not only the start of the grand tour season, but also the beginning of prime road graffiti season. For whatever reason, this quaint chalk-and-housepaint element of road racing culture has never migrated north to the spring classics in a big way, save the sterile, municipally-stenciled string of “Huy”s on the final climb of the Fleche Wallonne and the surprisingly prolific writings of the Phil Gilbert fan club on the climbs just outside of Liege. Yes, the pavement décor is a little sparse up north in the chilly early spring, but as the professional caravan motors south to the boot of Europe for the Giro, the blossoming of the graffiti marks another sure sign of seasonal transition.

The Italians have made an art out of road graffiti, just like they have made an art of clothing, automobiles, living, bicycle racing, and, well, art. From simple block-letter names to heartfelt scrawlings to carefully planned and proportioned works, and with sentiments ranging from the poetic to the profane, Italians lead the way in truly inspired race course paint. (In fact, maybe it’s the descendants of all of the immigrant Italian miners in the Belgian Ardennes who account for the street painting present in those classics but lacking in the Flemish races. Maybe the urge to roll paint onto asphalt is something in their blood that hasn’t been totally bred out by living in that French-speaking land for a hundred years. Or maybe paint just doesn’t stick to wet cobbles very well.)

Sure, in July the Tour de France will bring about grand and international gestures of support for riders, teams, or entire nationalities, played out in paint and chalk, banners and flags, and paper mache and hay bale sculptures. But like the Tour de France and nearly everything associated with it, those displays often go a bit too far in their quest to be a spectacle for spectacle’s sake. And as a result, any sentiment they’re intended to convey seems to ring a bit hollow.

The Giro d’ Italia, on the other hand, is certainly a spectacle, but it is a spectacle because of its focus on bicycle racing, not because it is achingly desperate to be the center of attention. The same applies to those messages to nobody and everybody that the race’s tifosi apply to the streets of Tuscan towns and high alpine passes. Like the Giro that inspires it, the beauty of its road graffiti lies in its relative simplicity, its authenticity.

In fact, so endearing are the roadway decorations of the tifosi that they’re apparently spreading beyond the realm of cycling and making their way into general Italian culture, as American ex-pat writer and photographer James Martin describes here. It's like a bizarre ode to simplicity: some people use instant messages, the Italians just paint it on the road.

Unsolicited Advice

Every April, the cycling press unleashes a slew of Paris-Roubaix tech articles in a barrage so heavy, so relentless, it makes the shelling that northern France received during World War I look like a passing shower. These articles became all the rage in the early 1990s, when pro teams got the wild hair to start throwing mountain bike parts on their rigs for a few days a year in search of some relief from the cobbles. Apparently, deep down, even the most effete Euro-pro in the disco had a soft spot in his heart for purple anodized, CNC machined parts. And RockShox.

Things have calmed down a bit equipment-wise since those heady days, but the relentless pounding of tech articles from Roubaix hasn’t slowed a bit. And that’s OK. They discuss an always-interesting mix of new technology, like making a carbon fiber bike that’s a centimeter longer with a higher rake carbon fork to smooth out the ride, and old tried-and-true technology, like making a bike that’s a centimeter longer with a higher rake fork to smooth out the ride. Hey, wait a minute…

Despite the plethora of articles meticulously detailing longer bikes, brand new forms of Zertz-No-More-Hurtz-Insertz, tied-and-soldered wheels, and hand-made tubulars aged with more care than vintage Bordeaux, it seems to me that while they fawn over the more high-profile modifications, most amateur racers overlook the one little Paris-Roubaix tweak that could actually make a significant difference in their own racing.

Probably because it costs about $16, required virtually no “R&D time,” and doesn’t have that sepia-toned, Rapha-catalog charm of beekeeper’s wire and a soldering iron.

So what is this divine secret of the Hell of the North? And why bring it up now, some weeks after closing the book on that event? Well, racing-wise, this past weekend wasn’t just the Tour of Romandie. In the MABRA zone, it was time for the local incarnation of that annual mainstay of amateur racing circuits nationwide: the race with a token stretch of rough, potholed gravel road. It’s a nice course all around, and we give the organizing club a lot of credit not just for a great course, but also for steadfastly resisting the urge to put “Roubaix” in the name. Because that’s lame. Anyway, as the race’s numerous tales of glory have circulated via the Internet (which is now apparently about 20% cycling, 78% pornography, and 2% other) and group ride chit-chat, a single common theme has emerged: racers’ fundamental inability to keep their water bottles attached to their bicycles when the road gets rough.

Numerous tales of woe – of desperation, dehydration, and surrender – resulted from this malady. As did inspiring stories of redemption, the kindness of strangers, the brotherhood of the road, and angelic saviors in the feed zone. I’d imagine similar recounts haunt every district to have such a race, but really, it’s all kind of unnecessary.

The solution, as we hinted above, is simple, and cheap. Cheap enough that you, too, can live like a pro, hoarding a special technology in your service course until that one time per year you break it out for that special race. You can even take pictures of it and write an article, if you want. Send it to cyclingnews.com, or VeloNews.com. They’ll eat it up.

Here’s how to do it: Go to almost any bike shop and buy two of the most inexpensive, bog standard stainless steel bottle cages you can find (no, not carbon, not resin, not aluminum, not scandium, not magnesium – Steel). They should run you maybe $10 a piece, or about $40 less per cage than the sexy carbon ones that sent your bottles into the woods on the first lap. Before mounting, squeeze the upper and lower portions of each cage together, far enough that the steel sets in the “farther closed” position when you let go. Now put them on your bike. Does the bottle feel tight? If not, take them off and bend them farther until it is. If you go too far, bend it back the other way. And if you want to be really obsessive, wrap the top part of the cage with a few turns of hockey tape for grip. Then put them back on the bike. I can’t stress enough how important that last step is.

Done properly, your bottle should stay put as much as you’d want, unless you do something ridiculous that you shouldn’t really be doing anyway, like falling over or running broadside into livestock. The tradeoff, of course, is that it’s a little harder to get the bottles in, but compared to riding in the dust and heat with no water, that’s the least of your problems. Sure, keeping your water bottles for the whole race might take a certain element of drama out of your race report, and the steel (and the water bottle) will add those couple of grams to your bike for those rollers just after the gravel. But on the other hand, you might get a good result if you have something to drink, and you won’t become known as the peloton beggar.

So there you go, trickle down technology straight from Paris-Roubaix to you. It’s not glamorous or new, but it’s far more useful than overpriced tied and soldered wheels, far quicker and less smelly than gluing on special tires, and far less frustrating than trying to convince your girlfriend to stand beside a hot, dusty road in your ratty wind vest with a cooler full of water bottles. Pure, simple, and utilitarian. What could be more pro than that?

Hey Rube!

There was a time not so long ago when many cyclists wished on shooting stars that their beloved sport would become more mainstream, mostly for the TV coverage and so that they wouldn’t have to explain the leg shaving and lycra quite so often. It seems that now we’ve all been cursed by their selfish wishes. An ever-growing flock of write-by-numbers articles have been appearing in mainstream publications, heralding the arrival of cycling as “the new golf.” Just to be clear, by the “new golf” they don't mean that cycling is an engaging form of moderate exercise, but rather that it is an activity that allows well-off people to "network” when they should just “work” and on which they can spend boatloads of money for shiny equipment and executive trinkets.

Well, that’s just great.

Along with all of the other jackasserey that comes along with being the new golf, there are the inevitable follow-up articles about the stupid amounts of money people will spend on various aspects of the sport, be it on travel, engaging in Walter Mitty ride-alongs with the stars, or buying bicycles that cost more than Toyotas. These articles typically involve at least one comparison to a custom suit and/or a reference to Fifth Avenue, Rodeo Drive, or, for the more global thinkers, Milan.

So it’s not surprising to see the latest New York Times contribution to the genre, because nobody writes about pompous people buying shit for three-to-ten times what its worth like the Gray Lady. This latest round, irritatingly titled “Cycling Success Measured in Frequent Flyer Miles” focuses on people who travel absurd distances to buy their bicycles simply to get a buying experience that makes the Mercedes dealership seem like the DMV. Don’t get me wrong, people should spend their money on what they want, provided they actually have the money. If what they want is bike stuff, that’s good for the industry that I’m extremely peripherally involved in. And I certainly don’t subscribe to the popular notion that nice equipment needs to be somehow “earned.” But let’s not pretend the social posturing accompanying this alleged trend isn’t ridiculous.

