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Roubaix V Flanders

What is the better race: Flanders V Roubaix

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Anonymous

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Muddy conditions, or dry?

If dry both days, RvV. If wet both days, Roubaix for sure.
 
Mar 11, 2009
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TRDean said:
I like this answer...and it pretty well sums up my feelings too. Both are HUGE and outstanding for the fans!!

I don't want to take anything from Roubaix, but the night before Flanders I feel like a kid who has his birthday coming up :)
 
Jun 16, 2009
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ak-zaaf said:
I don't want to take anything from Roubaix, but the night before Flanders I feel like a kid who has his birthday coming up :)

i've only watched flanders live once before (because i never new about live feeds) but I found it a much more entertaining harder race. The uphill cobbled climbs entertain me more that just flat cobbled sections. Boonen just seems to ride them so easily and it feels like it's not a contest.

i have that feeling whenever evans races! :D
 
Mar 27, 2010
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auscyclefan94 said:
i've only watched flanders live once before (because i never new about live feeds) but I found it a much more entertaining harder race. The uphill cobbled climbs entertain me more that just flat cobbled sections. Boonen just seems to ride them so easily and it feels like it's not a contest.

i have that feeling whenever evans races! :D

Are the protour races not live on the telly @ Australia? Thank god that we in the Netherlands have belgium channels :D
 
Jun 16, 2009
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maikel said:
Are the protour races not live on the telly @ Australia? Thank god that we in the Netherlands have belgium channels :D

if you have pay tv you get some.

Aus free to air tv gets live this year:
-3 stages of TDU
- Paris Roubaix
-Tour of California (probably because of lance:rolleyes:)
-Tour de France
-World championships (which i will be at anyway)

We also get:
Evening 1/2 hour highlights of the giro
15 minute morning highlights of la vuelta
A month later we get some highlights of some european races

To top it all off to watch any big race in aus you usually have to stay up till 2am. It's hard work to be an australian cycling fan.
 
Mar 27, 2010
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auscyclefan94 said:
if you have pay tv you get some.

Aus free to air tv gets live this year:
-3 stages of TDU
- Paris Roubaix
-Tour of California (probably because of lance:rolleyes:)
-Tour de France
-World championships (which i will be at anyway)

We also get:
Evening 1/2 hour highlights of the giro
15 minute morning highlights of la vuelta
A month later we get some highlights of some european races

To top it all off to watch any big race in aus you usually have to stay up till 2am. It's hard work to be an australian cycling fan.

That's indeed not very much, especially when you see what is broadcasted in Belgium and here in the Netherlands, all classics, all stage races like PN, tirreno, Romandia etc, the three big tours, and at the belgian channels even all smaller races like today de Panne.
 
auscyclefan94 said:
i've only watched flanders live once before (because i never new about live feeds) but I found it a much more entertaining harder race. The uphill cobbled climbs entertain me more that just flat cobbled sections. Boonen just seems to ride them so easily and it feels like it's not a contest.


But the flat cobbled sections are just what make the race so hard, ACF !

I'm a Belgian with Flemish roots and still I think Paris Roubaix is the hardest, the most dramatic, the most prestigious and the most entertaining one.

If you compare the two, you can notice that Flanders has climbs, with percentage, and not Roubaix but Flanders, which is as such a demanding race, also has many descent sections, in which you can recover, freewheeling. Paris-Roubaix being completely flat, has no descent between the cobbled sections - mostly in the last part of the race, which is really EXTREMELY hard -, which means that between those sections you still have to push.

I've also read some comments made by Merckx, who compared Milan Sanremo (a very underrated race) to Flanders. He said that he liked Sanremo because the route always goes straight ahead and you ride at a 50km/h speed and he hated the route of Flanders because it was so bending. In bends you slow down and you can also recover. For him, Sanremo seems harder than Flanders. Roubaix also has a route that goes straight ahead. You have one bend, that's around Valenciennes (in the old days, you had the famous bend of Wattignies, which was the key moment of the race, but the route has changed since then) and then, the race begins !

I know guys who finished both races as U23 and, believe me, they told me that after a race like Roubaix you lie down on your sofa for a couple of days, in order to recover. ;)


Which one is more entertaining? I guess that's a matter of opinion. But personnally, I've been very disappointed by the last editions of Flanders. I've watched it since 1993 and Roubaix since 1992. These last few years, I could watch Flanders live from 2pm (Brussels time) and for 3 hours on. For the first two hours NOTHING happens. The decisive attack comes very late and in the end you could have a bunch of 30/40 riders to sprint for a second place (just like the Ardennes classics). Is that really entertaining?

