Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne, 27 Feb 2011

[true legend]

Anyone know who the nonstarter was?

 

[taiwan]

Anyone know who the nonstarter was?

Joost Posthuma.

 

[blaxland]

Well done Sutto good to see him winning races again....Nice team work done by Team SKY....

 

[Ryo Hazuki]

incredible how professional announcers think it was stannard when stannard is 189 and 81 kg and the guy winning tyhe sprint was clearly smaller in every way then boasson hagen.

 

[Anonymous]

incredible how professional announcers think it was stannard when stannard is 189 and 81 kg and the guy winning tyhe sprint was clearly smaller in every way then boasson hagen.

Id like to see you call it when its not one of the top two riders on the team. Stannard was an educated guess as he is one of the riders they would have heard of. Ive seen worse mistakes in rider indentification.

its easy for us to say after the event

 

[ingsve]

incredible how professional announcers think it was stannard when stannard is 189 and 81 kg and the guy winning tyhe sprint was clearly smaller in every way then boasson hagen.

Well, it was probably because Stannard was 3rd last year and when you guess at a name of someone you don't recognize then that name would probably be first at hand. I can imagine that they didn't even know that Sutton was really in the race before they looked at a start list after the finish. That's simply my guess though.

 

[pedaling squares]

Hell I had a hard enough time spotting Garmin riders from Sky riders, never mind knowing it was Sutton. Which I did not. Great weekend for Sky. Garmin should reverse their main colours for the sake of those of us with failing eyes. Ok neither one is a colour but you know what I mean.

 

[Ryo Hazuki]

Id like to see you call it when its not one of the top two riders on the team. Stannard was an educated guess as he is one of the riders they would have heard of. Ive seen worse mistakes in rider indentification.

its easy for us to say after the event

I immediately saw that it wasn't garmin or stannard or bh. excuse me but as an announcer it is your job to know riders. the guy came over the line with freakin huge sky over his chest when an announcer is then screaming farrar like on dutch tv he can't be taken serious anymore and like I said sutton and stannard couldn't be more dissimilar. sutton was only logical choice.

 

[NickBVK]

Awesome stuff, good to see. CJ's from my club so a big win and nice guy.

Hand up for the tour team perhaps???

^ Definitely putting name forward for Worlds

 

[auscyclefan94]

By my reckoning, you must have had less that 5hrs sleep. Hardcore!

Actually 4 hours. But I had a little nap before I turned the computer on. I am a Very hardcore BMC and cycling fan. Though I felt like a piece of **** this morning!

 

[Francois the Postman]

Damn it, my heart stopped when Michel Wuyts said Stannard had won.

LOL. Yeah, a shame that the expression on your face wasn't captured for prosperity. Maybe the commentators has read your post and decided to pull a fast one on you

[only one of many reasons why they should allow me anywhere near a mic.]

 

[L'arriviste]

incredible how professional announcers think it was stannard when stannard is 189 and 81 kg and the guy winning tyhe sprint was clearly smaller in every way then boasson hagen.

Crazy! Wuyts is normally spot on. I was watching it on RTBF (I get on easier with the French commentary and I like Cédric Vasseur's patter) and they were correct. "Et. C'est. Surrrton. Christophe Surrrton."

Seriously, Sky though. What a difference a year makes. A man in every break. Tactically tidy. A brilliant, dominating whole-team performance.

I think the image I'll be left with after this weekend is a sort of Greek-style purgatory, Devolder trying to chase back on, doomed to repeat the exercise in both races this weekend. Russell Downing on his wheel both times too.

 

[boomcie]

LOL. Yeah, a shame that the expression on your face wasn't captured for prosperity. Maybe the commentators has read your post and decided to pull a fast one on you

[only one of many reasons why they should allow me anywhere near a mic.]

Yeah, apparently everybody is visiting these boards...

 

[Parrulo]

Actually 4 hours. But I had a little nap before I turned the computer on. I am a Very hardcore BMC and cycling fan. Though I felt like a piece of **** this morning!

i sleep 4 hours everyday. after a while of sleeping that time every night you get used to it. but i am not a the kind of person that needs that much sleep so it may be just me.

btw your new not over obsessed ways are much more pleasant ACF <3

anyway i was watching the live stream and found hilarious the way they messed up the name at the end. but i understand thats its hard to do it in the rush of the moment.

paulo martins (one of the commentators from the portuguese eurosport) never ceases to amaze me when it comes to distinguish riders from their riding style, even less known guys, he has a clinical high for it.

 

[Jamsque]

I think the image I'll be left with after this weekend is a sort of Greek-style purgatory, Devolder trying to chase back on, doomed to repeat the exercise in both races this weekend. Russell Downing on his wheel both times too.

I do feel almost sorry for Devolder now, I'm starting to wonder if he'll ever live up to the expectations that were set for him after winning Flanders twice at such a young age.

It's probably too early to judge definitively but it seems like Vacansoleil made all the wrong transfers this past off-season.

 

[Tuarts]

Actually 4 hours. But I had a little nap before I turned the computer on. I am a Very hardcore BMC and cycling fan. Though I felt like a piece of **** this morning!

3 hours. Heat + Cycling was a killer.