To whit, the coverboy for this particular piece, Dr. Jason Newland, traveled from his home in suburban Kansas City, Kansas to Waitsfield, Vermont to buy his new Serotta at the Vermont Fit Werx (chapeau for the transparently BMW use of the “e” rather than an "o" in Werx - very Euro). Dr. Newland is shown proudly holding his new Legend Ti over his shoulder while sporting pleated khakis and a crisp starched shirt. Many crueler writers would make jokes about this pose being the primary use for this particular bicycle, but I’m not going to go down that path. In fact, I have a lot of empathy for Dr. Newland, a triathlete who set about his noble quest in order to get a bicycle more suitable for his sport(s) than the Cannondale road bike he had. You know, more aero.

So, 1,400 Gold Card airline miles and $7,000 (not including travel costs, as the NYT article carefully notes) later, what has he acquired in his search for speed against the clock? A road bike with aero bars. Not, mind you, a Serotta triathlon/tt bike. Not that object of aero-geek lust, the Cervelo P3 Carbon. Not some overpriced semi-exotic eye-candy Euro-pro time trial bike, like a Colnago, or Pinarello, or Wilier. Not even a run-of-the-mill swoopy carbon TT bike, like a Jamis.

A road bike with aero bars. And Ksyriums.

I’m sure the folks at VFW did a bang-up job with the bike fit and set him up at the bed and breakfast with the fluffiest pillows and best damn pancakes in Vermont, but I can’t help but wonder if VFW took a little bit of advantage of Herr Doktor. There’s a lot of value in a good fit, no doubt. But if Dr. Newland’s motivation was really to get a more aerodynamic bicycle, as described in the first paragraph of the article, then he could have gotten just as aero by hitting the closest decent shop in his local Kansas City area and dropping a modest few hundred dollars for some bars, barcons, and snazzy reverse levers for the Cannondale. Because other than the bars and possibly the fit, there’s not a whole lot about his new bike that screams aero or time trial. It says expensive, yes, but not aero, which makes it pretty clear what the real goal was. If he’d spent a bit more of that $7,000 (not including travel costs) in a bike shop instead of on Expedia, he could have also floated himself a set of wheels with an aerodynamic signature better than a Cuisinart. (I’m assuming if VFW set him up with some high-zoot aero wheels, they would have been in the photo. After all, if you don’t run your Corimas in the Style section, where do you use them?)

Of course, people who have worked in shops know that there are any number of factors that could have led to Dr. Newland getting the bicycle he did. These include personal fit considerations, the unbendable desires of the client, or the strong, inexplicable magnetism between doctors and ti-carbon Serottas. So it’s probably not fair to imply that VFW took him for the metaphorical kind of ride, rather than the touchy-feely one to “gauge his riding style and position.” And we all know that if you’re really looking to fleece someone, selling them an actual time trial bike is a damn good place to start, and VFW clearly resisted that urge. But the marketing bullshit from VFW and its brethren that made it into the NYT piece makes it hard to resist pinning it on them. Here’s a sample:

VFW: “It’s a bit of a concierge service here.” Not too bad on its own, but it follows a delightful anecdote about the staff sharing leftover pizza and wine with a customer during a scrumptiously rainy afternoon. One wonders what delicious romantic dalliances might have ensued.

Cadence: “[Customers] want to scratch all their itches.” This one was in reference to customers making the purchasing trip part of a broader vacation. It’s also a bit creepy, in that I’m pretty sure they’re implying that, in addition to providing excellent bicycle-related services, they could arrange for a hooker (no, TT nerds, not that Hooker). That’ll give you an itch you need to scratch all right, but I’m sure the on-call doctor they no doubt employ could write you a script for some cream that’ll clear it right up.

SBR Multisports: “The wife wants to shop on Fifth Avenue, and the gentleman wants to shop at SBR.” At last, there’s our Fifth Avenue reference. Bonus points for the butler/tailor/waiter usage of “the gentleman,” instead of the more proletarian “husband” that would usually correspond to “wife.”

Regardless of who’s to blame for Dr. Newland accidentally buying a $7,000 (not including travel costs) butchered road bike instead of the $7,000 (not including travel costs) triathlon bike he set out to buy, I can’t help but feel that the NYT is the real villain here. The whole article just seems cruel. As we all know, the NYT usually sticks to talking about its own battle-hardened New Yorkers when it comes to reveling in the excesses of conspicuous consumption. But this article is a departure from those usual celebrations of absurd spending, and an unsavory one at that, because it dwells upon the mal-spending of a well-meaning rube from Kansas, inviting us all to have a knowing chuckle at his considerable expense. They’ve searched out an earnest Midwesterner, a simple pediatric infectious disease physician, exposed his monetary de-pantsing for all the world to see, and supplemented the humiliation with ridiculous quotes and associated prose highlighting the jackassedness of the entire enterprise. That’s just wrong, and I won’t stand for it.

Flaundry

Probably 10 years ago or so, VeloNews published a photo from the Ronde Van Vlaanderen/Tour of Flanders as it passed through the Flemish town of Gistel. Someone there had strung every Johan Museeuw jersey you could imagine along a clothesline at the side of the road. I mean everything – ADR, Lotto, GB-MG, Mapei, rainbow stripes, the works. The caption was simply “Flaundry.” For some reason, the term stuck with me, and with the spring classics now behind us, it seemed like a good title for a post to wash away some last thoughts from a great three weeks before hanging them out to dry.

The Liege-Tour Fallacy

This time of year, the media (and sometimes the riders) seem to delight in trying to divine Tour de France predictions from the results of Liege-Bastogne-Liege. Take, for example, this little product from AFP, which casts Valverde’s Liege win as a warning shot to fellow Tour contenders like Cadel Evans (Silence-Lotto) and Damiano Cunego (Lampre). I suppose they do it because Liege is often the first time the Tour heavy hitters emerge in concert from their hideouts after studiously avoiding each other for three months. In fact, that has to be it, because there’s virtually no other reason to think that Liege has any bearing on readiness to win the Tour de France.

So what does a one-day race in late April tell us about a 23 day race in July? Not a damn thing, other than some of the same people ride both races. Just look at the history. For starters, only one single man has won both Liege-Bastogne-Liege and the Tour de France in the same year, though he did do it three times. Any guesses? Right – Eddy Merckx pulled off that particular double in 1969, 1971, and 1972. And if we know anything, it’s that Merckx’s results really can’t be extrapolated or applied to anyone else. They are what they are, and have absolutely nothing to do with the rest of us.

Looking further, only three other men can boast victories in both races, though at least one won’t be boasting, because he’s dead. Frenchman Jacques Anquetil (1934-1987), the first man to win the Tour five times (1957, 1961-1964) notched his single Liege win in 1966. The first to do the double was the Swiss Ferdi Kübler, most famous these days for the iconic picture of him freaking out with frame pump in hand. He won the Tour de France in 1950 and followed up with Liege wins in 1951 and 1952. The last to do it, of course, is Bernard Hinault, the Badger, who won Liege in 1977, won it again in a snowstorm in 1980, and took his five Tour de France titles in 1978, 1979, 1981, 1982, and 1985.

So what does all of that mean? It means that nobody has won the Tour and Liege in the same year since 1972 – before any of the current contenders were even born, and in a far different era of professional cycling. It also means that the last Tour win by a winner of any edition of Liege-Bastogne-Liege was in 1985 – 23 years ago. And that looking to Liege to predict Tour victories would mean comparing the 2008 Tour contenders to Hinault and Merckx, which they ain’t.

Of course, if a Tour contender is way off the back or 10 kilos overweight at Liege, it’s not the best sign for his season. But none of them were too far off each other this year – Valverde won, slightly in front of a couple of Schlecks, and a little bit more ahead of Evans and Cunego. Given the margin of victory, that the Tour is two months away, that the Côte de La Redoute is not exactly the Alpe d’Huez, and that the Tour is roughly 22 days longer than Liege, I hardly think Valverde’s classic win tells us much at all about his Tour chances. Certainly, there are numerous winners of one of these races that have been contenders in the other (Armstrong, Lemond, and Hamilton to name a few), but you could say the same for a lot of other races and probably come up with much better correlations. Even then, it’s a dubious practice, especially when people can rip a true Tour prep race like the Dauphine Libere to pieces, and then completely tank at the real Tour.

In the end, looking at the 100+ year histories of Liege-Bastogne-Liege and the Tour de France, you could just as well argue that winning one will almost certainly doom your chances to win the other.

