1Q 2011 Surprises & Disappointments?

[boomcie]

Surprises:

- Boonen taking Wevelgem (this was surprising for many reasons, anyone predicting this win before the start of the season was a ****ing looney)
- Gesink's TT
- Van Avermaet doing well
- Milano-Sanremo
- Garmin sucking

Disappointments:

- Cancellara at E3 (dear God)
- Rabo being topnotch
- Vanmarcke's injury at the beginning of the season
- Contador farce
- Gilbert not taking Sanremo

 

[Roland Rat]

Surprises:

Goss's improvement
Swift winning in Australia
Garmin being truly sh1te in the classics so far
Agreeing wholeheartedly with Fat Pat's open letter
Cummings winning/Stannard going for it/Sky's overall attacking nature in the spring one-dayers
Team Leopard being even more up their own backsides than I ever imagined
Thomas de Gendt


Disappointments

Swift missing the early semi-classics
Wiggins half-a55ed attitude even when team leader
GB not showing respect to the non-olympic events at the Track Worlds
Vaughters
Voigt
The whole race radio farce and any cyclist and/or DS who whinged and cried about the radio ban and treated fans as though they are stupid
My own form so far this season

 

[Jan the Man]

Team Sky (one day races)/Geraint Thomas
Androni and in particular Serpa.
MSR



disappointments:
P-N
Garmin


thats all i can think of for now

 

[TeoSheva]

Surprises

* The young sprinters: Galimzayyyyo , Matthews, Guardini, Degenkolb
* EBH second in a mountain stage in Oman
* Gesink in the Oman's TT
* Martin's performance in mountain stages
* Goss so strong!
* Serpa so consistent! (and all Androni team!)
* Offredo


Disappointments

* Rogers doing nothing
* JRO doing nothing
* Chicchi
* Contador sub-judice

 

[joy118118]

I am not surprised about Westra and Poels. they did quite well last year and I believe Vac is eager to show themselves as a new ProTour team but dont want to hype themselves like Sky.

 

[More Strides than Rides]

Surprised:
Radioshack's diversification/departure from its origins
No Cadel post-rainbow blues
and a lot of what else has been said: Gesink, Goss, Kloden sprinting...
also, a little bit of the seeming excitement stemming from radio-less races


Disappointed in Haussler; I don't want to single him out, but nothing else stands out to me right now.

 

[Francois the Postman]

The 22 post long Maaskant squabble has been moved here:
http://forum.cyclingnews.com/showthread.php?t=12958

 

[Granville57]

Suprises:
That Thor and Tyler really did come together in devastating fashion for stage 2 of Tirreno-Adriatico.

Dissapointed:
That it hasn't happened again.

Also: Not knowing who the hell is in the crash/break/sprint due to the lack of contrast in team kits.

 

[L'arriviste]

The 22 post long Maaskant squabble has been moved here:
http://forum.cyclingnews.com/showthread.php?t=12958

I respectfully object to being made the starter of that thread. I never even mentioned Maaskant and I stayed on topic!