Echelons

Since Dan is tired I will have a go at yesterday's stage.  It was a hummer, and just shows you how unpredictable a stage can be.  And it also demonstrates that once the echelons form, not even the best riders in the world can close the gap.   Unfortunate for Movistar to now be out of GC contention, as that would really have been a good alliance with Saxo to have more GC contenders to go up the road and force SKY to chase.  But Belkin rode very strong also yesterday, and they can also help dislodge SKY from the Jersey as they have good GC position.  And Quintana is not so far down on GC that he would be allowed to go up the road without some attention from SKY.  So it should really be a great weekend.

Before yesterday, I was thinking that the Giro was taking it's toll on Cav.  Didn't seem like he had the jets on when Kittel came off his wheel and beat him by half a wheel, but yesterday proved that he was still very much on his game.  Even though he and Sagan didn't get their noses in the wind, it's still extremely hard riding to stay in the front echelon and take a minute out of the guys behind you......so for sure, hat's off to Cav and Sagan for getting into the front group when they did.

Now for just a little home brew, I was able to do one of the routes of the Ronde van Vlaandaren on Thursday.  The Ronde van Vlaandaren museum is in Oudenwarde (where it used to finish and still should).  Freddy Maertens is kind of the boss of the museum, and Manu (my Belgian 'training partner') knows him, so we hung out with him!  He won 5 stages in the 1981 TdF …….and 2 x world champions……and heaps of other races (look him up on Wiki)…..an all rounder that could get over the cols and still win a sprint.  He was an amazing rider.  A very controversial finish in Barcelona at the World Championships when he was supposed to lead out Eddy, but it all went wrong and the slowest sprinter in the break, Felice Gimondi, ended up winning.

We ran out of time to go to the museum, but someday I will be back. There are 3 rides you can do from the Museum: Yellow is 100km, Blue is 120km and has most of the famous "hellingen" on the route, and red is 140km.  If you eventually ride all three, you will have done all 16 hellingen (or muurs) of the Tour of Flanders.  The cobbled climbs are  very hard if you have to race up them, but not bad at my pace, but I found riding a 2km section of slight uphill on the cobblestones, trying to hold Manu's wheel was the hardest for me…..after about 500m you are cooked, and once you lose a wheel, you just can't get back on it, because standing up is impossible.  Some of the cobblestones are as bad as Paris Roubaix (according to Freddy) and going down them????? Wow!

OK, fasten your seat belts, as today could be as unpredictable as yesterday, and then we have two big days.  The Ventoux is an extremely hard climb, but the only climb of the stage, so I would expect Froome to rally his troops and you will see them setting a high pace from the start of the climb to limit anyone's ability to dance away.  The next stage will be a different story.  Thanks for reading......