The Conquistadors

As we pointed out earlier, there are now several classics winners from Spain, that sun-scorched land where the week-long stage race seems to be king. Alejandro Valverde (Caisse d’Epargne) has since added another Liege victory to his 2006 title, which he preceeded with a Fleche Wallonne win. Oscar Freire (Rabobank) had a great spring as well, putting in an impressive ride in support of Juan Antonio Flecha at Flanders before winning Gent-Wevelgem three days later. That was the first Spanish win in the big three cobbled classics, and Freire followed that performance up by persevering in his campaign not just through Roubaix, but through Amstel Gold and Fleche Wallonne as well. That’s a boatload of punishment for anyone.

But the real revelation isn’t the pair of Spanish winners. Igor Astarloa took the “first Spaniard” title quite awhile ago by winning the 2003 Fleche, and we’ve certainly known Valverde had the legs for a couple of years now. The real story is in the number of other Spaniards playing a role up north. This year, behind the raised hands of Valverde, you had the tireless prep work of Joachim Rodriguez (Caisse d’Epargne), who could well have the legs to take a classic himself. Flecha has made the hopefuls list for every cobbled classic and, together with Freire, has formed half of an odd leading duo for a Dutch team. And Quick.Step, that most Belgian of outfits, hired Carlos Barredo to help out Boonen at Flanders and Roubaix. That’s a pretty big endorsement.

Then there’s Euskaltel-Euskadi’s Juan Jose Oroz, who, though tough to spot, may have the most impressive classics record of the past 12 months. Peter at Bobke Strut can show you why.

The Youth Movement

For awhile there in the early half of the 2000’s, the spring classics were starting to look disturbingly like cycling’s geriatric ward. The names garnering all the press were all the trailing end of a generation that had steamrolled the north for the last decade. You had Peter Van Petegem (then Lotto-Domo) pulling off the fabled Flanders-Roubaix double in 2003 at the age of 33, and Davide Rebellin sweeping the Ardennes week at the age of 32. Museeuw was still hanging around, as were Mapei alums Michele Bartoli, Gianluca Bartolami, and Andrea Tafi. Suddenly, it seemed that becoming the next Gilbert Duclos-Lasalle and winning Roubaix at 40 was everyone’s career goal.

Now, just a few years later, only Rebellin remains active of those mentioned above, and he’s competitive at that. But though he won Paris-Nice and was in the mix in his beloved Ardennes this past week, his 36 years may finally be costing him the punch to win the single day races. Indeed, Rebellin, George Hincapie (High Road), Stefan Wesemann (Collstrop), and a few others are the last of that late 1990s-early 2000s era of riders holding on, and they’re giving way, if unwillingly, to the new generation. With the exception of Freire’s Gent-Wevelgem win (he’s 32), all of the major spring classics were won by riders 30 years old or younger: Stijn Devolder (Ronde Van Vlaanderen, 28), Tom Boonen (Paris-Roubaix, 27), Damiano Cunego (Amstel Gold, 26), Kim Kirchen (Fleche Wallonne, 30), and Alejandro Valverde (Liege-Bastogne-Liege, 28).

The Rinse Cycle

Did you feel it? Because the lack of doping news in the past three weeks was almost conspicuous in its absence.

In the time between the Ronde Van Vlaanderen depart in Bruges through the Liege finale in Ans, there was nary a doping story to be found, cycling-wise. Even better, none of the doping news that was floating about originated with this year's classics. Sure Björn Leukemans’s (formerly Silence-Lotto) testosterone suspension was upheld in Belgium, the Floyd Landis (formerly Phonak) case dragged on well into its second year, Liquigas signed Ivan Basso, and Phil and Paul knocked out the occasional Astana exclusion gripe on the Versus coverage. But really, it was pretty quiet.

I point this out apropos of nothing. I’m not saying the sport itself is cleaner, that the classics are any cleaner than the grand tours, that the drugs or the testing have improved, or that the public has lost interest in cycling’s dirty (f)laundry. I’m just saying that for three weeks, I enjoyed the focus on the racing.

The Mutability of Monuments

Calling something a monument adds a certain air of permanence to it, a sense of historic untouchability. After all, nobody suggests adding a revolving rooftop restaurant to the Washington Monument, do they? But the five monuments of cycling – Liege-Bastogne-Liege, Paris-Roubaix, Ronde Van Vlaanderen, Milan-San Remo, and the Giro di Lombardia – while formidable, aren’t as permanent as the term might indicate. They’re more like sprightly senior citizens than stone monoliths, closer to the quirky great aunt who somehow remains stylish than to sterile historical sites with interpretive audio tours.

Over the years, these races have subtly remade themselves as both cycling and the world around them have changed, retaining their history while preserving their contemporary relevance. Take Milan-San Remo. The Cipressa climb, now such a natural a part of the San Remo finale, was only added in 1982 when organizers saw that the Poggio no longer provided enough of a challenge to break up the modern peloton before the finish. When the Cipressa was no longer enough to consistently split things up, the organizers added the Le Manie climb this year.

The mighty Ronde Van Vlaanderen, too, shifts a bit each year, sometimes nipping westward from Brugge through Johan Museeuw’s hometown of Gistel and out toward the coast. Other times it drops almost straight down into the hill zone in the Flemish Ardennes. What’s more, the flexible “Tour of Flanders” name doesn’t even anchor the race to a set start and finish. It's finished in Meerbeke recently, but not always. Same story with Italy's Giro di Lombardia, which has even started in Mendrisio, Switzerland.

And Paris-Roubaix -- flat, 46-tooth inner chainring Paris-Roubaix -- once had a hill. It was (and is) at Doullens, situated some 150 kilometers north of Paris, and about 100 kilometers south of Roubaix. As recently as the Sean Kelly years, Paris-Roubaix didn’t even always finish in the iconic municipal velodrome, but rather on the street outside La Redoute’s corporate headquarters on several occasions. It’s also easy to forget that Peter Post’s remarkable record speed of 45.129 kph in 1964 was posted in the edition that boasted fewer kilometers of cobblestones than any before or since, an aberration that jumpstarted the effort by locals and the organizers to preserve and sometimes exhume the cobbled roads of northern France. Indeed, it has taken substantial yearly effort to keep Paris-Roubaix such a barbaric anachronism.

And yet, few complain about the renovations beyond the initial recoiling at the thought of change. Soon after, the public forgives and even embraces the yearly eccentricities of the monuments – a privilege afforded to few things besides old men and old races. That the public does so speaks to the skill of the organizers in integrating changes without tearing the delicate fabric of these historic icons. There are no doubt many who would try to preserve some “classic” version of these races for posterity, picking a single year’s course as some sort of zenith, bolting the course markers permanently to the signposts, and simply inflating the one-kilometer-to-go banner each year.

It would be easy that way, but the effect would be predictable racing on courses preserved under glass. Instead, the organizers of the monuments have managed to remain forward-thinking, despite the weight of history they carry on their shoulders. The positive effect of progressive race planning was evident in Sunday’s Liege-Bastogne-Liege, where the new Côte de la Roche aux Faucons climb with 20 kilometers remaining jumpstarted the final selection and led to a three-rider showdown between winner Alejandro Valverde (Caisse d’Epargne), Davide Rebellin (Gerolsteiner), and Frank Schleck (CSC).

This year wasn’t the first time Liege organizer ASO has taken action to ensure that the race doesn’t become just a longer version of Fleche Wallonne, another race to be decided on a frenzied final ascent. Faced with larger and larger groups of riders arriving together at the foot of the final Côte de Saint Nicolas climb to sprint it out on the final stretch up to Ans, ASO resurrected the "terrible triple" in 2005. The sharp, closely spaced climbs of the Côte de Wanne, Côte de Stockeau, and the Côte de La Haute Levée, icons of the Merckx era, are too far from the finish to make a final selection, but they do take their toll on the peloton. The year of their introduction, Alexander Vinokourov (then T-Mobile) outsprinted Jens Voigt (CSC) for the win after the reintroduced climbs reshaped the race.

But, just a year later, the terrible triple had been assimilated into various team strategies, and the group sprinting for the win ballooned to 12 riders, with Valverde emerging the winner. Another year on, in 2007, the group on the Saint Nicholas had grown still larger, with Danilo DiLuca taking the sprint, and so the new Roche aux Faucons was placed into the finale for 2008.

That Valverde won Liege-Bastogne-Liege again this year under different circumstances speaks to the Spaniard’s adaptability. But the fact that he won it from a group of three rather than a group of 12 speaks to La Doyenne’s adaptability as well. After 118 years, she’s still stylish.

