Most of my VDS team made the CN notes, and not for anything I should be happy about. There's also one last Flemish semi-classic before the Pro Tour moves to the Ardennes and Limburg for the hilly half of April's great races.
- Big news on the road in Europe is tomorrow's 100th anniversary running of the Scheldeprijs Vlaanderen. Quick Step owned the race last year, with seven guys in the top 22, and signing Steegmans means they now own all of last year's podium. However, VN reports Boonen is out sick, which sucks since it's in his home region of Antwerp/Kempen. Past winners include going concerns Robbie McEwen, Peter Van Petegem and Erik Zabel -- all of whom will be back Wednesday. It's a sprinter's race, as evidenced by other winners like Mario Cipollini and Jeroen Blijlevens. The official site is hard to deal with, but the basics is that they run around the Schelde area for a while before three 17-km circuits around Antwerp. From the start list, Lotto (McEwen, Hoste, Steels, etc.) and Quick Step (Steegmans, PVP, DeJongh, etc.) will fling their weight at each other one last time, but don't forget Zabel, Baden Cooke, Graeme Brown, the T-Mob sprinters, Roberto Petito, and others.
- Also, tomorrow is the Giro d'Abruzzo, a race near and dear to my ancestry. Not that I can find any information about it... but I'm sure it kicks ass, since there's no more than 10km of flat spots in the entire region.
- CyclingFans has a short explanation on yesterday's problems with the Adobe live coverage at the Tour de Georgia. I'm hearing Race Radio now but no video at the moment.
- In the CN post_Paris-Roubaix Notes, my VDS team shows Nuyens having breathing problems (punishable by a trip to the Cauberg), Bernhardt Eisel suffering from uncontrollable falling down, and Damiano Cunego off doing Giro recon, as opposed to anything that will win me some points.
- Is Dirk Demol coming undone? Here's his dressing down of his charges after P-R:
"[Stijn Devolder] began his race 180 kilometres too late," said Demol to Sporza. "During the pre-race meeting we clearly said that one of the three leaders (Devolder, Vladimir Gusev and Tomas Vaitkus) would go with an early move. All three missed the train. I find that difficult to accept."
Did anyone make it through the criticism of Devolder failing to attack in the first 100km without laughing?
- One last Paris-Roubaix roundup before we bid Hell adieu: Stuey Speaks, while Pez ogles the hardware.