We're already halfway the season so a lot of big and important races are already done. We saw some dominance of the American/Axeon boys with stunning performances from the 18 year old Adrien Costa (1997) in the Ronde van Vlaanderen and in France, from Neilson Powless (1996) on his home grounds (what a ride he did in California) and from Logan Owen (1995) who won L-B-L this year. In the same L-B-L we saw Brit James Shaw (1996, LTS) showing his potential for one of the first times in his u23 career and a new upcoming Russian star, Pavel Sivakov (1997, BMC). He came second which is pretty impressive (but not surprising after his junior wins) for someone who is in his first year as a u23 rider. Sivakov was ready to take over the cobbles in Roubaix too, but he was stopped by a puncture in the final kilometers. That Paris-Roubaix was finally won by Filippo Ganna (1996) after an impressive solo. He will be a neo-pro next year as he signed for Lampre. The ZLM Roompot Tour was dominated by the Norwegians and the first real tests in the French mountains by Lennard Hofstede (1994, Rabo) and Bjorg Lambrecht (1997, LTS). Ofcourse, I'm forgetting a lot of interesting results so feel free to fill in. As you can see I'm following the European races in particular. I don't know a lot about the upcoming South American guys.

