Spring race season has started...

The Spring bike racing season has started, and no I'm not talking about the Tour of California (although from what I've seen it appears to have been a good race and a success). I'm talking about Belgium, in the Spring. That's what I'm talking about. What most would refer to as "proper bike racing" in the ultimate sense of the words. This weekend we had the openers, Oomloop Het Volk and of course Kurne-Brussels-Kurne, and honestly I wasn't let down by these 2 opening Spring season races. Of course, residing in the US, I only get to read about the races via Cyclingnews.com, but I'll take it. They're written reports are not too bad, and they get most of the detail, and I can go back and see what happened during the race if I want to. Normally, I just look in around near the end, see who is off the front, and see who won.

Het Volk, we had a sort of surprise winner, Mr. Phillippe Gilbert from Francais des Jeux on Saturday. Gilbert had to bridge across to the front group, 2 times, the second time taking him almost 6KM to do it, but he made the split of the elite of the front of the group. The man showing lots of fight started attacking again about 10KM from the finish, and tried, and tried again, until finally, it stuck for him, and he rode off on his own. Eventually he soloed across the line with about 40 seconds in his pocket to take the win easily (well, easy at the end of it), and pocketed his best win of his young career so far. He is Walloonian though, so only half of Belgium will be celebrating this win, the French half that is. An old favorite of mine, Leon van Bon took the third place finish, with the podium being rounded out by Bert de Waele taking second. Overall, a damn fine race to start off the season.

Race number 2 this weekend is KBK, won last year by none other than George "I need a sandwich" Hincapie. He wasn't there to defend his win of last year, although from the looks of the strength of the Disco team, he would have had a very good chance to take it had he been there, but I think George is going to concentrate on le Tour this year, mark my words. He might race a few select Spring races such as Paris Roubaix (especially after coming so close last year), but he's going to ride the Tour to win, and I actually think that he can win it. I do believe a lot of people would be surprised, but then again, when Armstrong decided he could win the Tour, nobody thought he could do it either, and they considered 1999 a fluke, and 2000 a fluke when he won again, but then he kept on winning. I think July is going to be interesting this year. Hincapie's TT ability has come a long way, and he seems to have gotten faster in the time trials, and he has been getting better at climbing year after year, and in the past, he's had to work his ass off for Lance during the flat stages, and on the hillier stages. Yet, he was still hanging tough on some of the harder mountain stages of the Tour, especially last year when he took the win on top of Plat de Tet (spelling??). I think it's going to be interesting to see what shakes loose. Look for Hincapie to be co-leader with Popovych for Dicso's Tour hopes this year in July. Anyway, KBK. Ah, another great early season race today. Essentially with about 25-30KM to go in the race today, the attacks started, and then the counters, and then the speed got jacked up really high. At the end of the kicking of each other in the teeth, we had 11 guys in the front of the peloton by about 15 seconds, and that's all that elite group needed, as the rest of the race behind them got blown apart, and disorganized at that point in time. The make up of the final group was: Tom Boonen, Kevin Van Impe, Nick Nuyens (Quick.Step), Folkert de Haan (Ubbink), Jurgen van den Broeck (Discovery), Johan Coenen, Matthe Pronk (Unibet), Nico Mattan, Gert Steegmans (Davitamon), Niko Eeckhout (Jacques) and they were actually all working it together fairly efficiently. Coming into the finishing circuits, it looked like Boonen might get the win as he had a couple of teammates with him towards the end of the race, but.. There is always a but. Nuyens attacked the rest of the group, and got a small gap, and then he just put his head down, and went as hard as he could and maintained the gap to the finish. Nuyens took the win in a great solo effort to get across the line first. Leif Hoste from Disco took second, which is a great result, with Tom Boonen taking it across the line for 3rd.

In another race weekend debut, it was also the first weekend of the annual Greenville Spring Training series, which for the past 4 or 5 years has been the de facto Souteastern season opener. For the first time in about 5 years, I wasn't there. A combination of no training, and well, no training and or riding. Actually, as I write this entry, I should be out, training, but I digress. In getting the low down about the race weekend, it appears that as much as things change, they still stay the same. The Hincapie juggernaut keeps on rolling in the pro 1-2 ranks of the Southeast, as they made up almost half of the break yesterday. 10 man break, 4 Hincapie riders. Of course, only one of the Hincapie riders was doing any work at all, along with the other 4 or 5 guys that were in the break, but within said break, namely, Scottie Weiss and Geri Mewitt were sitting on doing, well, nothing, until it was towards the end of the race, at which time, they started taking turns attacking the break to try and bust it up. Of course, they being of the fresh legged sort of people, and the rest of the folks being of the not so fresh legged folks, they were successful in breaking up the break, and taking the top spots on the day. As I said, as things change, they remain the same. The Hincapie team is all by themselves in making racing in the Southeastern region of the US, not fun. By not fun, they race negatively, and frankly, for a small region, they have way too many riders on the team. Seriously, last year, at some of the races I lined up at, they had 15 or 16 riders starting a race. 16!! I know there isn't any limit as to how many folks you can kit out in your gear, and throw them on the start line, but it's getting ridiculous folks. Plain old silly and ridiculous. Of course, they take wins in races all the time, so that's good for them, and good for their team, but I don't think it's good for the sport in the Southeast. It makes people NOT want to go to races, because we essentially already know more or less what the outcome is going to be, and while we can try and do something about it, in a case like mine where you're outnumbered 16 to 1, there ain't much that you can do. As for the rest of the teams in the region, nobody else approaches the size of the Hincapie team, so even the larger teams tend to not be able to do anything about their dominance. When you've got 16 people lining up for a race, you can send guys on the attack from the opening gun to the last lap, and still have reserve riders waiting in the back. Like I said though, unfortunately, there isn't really anything we can do about it in the Southeast, except try and beat them.