 

[boomcie]

If it would make ACF feel any better: Van Avermaet said he felt really good throughout the weekend. On Saturday he decided to stay with Boonen and Gilbert. On Sunday he crashed before the "Oude Kwaremont" and had to wait for several minutes for a new bike. At least this is what he said. He was very disappointed.

 

[auscyclefan94]

i sleep 4 hours everyday. after a while of sleeping that time every night you get used to it. but i am not a the kind of person that needs that much sleep so it may be just me.

btw your new not over obsessed ways are much more pleasant ACF <3

anyway i was watching the live stream and found hilarious the way they messed up the name at the end. but i understand thats its hard to do it in the rush of the moment.

paulo martins (one of the commentators from the portuguese eurosport) never ceases to amaze me when it comes to distinguish riders from their riding style, even less known guys, he has a clinical high for it.

Thanks, Why don't you tell that to Dekker_Tifosi who randomly abuses me because I said I preffered KBK over Het Volk. Yet he won't EVER admit fault when he has done something wrong.

 

[auscyclefan94]

If it would make ACF feel any better: Van Avermaet said he felt really good throughout the weekend. On Saturday he decided to stay with Boonen and Gilbert. On Sunday he crashed before the "Oude Kwaremont" and had to wait for several minutes for a new bike. At least this is what he said. He was very disappointed.

Greg crashed twice yesterday. It was quite amazing that he got back into the peleton but he and some of the team worked well to chase hard and get him back into the group. Promising signs.

 

[Barrus]

I do feel almost sorry for Devolder now, I'm starting to wonder if he'll ever live up to the expectations that were set for him after winning Flanders twice at such a young age.

It's probably too early to judge definitively but it seems like Vacansoleil made all the wrong transfers this past off-season.

Well, Devolder was really unlucky, but did show great form in the manner in which he almost single handedly closed gaps both on saturday and on sunday (more succesful on sunday, but I think he looked stronger on saturday). So this could mean that he could really play an important role in the upcoming classics and that his statements that he did not feel that good prior to this weekend were perhaps a bit of an overstatement or could perhaps mean that he really will have a great season in store.

 

[L'arriviste]

I do feel almost sorry for Devolder now, I'm starting to wonder if he'll ever live up to the expectations that were set for him after winning Flanders twice at such a young age.

It's probably too early to judge definitively but it seems like Vacansoleil made all the wrong transfers this past off-season.

Thing is though: he isn't all bad really, if you strip away some of those ludicrious expectations you rightly mention. National champion three times over. Ronde twice. Tour of Belgium (not much abroad though, to be fair).

It's just that he's not a popular figure, mainly because he a) targeted one race a year and dragged his carcass around all the others in preparation for it or in a sort of near season-long winding-down funk, b) looked bad when he had to resort to a Plan B after failing to win his target race, c) had Lefevere bad-mouthing him every five minutes for about two seasons, and d) he's a fairly awkward figure in front of a microphone.

Others would love to have his palmarès, I'm sure. And it's a bit early to write him off - he just had a big dose of bad luck last weekend - but he's unlikely to win our hearts now just because he's donned a Vacansoleil jersey. He is, as I continue to believe, a dour, stolid and rather workmanlike rider, not easily fitting into one's expectations of a great champion.

 

[theyoungest]

I'm not a Devolder fan (are there many of those outside Belgium?) but to say he's a bad pickup for Vacans... he's not made their classics squad any weaker, that's for sure. And even if he fails he is Sporza's Voeckler, always gets airtime, which is only aided by having the three coloured jersey on his shoulders.

And like Barrus says, he seemed to be going fairly well. He just didn't have any luck.

 

[Armchair Cyclist]

None of the four disqualified riders are likely to have featured, and having worked with the families of kids killed by "misadventures" with trains, I can't condone taking risks with level crossing gates, but how is it that major races don't totally avoid these obstructions?

Suggestion to UCI: no race to be given .1 or higher staus if it includes level crossings without some agreement (probably v difficult to acheive) with the train operators that the race has priority.

 

[Barrus]

None of the four disqualified riders are likely to have featured, and having worked with the families of kids killed by "misadventures" with trains, I can't condone taking risks with level crossing gates, but how is it that major races don't totally avoid these obstructions?

Suggestion to UCI: no race to be given .1 or higher staus if it includes level crossings without some agreement (probably v difficult to acheive) with the train operators that the race has priority.

So no more Roubaix or RVV? In many regions it is impossible to do races without train crossings and getting the race to have priority is almost impossible

 

[Parrulo]

Thanks, Why don't you tell that to Dekker_Tifosi who randomly abuses me because I said I preffered KBK over Het Volk. Yet he won't EVER admit fault when he has done something wrong.

i quit discussing with D_T after he kept saying nibali was not a GT wining material even after he won the vuelta and that the only reason why he won the vuelta was cus the field was weak and he was lucky.

honestly het volk was a better race and the fact that people had high expectations for k-b-k after last year's edition didn't help

oh btw i like devolder i have watched last year's P-R a couple times and i noticed how he kept chasing back the entire race either cus of a puncture or a fall, not sure. but he did a good race. i think he may make it past the selection this year.