What a brilliant race! There seem to be too few big pro road races where the big favorites have to stick their necks out and make aggressive bold moves. the closing 40K of yesterdays Ronde was brilliant. Dave Harmon described it ad being like a club race and I think that's exactly what it was. Like a boxing match the riders took it in turn to hammer each other. Cancellara was absolutely awesome once again despite not managing a repeat of last year.
Chavannel was superb as well although what Quickstep were playing at was beyond me. With Chavannel up the road, opening up a nice advantage, inexplicably Boonen goes on the attack. But that just acts as the que Cancellara had been waiting for and he then drops Boonen, catches Chavannel and tears off like a freight train! The later in the closing stages when its looking like coming down to a sprint between about 12 riders and set up for Boonen to take it Cancellara has one more massive dig. Only Nyens and Chavannel can hold his wheel. But instead of sitting on waiting for Boonen to come back Chavannel decides he'll start coming through! They might be wearing the same jersey but they didn't appear to be riding for the same team.
So Nyens wins the sprint. First time he'd been at the front for the whole race and it was the last 200yards. That's road racing though I guess! For me the heros were Cancellara, Chavannel and Gilbert though. They're the guys I want to ride like!
Robin Wilkins
my blog: http://thewheelabout.blogspot.com
I've not seen Boonen's post race comments but it would be interesting- maybe he was trying to bridge up so he'd have a one-two punch with him and Chavanel.
ReplyDeleteSame thing in Roubaix- if Hushovd could have bridged up he could have had a valuable guy up front with Cancellara isolated. In the end his beanpole teammate got it anyway, good on him.