It's warming up for the Ardennes out there...
- First and foremost, as TC's and Sarah's diaries/Saul Raisin logs note, he's officially out of his coma (which, recall, was induced to facilitate healing). Progress! VeloNews has a longer piece.
- CyclingNews and VeloNews don't want to miss the web-video explosion across Cycling. CN is advertising a video highlights feature, and VN has its identical VNTV site up. [Can PodiumCafeTV be far off?] Only two concerns so far: 1) they only use ASO races (Paris-Nice, Paris-Roubaix, L-B-L...); and 2) they don't work. Update [2006-4-13 15:25:58 by chris]: Ok, they work, give it time to load.
- Don't miss Professor Wilcockson's rundown of the Ardennes Classics. VN is en fuego today...
- CN has another Tom Boonen interview, possibly the last for a spell while he goes off for vacation. Personally I can't get enough of these. He speaks his mind. And face it -- he owns the sport right now.
- Eurosport looks at Igor Astarloa's attempt to rebound from his world championship victory. They also note that bad boy Franck Vandenbroucke slouched off to Milan after crapping out of Flanders. VDB was once an Ardennes rider, even winning Liege-Bastogne-Liege after famously telling people ahead of time when he planned to attack.
- Cosmo has a good piece on the Flandrian Civil War, namely Quick-Step vs. Davitamon.
- Along similar lines, Pez's roundup checks in on the Flandrian transfer season, which apparently is subtly underway:
Recent reports have noted that Peter Van Petegem has been discussing a move over to the Quick.Step for next season, as De Peet's contract runs out at the end of 2006. PVP hasn't commented too openly on the rumours saying only that "There are a number of teams that are interested and it's going to be a difficult decision." Boonen didn't seem all too unhappy at the idea when asked about it, and it would definitely go along with Patrick Lefevere's scheming ways of forming an even better All-Star team of Classics specialists, why win only 90% of all of the Springtime races when you can win 100%? Right?
It wouldn't be too surprising to see PVP leave the team, as he has fallen under increasing fire from both the public and his team for being good, "only week of the year."
Davitamon-Lotto does have their keen little eyes on a former D-L rider: Leif Hoste. After Hoste's breakout rides two years ago at both Flanders and Roubaix, he was picked up in rapid order by Discovery, but now the Belgian squad would like to regain his services.