A Pound of Flèche

It’s a little bit hard to see, because somehow it’s hovering just below the radar, but High Road is on what may be this young season’s finest winning binge. The biggest victory by far came in yesterday’s Flèche Wallonne, where Luxemburger Kim Kirchen ground past Cadel Evans (Silence-Lotto) to win the slo-mo sprint atop the mighty Mur de Huy. Yes, it's still a mid-week classic, but it's a good one. And behind that fairly prestigious win, High Road has racked up the victories in an astonishing number of locales – just not in the headline events.

While Kirchen was still feeling the aftereffects of the bubbly over in Belgium, the other half of the team was busy collecting first and second place on Stage 3 of the Tour de Georgia with Greg Henderson and Andre Griepel. Henderson’s efforts and a time bonus also gave the big New Zealander the leader’s jersey, at least until the course tilts uphill later in the week. So yeah, Wednesday was a good day.

But High Road’s low-profile streak goes much farther than fighting a good war on two fronts this week. Let’s have a look at April, which isn’t even over yet. On April 3, Mark Cavendish won his second of two consecutive stages in the Three Days of DePanne in Belgium, both in bunch sprints. Two days later in the Hel Van Het Mergelland up in the Netherlands, High Road duo Adam Hansen and Tony Martin attacked together after 15 kilometers of the one-dayer and stayed away for the rest of the day, with Martin getting the nod to take the win. The next day, Kirchen took a bunch sprint win ahead of Paolo Bettini (Quick.Step) in Stage 2 of the Vuelta al Pais Vasco, took a day off, then won Stage 4. That victory came just ahead of teammate Morris Possoni, who had been in the breakaway until the peloton swept by at the last second.

A drought of five entire days followed, until Cavendish nipped Roubaix winner Tom Boonen (Quick.Step), who seems to suffer from premature gesticulation, to win the Scheldeprijs Vlaanderen and salvage a disappointing Flanders-Roubaix week for the squad. The next day, down in France, young Norwegian talent Edvald Boasson Hagen outkicked four breakaway companions to win the GP Denain. Another agonizing five day wait ensued before Kirchen and Henderson picked up the slack in Belgium and Georgia, respectively.

And that’s just April. Here’s a quick view of the rest of the early season:

January: Roger Hammond takes the team’s first win in the British cyclocross championships, and Adam Hansen adds the Aussie TT championship, all in an effort to get themselves out of the terrible black kits the team debuted with. Griepel wins four stages and the overall at the Tour Down Under, giving him the lead in the admittedly anemic ProTour competition and, thankfully, a different jersey.

February: Smitten with the fetching white look of Griepel’s ProTour jersey, the team changes to white kit with disco-rific lettering. George Hincapie and Bernhard Eisel bat cleanup at a pair of weeklong stage races, winning the final stages of the Tour of California and Volta ao Algarve, respectively.

March: Trackie-in-disguise Bradley Wiggins goes under cover with the British national team to win three gold medals at the World Track Championships, taking the individual pursuit on his own (obviously), the team pursuit, and the Madison with trade teammate Cavendish. Boasson Hagen scores the second victory of his fledgling pro career by winning the 8.3k final TT of the Criterium International.

Yes, there are no stages of Paris-Nice, no Roubaix title, no Flanders. But keep in mind we’re not even to the Dauphine yet, and the list above only notes outright victories, not podiums or admirable performances. Though there’s an argument to be made for quality over quantity, High Road’s wins, particularly those in April, are all solid wins and good media attention for the team. And when it comes down to it, there are precious few of those super-wins that can make a season on their own. Five monuments and a couple of grand tours is a pretty narrow window to shoot for, and for a team in search of a sponsor, betting big money on small odds and good luck would be a pretty risky strategy.

There’s a lesson here for teams looking to get in the papers as often as possible, even if it’s a bit less glamorous than a Tour de France GC win or hoisting a cobblestone at Roubaix: sign a ridiculous number of sprinters and let them have at it. Those GC wins take big manpower (as can certain sprinters), but if you have a few sprinters who can ride the wheels and fend for themselves, and if they’re pretty young like Griepel, Boasson Hagen, Cavendish, and Gerald Ciolek, you get pretty good media bang for your buck. If a couple of them can get relegated or spout off in the press occasionally, and Cavendish seems like a good prospect here, all the better. Call it the Robbie McEwen (Silence-Lotto) model for cycling publicity. It won’t get you on the cover of Sports Illustrated, but it’s a lot cheaper than the Lance Armstrong plan.

Amstel Gold: The Italian Dilemma

Watching the Amstel Gold Race on Sunday morning gave me a bit of deja vu, somehow sucking me right back to 2005. It wasn’t just the race that triggered the flashbacks, but rather the combination of watching the familiar scenes around Maastricht and stepping out briefly into the weather outside my own front door.

Here in the mid-Atlantic United States, it was one of those grey spring days with twilight from dawn to dusk and drenching rain showers blowing through every hour. Even in those interludes when it didn’t look to be raining, I was greeted by those huge, soaking rogue drops that make me look above for a dripping tree, only to get a clear view of a cloudy sky hovering like a low ceiling over the horizon. They were the type of clouds you could have ridden up into if there were a decent hill around, but standing in the flatlands, you could only peer out through the mist sandwiched between them and soaked ground.

With the rain pounding the orange tulips flat out in the lawn and the scenes of the Cauberg playing out on the computer screen, it was easy to make the mental leap back to the grey Amstel of 2005. Back then, I was perched shivering on top of that nasty little hill in a press room located in a white, corrugated steel building. Sitting in a metal building on a wet 50 degree day is a bit chilly, but the facilities were a lesson in effective truck-based service provision. Out one side of the building, a pink and black T-Mobile truck was pumping out the wi-fi signal necessary to get text and pictures out of the Ardennes hills, while a trailer on the other side housed what must have been one of the world’s finest port-o-johns. It had everything: urinals, stalls, toilet paper, running water, soap, flowers, and a 60-year-old woman who would hop up off her stool in the corner to wipe down the urinal as soon as you stepped away, making you feel somehow guilty even if you’d been exceptionally careful. And, of course, there was the Amstel truck, keeping the assembled press in good spirits by continually restocking the in-suite bar. I’m not really sure where the sandwiches and coffee were coming from, but I was certainly glad they were there.

Not everything functioned as well as the press room in 2005 though. Unlike this year’s edition, that one was held in the same eternal twilight, chilly air, and rain that blanketed the mid-Atlantic yesterday, as well as an intense fog that grounded the TV helicopters, preventing the camera motos from transmitting any live television signals. By the time the fixed position cameras on the Cauberg kicked in, we were running from the press room to that bridge you can see in the coverage to see what the race looked like, since we’d only have three chances all day.

Yes, indeed, despite the similarities in weather, there were several differences between my Amstel Gold 2005 and 2008 experiences. I saw more of the race this year, made my own coffee, and the wi-fi signal was Verizon instead of T-Mobile. The plumbing is inside the house, and if there’s a need for wiping down the toilet, I’ll likely be told in no uncertain terms to do it my damn self. But as far as the winners, there were some similarities to be had.

In 2005, the winner was Danilo Diluca (then Liguigas, now LPR), an Italian who despite his classics success always dreamed of winning the Giro d’Italia. He went on to take Flèche Wallonne on Wednesday, but came up short at Liege-Bastogne-Liege, thus failing to repeat the incredible Ardennes sweep that countryman Davide Rebellin (Gerolsteiner) had achieved the year before. Though he failed to complete the triple that year, Diluca would return in 2007 to take his Liege before going on to realize his Giro d’Italia win, snapping closed the mouths of people like me, who always thought (and sometimes said) that he was just kidding himself.

Diluca’s Giro goal was easy to dismiss, if only because several other Italians with similar profiles and better results – Michele Bartoli, Paolo Bettini, and Davide Rebellin – had previously chased the same dream and failed. Further, once they finally cast off the shackles of grand tour expectations and surrendered to the idea that they were classics riders, and great ones at that, their careers leapt forward. Sure, we were dismissive, but we were just acting in Diluca’s best interests.

