Paris-Roubaix follow up…
Monday, April 10th, 2006Here is someone who takes bicycle racing for what it is:
Cyclingnews: How is it to finish second this way [after three riders who finished before the world champion were disqualified - ed]?
Tom Boonen: “It’s not a nice way and I don’t agree with the decision the officials took. When the train was passing, it was up to the officials to make us stop. I finished fifth, not second. But that’s the way it is now.”
CN: How did you enjoy standing there when the gates were shut?
TB: “Normally you don’t have the chance to look around like that. The birds were flying, the sun was shining and a train passed us, it was beautiful. Then the gates opened and we started off racing again.”
Nice huh?
Turns out that I was right about Hincapie not winning Paris-Roubaix, but for the wrong reason. He was in the right place at the right time but suffered from a colossal bike failure when the steering column on his Trek snapped.
Working in the bicycle industry I am intimately familiar with the ramifications of product failure and to have this happen in the single biggest one day classic race of the year is really unacceptable. You have the number one rider on the Discovery team who, despite my predictions, could have finally won this race and instead ends up injured by the side of the road. Trek was wasting their time and their money working on some kind of rear elastomer suspension system at the expense of the front end of the bike. No suspended bike, front or rear, has won in Roubaix since 1994.
Team Discovery compounded their problems with Hincapie by allowing Leif Hoste and Vladimir Gusev to ride past the rail road barriers at the end of the race. These guys know the rules, and the team managers in the cars know the rules too. The Discovery director should have screamed into his race radio for these guys to stop at the rail crossing. So between equipment failures and the failure to adhere to the rules of racing, Team Discovery not only loses the Paris-Roubaix, but they get two riders DQ’ed off the podium. Not a good day.
