« Overtired | Main | 21:36/141 »
April 09, 2006
Paris and Paris-Roubaix
Didn't watch any of the Paris Marathon this morning. Looks like Gashaw Melese won in 2:08:03.
Watched the last 50 km of Paris-Roubaix. France 2 was having trouble with the cameras. Fabien Cancellara won, breaking away less than 20 km before the end. He rode for a bit over 6:07, including the rough paved sections, at 42.24 kph on average into headwinds much of the way. He could not speak to the reporters when he finished. Looked like he was having a heart attack or something.
Tom Boonen seems to have run out of gas around the last attack. The announcers thought one of the reasons nobody went after Cancellara right away is because they were waiting to ride in Boonen's wake.
The rough paved sections are truly rough. Hincapie went down and seems to have fractured his collarbone or something. He didn't get a flat. His handlebars broke.
UPDATE: Looks like Tom Boonen got second place, although he finished fifth! Three guys got disqualified in the end for crossing train tracks when the bars were lowered. That's against the law and against race rules. You're allowed to kill yourself in a crash but not by potentially getting hit by a train.
Cancellara's lucky too. What if the train had been 30 seconds faster and he'd've been disqualified?
The only reason Boonen and the guys he was with stopped is because the train was literally going through the intersection when they arrived.
Posted by Mark at April 9, 2006 05:10 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://mcraig.org/movabletype/mt-tb.cgi/1534
Comments
A train in the middle of a race. On the one hand, I think that's poor organization to have this random event have such an impact when it could've been planned for (different route, different time). On the other hand, I have to suppose the riders knew of the "obstacles" and dealing with the unknown just makes it more real, which is what the Paris-Roubaix is all about. In a way, the train gave the leader a bonus: his extra effort to get by before it paid off as a time penalty to the others. I just wonder if it was purely random or he (or his handlers) were able to plan it when they became aware of the train.
I've often thought that all sorts of races would be more real if they weren't on closed circuits. Yes, I realize that racing is all about man (and machine) against the distance or the physical terrain. But when driving or biking, you know that getting somewhere fast is almost more exciting when you have a to deal with traffic. That frustration (and skill to anticipate and deal with it) is missing from real races. Maybe the inherent dangers of racing on public streets could be mitigated with onboard cameras and sanctions for violations.
Posted by: Andy at April 11, 2006 01:05 AM