Roubaix V Flanders

[spanky wanderlust]

i looooove flanders!

but...paris roubaix is the only race on the calendar that finishes in a velodrome! that's too cool.

 

[Dr. Maserati]

Which is the better, more entertaining, more interesting race, Roubaix or Flanders?

You know when you are out on a date - and you stare off in to space - and she then asks, "what are you thinking about" and even though your immediate (and I mean immediate) reply is "why you of course".....

No, actually it is questions like the one you posed.

 

[ImmaculateKadence]

Its like trying to choose between the best two models in the Victoria's Secret catalog. Literally, as none of us will ever ride either one.

Now THAT was funny! Unfortunately though, so true on both counts.

 

[Moondance]

For me it's De Ronde by a nose. They are the Number 1A and 1B races of the year (ahead of le Tour even). While Roubaix is probably the slightly harder race to win i think Flanders takes it because of the enormous cultural event that it represents.

 

[auscyclefan94]

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.

Yes but Boonen doesn't dominate so much on the flat cobbles in comparison to the hilly cobbles. That was my point.

 

[blaxland]

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)
-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.

I second that one my Aussie mate...................Fans of cycling in Australia are very dedicated............and usually very tired too..

 

[Ibanez]

Roubaix, but that is because I swear in recent years races are breaking apart later and later and even on a parcours as brutal as De Ronde's, you have huge groups still together in the finale.

The Ardennes classics are almost positively boring now because of this, and Flanders is going the same way, the teams are simply too strong. Who knows, maybe this year the race will be really hard and blow apart early, but I doubt it.

Roubaix however is immune to staying together until as late as possible thanks to Arenberg which breaks the race into pieces every year without fail, and the final 100km or whatever it is is always much tougher as a result. Which makes for more exciting racing!!

It has to be said, both races **** all over the Tour and the Ardennes for excitement. Only the Giro manages the same spectacle.

 

[unsheath]

The Ronde. Cols, Hills, Flats in that order.

 

[nvpacchi]

RvV! People say if you can win RvV, you have the potential to win any single-day race.

 

[Big Mig]

For me it,s Roubaix. just. due to the unique nature of the race.
Riders go over the Muur, Patersberg etc in other races so the Ronde is in some ways a longer, harder version of the het volk or E3 so we get to see that style of race a few other times a year. We as fans don,t get to see anything that compares to those chaotic 4-5 mins through the Arenberg forest for the rest of the year.
It is for this reason i,m flying half way around the world to do the full distance, all the pave sections, cyclosportive ride in june that the vc roubaix put on.
You have to pay homage to the Queen.

 

[Archibald]

For me it,s Roubaix. just. due to the unique nature of the race.
Riders go over the Muur, Patersberg etc in other races so the Ronde is in some ways a longer, harder version of the het volk or E3 so we get to see that style of race a few other times a year. We as fans don,t get to see anything that compares to those chaotic 4-5 mins through the Arenberg forest for the rest of the year.
It is for this reason i,m flying half way around the world to do the full distance, all the pave sections, cyclosportive ride in june that the vc roubaix put on.
You have to pay homage to the Queen.

am undecided on the doing the cyclo, but will decide after riding from Arenberg to (and in) the velodrome this saturday.
Always liked PR, but even more so when O'Grady won it after a fall...

 

[hindsy]

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)
-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.

On fox, if you have eurosports you get De Ronde, Amstel, Fleche, L-B-L, Giro, Vuelta and a host of other races

But yea, free to air in Aus sucks generally!!

 

[backbonz]

great analysis...i agree.

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.

 

[Monty Dog]

I've ridden both courses a couple of times, and whilst De Ronde is a long, tough day in the saddle it isn't anything like as hard to ride as P-Rx at a decent pace - but both are a race of attrition and usually the strongest wins. The first section of P-Rx isn't pan-flat either, over the course there's 1500m of ascent, but it does flatten-out after Troisville. The pave in France is significantly rougher and harder on you physically than Flanders kassen, particularly if you ride them full-bore - Flanders kassen is more like a regular cobbled street whereas Arenberg and Carrefour are trench warfare! Flemish stones are slippier in the wet though. There's a reason that Boonen can deceptively ride away from the bunch and that it power - the successive accelerations onto each sector - at the front you get to choose the lines and experience and knowledge of the course helps, whereas when you're following wheels you get covered in dust and hit all the big potholes - some which stop you dead. We could do with a 'wet' race either way, just to remind us of how hard they are.

 

[Angliru]

i have that feeling whenever evans races!

Except against those dreaded Spaniards! (You left the door wide open for that one! )

 

[auscyclefan94]

On fox, if you have eurosports you get De Ronde, Amstel, Fleche, L-B-L, Giro, Vuelta and a host of other races

But yea, free to air in Aus sucks generally!!

Don't have fox