From the cobbles of Flanders to the boards of Belarus, with a sprinkling of the Emerald
Isle it's a truly international flavour to this week’s GCN News Show.
Ok, so we’ve had Down Under, Qatar, Oman, Tour de Med and Haut Var, but for the purists
the season doesn’t truly begin until Ghent. Saturday’s Omloop Het Nieuwsblad marked
the opening of the cobbled Classics season the ladies kicked off the action and it was
Tiffany Cromwell who scored arguably the biggest win of her career to date, seeing off American
Megan Guarnier in a two-up sprint on a bitterly cold day. I’m delighted to say Tiff joined
us a little earlier on a Hangout...
Firstly, congratulations on a great win on Saturday. Can you talk us through the closing
kilometres?
You know, it was so good to go out and get the win. It came down to still quite a big
group after the last cobbled sector. We had such a strong team for the race, and we were
going to use numbers - we had four in the group, and so we just launched attacks in
the last 20k to try and get somebody free and I just managed to get one clear and go
away with Megan Guarnier in the last 5 kilometres and, you know, I knew it was an opportunity
to go for the win, and just had to be patient, wait, work hard to establish a break but then
timed my sprint to perfection. I was glad I was able to pull off the win.
Ever since I first did my first Classics in 2010 with the Ronde van Vlanderen, you know,
I just loved them - the technical aspect, the hardness, you know, you have to think.
You have to be not only strong, but also smart. If you go in the wrong position into the wrong
sector then it can be race over ultimately, so having that experience makes a big difference.
Yeah, I bet. So just very quickly then, what’s coming up for you now then? You know,
you’ve got great form, what are you hoping to win?
Yeah, so we have... we keep the team more or less together for the Classics campaign.
We go up to northern Holland and then my next big target is probably Cittiglio World Cup
at the end of March and then Flanders is the next big one, you know. It’s the biggest
race on the calendar, it’s one I’d love to win one day but I know we have such a strong
team to go into that race and you know, hopefully it’s going to be an Orica-AIS jersey going
over the line first, but those are the next short-term goals.
The men’s race followed on from the women’s - van Avermaet, Roelandts, Chavanel, Thomas are
all names that might’ve been worth a cheeky bet on Saturday, but no, they were in a frustrated
group of eight chasing a two-man break containing eventual winner Luca Paolini of Katusha and
Stijn Vandenbergh of OPQS. Vandenbergh looked a little outclassed and he could neither outfox
nor outsprint the wily Italian veteran in Ghent.
As sure as Sunday follows Saturday, so, too, does Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne follow Het Nieuwsblad:
or maybe not. Traditionally a hard man’s race, the weather was too bad even for the
hardest of hard men and K-B-K was called off.
I caught up with Guy Andrews, the editor of Rouleur magazine, to find out why this opening
weekend in Belgium means so much to us as cycling fans.
Guy, what is it about the opening weekend of the Classics season that’s so important
for cycling fans?
I think it’s the proper beginning. I mean we’ve had a lot of races already: the Tour
Down Under, the Tour of Qatar, Tour of Oman, but the Classics are really when it starts,
when the proper racing begins, shall we say. No disrespect to those other races, but you
know, it’s when cycling comes back home, back to Europe and back to Belgium in particular.
So, why is it proper racing? Can you put your finger on what it is about racing in northern
Europe?
I think what it is, is the history and the heritage involved in the races and the fact
that the races the riders want to win are the big name races. Certainly the Tour of
Flanders and Paris-Roubaix are two races that if you win that, your career is set for life.
So even though we’ve had races that have been going for a few years that are building
momentum, it takes many, many years of being in the limelight, of having big riders come
and ride those races. I think that’s one thing that the Tour Down Under and Oman and
Qatar are getting now - they’re getting bigger names, because seasons are starting
earlier for riders so they want to get the miles in, they want to get the racing miles
in their legs so they are important.
So after Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, who’s your money going to be on for Flanders now?
Oh, crikey. I never like to make predictions... I think Greg van Avermaet rode really well,
I think we’ve got a chance of seeing Geraint Thomas do really well in Flanders certainly.
It’s always hard to say, I think it’s always a bit of a lottery. I don’t think
it told us a huge amount other than everybody’s pretty well prepared, and as the races pan
out over the next few weeks - we’ve got five or six weeks now until Flanders - we’ll
see some of the contenders coming to the fore a bit more.
So cancellations on the road throughout Europe, GP Lugano was called off as well, but the
freezing temperatures weren’t a problem for the track world championships in Minsk.
There were plenty of new faces on the podiums as a number of track legends had retired or
elected to miss this one, but the level was as high as ever.
One rider who had a breakthrough performance was Irishman Martyn Irvine, who took his first
world title, and also Irelands first for 117 years.
Here what he had to say earlier:
Honestly, I think on the day, podium in the pursuit was my kind of training goals, you
know, that I had in the back of my head, so the rest was just a bonus.
Can you pinpoint what’s made the difference for you this year? What’s caused the step
up?
I think a lot of road work. I did a lot more road racing. You know it gave me a kind of
strength in depth I didn’t have before last year and that definitely gave me the strength
to back it up after the pursuit, you know, to back it up and do the scratch race.
Some tech news now. In what was either a carefully planned PR
move or a major gaffe, Rabobank cyclocross pro Michiel van der Heijden innocently tweeted
a picture of his new bike with what is seen as the conformation that Shimano are introducing
a potential game changer of a product – a hydraulic disc road brake.
Van der Heijdens bike has what look like prototype Shimano Hydraulic DI2 levers. They look really
neat, and not much larger than standard DI2 hoods. The callipers look like existing Shimano
MTB ones. Shimano are tight lipped about it all, And Van der Heijden has now removed the
photo from his twitter feed. Lets hope he at least got some more followers.
Now for a quick reminder of what we’ve been up to here at GCN.
This week we were in Ireland for the announcement of the Giro d’Italia start in Belfast, with
stages also taking in Armagh and over the border in Dublin.
And if you love your racing with an Italian twist there’s plenty coming up very soon
on GCN - we’ll be at Strade Bianche, Roma Maxima and Tirreno-Adriatico.
Coming up later this week though, Dan Lloyd is in Switzerland and has news of what’s
to come...
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Thanks for joining us.