Despite the weight of history being against him, Diluca somehow (and many people continue to question just how) made it work, as has 2008 winner Damiano Cunego (Lampre), who now boasts the same Giro d’ Italia/Giro di Lombardia/Amstel Gold lines on his resume as Diluca. The difference between Cunego’s grand tour/classic equation, Diluca’s, and Bettini, Bartoli, and Rebellin’s, however, is that he’s approached it from opposite direction. Unlike his countrymen, who all notched classics before getting grand tour ideas, Cunego tasted his first big success at the 2004 Giro d’Italia, where he won four stages and the overall, and succeeded in pissing off Gilberto Simoni to no end (the former being much more difficult than the latter). He went on to take the first of his two Giro di Lombardia titles that fall, which capped off a year that also saw him win the Giro del Trentino and a host of Italian semi-classics: the GP Industria & Artigianato-Larciano, Giro dell’Appennino, GP Nobili Rubinetterie, and the GP Fred Mengoni.

But promising classics results be damned – you win a grand tour at 23, and you’ll hear only one whisper in your ear, the one that says “Tour de France.” Cunego did manage to capture the white jersey of the best young rider at that event last summer, but for someone with a three-year-old maglia rosa hanging on their wall already, that’s a bit of a hollow victory. He’s tried to recapture the magic at the Giro d’Italia several times as well, but to no avail.

So now more than ever, the whisperers are starting to go the other way on Cunego, telling him that, hey, maybe he’s a classics rider after all. And that’s really pissing him off, according to this post-Amstel article by VeloNews’ Andrew Hood. Frankly, Cunego can be irritated all he wants, but when you’re a 5’4” Italian with a good little kick, a pair of Lombardias and an Ardennes win under your belt, you start looking a hell of a lot more like Paolo Bettini than Paolo Savoldelli.

With Cunego mounting an all-out bid for the Tour this year, going so far in his mission as to buck the Italian dogma and forgo the Giro, July could hold all the answers for the 26-year-old. If he meets with success there, he’ll no doubt start developing insidious habits like showing up in low-speed wind tunnels and spending perfectly good spring classics seasons riding deserted Tour de France climbs with an unmarked car and a film crew behind him. He also will have pulled off something pretty unique in modern cycling – going from grand tour winner, to classics star, and back to grand tour winner. So far, even Diluca has only gone in one direction.

All of that, of course, would be phenomenal, and would make for a career profile not seen since Bernard Hinault (no, various combinations of Vueltas and Clasicas San Sebastian don’t count for entrance to the grand tour/classic pantheon). But if Cunego falls a bit too short in his Tour bid, that bit of failure could open up the door to a set of classics palmares that, with a good 10 more years yet to develop could put many of his predecessors to shame.

Parting Shots

• I watched Sunday’s race courtesy of free service on cycling.tv. The picture was pretty good, and the commentary has come a long way over the years – they’re no longer giving shoutouts to fans while the crucial attacks are going down. Chapeau. I’m not sure whether Amstel was supposed to be free, or whether they just opened up the feed as a result of the same subscriber login problems they had last Sunday for Paris-Roubaix. Obviously, as a non-subscriber, the free access works great for me. But if I had paid $100 for a subscription to access races that are now being aired for free, I’d be fairly irritated, to say the least. I wonder if they’re getting significant blowback along those lines or whether, in a state of lowered expectations, subscribers are just happy to be able to see the feed at all?
  
  
• During the final sprint, and well after it, the commentators were getting all riled up because they thought the caravan diversion along the left side of the straight was confusing for riders and affecting the final sprint. They were looking at the moto shot at the time and got themselves in such a fluff that they missed the overhead shot, which showed that Cunego, Schleck, and Valverde never really came close to going that way, and that the guys waving them the right direction were actually spread out over 100 meters or so. Easy to forget how the moto shot foreshortens everything, eh? I can’t remember exactly, but I’m pretty sure the diversion has been there for awhile – places to cut off on top of the Cauberg aren’t exactly plentiful.
  
  
• The shot capturing the left turn onto the Keutenberg on the last lap was pretty good. For me, that climb was perhaps the most shocking during a drive of the course. From a fairly main road, you turn onto one a hair wider than a golf cart path, more poorly maintained, and which tilts upwards like the driveway to Uncle Zeke’s mountain hideaway. When you hit the top, it’s still narrow, but dead flat and completely exposed to any hint of a breeze that may be stirring in the greater Netherlands/Germany/Belgium corridor, and the shoulders are mucky ruts. Fun stuff.
  
  
• It’s been noted elsewhere that this is the first time Cunego has ridden the Amstel Gold. That makes his victory more impressive, since making it to the finish line without getting lost is a viable goal for your first year here. There are actually points on the course with arrows pointing one direction, a second set pointing the other direction, and a third set below that pointing back in the first direction. Sure, it’s decipherable if you’re studying the map and moving at Florida-retiree-in-a-Cadillac pace, but when you’ve got other things on your mind, like racing your bike or getting to the press room to pee, things can get confusing in a hurry.
  
  
• I’d give the “know thyself” awards for Amstel go to Frank Schleck (CSC) and Davide Rebellin (Gerolsteiner). For differing reasons, both of them knew they wouldn’t be able to win a drag race up the Cauberg with Cunego and Valverde, and took their chances with attacks in the lead up. Schleck even managed to save enough to give it a go with Cunego in the sprint (though it turns out that was an order from the car), but the result would likely have been the same even if he’d tempered his aggression earlier on. It’s nice to see riders not just waiting for the bottom of the Cauberg and hoping for the best.
  
  
• Thomas Dekker put in a credible ride to finish in the break for home team Rabobank, which is always itchy for a victory in the only Dutch classic. But Dekker clearly wasn’t in the hunt for victory, a fact confirmed by the outstanding if unsuccessful ride put in by his young teammate Robert Gesink, who pulled extremely hard for a long time trying to get Oscar Freire into position for a Cauberg sprint. The look of effort on Gesink’s face was priceless.

The Migration

In the week between Paris-Roubaix and the Amstel Gold Race, a strange migration occurs in northern Europe as the stout masters of cobblestones and rain gradually disappear from the countryside. We catch our final glimpses of them at races like the Scheldeprijs, and then they’re off to sunnier climes to rest and retool for a second, warmer season as Giro and Tour stage hunters.

But as the familiar plumage of the past few weeks departs, the peloton seems to grow tanner and thinner as its ranks swell with different subspecies, many from more southern countries. The narrow, better paved roads of the Netherlands’ Limburg region and southeast Belgium attract riders who perhaps lack the more solid constitutions necessary for the jarring, muddy roads of Flanders, but who boast physiques that find a more compatible habitat in this region’s frequent, choppy hills.

Some of the native Belgians are replaced by migrating Spaniards, like Alejandro Valverde (Caisse d’Epargne), who has tuned his classics form with a win this week in Paris-Camembert, and Igor Astarloa (Milram), who will try again to find the magic that won him Fleche Wallonne in 2003. Sunny Italy, of course, produces subspecies that can thrive in both environments, but they are distinct from one another, with riders like the proven Paolo Bettini (Quick.Step) and Davide Rebellin (Gerolsteiner) and young Ricardo Ricco (Saunier Duval) replacing the likes of Alessandro Ballan and Fabio Baldato (Lampre).

This yearly migration also marks an anomaly in cycling – that singular time of the year when grand tour riders cross the lines of specialization to participate in one-day races. The winners lists of Amstel, Fleche Wallonne, and Liege-Bastogne-Liege are dotted with those who have been successful in the three week tours –DiLuca, Armstrong, Kelly, Berzin, Zoetemelk, and Hinault to name a few. And of course, Merckx, but that’s a given. Those same lists are also marked by those who have tried and failed to master both disciplines – Hamilton, Bartoli, and the aforementioned Rebellin. This year, there are several participants who could yet hope to be durable enough for both – Damiano Cunego (Lampre), Frank Schleck (CSC), and, of course, Valverde.

As with any migration, there are always the outliers – the early arrivals and those who trail behind their departed flocks. Some riders who favor these wooded hills, like Quick.Step’s Carlos Barredo and Cofidis’ Sylvain Chavanel, arrived in time to endure and thrive on the cobbles of the Ronde Van Vlaanderen, but will now seek to make good on their form in a more suitable environment. Others, stars of the flatter roads like Leif Hoste (Silence-Lotto) will ride at least through Amstel, hoping to salvage their spring seasons with a better result despite the increasingly unfavorable courses. And still others, mostly domestiques like Bram Tankink (Quick.Step), more suited to the stones than the asphalt, will hang around a bit longer before giving way to more specialized squads for the hills of the Walloon Ardennes.

Finally, of course, there are the rare local birds, like Philippe Gilbert (FDJeux), Maxime Monfort (Cofidis), and Christophe Brandt (Silence-Lotto), who come home to roost just once per year and will look for success in front of the home crowds.

