A hyped line up, I say. GC guys would be Froome and possibly Porte if G Thomas keeps with the program and Kennaugh keeps doing his Hincapie imitation. I like Wiggo and it would be cool to see him podium in a classic before he mails it in and becomes Fat Bastard.

Someone to really root for is former Sky kid Joe Dombrowski. He's healthy after arterial surgery and happy with his homies at Cannondale. He's riding Catalonia and the next few days will be interesting to see if he, Dan Martin and another good clean guy Tejay can follow Froome and the rest of the evil empire in the hills. USA! USA!

I was at the finish line in Geelong for that race. Hell of a sprint. Matthews and Degenkolb are fast bastards.

i have always found degenkolbs head bobble almost hypnotic.....GVA i another head bobbler

Riis just got (partially) sacked. I somehow think a year from now we are gonna get all sorts of bio passport irregularities from Tinkoff...

There's definitely something fishy going on here. It's way too early in the season to sack a DS due to lack of results; clearly this is the consequence of some power struggle internally. Maybe Sagan and Riis don't get along or something else is happening but we'll find out sooner or later.

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Don't forget to attack!

Publicly they are stating it was all just power struggle.
http://www.cyclingnews.com/...firm-riis-suspension

Cyclingnews is saying that he stepped away to resolve his differences with Tinkof, not due to lack of results. Of course this is what their Comm Department put out so the reasons may be much different but they specifically said "It ain't the results". As far as I remember Sagan was quoted as saying that he went to Saxo in order to work with Bjarne in the first place so I'm not convinced it's friction between them either. Who knows. One thing I'm certain of, though, is that instability anywhere in the team, especially in the executive, is not a good thing for morale and racing. Even if Sagan's account is growing nice and large from the current contract.

Dwars Door Vlaanderen:


1: Terpstra
2: Boom
3: Cavendish

WC: Kwiatkowski
WC: Farrar

I'm not nearly as confident with these picks as Strade and MSR. These mid-week races are always tougher to pick.

Can someone help me find a drive side picture of Cavendish's bike during MSR? This was the best one I could find, but I am wondering about what rings/spider/cranks he was running.

All season is has been FSA SRM with FSA chainrings, but this issue is was brought up at a local race two weeks ago after a big crash in 1/2/3 crit. The guy sprinting second wheel just went down, chain thrown on the outside, he had a venge with di2. This sparked a pretty big discussion on a local team discussion board and there were 7 separate accounts with riders on specialized bikes with chains thrown on the outside, not all were riding DI2. The discussion consensus is that it is a specialized frame specific issue causing the chain to be thrown during accelerations. There were no accounts of this happening on a sram mechanical setup, all where shimano mechanical or DI2. Not sure if anybody else has noticed this issue or not. In can be difficult to determine the root cause of issues like this.

not the bike at MSR, but i'd guess it's quite similar

Compared to the picture I posted, he's running different rings at least.

I was thinking Farrar and Terpstra too. So just to keep it interesting, I'm going Kwiatkowski, Farrar, Gatto.

Terpstra has to be favored, though I couldn't find a bookie.

all good picks. Farrar has done well in this race.

Cadillac: Terpstra
Steak Knives: Boom
Fired: Devolder

WC: Matti Breschel - because it's a wild card
WC2:Keisse...because he may not have another opportunity at the bigger races coming up.

I secretly hope Terpstra takes it (aside from TK). He's a tireless worker and seems to always step up for teammates.

I'm going to go with an Etixx Quickstep heavy prediction

1. Terpstra
2. Kwiatowski
3. Cavendish

WC Boom
WC Gatto

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http://www.thedeludedcyclist.wordpress.com

last minute change; Jempy Drucker in for Debusschere

Bo Hagen.
Didn't see him earlier. Dang it. He rode well in MSR.
Crazy that these guys can do that on Sunday and do this on Wednesday.

Never mind the MSR/Dwars door Vlaanderen combo, how about Maciej Paterski who finished in the first group on Sunday (22nd overall) and then started in the Volta a Catalunya the next day (!) and won the first stage in a three man breakaway that put 2:40 into the peloton.

Exciting race so far (as exciting as reading the CN text feed in between spreadsheet work). Unfortunately, seems like my picks are having trouble keeping the rubber side down.

VPN+ spanish feed should do the trick, but tunnel bear is letting me down at the moment (old version worked fine but didn't go to Espana), new version does go, but i'm not getting past authentication...

well done!

Do I actually get points for that? I thought WC's had to be on the podium.

Cannondale had a good day today.