On the friday before Omloop Het Nieuwsblad I unpacked a line of cookware that we are about to start selling. When I read on the boxes they were made in Herentals I just looked at them in slackjawed amazement thinking “Weeow dude! Destiny”

I love the Emperor, he must have been such an absolute ass. Even his teammates seem to find it hard to say something really positive about him, apart from his qualities as a racer of course.

now if someone won all three grand tours that would be the most impressive thing, but very few favourites ride all three, let alone have a shot at winning. (Carlos is the most recent that springs to mind, although in the Giro he was waaaay down the leaderboard after helping Birillo)

To me Flanders week is the greatest 7 days of cycling, for so many reasons that we will start listing in 2 weeks.

I was going to say something about Rebellin in the comments section, but then you talked about him. I basically agree with you, if only because you have 2 monuments in the Flanders-Roubaix week. But man, Rebillin’s feat (like van Looy’s) is simply superhuman to me.

About the poll: I don’t really know if you can compare winning several one-day races to winning a tour, since, like you said, the one-day races depend so much on luck. I mean, you can win a tour without winning a single stage. If you’re the strongest guy with the strongest, you’re simply going to win, no matter what – (well OK that’s a bit simplistic but I think it’s basically true) – the fact that there are 3 weeks means that a lot of the luck stuff is going to get ironed out somehow. I almost think that the only way to make a comparison here would be to have a cumulative time for all the classics…so that it wouldn’t matter if, say, you flatted with 2km to go in Flanders.

Anyways I’m someone who has always looked at Rebellin’s feat in the Ardennes as being equal to Armstrong’s 7 straight tours…but I guess that’s just me. ;)

Thanks for this one, Chris. I don’t think van Looy gets proper credit for his 1962. achievement. Maybe that’s got something to do with how `liked’ he was in the peloton…

Just to add one more reason to consider a cobbled classics treble a greater feat than a dominant Tour win – sometimes, all it takes to win in a Tour (even in a dominant fashion, at least based on time margins) is for the main opponent to have a jour sans on an important stage. Naturally, one still needs great strength and endurance to pull off the GC victory, but from that point on, it’s all about riding conservatively and controlling the race day-to-day. If the rival is already beaten, another emphatic stage win over him could bury him completely, even though it’s not necessary for the GC victory, thus creating a clearly dominant Tour victory. I guess we’ve seen that happen to Ullrich most recently. Another example could be Thevenet’s first Tour win when Merckx bonked in the Alps (if I’m not mistaken).

On the other hand, van Looy had to wake up on three mornings in eight days and face the field of 100+ riders fired up to win on the day, and with (more or less) equal chances of winning, given all the different ways things can go wrong on those tricky stones. He had to be lucky, no doubt, but he also had to be clearly the strongest one out there. And if one of his rivals had a bad day in Ronde, for example, he could’ve been back and firing on all cylinders by the time they reached Roubaix Velodrome.

On a side note, van Looy had to dig deep at least in Paris-Roubaix that year. He beat Emile Daems who’d just won Milan-San Remo and who went on to beat van Looy in Paris-Roubaix next year. Competition was there and it was strong, for sure.

Van Looy was lucky that he didn’t break a wheel, puncture at the wrong time, get crashed out by someone else (skill involved too), or get hit by a team car. I find that to be the most amazing part.