Not sure how many of you were up on yesterday’s comment thread, but to jackhammer the point through the floor, today’s Cyclingnews post not once, but twice misnames Juan Antonio Flecha as the 2008 Flanders runner-up. This wouldn’t be such a big deal if the race hadn’t been four days ago. Jeff Jones, where are you?!

Anyway, Flecha: not a winner Sunday. Not even a runner up. But today he still got some props from his teammate, homeboy, and today’s winner, Oscar Freire, who reminded the world who should have been the first Spaniard to win Gent-Wevelgem, back in ‘05. Still, not like anyone in Spain cares about this cobblestone crap. The Tour, the Vuelta, and that’s about it. And my pick, Boonen? Just seemed to be out for a ride. Hopfeully, he’ll be that much more ready come Sunday.

Velonews’ candidate, Mark Cavendish, did manage to finish the race fairly winded, but only because of the tirade he went on, berating the people who were “not even sprinters” contesting the group kick finale. Young Cavendish should take a lesson from Slipstream’s Christian VandeVelde, who won the argyle squad’s first Euro race on a bike apparently borrowed from a 12 year old. And he didn’t even complain once. Then again, he didn’t have to go over any “roads” that, under the Americans With Disabilities Act, couldn’t even be called “sidewalks”.

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Man, is there a close layover between Ghent Wevelgem and the Ronde or what? I feel like it’s hardly enough time to walk after Flanders, let alone take on a few more bucketloads of Belgian cobblestones. It makes the relative lack of respect Wevelgem gets all the more inexplicable. But once Cipo’ wins a race, the purists’ respect goes out the window. Get over it you fogies - Cipollini’s a good rider. He’s trading elbows in final k at an age when Merckx’s biggest rivals were sausages and Stella.

Anyway, as Brian Smyth jokingly summarized one year “There’s nothing to Wevelgem, really - tough it out over the Kemmelburg twice and then win the sprint.” I love Wevelgem. Lots of different ways to finish this guy off: Small break (Cipo, 2002), Group gallop (Hushovd), Cancellara-style (Pozzatto), a friendly motopace (Mattan), in the back of the meat wagon (Farrar), and you might even get knocked over by a horse (Zabel). That’s what I dig this race: as many ways to close it out as there are riders in the peloton, and it’s (almost) never the same finish twice.

Now, quickly, I will recap all the stupid stuff I’m ignoring because I love talking about cobbled one-days:
1) Cyclingnews’ new look giving a face to its steady decay into the worst parts of Velonews.com and the old ProCycling page.
2) Running bike
3) Boonen whining that he was supposed to win Flanders. It’s like Elway being pissed that he had to hand off.
4) Five days from Roubaix, the eve of Wevelgem, and this is a top story? Really?
5) Worst bike lane ever
6) Cavendish? I like him, but dude. Boonen. Solo. Because he’s got something to prove.
7) Also…”sprinters’ classic”? Paris-Tours? MSR? Maybe sprinters’ cobbled classic…

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Well, two days to go until the Ronde and I’m already sick of Flanders…PSYCH! Velonews drops some coin on a Graham Watson photo history and details Leif Hoste’s plans not to be second again. Note to the Belgian - self-calling that you won’t be second on the cobblestones in April is historically not a good idea.

Speaking of history, Podium Cafe has a brief DYK on the race, as well as a previewing of potential team tactics, because everything else has been previewed to death already. But in case you’d been living under a rock in a cave on Mars with your eyes closed and your fingers in your ears, here’s the course preview from Pez.

So who’s hot? Well, Joost Postuma (man, I hope he turns out to be on drugs so I can write his name as “Juiced”) pulled out the DaPanne vic on an impressive ITT. He gives himself mega-longshot odds in service of Captain J-A Flecha, but given the weather forecast (42 degrees, rain, hail, snow, carnage) I’m guessing it won’t be a walkaway win for anyone.

The Great Tombino says he’s locked and loaded, and with God’s Own supporting cast behind him, he’s even money with the smoking hot Cancellara. Cance’s given a better shot at the podium, though, which I find inexplicable given the race conditions; correct me if I’m wrong, but Cance has yet to score a major result in anything tougher than partly cloudy. Not that I’m saying he can’t, of course - just that he hasn’t.

My pick? We’ll save that for tomorrow. And the not-so-fun stuff might just have to wait ’til Monday.

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We’re barely through the second of 3.5 stages, and already The Pain has taken a toll - Leif Hoste’s well on his way to another unhappy Ronde, to go with his flag-in-spokes from ‘03 and leave-stronger-teammate-behind-before-losing sprint from ‘06. It’s all fun and games for Tom Boonen, of course; he seems awfully relaxed for a guy whose biggest performance this year has been at Tour of Qatar.

