The rest day

Tomorrow sees the greatest one day race of the year, the Tour of Flanders. Organisers say 600,000 to 800,000 people will line the roads, L’Equipe even says one million could turn out, making one tenth of the Belgian population.

This does not mean that the race will have you perched on the rivet of your armchair for hours as like many events, sometimes anticipation can exceed reality. But ahead of tomorrow’s race here are a few things to consider.

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UCI waive their own rules to let Kolobnev join Katusha

How good is your maths? If you can count, have a go at the number of riders listed on the Katusha team as of tonight on the UCI website. I make it 28 riders and one neo, a total of 29 riders.

All seems normal so far. Only the Russian team today announced it has signed Alexander Kolobnev. And that is against the UCI rules.

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The Olympics, adverts, social media and pro cycling

Dessin Pellos

Pro cycling is a nakedly commercial sport. The above cartoon by Pellos mocks the way the 1956 Tour de France consumes the environment with branding. Half a century later only the sponsor names have changed. Riders act as mobile billboards to sell Quickstep laminated flooring and Liquigas bottled gas.

However this culture is set to clash with the Olympic Games, now just four months away. One thing that didn’t exist in 1956 was social media and the International Olympic Committee has very strict rules in place about the use of blogs, Facebook and Twitter during the games. Here’s a look at the ad rules and social media guidelines.

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Moneywheel

In the a piece for cyclingnews.com I look at how teams on a small budget can aim to get in the UCI’s World Tour. Inspired in part by the book/film “Moneyball” that looks at baseball and prompted by Ag2r La Mondiale’s position as the only top team yet to win this year I wanted to see if there ways to build a winning team on a shoestring budget.

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Dauphiné route unveiled

EDIT: since publishing this in March I’ve put a full preview online. Go here: https://inrng.com/dauphine for full stage analysis, the jerseys, the history and much more.

ASO have unveiled the route of the 2012 Critérium du Dauphiné. The 8 day stage race is a great contest in its own right but also resembles the Tour de France in more ways than one.

Just like last year’s edition, the Dauphiné will feature some of the same roads as the Tour, making it an ideal test ahead of July. Here’s a summary of the route.

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2012 Team Victory Rankings updated

Wins Team
21 Omega Pharma – Quickstep
13 Liquigas – Cannondale
13 Team Sky
8 Greenedge
7 FDJ – BigMat
7 Lotto – Belisol
6 Garmin – Barracuda
6 Movistar
5 Vacansoleil – DCM
4 Katusha
3 Rabobank
2 BMC Racing
2 Lampre – ISD
2 Radioshack – Nissan
2 Saxo Bank
1 Astana
1 Euskaltel – Euskadi
0 Ag2r – La Mondiale

I won’t be doing a running commentary every Monday but this time last week I listed the World Tour teams by win and in the space of seven days several teams without a win finally got the result they needed.

Astana’s Janez Brajkovič won a stage in the Tour of Catalonia as did Samuel Sanchez for Euskaltel-Euskadi. Cadel Evans won Stage 2 and the overall in the Critérium International. Note these three riders are just who’d you’d expect to appear once the roads head for the mountains. In addition, promising all-rounder Diego Ulissi won two stages in the Semana Coppi e Bartali. This leaves Ag2r – La Mondiale as the World Tour gooseberry.

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Gent – Wevelgem: The Moment The Race Was Won

Tornado Tom Frits

Tom Boonen won the sprint to the line. As you can see from the image above he is level with the lime green Peter Sagan and the red and white Oscar Freire with 200m to go. But this was not the crucial moment of the race. Instead an acceleration 30km from the finish on the Monteberg climb made all the difference.

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