In Paris-Roubaix, the top favourites are forced to ride in front from the Aremberg Trench on. The battle begins there, with 80km to go. And in the end, you can't have some many riders sprinting for a top ten place. The hierarchy is much more clearly defined.

Nah really, Paris-Roubaix is known as the Queen of Classics and deserves this nickname. ;)
 
Mar 18, 2009
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Unequivocally P-R, regardless of the weather, but Flanders a close second. That's based on watching WCP DVDs and watching the race live on TV last year when visiting back home in Australia. This year I will be watching both races live from the roadside, so I may yet change my opinion ... but I doubt it. :)
 
Mar 13, 2009
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auscyclefan94 said:
i've only watched flanders live once before (because i never new about live feeds) but I found it a much more entertaining harder race. The uphill cobbled climbs entertain me more that just flat cobbled sections. Boonen just seems to ride them so easily and it feels like it's not a contest.

i have that feeling whenever evans races! :D

Seeing whoever is winng float away ?

You can RAI on cable here and they show a few of the italian races including the giro
 
auscyclefan94 said:
if you have pay tv you get some.

Aus free to air tv gets live this year:
-3 stages of TDU
- Paris Roubaix
-Tour of California (probably because of lance:rolleyes:)
-Tour de France
-World championships (which i will be at anyway)

We also get:
Evening 1/2 hour highlights of the giro
15 minute morning highlights of la vuelta
A month later we get some highlights of some european races

To top it all off to watch any big race in aus you usually have to stay up till 2am. It's hard work to be an australian cycling fan.

does SBS still do that cycling show on sundays? used to have good highlight packages of the previous week's races (if you could stomach that tomalaris fella)...

I remember watching the Tour when i lived in melbourne - i'd get home from work, straight to bed with alarm set for 10.30 or 11pm when broadcast started, then watch allnight. have about 2 hours sleep from 4/5am then work the next day. Hell, I really loved the rest days because it was hard to keep that up for 3 weeks straight.
Now that i moved to the UK, I don't get to see any of it coz i'm working during the day when it's on!! :mad:

oh, and Roubaix for me
 
Jul 13, 2009
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Vlaanderen, hands down. It's just more what cycling is really about, and the countryside is more beautiful. You need a wider range of skills to win the Ronde, there are few true specialists for that particular race. Winners of the Ronde have one thing in common: they are good at one-day races. But they actually win by carefully applying their own particular abilities. Winners of the Ronde are less a 'class' of riders than winners of P-R.

It's telling that Patrick Lefevere always has more trouble executing his 'masterplans' at the Ronde, while he seemingly owns P-R. If you admit that Devolder won the Ronde because he was in the same team as Boonen, you also have to admit that Boonen has won P-R because he was in Lefevere's team.
 
Mar 19, 2009
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Echoes said:
But the flat cobbled sections are just what make the race so hard, ACF !

I'm a Belgian with Flemish roots and still I think Paris Roubaix is the hardest, the most dramatic, the most prestigious and the most entertaining one.

If you compare the two, you can notice that Flanders has climbs, with percentage, and not Roubaix but Flanders, which is as such a demanding race, also has many descent sections, in which you can recover, freewheeling. Paris-Roubaix being completely flat, has no descent between the cobbled sections - mostly in the last part of the race, which is really EXTREMELY hard -, which means that between those sections you still have to push.

In your logic mountain stages should be the easiest then: long descents where you don't have to push.
 
il_fiammingo said:
In your logic mountain stages should be the easiest then: long descents where you don't have to push.

Yeah I'm convinced that Paris-Roubaix is much harder than a mountain stage of a GT and Milan Sanremo about as hard, maybe harder. Is that weird?


Perhaps I should also add to my reasoning that the cobble is as hard or even harder than a small climb.
 
Mar 26, 2009
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Some years ago in an interview to Ballan the italian cycling magazine Bicisport asked him what was his target of the season and he answered "tour of flanders"; the article title was "Roubaix, you will be mine".

Roubaix is much more famous especially for the ones not as sick as me of cycling, but Flanders has that charm that it's difficult to compare.