2019 Road Racing Season Omnibus (Spoilers Guaranteed)

[j44ke]

Omloop Het Nieuwsblad is this weekend (March 2 to be exact.) Wout van Aert will be there with Jumbo-Visma, but I don't see Michael van der Poel listed for Corendon-Circus. Maybe someone else will win?

Strade Bianche is the next weekend, March 9. Saab's favorite race, Milan-San Remo, is March 23rd. Then the rest begins March 31 with Gent-Wevelgem.

This article made me a little sad.

This article made me cautiously optimistic.

I apologize for already being a bit tired of EF-Education First even though they've shown early success this year.

INRNG has their pro cycling calendar set up already. The best!

Pro Bikes of the Men's World Tour, courtesy of CyclingTips. I haven't located an overview of bikes for the Women's World Tour yet.

Onward....

[j44ke]

Pounding snow outside, mist and grit in Belgium, & espresso on the burner. Must be Omloop time!

[Saab2000]

Trying 1X again, but this time on a group really made for it and with a more established team that doesn’t need to put everyone on this setup.

1X drivetrains come to the WorldTour at cobbled Classics | Cyclingnews.com

[j44ke]

Nice list of riders at the front currently. Probably will be a similar group in many of these races upcoming:

Ives Lampaert, Zdenek Stybar (Deceuninck-QuickStep), Tiesj Benoot, Tim Wellens (Lotto Soudal), Olvier Naesen (AG23 La Mondiale), Davide Ballerini, Alexey Lutsenko (Astana), Dylan Teuns, Sonny Colbrelli (Bahrain-Merida), Jempy Drucker, Daniel Oss (Bora-Hansgrohe), Greg Van Avermaet (CCC), Matteo Trentin (Mitchelton-Scott), Wout van Aert, Danny van Poppel (Jumbo-Visma), Ian Stannard (Sky), Baptiste Planckaert (Wallonie-Bruxelles).

[j44ke]

Nice end result!

[j44ke]

Mads finished out of the top 10.

[Saab2000]

Mads finished out of the top 10.

Probably not his equipment. I'd like to know how many near-duplicate gears are on a 2x12 system. A 1x12 is still going to leave some bigger gaps but it's probably manageable.

[j44ke]

As far as the race goes, YAY! Stybar! And Van Avermaet looks strong again this spring. No one seemed to want to have anything to do with Lutsenko.

[72gmc]

Omloop Het Nieuwsblad is this weekend (March 2 to be exact.) Wout van Aert will be there with Jumbo-Visma, but I don't see Michael van der Poel listed for Corendon-Circus. Maybe someone else will win?

Strade Bianche is the next weekend, March 9. Saab's favorite race, Milan-San Remo, is March 23rd. Then the rest begins March 31 with Gent-Wevelgem.

This article made me a little sad.

This article made me cautiously optimistic.

I apologize for already being a bit tired of EF-Education First even though they've shown early success this year.

INRNG has their pro cycling calendar set up already. The best!

Pro Bikes of the Men's World Tour, courtesy of CyclingTips. I haven't located an overview of bikes for the Women's World Tour yet.

Onward....

IM shallow O ...

The CCC Giant is the bike I'd move closer to, if only to move further from most of the others.

The Sunweb Cervelo looks like a survivalist fashioned a road bike from an abandoned panel van.

It could be true that celeste paint is not enough, by itself, to make a bike look good.

[j44ke]

No joy in Trekville.

[m_b_b]

This article made me a little sad.

Something is a little fishy with the Cavendish story. I don't doubt that he's off his peak, but some of the way his "second" case of EBV is being reported sounds a bit off to me. We'll see how it plays out, and I hope whatever it is that's making him feel unwell gets sorted, but I'm not sure I'd put my money on EBV.