It’s a strange flock, this mashup of worn out Flandriens, wiry Spaniards, and stage race hopefuls. But somehow, it works. Each year, Amstel, Fleche, and Liege serve up some of the most riveting racing of the season, and perhaps the only chance to catch a glimpse of professional cycling that is not so sliced, diced, specialized, analyzed and weighed for maximum performance. After all, when else could you see Leif Hoste battle Damiano Cunego for a win? How often would Oscar Freire face off with Frank Schleck? Like many things in cycling, Ardennes week comes but once a year. Enjoy it while you can.

The Schedule
Amstel Gold Race: Sunday, April 20
Fleche Wallonne: Wednesday, April 23
Liege-Bastogne-Liege: Sunday, April 27

Classics Interlude Update

With the cobbled classics in the books and the Ardennes classics yet to begin, it seems like a good time to look back at the last month here at the Service Course and see how some of the subjects we’ve explored have developed.

On March 21, we took a look at victory salutes, and pointed out that rule number one was to never, ever raise your arms until you were absolutely sure you’d won. Clearly, Tom Boonen (Quick.Step) did not read that particular article, because at this morning’s Scheldeprijs (a.k.a. the Grand Prix de l'Escaut), Tornado Tom threw the guns in the air just a bit early, allowing Mark Cavendish (High Road) to squirt by him. Feeling a bit invincible after Paris-Roubaix, are we?

Even further back on March 10, the Service Course discussed the industry spat du jour, the Cannondale versus Specialized war of words, which played out in a highly discussed Cannondale advertisement. People seem to enjoy a bit of industry polemics, and the dispute gave us hits from a number of people Googling things like “Shannon Sakamoto Specialized” and “Specialized stealing Cannondale engineers,” so the ad did have some effect in raising awareness if not necessarily swaying any loyalties. That was all quite awhile ago now, but apparently the hurt feelings have yet to heal. Evidence comes in the form of this article on the Bicycle Retailer and Industry News site today. I say less whining, more designing.

Speaking of Google-y ways people get to this site, the most interesting search to lead to a hit last month was undoubtedly “Museeuw hair piece.” I don’t believe the Lion of Flanders’ follicular status has been addressed here, but I guess we had enough of the terms to make that little aberration happen. And if that wayward reader happens to stop back by, I’m pretty sure Johan has plugs, not a piece. The installation of said plugs may have lead to the regrettable do-rag incident at the 2000 Paris-Roubaix. Or maybe not, but it’s hard to imagine a classics specialist embracing Marco Pantani as his style maven unless there were extenuating circumstances. And besides, he’s retired – leave the poor man’s hairline be.

March also found us wondering if, after changing the name, the location, and the date of a race, you can still claim that it’s the same event. And on April 11, we got our answer: it doesn’t matter, because there’s not going to be a race anyway. Yes, the U.S. Open of Cycling, previously slated for late May in Rhode Island (previously known as the U.S. Open Cycling Championship held in April in Virginia) won’t be held anywhere, at any time, under any name in 2008. But we look forward to hearing the plan for 2009.

In a more recent entry discussing the plight of Spanish classics riders in the wake of Oscar Freire’s (Rabobank) Gent-Wevelgem win, I speculated that part of the reason Spain doesn’t turn out a great many such riders is that, after they’re forced out to foreign teams, the Spanish media doesn’t report much about their exploits. Freire’s teammate and fellow expat Juan Antonio Flecha (Rabobank) reinforced that theory the very next day in this little snippet on cyclingnews.com. Seems that his podium place at Flanders getting footnote billing under the daily results from Pais Vasco miffed Flecha a bit. After getting left for dead by his team at Paris-Roubaix, he’s not in any better mood a week later.

Finally, just prior to the start of the cobbled classics, I offered some suggestions on what to drink as you enjoyed whatever coverage you could squeeze out of the internet and Versus. There was some wiggle room in those suggestions, depending on whether you wanted to go for an authentic spectator experience or go a bit more upscale. With the coming of the first Ardennes classic, there is really no choice. It is, after all, the Amstel Gold Race. But apparently those wily Dutch don’t think that Americans will tolerate a fully caloried beer, so unfortunately, our only choice stateside is the ubiquitious Amstel Light. I’m not sure if that means that news of the American obesity epidemic doesn’t make it to CNN International, or that it does, and the Dutch are trying to do us a favor. Either way, the combination of a beer sponsorship and a race route that looks like it was laid out by a drunk trying to find his house after last call just feels right.

Paddling Toward the Waterfall

So, that was Paris-Roubaix 2008. What more can you say about it? Plenty, and the cycling media will be busy cranking out those stories for the next week (web) or month (print), resulting in a volume of words eclipsed only by the Paris-Roubaix discussions already raging in online discussion forums. Whatever the venue, expect suspect answers to such questions as:

Why do people who should know better insist on using deep carbon wheels for Roubaix?

Who is Martijn Maaskant, the least talked about but most effective member of Slipstream's classics squad?

Now that he has undeniably good team support, can we switch to “mechanical problems” as the official George Hincapie post-Paris-Roubaix discussion subject?

And, most importantly…

Was Cannondale secretly behind the de-cornrow-ization of Pippo Pozzato? Because that hairdo was a PR nightmare.

Yes sir, the implications and speculations will be flying around for a week or so, until the Ardennes classics come along and give people something else to think about.

In an effort to not get caught up in the rampant over-analysis that inevitably follows Paris-Roubaix, I’ll offer just one observation: You know that Fabian Cancellara (CSC) and Alessandro Ballan (Lampre) had to be riding those last 40 kilometers thinking, “Seriously? We’re just going to rotate through like we’re on a well-oiled training ride, and bring Tom Boonen into a sprint on the velodrome?”

We’ve all had those moments, both on and off the bike, in which we’ve actively played a leading role in our own demise, gallantly paddling the canoe towards the waterfall while the natives look on expectantly from the banks. We know what’s going to happen if we don’t stop doing what we’re doing, but for any number of reasons, we’re powerless to change course.

If bicycle racing occurred in a pain vacuum, Ballan would have attacked Boonen over the waning cobbles at the Carrefour de l’Arbre, Hem, and Gruson, and Cancellara would have mustered his resources for one of his late race, 4-kilometer dashes to the line. But it doesn’t, and they didn’t. Ballan and Cancellara (and Boonen) would have known that Boonen would eat them alive in the sprint, but without the strength to try one more attack, to dig deep one more time, all the tactical savvy in the world doesn’t mean a damn thing. So there was little to do but keep moving towards the velodrome, hand Boonen a fork and napkin, and get on with it. And if they went straight to the table like good little boys, maybe they get to keep their podium places.

Those who have to wait until the Versus coverage next Sunday to see Paris-Roubaix should be sure to stick it out to the sprint, even though the results will be stale news by then. The resignation of the two men to their fate as they roll toward the velodrome is both frustrating and beautiful. You want the attacks to come, for Boonen’s competitors to fight for their lives, but Ballan and Cancellara have already done what they can. There isn’t an attack left in either, and they’re left to wait for that dinner bell that signals one lap to go. And when Boonen starts his sprint before the last corner, it’s like seeing a starving man enter the Old Country Buffet – he goes in, jumps the whole line, and five seconds later there’s not a crumb left.

And that’s what keeps bicycle racing interesting – it takes time-tested tactical dogma and then complicates it by introducing human strength and weakness to the mix. People say professional cycling is like chess, but that only covers one part of the equation. It’s a game of chess that you can actually lose because you don’t have the strength to move your piece.

Parting Shots:

• For the past few decades, prevailing wisdom was that old guys had an advantage at Roubaix, with riders like Museeuw, Tchmil, Tafi, Duclos-Lassalle, and Van Petegem winning well into their 30s. No so this year. In fact, this is a podium you could conceivably see for the next six years or so. Seems like the generational shift is finally complete.
  
• It looks like George Hincapie had a special Giant ready in case of mud, but didn't have to use it in light of the dry conditions. Maybe he should have - it had normal wheels. Here's a tip for the High Road mechanics: the cobbles are still hard and terribly uneven whether it's raining or not.
  
• I have to wonder if, throughout Italy, cycling discussion forums are ablaze with empassioned arguments bemoaning how Ballan could have won Paris-Roubaix if he only had more team support. Or can they really be that different from us?
  
• After having even more login problems than usual, cycling.tv apparently opened the feed up for free. Good on them for that, at least. Fortunately for those of us who just don't bother anymore, the fine folks at cyclingfans.com had also identified another feed that worked well.
  
