De Ronde .......35k to go

[azrider]

https://inthebunch.co.za/live-stream/live-stream-tour-of-flanders/

[azrider]

How can you NOT be a MVDB fan ?? Such a stud

[berserk87]

I keep getting "this video has been blocked by the copyright owner's request" messages. Either on the link above or Tizcycling.com.

[oldpotatoe]

I keep getting "this video has been blocked by the copyright owner's request" messages. Either on the link above or Tizcycling.com.

refresh...might take a couple of times..close website, wait a few, restart..worked for me. Tiz

[Jaybee]

If this dude wins, he owes his other teammate a double share of the prize money.

[azrider]

I keep getting "this video has been blocked by the copyright owner's request" messages. Either on the link above or Tizcycling.com.

refresh...might take a couple of times..close website, wait a few, restart..worked for me. Tiz

yeah i was getting same thing in beginning........closed all my other browsers and it's been fine since.....

[azrider]

If this dude wins, he owes his other teammate a double share of the prize money.

No doubt....that huge surge his team put on the Paterberg was huge

Dude anyone know what Cannondale bike he's riding?

[Chris]

Those guys should have to ride home. Weakest chase ever. A group of champions and they are too worried about each other to not close 12 seconds.

And there’s no way I’m buying that a guy can crash, sit and think that he broke his collarbone, finally start riding while shaking out the shoulder, then bridge through three groups in the last 40k and catch the main group where high level guys are getting popped from the group. Check the bike then the pee...

[rain dogs]

Pretty entertaining race. Amazing ride by Bettiol, MVDP, and pretty impressive first Flanders for Valverde.

However, I really can't wait for the post race comments from Lefevere.

I'm sure he'll be complaining about how nobody pulls at the end of the race when his 3 guys out of 16 rode coattails until it was over and then raced for second.:rolleyes:

Any of the teams, especially the Belgian teams, who had two or more riders in that final group and made Van Avermaet do all the work, should be ashamed.

cough... Quickstep, Lotto Soudal cough

[Jaybee]

Those guys should have to ride home. Weakest chase ever. A group of champions and they are too worried about each other to not close 12 seconds.

And there’s no way I’m buying that a guy can crash, sit and think that he broke his collarbone, finally start riding while shaking out the shoulder, then bridge through three groups in the last 40k and catch the main group where high level guys are getting popped from the group. Check the bike then the pee...

I can understand the feeling of helplessness if you’re in that group and not named Sagan, Kristoff or Matthews. Drag any one of those three with you and your fighting for second at best. A few guys made bids and Langeveld taught a master class in disrupting a chase.

[rain dogs]

I can understand the feeling of helplessness if you’re in that group and not named Sagan, Kristoff or Matthews. Drag any one of those three with you and your fighting for second at best. A few guys made bids and Langeveld taught a master class in disrupting a chase.

Quickstep had three guys. They could have worked to pull back Bettiol and then tried to sneak off the front for a chance at the win.

They didn't do any work and snuck off for second. You race for second, you're truly fighting for second at best. It's especially disgusting considering the BS that comes out of Lefevere's mouth criticizing that kind of thing.

[Jaybee]

Quickstep had three guys. They could have worked to pull back Bettiol and then tried to sneak off the front for a chance at the win.

They didn't do any work and snuck off for second. You race for second, you're truly fighting for second at best. It's especially disgusting considering the BS that comes out of Lefevere's mouth criticizing that kind of thing.

This is fair, as is the criticism of Lotto.

I’m actually surprised that QS didn’t do better, given that they’ve been so aggressive and successful so far this spring.

[Mzilliox]

this ending was really weird. nice race though, well done to team EF, they had some fighters up front the whole race.

[gavingould]

turned out kind of weird for all the firepower in that chase.
Wild ride for MvdPoel, Wout van Aert also looked pretty good at points, Stybar struggled later, surprisingly.

very well played by EF with Sep van Marcke dropping back from the break.

i'm still amazed by van der Poel, i've followed him pretty closely since his junior CX world champ win in Louisville in 2013. thought he was cooked with that broken steerer and hard over-the-bars before the second time up the Kwaremont.

van Aert was without teammates from what, at least 50km to go? looked good on the climbs but even so, had no answer for van der Poel.

[Elefantino]

EF jerseys still look like a pink load was washed with a blue load on hot.

[echappist]

Those guys should have to ride home. Weakest chase ever. A group of champions and they are too worried about each other to not close 12 seconds.

