Wow, is probably the best way to sum up yesterday. I am still processing it all but here goes. First off, I used my Garmin to map out the course and uploaded it to MotionBased.com I highly recommend exporting that file to Earth Google for a closer look. Keep in mind that the race caravan was diverted around the Molenberg and the Muir b/c they were too steep to send cars up.
I do not have many race pics b/c it was pretty much 3 hrs of high pressure white knuckle driving with lots of drama sprinkled in. At any one time I was doing about 4 or 5 different things in the passenger seat. Thankfully I wasn’t driving! But before and after here’s the scoop:
The foggy drive on the way to the race
Here’s the alley the team cars staged before the start in downtown Oudenaarde:
Here are the maps and start lists I used during the race:
The race radio was in Flemish and French but no English. Suffice it to say that 5 years of French in high school and college came back mighty quick!
The team did well albeit not the “w” but it was a great start to our 6 week trip. There was a mondo crash right before the first cobble section b/c all the riders were battling for position — imagine 50 cyclist all over the road w/ 25 cars behind scrambling to get up to their riders to fix bikes and change wheels so they could get back onto the ripping fast peloton. Two of our girls crashed and although they were not hurt badly the pace on the front of the field was just too fast.
After 7 climbs the race really took off as Nicol Cooke’s team (Raleigh) sent Karin Thurig off the front with about 40K to go. No other teams chased and her gap moved up to 55 seconds (as I interpreted in French on the race radio).
No riders attempted (that we could tell) on the third to last climb: the Eikenberg. So it was gonna come down to the biggest and baddest climb of the race: the Muir. Sure enough Nicol Cooke attacked and bridged up to her teammate and they worked together until the Bosberg where Nicol continued on 9K alone for the “w”. She has incredibly great form.
Behind these two were some other heavy hitters: former world champ Marianne Vos, Trixi Worrack & Susanne Ljungskog. No T-Mobile riders were in there so they chased.
In the T-Mobile led chase group behind we had 3 girls come off the Muir in a group of about 30 riders. These were essentially all the other heavy hitters. For Kristen Armstrong (current World Time Trial Champion) she’s a heavy hitter and this wasn’t new territory. However, for Brooke Miller and Allison Powers this was their first Flanders and first season racing over in Europe. So to be in that group was a small victory and a great first race of such difficulty. Way to go girls!!
Probably the biggest behind the scenes story I have is the battle between directeur sportifs in the race caravan. At the pre-race meeting the night before each team car is assigned a number for their order in the caravan. We drew the 7th car and that’s pretty close to the peloton. Other teams like the belgian based Biglia team drew a low number.
During the race, the directeur sportif of the Biglia team, Felice Puttini, would constantly break the rules and cut up in line. One of the other Belgium directeurs did not like this and took up the responsibility to block Biglia from moving up. Puttini did not like that so he rammed the other Belgian (I did not get his name). Well that pissed off this guy so much that he rammed the Biglia car not from the bumper but from the driver’s side door!! That ended the fued and the Biglia car returned back to his orded in the race caravan with a huge dent in their team car.
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