• Versus's decision to run Paris-Roubaix coverage a full week after the event is strange at best. I guess they've found that a starving man will eat what he's served, when it's served to him. And they may be right. But you have to suspect that someone who understands cycling has left the network. The Tour of Flanders is undoubtedly a great race, the paramount classic in some minds, like mine, and was shown on the same day it ran. But for pure name-brand power in one-day races for the American audience, you can't top Paris-Roubaix, so it's hard to understand the decision to delay coverage. Must be the hockey playoffs.

Marlin Fishing and Paris-Roubaix

When I worked at a bike shop in high school, there were a few years when the owner took the staff on a deep-sea fishing trip as an end-of-season celebration. At 4:00 am, we’d show up bleary-eyed at the marina, where the charter’s diesel would already be rumbling, then cast off towards the Gulf Stream in search of mahi-mahi and marlin.

Those trips are always a long day out, but conditions and events always conspired to make ours even longer. Our charter was an older, single engine boat. That made the trips to fishing waters slower (thus the early departure), and a few hours after we left the dock the newer twin-engine boats would roar past us. But that was expected; other things weren’t. Like the time we broke the rudder linkage about 60 miles offshore as we backed down on a 300+ pound blue marlin. We landed the fish, but a rudder rigged by bike mechanics with hose clamps and bungee cords--on a single-engine boat--makes for a less-than-direct trip home. The next year, we were caught in a storm and Gilliganed our way home over 15 foot swells while half the staff puked below decks.

After 20 hours of diesel engine drone on a rolling boat, standing back in the parking lot of the marina felt so quiet, so still, that it was disarming. As I stepped off the boat and walked towards the car, it was like someone had stolen my senses. Everything was suddenly muted. The sensation was almost the opposite of what I’d expect – the absolutely solid ground under my feet made me feel like I was floating.

I found myself thinking of those trips 12 years later as I pedaled along the roads around Denain, just after I'd hopped my bike (or, rather, Specialized's bike) over the asphalt lip separating the end of the Haveluy cobbles from the pavement beyond. Marlin fishing and riding bicycles on cobblestones don’t have terribly much in common, except maybe getting wet and the distinct possibility of hurting yourself. But on this occasion, they collided in my mind for a single, unifying reason – while both are extremely vivid experiences in the moment, they produce perhaps their most striking sensation by simply being over.

After having my eyeballs rattled in their sockets, my hands jarred, and my posterior hammered by an unfamiliar saddle for the 2.5 kilometers of Haveluy, the ordinary, unremarkable French asphalt felt bizarrely smooth. Almost pillowy. The vibration that hd made its way into my ear canals and manifested itself as sound was gone, I could fully close my hands around the bars again, and everything was quiet and smooth. Hitting that first sector of the day, without warning and at speed, was pure sensory shock-and-awe in its own right, but the exit was far more memorable. It was almost exactly like stepping off the fishing boat onto the midnight docks of Rudee Inlet – suddenly silent, unsettlingly still, and somehow surreal. Like floating.

That feeling – which I would experience three more times as we exited the Trouée d’Arenberg, Wallers, and Hornaing sectors – got me thinking about the odd, unspoken paradox of Paris-Roubaix. Namely, that after some 250+ kilometers, this anachronism, this cruel, jarring, dusty, muddy, jackhammer of a course crowns its winner not on uneven cobblestones or bog-standard asphalt, but on cycling’s most sublimely smooth and sanitized surface, the velodrome.

Absent a solo escape, victory at Roubaix requires winning performances on two almost diametrically opposed surfaces. To heft that most weighty of trophies, competitors have to endure and excel on 52.7 kilometers of cobblestones (this year) that are nearly pancake-flat. That much is well known.

What’s often forgotten is that, at the end of it all, they must push the mud and stones from their minds, and try to conjure up a few long-ago memories, if they have any, of track racing. Then they have to adapt them to account for riding a geared bike. Better to sneak through the inside in the final turn? Or take the high line and use the trip down the banking to accelerate? Who is the strongest in the group? It’s a good thing the velodrome is smooth – that kind of thinking is harder on the pave when your brain is rattling around in its casing.

The new Paris Roubaix book from VeloPress (which damn near everybody has reviewed already) draws heavily on the race's “Hell of the North” nickname in order to talk about it in religious terms. The authors fittingly dub the first sector of cobbles at Troisvilles “the gates of Hell,” and go on to tell the stories of the race lightly couched in the language of Christian theology. That they manage to string these metaphors together pretty smoothly throughout the book to create an engaging and not-religiously-offensive narrative is a testament to their skill and experience.

But that narrative focuses almost exclusively on the descent into Dante’s inferno, with riders sinking a circle deeper with each successive sector. Only when riders reach the famed concrete showers do they find salvation. That fits fine with the structure of the book, but I’d argue that redemption begins a bit earlier than that.

When the riders have crossed the last truly hellish cobbles at Hem, they begin their ascent, crossing the 300 meters of even ornamental cobbles of Roubaix’s main street, then riding the tarmac once more, and finally making the right-hand turn onto the blessedly smooth concrete track. Having taken far more of a beating than I did in my brief cobblestone experience, I'm not sure if they notice the floating sensation that stuck in my mind. But if being on a velodrome rather than some Napoleonic washboard of a road doesn’t make them feel like they’ve sprouted wings for the trip to see Saint Peter, they can listen to the cheering chorus of angels ringing in their ears as they do their one-lap-plus and pause in the grassy infield to take it all in.

By the time they get to the showers, they’ve long since left hell and passed through the gates of heaven.

Un Rey de los Adoquines? ¿Por qué no?

Make a few cracks about Spanish classics riders on Tuesday, and Oscar Freire wins Gent-Wevelgem on Wednesday. That’s just great. Though in my defense, I did intentionally exclude Freire and his key man Flecha from that discussion to guard against just this eventuality. But, even though it was Freire taking out the win, it does mark the first Spanish victory in Gent-Wevelgem, and the first Spanish victory in any of the cobbled Flanders-Roubaix week races. Have the floodgates opened to a string of Spanish classics victories?

Probably not.

Freire may be the first Spanish winner to net one of the three biggest cobbled classics, but he missed out on being the first Spaniard to win a big Belgian classic. That honor goes to Igor Astarloa, who became the first Spanish winner of the mid-Ardennes week Fleche-Wallonne in 2003. I guess the Spanish ride better on Wednesdays than Sundays? Maybe it’s a religious thing. Astarloa has another point in common with Freire in that he’s also worn the rainbow jersey, earning his in Hamilton, Ontario, the same year as his Fleche win. Of course, Freire has won an astonishing three of those fancy shirts, some Milan-San Remos, and a host of stages to go along with them. Astarloa, not so much.

Regardless of their career trajectories, probably the most telling similarity between Freire and Astarloa has been their choice of teams during their respective 11 and 9 year careers. With the exception of Freire’s first two seasons with the Vitalicio Seguros squad, at the conclusion of which he won his first world championship, neither has since ridden for a Spanish team. With the rainbow stripes boosting his market value, no home team was willing to pay Freire his worth, so he went off to the Italo-Belgian Mapei-Quick.Step for three years, and then to Dutch team Rabobank ever since.

While Freire opened his career at home, Astarloa didn’t even do his stagiare ride for a Spanish team. Instead, he did his test run with the Swiss Riso Scotti-Vinavil squad in 1999 before signing his first pro contract with Mercatone Uno in 2000. After two years there, he stayed in Italy, signing for Saeco-Longoni Sport, where he had his fantastic 2003 season. For 2004, Cofidis was stocking up on world champions, and signed both David Millar and Astarloa, but Astarloa quickly jumped ship to Lampre when Cofidis pulled its team from competition on the eve of the 2004 Paris-Roubaix. The Cofidis scandal would eventually cost Millar his jersey and a couple of years on the bench, while Astarloa would spend an anonymous year with Lampre before moving on to the allegedly South African Barloworld squad during its modest early years. After a couple of years in the hinterlands, a win in Milano-Torino was enough to gain him a ride with Milram, where he remains today.

So here we have two riders who, in the scope of the last 9 years, have given Spain four world championships and some of its biggest professional victories. And in that time, neither has ridden for a Spanish team. Why don’t Spanish teams want classics riders? I think it’s due to Miguel Indurain Disease (MID). MID is very similar to the malady known on this side of the pond as Lance Armstrong Disease (LAD). The common thread is a nation having one rider so dominate the collective consciousness for so long that people begin equating that rider’s specialty with bike racing itself. And in both cases, that means stage racing, not winning burly one-day classics. MID, which is principally tied to GC victories, is rendered far more potent by the long Spanish legacy of spindly climbers who, despite their inability to win the grand tours, make a good living genuflecting across their mountaintop finish lines.