And there’s no way I’m buying that a guy can crash, sit and think that he broke his collarbone, finally start riding while shaking out the shoulder, then bridge through three groups in the last 40k and catch the main group where high level guys are getting popped from the group. Check the bike then the pee...

they close it down, and the likes of Matthews and Kristoff take all of them to the cleaners. To most of these guys, it makes no difference if they finish on the podium or 8th. So why bother?

as for M vdP, there might be alternative explanations here. This is the least selective the race has been in a very long time. 15+ gunning for second place and more than 50 or so before the Kruisburg suggest a relatively slow pace by the front group.

[Drmojo]

Marta won the women’s race too!
Rome will rock tonight!

[fignon's barber]

Dude anyone know what Cannondale bike he's riding?


I could have sworn he was riding a Pavaix.

[MattTuck]

I'm pretty excited for EF. That team hasn't won a big one day race since Garmin-Sharp days, 2014 Dan Martin won Il Lombardia. And truth be told, they've looked pretty ragged (though not as ragged as Trek) over the last few seasons.

Also, just nice to see someone beat QuickStep. :banana:

Also, nice that an Italian came and stole the show from the Belgians.

Was very surprised to see Sep Vanmarcke at the front with only 20km left. and he only finished 2 minutes down. I thought his knee was going to keep him out, so this is pretty great ride from him.

Also, needs to be pointed out that Valverde finished in the bunch. Pretty good ride from the old man. Would have been interesting to see how he'd have done in a more selective/brutal edition.

[ultraman6970]

U need team for those races and Valverde from the little I saw was alone from the start, The spanish team is not for the classics, never been. IMO Valverde went stayed there just waiting like sagan, the issue is that EF did a super good race, never alone, they always had somebody to play their cards.

If you look the bunch everybody was alone so, if they needed to go they needed to go solo because as a group, it was way too big to do rotations to catch the italian. So they pretty much sat. With a smaller bunch like 4 riders they could have organized something but over that number impossible, the guys sit there waiting.

Sagan did not have the legs, valverde played his cards and did not work because in a small bunch of 5 or 4 something totally different could have happen IMO. 1st a catch and then a nice valverde type of sprint or maybe an attack. Who knows, good for the spaniard.

P-R is going to rock this year.

[berserk87]

EF rode a nice race, tactically speaking. They had a Van Marck in the most promising break of the day. They also had a dude in the field of contenders covering attacks when Bettiol was up the road.

Thanks for the advice on the up-and-down live feed. I tried refreshing the page several times but no dice.

I ended up hopping feeds to 2 others before they went down. Switched browsers and went back to Tiz Cycling for the last 20 or so and it worked fine until the end.

[Totalinsanity]

I paid the $120 for the year for Flo Bikes and have enjoyed not only the race coverage but their commentary as well.
Also love that Education First pulled this one off. Started enjoying the squad when they employed Sagan. The boys in pink are hopefully going to gain momentum now that they taste blood.
Vand er pol is certainly a star of the future.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G935A using Tapatalk

[chiasticon]

And there’s no way I’m buying that a guy can crash, sit and think that he broke his collarbone, finally start riding while shaking out the shoulder, then bridge through three groups in the last 40k and catch the main group where high level guys are getting popped from the group. Check the bike then the pee...with the number of races the guy wins, they check both very frequently. and likely yesterday was no different. so he's either found a great way to hide what he's doing, or he's not doing anything. same as any other rider, really.

[sailorboy]

the only thing I'd be checking is the construction of that front wheel. Couldn't tell from the slo mo footage before MVDP crashed if someone got into his front wheel but that small bunny hop he did over a curb or something moments before his front wheel disintegrated shouldn't have caused a catastrophic wheel failure like that.

[Morgul Bismark]

I'm pretty excited for EF. That team hasn't won a big one day race since Garmin-Sharp days, 2014 Dan Martin won Il Lombardia. And truth be told, they've looked pretty ragged (though not as ragged as Trek) over the last few seasons.

Also, just nice to see someone beat QuickStep. :banana:

Also, nice that an Italian came and stole the show from the Belgians.


Same could be said in the WWT about Team Virtu coming out of the darkness this year with Bastianelli. Also, just nice to see someone beat Boels.

[weisan]

the only thing I'd be checking is the construction of that front wheel. Couldn't tell from the slo mo footage before MVDP crashed if someone got into his front wheel but that small bunny hop he did over a curb or something moments before his front wheel disintegrated shouldn't have caused a catastrophic wheel failure like that.

Saw a closeup video of what happened, the bunny hop did not actually clear the curb but hit it straight on at speed and with full force.