At T-minus 4 days, the Flanders hype machine is running full-bore: check the bergs n’ cobbles pain scores over at Podium Cafe, or see what UK hardman Barry Hoban has to impart from his fistful of rumbles over the undulating pavé. Despite not considering Cipo’ one of the best sprinters of all time, Hoban still manages an insight or two - though someone ought to drop him the memo that his “man’s race” does indeed have a woman’s event.

Ah - now for the fun stuff. While a friend of mine calls 1 April “Internet jackass day”, in honor of all the fake news, he might as well have been referring to the “final” Danilo DiLuca hearing, which was both skipped by the accused and delayed by the judge. Yes, it seems cycling’s allegedly new attitude toward the dopage might still need a few refinements. And you know it’s not going to help that the governing bodies still can’t seem to stop chasing their tails. Isn’t there some way the Federal Reserve could maybe step in and fix this?

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Well, it ain’t the Tour de France, but as per my prediction, Sylvain Chavanel certianly is on a tear. While Dwaars door Vlaanderen has turned out its fair share of oddball winners (Frederik Veuchelen, anyone?) Brabantse Pijl has been the personal property of thrice-over world champ Oscar Freire for quite some time. We’ll see the true measure of Chavanel this weekend at the Ronde; my guess is a key supporting role for teammate Nick Nuyens, but good legs are good legs, and Flanders is Flanders - anything could happen.

‘Til then, we’ll just have to satiate ourselves with the race I humbly refer to as the “Three Days of Pain“. It’s an easy race, really, so long as you discount the cobbles, the headwinds, the rain, the narrow, unpredictable roadways and the fistfuls of middling Belgian riders who realize that if they don’t make in impact between now and May, they’ll be boot-deep in cow dung this time next year. Expect them to be even angrier for the rest of the race, as a trio of Italians took Stage 1.

Two last notes before I leave the comfort of Boloco’s free wireless (the only free hotspot in Harvard Square, I might add) - and they’re on E3. First, it’s always nice to see a company man like Kurt Asle-Arvesen at the top of the results sheet. Like Giovanni Lombardi, he busts tail for the team 99 times out of a hundred, only occasionally being cut loose to take one of what Cipo’s lead out man used to call “his pet wins”. A superdomestique like Jens Voight gets a chance to shine a few times a year, but for a guy like Arvesen, its a few years between spotlights. Savor it, big guy.

The other note from E3: it’s practically April. Where the heck is Boonen?

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In response to Velonews’ pre-race question “sprint or break”, the answer is “no”. Drawing obvious comparisons to last year’s staggering TdF stage win at Compeigne, Fabian Cancellara once again turned savvy, raw power and a confusing race situation into a glorious breakaway win.

While TT riders can be notoriously poor performers in tense, tactical race situations (see Zulle, Alex), Fabian Cancellara has shown he can outfox classics riders on the cobbles and sprinters on the tarmac, making him one of the most versatile riders in the peloton. He can’t really be discounted from any races less hilly than Lombardia. Let’s not forget, Cance challenged Boonen all the way to the line in a 4-up sprint at last year’s E3.

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Ah, finally, good cause to ignore all the piddly little races that have filled up the cycling calendar so far. Not that I haven’t ignored them up to this point, of course, but now I have an excuse…

In 2006, Phillippe Gilbert broke out onto the international cycling scene by taking his first Het Volk. Classy victory though it was, Gilbert took it largely though pluck and tactical nous, plying a weakened and out-classed breakaway group, and a heavily marked Quick.Step Team to his advantage.

Saturday’s win, on the other hand was a brash and ballsy, the kind of counter-intuitive high-risk attack that you simply don’t see outside the one-day events (and certainly not at the Tour of California). While comparisons to Merckx might be a bit overstated, I don’t think likening it to Fabian Cancellara’s victory at the ‘06 Roubaix would be too far a reach.

On Sunday, Quick.Step’s DeJongh became the second two-time winner on the weekend, thanks to some devastatingly concerted work from the rest of his team. Any time you get five men in a move of eleven, the psychological advantage alone makes the result almost inevitable. My only worry for the Q.S boys: WTF Tom Boonen losing a sprint to Matthew Goss?

If you’ll recall, Quick.Step pulled similar rebounds in 2007 and 2006, after essentially making the race most of the day at Het Volk, but missing out entirely in the final hands. Discovery Channel did the same thing in 2005. While one-day turnarounds are historically suspicious, it’s important to note these HV/KBK 180’s involve a team being strong both days, and just more motivated - or more lucky - the next.

Final assorted notes on the weekend - French reign of terror continues. Even if Gilbert is just a francophone Belgian, his squad is unquestionably of the Hexagon. Also impressive was Slipstream-Chipotle, making their presence felt through hard-man breakaways and moves that matter, rather than simply the suicide publicity attacks one used to see from the wild card squads at these events.

All in all, a promising weekend of racing - let’s hope the cheery outlook holds through the rest of the month.

