Manic Monday: In Awe of De Ronde Edition

Last week, I posted a little spiel about my favorite bike race of the year. Pretty much immediately after I hit the publish button, I was hit with a rush of self-consciousness about what I had put down. To be blunt, I felt I'd inflated the race and been a little too flowery in my description. It's a common problem with cycling people: our passion tends to spill over and, many times, our anticipation for great events leaves us disappointed with the actual result. It happens all the time in sports: Super Bowls end in blowouts, with too many stoppages, bad ads, and questionable half time shows. Like Senior prom, the build up is such that it's almost expected that there will be a let down.

The 2011 Tour of Flanders, however did not disappoint. If anything, I undersold the immensity and epic nature of the race. As a neophyte cycling fan, it was, hands down, the best race I have ever seen. I won't recap, as many others have done a better job than I could hope to (Case in point: here, here, and here). This weeks Manic Monday will be heavily focused on Sunday's proceedings. For the three of you who read this other than my wife, my apologies, but I must indulge myself. For your review, I submit the Honesty's race awards for a phenomenal Tour of Flanders.

Ride of the Day: dead heat between My Man Crush and Sexy Legs Chavanel (people who went to to France with us last year will hopefully get that inside joke).

Most Courageous Rider: Man Crush (make your move with 40k to go, no help the rest of the way, cramp on the Muur, get dropped on the Bosberg, chase back on, and still animate the decisive move and make the podium? Amazing.)

Most Aggressive Rider: Sexy Legs (Get away on the Kwaremont, bridge up to the break, ride everybody else off your wheel, get caught by and stick with the Man Crush, not once, but twice, and almost get the win? Gorgeous.)

Best Race Tactics: Tricky Nicky Nuyens (seriously, did anybody even see him until the endgame? Was it Riis or Nuyens that had the strategy? Regardless, it was genius racing.)

The Trojan-enz Boner of the Week Award: Tommeke (Attacking your teammate, drawing out the Man Crush and getting completely shelled only to have BMC bring the race back together for you and miss the move AGAIN at the finale? Dumb-de-dumb-dumb, and selfish. Cost his team and Sexy Legs the win if you ask me.)

The Hamlet "thought too much about it" Award: Garmin-Cervelo. Sure, it was the right tactic to have Thor and Tyler sit in, and I agreed with it, but you'll never win a Classic if you don't throw caution to the wind and have a go at it. It was the right tactic, but  at some point, they've gonna have to just let their guys loose.

Which reminds me...

The Red is the Color of Passion Award: Team BMC. Seriously, you could almost hear Och saying, "oh hell no, this ain't happening again" when the Man Crush got away. The result was a red train clawing the time back up to the Muur and bringing the race back together. Lovely, heartfelt racing, and two decent results for Ballan and my Main Man George. Hope springs ever more eternal for Roubaix, and given the fitness so far of Cadel Evans, Team BMC seem to be on track to really do damage in the Grand Tours as well.

The Disappearing Team Award: Dead heat between Garmin-Cervelo and Leopard-Trek. Their kits are so similar that they blend together, but they appear to double as Flandrian camouflage. Both teams were nowhere to be seen as the race kicked up, with one obvious exception, of course. Wherefore Stuart O'Grady? He lives for that stuff...

Superdomestique: Geraint Thomas. I somehow started noticing him a couple of years ago, but I was amazed at how, time and again, he willed Flecha back up to the front. Can we get him protected in one of these big races soon? Kid's got gallons of class.

The Damned if you do, Damned if you Don't Award: Jonathan Vaughters. I'm far from a Vaughters apologist. He seems to be attention hungry, and a bit of a control freak. That said you have to hand it to him for building that team up from the ground and doing everything he can to push the sport into the future. The ongoing race radio debate honestly leaves me nauseous. I'm a fan, but I'm by no means a cycling purist. I'm savvy enough to recognize good and bad tactics, but I'm not set enough in my ways yet to think that there are right and wrong ways for races to be run and won from a tactics perspective. To my eyes, radios have little to no adverse effect on 99% of the races out there. Whether or not they help rider safety is also not an issue, because as long as it makes the riders FEEL safer, then I'm all for it. They're the ones who are out there risking it, and in the limited amount of racing I've done, I can understand how scary it can get.

Anyway, Vaughters spearheaded the whole in-car camera thing so fans could see what happened over the radio only to have it come back and bite him when he was seen and heard telling his guys to sit in. Again, it was the right tactic, but the cycling purists, who are all obsessed with the lore and panache of the good old days cried foul. I'll say it: the call had NO effect on the outcome of the race. Sure, one of the top teams was rendered impotent, but as in any situation, the vacuum was filled by BMC and the subsequent attacks of Gilbert, Langeveld and the end trio. Far be it from me to say "poor Jonathan," but the guy had a good idea (one that NASCAR has used to resounding success for years, by the way), and it ended up putting egg on his face. No good idea goes unpunished I guess...

In the end, even with the demon presence of radios, it was tons of fun and throws everything up in the air for next week. Gonna be fun!