[chiasticon]

Saw a closeup video of what happened, the bunny hop did not actually clear the curb but hit it straight on at speed and with full force.I haven't seen a closeup video. would be interesting.

according to him: “I wanted to avoid a flower box just before my fall, but I jumped into the flower box and immediately broke my wheel,” Van der Poel told Sporza. “Then, I hit a small hole in the sidewalk, my wheel broke completely, and I went over. That hurt a little."

my main thought when watching it was that he should've come to a stop or at least made sure he had control of the bike before throwing his hand up. generally when you lose the front wheel, it's best to keep both hands on the bars. but...the man is a wizard with controlling bikes, so he likely thought he had it.

[doubleklobbs]

If this dude wins, he owes his other teammate a double share of the prize money.

That's actually how it works. All prize money is taken by the team and distributed to most of the organization. Obviously the winner themselves get a bigger share, and they sometimes also have other cash bonuses in their contract.

But in Bettiol's case, winning today doubled his next contract value which is way more lucrative than the purse money from winning the Ronde.

-edit- Oops I misread your comment. I'll leave the above anyway.

[nooneline]

If you look the bunch everybody was alone so, if they needed to go they needed to go solo because as a group, it was way too big to do rotations to catch the italian. So they pretty much sat. With a smaller bunch like 4 riders they could have organized something but over that number impossible, the guys sit there waiting.

yup. we have the conventional wisdom that it's faster to be among a group than to be alone; there are times in bike races when that's not the case, and i hear that it helps to have covered some 260km first.

bike racing is about being strong enough to make the smart moves - bettiol recognized the possibility and went for it, and sure enough it was faster to be along than to be in a very equally-matched favorites group after the paterberg.

[ultraman6970]

Well... to me after looking at the last 20km of the race again, you can tell that bettiol put an attack that was in their race plan. Something calculated, and the team took their chances with that attack. No idea who else from the team was sucking wheels from the start, need to check the whole race to notice this because there's a chance they were waiting for a 1-2 punch or just have another guy fresh for the sprint in case bettiol was catched, we wont know...

As for races, I been in solo effords in races and evethought you suffer a lot sometimes is easier to go solo than going in the group, specially in groups like the one with the main contenders, nobody will pull... heck i been in stuff like that in the track that is even worse. In the road the attacks are measured more because the guys arent super explosive and they are cautious of who you can go with, but the salad of attacks and changes in the pace really sucks more than going alone. At those levels when you go alone you pretty much go zombie mode till the end, at least is an even pace which is a lot easier than coping with the attacks of several guys.

I was looking at the race and if you notice nobody was able to do 3 attacks in a row, nobody can do 3 in a row (i knew a couple of guys that were able to), guys did like 1 then sat, sagan did just one and sat... velverde just one aswell... that tells you how hard the race was.

[Totalinsanity]

Well... to me after looking at the last 20km of the race again, you can tell that bettiol put an attack that was in their race plan. Something calculated, and the team took their chances with that attack. No idea who else from the team was sucking wheels from the start, need to check the whole race to notice this because there's a chance they were waiting for a 1-2 punch or just have another guy fresh for the sprint in case bettiol was catched, we wont know...



As for races, I been in solo effords in races and evethought you suffer a lot sometimes is easier to go solo than going in the group, specially in groups like the one with the main contenders, nobody will pull... heck i been in stuff like that in the track that is even worse. In the road the attacks are measured more because the guys arent super explosive and they are cautious of who you can go with, but the salad of attacks and changes in the pace really sucks more than going alone. At those levels when you go alone you pretty much go zombie mode till the end, at least is an even pace which is a lot easier than coping with the attacks of several guys.



I was looking at the race and if you notice nobody was able to do 3 attacks in a row, nobody can do 3 in a row (i knew a couple of guys that were able to), guys did like 1 then sat, sagan did just one and sat... velverde just one aswell... that tells you how hard the race was.Same situation kinda happened last year when no one wanted or could contribute to dragging a group to the line. These long one day races have a much different dynamic than stage racing....

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G935A using Tapatalk

[MattTuck]

GVA throwing some shade...

In a post-race interview with Sporza, Van Avermaet — Bettiol’s teammate at BMC Racing last year — expressed surprise that the Italian had won. “I know him a bit,” he said. “He was a great talent, but also a bit lazy. Last year he was too fat. Now he may have made that click and he will finally do everything for [the sport].”

[Chris]

GVA throwing some shade...

Vaughter’s says as much in the latest CyclingTips podcast.