Completely unrelated - how are people watching racing? I've debated the fubo.tv option, which I've done in the past, but it seems their pricing keeps going up. Best I can tell it's now $45/month, plus another $12/month for the cycling package. I feel like you used to be able to just pay for cycling, or am I mistaken? It's a bit steep considering the best I can hope for is a few stolen moments here and there when I can manage to both have the television on and not have it displaying children's programming.

[rabo]

I'll grab the Belgium feeds from 219 UCI Cyclocross World Championships LIVE streams, Times, Schedule, Start Lists, Results - Bogense, Denmark | www.cyclingfans.com that ran great today. In the evening the cycling torrents dot nl
Great race today. The big ones still a few weeks away. Vanmarcke not looking good.

[j44ke]

Vanmarcke very suddenly went backwards at a very rapid rate. Kind of startling.

[Clean39T]

Textbook racing from Stybar. Helps to have the legs, but knowing how/when to use them is also quite useful. Fun start to the (real) season!

[sk_tle]

Did I see a deceunink mechanic spray lube on Lampaert's drivetrain while he was riding ? I guess they don't care about the effectiveness of his rear brake.

[dogrange]

Something is a little fishy with the Cavendish story. I don't doubt that he's off his peak, but some of the way his "second" case of EBV is being reported sounds a bit off to me. We'll see how it plays out, and I hope whatever it is that's making him feel unwell gets sorted, but I'm not sure I'd put my money on EBV.

Completely unrelated - how are people watching racing? I've debated the fubo.tv option, which I've done in the past, but it seems their pricing keeps going up. Best I can tell it's now $45/month, plus another $12/month for the cycling package. I feel like you used to be able to just pay for cycling, or am I mistaken? It's a bit steep considering the best I can hope for is a few stolen moments here and there when I can manage to both have the television on and not have it displaying children's programming.

I plumped for fubo again this year. Yes, it is north of $50/month to include cycling (I also use it to watch other stuff like motorcycle racing so it is a better value for me than just cycling). Unfortunately, they do not seem to have everything - they had nice Omloop and UAE tour coverage, but no KBK. They are carry ing both the mens and womens Strade Bianchi this weekend.

[j44ke]

Race officials had to neutralize the women's Omloop, because Bigla's Nicole Hanselmann broke away from the field and closed in on the tail end of the men's race. Eurosport reported that she knew something was wrong when she saw the ambulances following the men's race ahead of her.

Omloop Het Nieuwsblad Elite Women 219: Results | Cyclingnews.com

Then someone forgot to shut off the automatic whatsit in the race director's car, and it stopped suddenly in during the neutral start of Junior Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne, causing a rider pile-up.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/ride...-kuurne-video/

Marta Bastianelli was second at K-B-K and won Omloop van het Hageland. So she's off to a good start! She was with Ale Cipollini last year but is with Team Virtu Cycling this year, a new team in the women's peloton.

I was watching the cross country skiing World Championships late last night (30km women's race - Jess Diggins got 4th! Race was won by a former doper from Norway) and the presenters were discussing the arrest of a bunch of skiers for blood doping, then mentioned as an aside there were also professional cyclists in trouble. Austrian riders Priedler and Denifl are two of them.

[sk_tle]

I was watching the cross country skiing World Championships late last night (30km women's race - Jess Diggins got 4th! Race was won by a former doper from Norway) and the presenters were discussing the arrest of a bunch of skiers for blood doping, then mentioned as an aside there were also professional cyclists in trouble. Austrian riders Priedler and Denifl are two of them.

There is a video showing one of the austrian team skiers, himself a police cadet, getting caught in the middle of a transfusion. And the Austrian xcountry skiing federation president is in complete denial mode.

[j44ke]

Isn't the first rule of doing something illegal no photos?

[72gmc]

Race was won by a former doper from Norway

I will endeavor to adopt your positive outlook about the "former" part ... an athlete winning by eyebrow-raising margins pre- and post-ban makes me start to grumble but it sure is fun to watch the rest of the field.