Cycling News

29 April 2008

For the past 10 days I’ve been up in Belgium and Holland tackling 3 of the hardest and most prestigious one day races on the calendar. I was very focused going into the week as a result in these three races was my first objective for the season. After claiming the second stage of Criterium International a couple of weeks ago, I was feeling confident of my form and was hoping to achieve some good results.
 
Amstel Gold is probably my favourite one day race of the season. Amstel has 31 catergorised climbs and is know as the race of 1000 corners (there’s not that many). I really enjoy racing over this sort of course, and there’s always a huge crowd of really enthusiastic (and really drunk) spectators creating a great atmosphere. So I was super motivated. I started the day with the full support of my team who did a good job looking after me for as long as possible. With 25km left to race the peloton was down to around 40 riders, then with 15km to go the front group broke up. I just missed the front split of 9 riders ending up in a chasing group of 10 guys, we arrived 45 seconds behind the winner, I finished in 12th place.

At la Fleche Wallonne my day wasn’t as good. My plan for the race was to do as little as possible and save as much energy as I could for the final ascension of the Mur de Huy to the finish line. The first 150km of the race went pretty well. I managed to stay quietly in the group without wasting too much energy, but as the pace started to speed up and the peloton was breaking up, I hit a pot hole and broke my back wheel. With my wheel rubbing against the break I watched the front group disappear, then the 2nd group, the 3rd group and the 4th, until I was finally caught by the convoy and given a new rear wheel by neutral spares. I knew my day was over. A couple of my team mates dropped back to try and help me catch back up to what was left of the main group, so we chased for a little before calling it a day. I was pretty disappointed, but hey, that’s racing.

The last race of the week was Liege Bastonge Liege. Liege is probably the hardest one day race on the calendar with 261km of nothing but climbing and descending. My two former attempts haven’t left me with great memories, as I’d never made it past the 2nd feed station at the 200km mark. So as you could expect my expectations at Liege weren’t super high, however my form has been good so I was thinking things could only get better from my last attempts. Like the past two races I spent the first part of the race conserving as much energy as possible, I had Nico Roche by my side every pedal stroke of the way keeping me protected from the wind and out of trouble. Things were going well, I was right up there and with the best guys as I collected my feed bag for the 2nd time, then things really heated up. As we hit the Cote de La Redoute with 35km to go, the favourites started attacking, I managed to hanging in there. Then with 20km to go when we climbed the Cote de Roche aux Faucons what was left of the peloton exploded, I ended back in the 2nd group with which I rode to the finish. I was happy I finally made it from Liege to Bastogne and all the way back to Liege again. Next year I’ll be back with much higher ambitions.
 
Simon.

Print