WorldTour and Pro Cycling Nonsense 2012

Expect fun tomorrow, it's been raining off and on all day, plus it's gusting nicely. We'll be in the town of st Quentin about 11am CET. Apparently the caravan is stingier than the TdF, but should be able to get some decent pictures at least, then Monday I'm going to head up and ride a few sections of pave myself, about 40km north.

Forecast is dry for tomorrow but if its been wet its going to make the gutters less attractive. I'm ready for a good race.

Is dry now, but cold, overnight frost in fact. Just heading out to st Quentin itself to take some pics.

COBBLESTONES

Not wet...yet?

possible rain at some point before the finish!

ouch

they must be into dubstep 'cause that was a sick drop to the cobblestones

I'm away from home without Eurosport and watching the football instead so happy for updates here, pretty please

remnants of the early break @ 70km, then small group of chasers including THOR and flecha at 40sec, then main bunch about 30sec later

sorry, ballan not thor

chavanel leads main bunch back to the ballan group, then attacks just after the feed zone! it's split everything to pieces.

THOR drops it going through a roundabout, just slips over due to the dust i think. looks a bit torn up.

Thanks for this running commentary

turgot of europcar has dropped the other riders from the break who get swept up, and has a handful of seconds. boonen hits it and takes pozzato with him. chavanel flats!

57km from the finish - boonen, pozzato, turgo, ballan (who's crossed from the bunch). they have 15sec maybe.

Boonen? Argh,

boonen's broken away and taken terpstra with him - the others have gone back to the bunch and they're not organised yet...

boonen with 30sec gap at mons-en-pevele, has disposed of his team-mate's services. this is p. audacious!

pozzato and stijn devolder trip over each other on a dusty corner, that might do for pippo i think. sky have four in the chase group, they might have to burn a couple of them i reckon...

Is EBH riding today?

flecha's trying to bridge from the bunch to boonen, who's still 30sec up the road. luca paolini slows to a crawl from the main bunch trying to clip back in, lol i know how he feels. chavanel has a few with him trying to come through the cars and rejoin the chase.

yep - and he and stannard plus ballan, lars boom and a couple others have bridged to flecha.

boonen not even wearing gloves today, total hardman stuff.

great ride from boonen, esp since terpstra bonked

out to about 40 secs now

vansummeren towing a small group up to the main chasers. chavanel group are coming back but are another 2min20 back, don't think he'll get back sadly.

terpstra sitting on stannard's wheel and disrupting the work of the sky guys; nontheless the gap has stabilised at 45sec.

this is amazing. he's accelerated again, 55sec gap now.

Can't get wifi to work here so am relying on this thread and twitter

chase group are taking 'advantage' of sky doing all the work, but they're not actually making any inroads.

27k, 59"

flecha, boom, van summ, and ballan go

tornado tom gurning like a teenage raver from the effort.

1'10 up at carrefore l'arbe over lars boom who's shipped the rest of the chasers - i think he's on his cross bike again like last year, was running 30mm tubulars then iirc

E for Belgium.

boom's been caught by flecha, balland and unheralded matthieu ladagnous of FDJ - who then flats on the third-last sector. awful luck!

Paul Sherwen just said everyone at the Velodrome will be high as a kite...

boom to lead out the sprint for 2nd

oof so close - terpstra and turgot catch the other three, ballan and turgot in photo-finish!

So Boonen won alone? What kind of margin? Flecha?

1 Tom Boonen (Bel) Omega Pharma-Quickstep 5:55:22
2 Sébastien Turgot (Fra) Team Europcar 0:01:39
3 Alessandro Ballan (Ita) BMC Racing Team
4 Juan Antonio Flecha Giannoni (Spa) Sky Procycling
5 Niki Terpstra (Ned) Omega Pharma-Quickstep
6 Lars Boom (Ned) Rabobank Cycling Team 0:01:43
7 Matteo Tosatto (Ita) Team Saxo Bank 0:03:31
8 Mathew Hayman (Aus) Sky Procycling
9 Johan Vansummeren (Bel) Garmin - Barracuda
10 Maarten Wynants (Bel) Rabobank Cycling Team
11 Luca Paolini (Ita) Katusha Team
12 Matthieu Ladagnous (Fra) FDJ-Big Mat

brilliant ride from boonen, balls of steel TT'ing solo from 50k out

http://www.iamtedking.com/2012/04/done-and-dusted-3/

A good read

I thought so, his blog is pretty entertaining.

Twitter was pretty entertaining for Roubaix, it's clearly a race that pros watch. Cancellara was pretty entertaining. David Millar spent the race criticising Oakley for not getting exactly colour matches with their shades.

I was sure Gilbert was going to get that. Then I was sure Sagan was.

Good end to a fairly dull race. Wonder if Romain Bardet will come to anything, between him, Pierre Roland, Arnaud Démare and the reset of the world taking less drugs it finally seems like France has some good oncoming talent. (also the FDJ sponsored academy system as well)

5km to go at fleche wallone. always find the finish pretty hilaire - the slowest bunch sprint around!

ryder and nordhaug couldn't stay off here could they?