The biggest one day bike race in the Netherlands takes place on Sunday. It’s always an exciting race and if you want a preview, well the Pavé guys will probably do it better soon. Instead I thought I’d take a side look at the race, to review the geography of the event. Plus a quick mention of what Amstel is, in case you don’t know.
Matthew Lloyd, the Australian rider on the Omega Pharma – Lotto team got fired today.
In times past I’ve often found the various incarnations of the Lotto team to be rather chaotic, surviving from one month to the next, often with ability to lose a race by strategic bungling and above all, some chaotic recruitment (eg here and here) and man-management skills. That’s harsh but for years they’ve been a distant second to national rivals Quick Step.
In recent times though that’s changed. They’ve refocussed with Philippe Gilbert as their leader and André Greipel was a useful addition. There have been other changes and some measures they’ve toppled Quick Step.
But it seems the office politics haven’t gone away. Only this morning I brought tales of a split in the team that’s got traction across the cycling media. Rather than countering with some good news, they’ve now fired Aussie rider Matthew Lloyd.
Details on two races for the future.
First up the Giro d’Italia will start in Herning, Denmark in 2012. If the nordic Kingdom is flat, the Giro organisers appear to be compensating elsewhere with the inclusion of the “Zoncolan of the south”, a road near Salerno in Italy’s Campania region – famous for its buffalo mozzarella – that climbs up to the Rifugio Calvanico 1320m.
I first saw it mentioned on twitter then found out the source from the Gazet Van Antwerpen, GVA.be. The idea is that team sponsors in the Omega Pharma – Lotto team are not seeing eye to eye on their partnership.
Lotto are the longest team sponsor in existence, being involved in one way or another with Belgian pro teams since the 1980s. Omega Pharma have been behind the team for some time, using different product names for the team like Bodysol, Predictor and Silence. But now it seems there are differences over the future of the team.
Team Sky’s co-sponsor IG Markets are going to launch a new rider ranking, the “IG Markets Pro Cycling Index” and it will attempt to reward panache ahead of anonymous consistency.
One of my pet hates is lists and rankings. Things like “Best film ever” or “top-10 dog breeds” can be pointless exercises and often used by newspaper editors to fill pages and generate debate, you can be sure people have opinions and, online, readers will leap to the comments section, thus generating more valuable clicks.
In cycling I find it hard to define the “best cyclist”. Is Alberto Contador better than Fabian Cancellara? Is Philippe Gilbert better than Ivan Basso? These questions are subjective and in trying to answer them we often reveal more about our preferences and biases than the riders’ abilities.
History is written by the victors
– Winston Churchill
When a rider wins a race or a general is victorious in battle, it is often easy to ascribe physical supremacy and tactical brilliance. We align a series of facts from the day into a story, the narrative of victory becomes self-evident. Only what of luck?
It makes you wonder about the tales and statues of war heroes, just how brilliant and superior were they? Or was an unmentionable stroke of luck involved too? This isn’t necessarily cynicism on my part, the last man to durably conquer Europe was Napoleon Bonaparte. When asked whether he preferred courageous generals or brilliant generals he replied “neither, give me lucky generals“.
I’ve often wondered about this when it comes to sport too. Do we ascribe particular skills and talents to some athletes and teams when in actual fact, they just got lucky? Before you leap to the comments section, I am not suggesting you fluke a win at elite level nor, I stress, suggesting that victories in warfare occur without guts and courage. No, this is not to deny the hard work and skill involved. Instead, what I’m trying to explore is whether luck is a bigger deciding factor that we might currently think. Are our heroes all conquering or do they get a little bit of luck along the way too?
Italian pro team Liquigas have had a semi-permanent base on the slopes of Mount Etna this year. Etna is an active volcano in Sicily, the large island at the southern tip of the Italian peninsula. It’s black slopes often contrast with a snowy peak and at times, the infernal glow of lava.
Liquigas’s mountain HQ is the Rifugio Giovanni Sapienza, a mountain lodge also the choice of the Astana team. A pumice stone’s throw away lies the Hotel Corsaro, as used by two more teams, Lampre and Katusha.
A reader’s sent in a link to this Dutch video clip from Paris-Roubaix. Shot with a Weisscam, a German-made high speed digital camera capable of 4,000 frames per second, it captures surprising details in slow motion. You can see tubs deform on the cobbles and specks of dirt flying off the wheels. It’s so detailed … Read more
The mania for medieval roads is over. There might be one or stretches to come in the weeks and months, but gone are the races where cobbled climbs and farm tracks are the strategic points. Now the races begin to head to the hills and by the end of the month, the mountains. This isn’t to say we’ve not had hilly races, more that the focus of the sport has been on the Belgian classics instead of races like the Tour of the Basque country or Giro dell’Appennino. This is now about to change. The climbs are coming.
What a race. What a season. I’ve seen enough racing this season to satisfy me for some time to come and Johan Vansummeren’s win today is one big part of all of this.