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Right…so I took on a third job last week. Questionable judgment on my part, I know, but it appears to be a short-term kinda thing. At any rate, some of my predictions in last week’s post have already begun to come true. Astana - not invited to the ‘08 Tour. No Kloeden, no Levi, no Condator. Sylvain Chavanel just got that much closer to his first TdF win.

And don’t bet on another High Road-style change of heart. Not only does High Road have a different sponsor, but its “clean” new management also didn’t spend the past 8 years winning the Tour de France under an ever-thickening cloud of suspicion. That’s not to say that the cleaner-looking members of Astana aren’t giving it the old college try in hopes of a TdF ride, but folks, it’s just not happening.

I don’t know why you’d want to start up a new race in cycling’s current environment, especially at this time of year, but the people of Grosseto thought they’d give it a whirl anyway. Didn’t work out so well. Just down the coast, the more established Tour Med concluded with another two French successes to add to the tally - Cofidis’ Chavanel with the final stage, and CA’s Botcharov with the overall.

And yeah, fine. I’ll mention the Tour of Cali. But it’s a bitter thing to me, this California; so close, and yet so far away. Also, I don’t have cable (yet). But it’s worth mentioning, as after the Puerto reopening in Spain, the ToC organizers managed to both exclude a bunch of Puerto escapados, and STFU Michael Ball in one sweet swoop. I wish that windbag a perpetual case of laryngitis.

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Het Volk isn’t until March 1st this year, but it’s never too soon to start dredging the murky channels of cycling to see what fetid gunk comes up. First sloppy bucketload - some guy whose name I can’t pronounce won a race I can’t pronounce. This sort of thing would normally make me feel like an unlearned American, but since no one can agree on how Monsiour Trofimov spells his name, I’m giving myself a pass.

The Bouygues Telecom rider’s win is yet another rhinestone in the neckless of knock-off wins strung together by French teams this pre-season. Jeremy Hunt added another at the TdL to go with Matthieu Sprick’s win on Stage 1, and the only win of significance thus far, Phillipe Gilbert’s win at the non-stage race stage race in Mallorca.

As a result, I now officially declare that the 2008 TdF, for the first time in 23 years, will be won by a Frenchman - and not just because no one else will be invited. Drug scandals aside, the ‘07 Tour was one of the worst in history for the host nation; their highest finisher was 27th, over an hour back. And when the obviously hesitant heads of state betrayed the effectiveness of the doping ejections, there was no more excuse of a peloton at two speeds. Someone will finally take Fignon’s adivce to heart this season, and put on a show come July.

Hopping back over to the US of A, Velonews finally launched their new website, and I must say I agree whole-heartedly with their design team: those jiggly Wrench Science ads weren’t nearly annoying enough in the right sidebar. Smack dab in the middle of text is the perfect spot. On a related note, I’ve revised the blogroll over to your left, and added a feed ripper from the blog I get paid for. I get a traffic bonus if I draw enough hits; more money for me is more content for you, so spread the word and check back frequently.

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It was a rough Sunday out here in New England. First was the Pats loss, and then came word of Sheldon Brown’s passing. It’s not so much that without Sheldon’s site I wouldn’t be writing this; it’s that I wouldn’t be on a bike. At all.

Riding a bicycle, especially an entry-level machine, causes stuff to break all the time. Waiting on the local shop (yes, that still says ‘06) to fix it simply won’t keep you rolling, and Sheldon’s pages made it so anyone with access to Google and a set of metric Allen keys could keep their ride in order, and learn more than they’d ever dreamed in the process. To say he will be missed is understatement redefined.

Leaping from the loss of an immense societal contributor to the stubborn continuance of a societal leech, Italian media conglomerate RCS announced invitations for the ‘08 Giro d’Italia last week. Not invited? A whole fistful of international powerhouses. Invited instead? Local Italian teams! Awesome! Evil media conglomerate’s rationale: “ethics, quality, international character [and] the historical relationship with RCS Sport”. Ah, what lofty criteria from a country so corrupt it’s drowning in its own garbage.

Seriously, though - LPR Brake’s roster features Danilo DiLuca, who spent the runt-end of last season suspended after being mired in at least two dope scandals; one of them even involved suspicious test results from his ‘07 Giro victory. Perhaps to ease the obviousness of this contradiction, RCS has now dropped hints that maybe they’ll invite anti-dope pioneers Team High Road as a 22nd squad, because they might bring a little “sporting quality” and “respect for the rules” to the event - no doubt to compensate for RCS’s lack thereof.

But enough bitterness! Time to revel in the flat, sunbaked, sprint-happy glory that is the Tour of Qatar! Slipstream almost won the first stage, which is (IMHO) a fine start for the burrito powered squad. Things went pearshaped a bit when Backstedt broke his collarbone, but the big guy still has hopes for Roubaix. For me, the story of the race was Tom Boonen only winning half the stages. Last year he won nearly every day, missing only a long escape in which a teammate sealed GC victory. Could Tornado Tom be slipping?

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