Thursday, April 9, 2015

Tour of Flanders and Scheldeprijs - Kristoff Krushes all Kompetition

Another late race report, and I'm going to bundle two together to save a bit of time. There's only been one man winning races in Belgium recently - unless you count Wiggo's ITT win at De Panne -  and that's Alexander Kristoff. First, he won all three road stages at De Panne. Then he took the Tour of Flanders, and to cap it all off, he won Scheldeprijs yesterday. Here's a picture of him winning some race or other recently.

Here are the league scores at Flanders.

Stage 5


 And here's the Scheldeprijs points.

Stage 6


 With his incredible form of late, you'd have to be some kind of moron not to have Kristoff in your team by now, (sorry WACA). The Norwegian is sure to be one of the favourites at Paris-Roubaix on Sunday. But there's plenty of others in with a shout. Bradley Wiggins has made no secret of the fact he's out to do well in what will be his final race for the Team Sky. And I wouldn't be surprised if an interview with a delusional Pippo Pozzato shows up on CyclingNews, about how he's going to be up there in the finale too. It looks like the weather forecast is a bit short on rain for the weekend, but this puddle was spotted on the course yesterday, so there could still be some muddy fun.

We're now over half-way through the Fantasy Classics season and the Bile Beans have been underperforming in the last few races, leaving the way open for Enrico 666 to surge ahead in the overall. I'll have to hope for a change in fortunes when we head into the Ardennes Classics.

Overall

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Sunday, April 5, 2015

Wevelgem - Hard Blowing Makes the Job Tricky

If you're riding the Tour of Flanders tomorrow, you're probably in bed by now, or at least you should be. But seeing as "The Ronde" is just around the corner, I better take care of the Gent-Wevelgem write-up. Yes indeed, Gent-Wevelgem this year took place in what, by all accounts, were windy conditions.
Although the prospect of being "blown-off" doesn't appeal to professional cyclists, they have a job to do. So the hard ones went out there and did it. And the pussies quit. That's why only 40something riders actualy finished. Even recent classics revelation G Thomas has a blowy moment to contend with on his way to taking third place.


So, last week, king of the hard-men was Luca Paolini, who is usually to be seen doing the spade-work for Alexander Kristoff, but rode hard and smart to take an impressive win.



Having the least quitters was good news for the Kloefekappers.

Stage 4


Those Beans of Bile continue to stay on top in the overall. If you've been keeping up with those transfers, I imagine our teams are all looking pretty similar by now as we head into the bestest couple of one-day races of the season. The difference is in the details.

Overall

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Thursday, April 2, 2015

E3 Harelbeke - G Hits the Spot

With E3 Harelbeke more than a week behind us, it really is about time I devoted some blogging inches to what was turned out to be an excellent race. As is often the way in these bike-race things at this time of year, there were some crashes. Along with the many members of the Bile Beans that hit the deck, the biggest casualty was classics superstar Fabian Cancellara, who saw his Spring season come to an end with some fractured vertebrae.

The race was still on though, and coming into the finish a three-man group of Sagan, Stybar and Thomas were out in front. A canny attack left Stybar chasing for second, while Sagan faded spectacularly and got caught by the bunch.

A Thomas-Stybar-Kristoff 1-2-4 did the Bile Beans no harm, but it wasn't quite good enough to match the Stybar-Trentin-Kristoff 2-3-4 of Enrico666.

Stage 3


 Time I wrote up Gent-Wevelgem I suppose.
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