Boone in Break, Cancellara Broken

Such was my level of excitement for the Tour of Flanders, I went as far as spending some of my very own money on the on the Eurosport player thingy. I'm fed up with dodgy internet feeds that cut out, and US cycling coverage sucks. I was most impressed with the picture quality until we had to leave the cycling in order to watch some touring cars driving around.

Back to some dodgy Flemmish internet feed it was then. I think my Flemish is getting pretty good now, but luckily the cars didn't last too long and we could get back to Flanders.

I may have said it before, but cycling is a tough old game. Coming into the race, there were two names on everyone's lips, Fabian Cancellara and Tom Boonen. Out on the unforgiving Flemish roads, the anticipated showdown never happened, as poor Fabian crashed out with a broken collarbone. I'm betting he's not too happy right now.

Another man out in a crash was Langveld of GreenEdge. He tried a sneaky short cut, but came to grief when he hit a spooked spectator.


If you look closely, just behind Langveld is Filippo Pozzato, or Pipo Potato, as he will always be in my mind. Pozzato did well to avoid the crash, and he also did well to make it in the winning move with Boonen and Ballan. Once they had a gap, there was no catching them. It was a surprise to no one, to see Boonen take the sprint ahead of Pozzato.

I was pretty pleased with the Bile Beans performance, but was hoping for more from Sagan and Boasson Hagen. It turns out that in the league for the day, those pesky Roulers got the biggest score. With Boonen and Ballan, plus a few more in the top ten, things are Rouling along nicely for them. It looks like they still have a fair few transfers left too.

And the Roulers have done enough to oust the mighty Bile Beans from the top of the overall league. Not that the new scores are up yet mind. So you'll have to take my word for it.


All the cobbled bike racing action on Sunday must have put me in the mood, for I took the unusual step of actually riding my bike later that day. Second only to Paris-Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders as cobbled races go; it was time for Alleycross3 here in Atlanata.

I had little idea what to expect, but I had heard there was free beer afterwards, so I thought I'd give it a try. I was slightly concerned that there would be a load of Hipsters on 'Fixies', and although there were more tattoos than I'm used to seeing at a race, it turned out that most of the fixie crowd didn't want to break their bikes. I never even knew there were any cobbles in Atlanta, but it turns out there are. Mix 'em up with some city streets and paths, and you've got a fun little race. And there was free beer afterwards.

Tomorrow, (or even today...if you happen to be in one of those fancy time zones, like they have in Australia) it's the Scheldeprijs, which I believe to be popular with the sprinters. It looks like a lot of the bigger names are sitting it out in preparation for Paris-Roubaix at the weekend. So the big dilemma is, make some transfers to bag a few points? Or leave it be and save those transfers for Ardennes Week?