What makes MID even more dangerous is that the Spanish don’t build antibodies to it; instead, due to the nature of the disease, they just keep getting re-infected. Young Spanish riders watch the current Spanish professional squads, dream of success in the mountains of the grand tours, and focus their attention there. Young talent is groomed for the hills, not the crosswinds. The Spanish teams and their sponsors know that the Alps, the Pyrenees, and the Dolomites are where the fans will expect them to make their mark, so yet another “Next Indurain” is signed while proven classics contenders are exported to Italy and the north. And there they stay, because even if the Spanish teams would pay them, they wouldn’t have the support they need in their races, because everybody’s too busy preparing to ride five mountain passes a day. While they’re outside the Spanish border, their day-to-day exploits go underreported to their countrymen, and the cycle starts again.

If the next Oscar Freire is coming up through the Spanish ranks right now, I can guarantee you someone’s jabbering in his earpiece trying to make him the next Iban Mayo. Meanwhile, Flecha, Freire, Barredo, Reynes and others are dispersed among the northern teams, more appreciated by a host of Flemish lunatics than their countrymen until it’s time to hoist the flag at the World Championships. Venga, venga, venga.

(If you want to see the reverse, look at Belgium’s recent grand tour history versus their role in the one-day classics. I believe it’s called the Johan Museeuw Disease (JMD).)

But back to Spain. People like to use the phrase, “exception that proves the rule.” I’m never sure exactly what they mean, and I don’t think they are either, but in this case, I’m pretty sure that exception is Alejandro Valverde. Despite winning both Fleche Wallonne and Liege-Bastogne-Liege in 2006, he somehow still rides for Caisse D’Epargne and, in fact, has not ridden for a non-Spanish team in his career. I think that’s because, in spite of his sprint, his palmares, and his lack of time-trialing ability, he has just enough high-mountain staying power that people continue to whisper “Vuelta a Francia” in his ear.

God bless him, Valverde is doing his best to fight MID by winning sprints and generally being an exciting rider, but the disease just keeps recurring. Every half-decent time trial and second place mountaintop finish is like Miguel himself sneezing in his face. And like LAD, MID is a tough illness to kick. Over here, many in the competitive cycling community have hoped that a big win from George Hincapie (High Road) in the classics could provide the antidote to LAD, but so far, the results aren’t propitious. An unexpected win from Tyler Hamilton in Liege-Bastogne-Liege looked promising, but that research later proved to be flawed. However, if we learn from the MID work the Spanish have conducted with Freire and Astarloa, it looks as if Hincapie could win Paris-Roubaix three times this Sunday, and we’d still be a long way from finding the cure. I’m thinking of starting a charity ride.

Gent-Wevelgem

Doing the Triple

Sandwiched between two monuments, the Ronde van Vlaanderen and Paris-Roubaix, the mid-week Belgian classic Gent-Wevelgem would seem ripe for getting the short end of the stick when it comes to participation by the peloton’s big guns. Riders targeting Paris-Roubaix could justifiably head straight from the Ronde finish in Meerbeke down to Compeigne, begin scoping out cobbled sectors, and count on those recon rides and their Ronde kilometers to put them on the boil for Sunday in Hell. In the past, it’s an option that more than one cobble specialist has exercised.

And who could blame them? Last year, the larger of Gent-Wevelgem’s two hills, the Kemmelberg, caused havoc in the peloton, not so much on the climb as on the cobbled descent. Crashes split the peloton on both trips down the hill in 2007, causing injuries serious enough to interrupt the seasons of several riders, including Tyler Farrar (then Cofidis, now Slipstream) and Matt Hayman (Rabobank). Though last year was particularly notable for its carnage, it’s never exactly been a relaxing coast through the woods. This year, however, organizers have chosen to route the course around the most dangerous portion, substituting an apparently sketchy right turn at the bottom of a paved descent for the eyeball-rattling cobbled downhill. Tomorrow will tell whether the cure proves worse than the disease.

But despite the danger just days ahead of Roubaix, and despite the fact that Gent-Wevelgem has never carried the same World Cup/ProTour/UCI points or prestige as the weekend heavies, a few teams still come out on Wednesday morning loaded for bear. Witness High Road, for example, which will hit the start line in Dienze with not only 2001 winner and perennial classics favorite George Hincapie and 2003 winner Andreas Klier, but also 2007 runner up Roger Hammond, 2001 Paris-Roubaix winner Servais Knaven, Tour Down Under winner Andre Griepel, on-form sprinters Mark Cavendish and Bernhard Eisel, and Vincent Reynes. Hold on, Vincent Reynes? Can you tell who got the call-up to replace the team’s injured 2007 Gent-Wevelgem winner Marcus Burghardt? Even without Burghardt, though, that’s a team that should have every expectation of coming home with a trophy Wednesday evening.

Quick.Step isn’t pulling any punches either, with Tom Boonen attending despite his focus on bringing home a second Roubaix title. It’s worth remembering that Boonen had his breakout classics win at Gent-Wevelgem in apocalyptic conditions in 2004. Along with Boonen, the team is also bringing Ronde hero Stijn Devolder out for a curtain call, as well as Gert Steegmans, who could certainly take Gent himself on a good day. To that trio, they add their usual battle-hardened classics support staff of Steven De Jongh, Wilfried Cretskens, Kevin Hulsmans, Matteo Tosatto, and Wouter Weylandt. So, even at a 2-1 disadvantage to High Road in the previous winners department, they'll will be shouldering plenty of hopes for the home crowd.

According to the organizer’s provisional start list, a few Roubaix hopefuls are taking a pass, including Leif Hoste (Silence-Lotto, who gives up leadership for this sprinters’ classic to Robbie McEwen), Nick Nuyens (Cofidis), and Fabian Cancellara and Stuey O’Grady (CSC), and Philippe Gilbert (FDJeux) (*update - Cancellara, O'Grady, and Gilbert all ended up taking the start this morning). But many of the heavy hitters for the spring are manning up and making it a full week, including the aforementioned Quick.Step and High Road riders, Alessandro Ballan (Lampre), Filippo Pozzato (Liquigas), and defending Gent-Wevelgem champion Thor Hushovd (Credit Agricole). I’m glad they are. If only in a very small way, it harkens back to a time when the sport wasn't quite so specialized, when riders didn’t target a single race as the focus of the year, and when you got to see the same group of riders face off more than once or twice a year.

Southern Discomfort

Naturally, the media focuses on the favorites around this time of year – the Quick.Steps, the Silence-Lottos, the High Roads. And to a lesser extent, on those upstart teams that could make a splash, like Slipstream. Nobody tends to focus on the people that don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell. Or a Spaniard’s chance in the Hell of the North, as the case may be. And no, Juan Antonio Flecha and Oscar Freire don’t count, because they’ve been excommunicated from their own country and adopted by the Dutch.

As a result, we have stories out there about every Belgian on every team riding themselves into the ground all spring to make the team selection for the Ronde or Paris-Roubaix. We have stories of agony when they don’t, and of elation (and sometimes more agony) when they do. But what’s going on inside a Euskaltel-Euskadi or a Caisse d’ Epargne in those last weeks of March, when the decisions have to be made about who packs their bags for the flight to Brussels?

Somehow, I always picture them sitting around a table, maybe in the service course, under a bare lightbulb, shivering a bit from the chill as they draw straws. I know that’s not how it happens, but the image works for me.


That said, the Spanish did have three riders in the top 10 of Gent-Wevelgem last year, if we're kind and include Freire's 3rd place. Francisco Ventoso was 4th, and Joaquin Rojas was 9th. That's more riders in the top 10 than any other country.

The Media Note

It may be the “smallest” classic of this week, but Gent-Wevelgem has probably the nicest press facilities of the three. And by nicest, I mean the four things the media values most – free coffee, beer, and food, and indoor plumbing. Granted, the smell of the bathroom will probably be with me for the remainder of my years -- you couldn’t really tell if it came from urine or a cleaning product designed to eradicate urine, but the place seemed spotless, which probably indicates that it was, in fact, an exceptionally poorly thought out cleaning product. Anyway, it was pretty good living there in Wevelgem, a few steps from the finish line, the frites wagon, and the cheesy Euro-pop live show. Even better, there were surprisingly unguarded international phone lines in a back room. What more could you ask?