First off how amazing is Wout for his 4th today only months after being able to adequately walk again. These top guys are just physiologically different than event the rest of the pointy end. Even amazing cyclists could have years to train and never touch that performance.

MvdP is something else. Sheer power. Amazing technical skills. I've ridden with Tom and I have a general idea of his threshold, w/kg and handling skills. He is pure class and today he rode out of his skull. The fact that MvdP is that far ahead is insanity.

Yeah, there’s MvDP and everyone else. 2-5 were a good race but pretty much a different one that ftw.

Good to see Wout looking that strong. And did you see Stybar’s 1k flyer yesterday? The CX guys could tear through the northern classics this year.

Stybar is DQS are doing what they always do...win. My heart is warmed by the start of a new year of cycling!

That was fun to watch. Love to watch someone jump all the fatties lining up their leadout trains.

And Evenepoel. And the Cadel Evans race. Back to their typical domination. Ineos totally bungled having two out of 5 in the Evans race. Sivakov needs some chalk talk on how not to deliver a DQS guy to the line.

Those 1k moves rarely work, he must be going well.

With Cadel’s race their chances aren’t much better with Impey back there, probably still get 2nd if it comes back. I’ll give Sivakov credit for looking pretty good in a one day as a stage racer.

Sorry if this was posted somewhere else already, but this should make the upcoming Spring Classics interesting ;) https://cyclingtips.com/...tor-michele-ferrari/

yikes...

this looks really bad...

I don't get how 2 of the 3-4 lead riders of Astana, lead by Vinokourov, would get it in their head to be even seen with that guy.. There was already some suspicion halfway through the Classics if something was going on. Reason why even as a Belgian, I don't necessarily like Deceuninck-Quickstep. Team lead by Lefevre who was the Mapei DS, they still have Van Mol and Ibarguren as team doctors and then they always perform at a high level and a lot of their riders after switching teams are having a hard time reaching that same level again.

BTW I don't want this to become a 15 page discussion on doping but it's quite alarming to me that Fuglsang and Lutsenko are possibly in very deep shit as of right now.

Ferrari motor pacing Fuglsang seems far fetched but if there are 12 ppl corroborating other sightings, then yeah, it doesn't look good.

Mapei rumors are from a long time ago (around the time when Tom Boonen was dating this 16 year old girl and got busted twice for cocaine if I'm correct) but since then there have been very few public suspicions about Quickstep incl their staff. Part of their success is that they have a very focused lineup consisting of classics guys and sprinters and never really cared much about grand tour general classifications. Other teams are more broad as far as their riders are concerned whereas Quickstep is much more focused. The guys who can race the classics are the same type of guys that can do a leadout for a sprinter in a stage race. Their base for that type of work is much bigger than any other team and they get more successes because of it (they often outnumber other teams in the final because they start a race with 6 guys that can vs 1 or 2 in other teams).

It's a little fishy to me, until there are specific details. Because I see no reason for Dr. Ferrari to ever actually travel or meet anyone in person. I'd have thought it'd all be encrypted messaging services and jiffy bags.

I find it a bit far fetched as well, Ferrari is definitely not stupid.. It would make zero sense for him to be there to motor pace someone if he can do all/most of his work from a distance, which is what one would do in his case.. Then again, something is up.. Why would one of the biggest (social-liberal) Danish news papers drop something like this without there being enough evidence to suggest any of it is real.

And just Ferrari motor pacing at all seems unlikely.

As loathe as I am to admit it, Vino made a couple good points to dispute allegation. Namely, why Ferrari would show up at any bike race, since he'd be immediately noticed. And if Fuglsang and Lutsenko are in cross hairs then why was Ferrari at Volta a Cataluna when neither of them were racing.

Could certainly be a case of where there's smoke there's fire, time will tell.

Stepping aside for a moment re: the doping talk for a bit. Lads, it's fewer than four weeks to Omloop! What are we doing for the annual tradition that is the Slowtwitch Spring Classics thread and the pick'em?

Also, a trip to the Netherlands this past Christmas has really gotten me itching to go ride my bike in Belgium and the Netherlands during classics season. Sure it's windy, but there's some lovely scenery (and even lovelier infrastructure).

If you make it over let me know. I live on this side of the pond and always take a few weeks to train in Belgium so I can watch races in between.

I'm sooooo ready for the Classics! We are going to need a new thread!

will do; probably won't be for a few years, but it'd be swell. Also, you'd have to be content with riding recovery pace if you were to ride with me ;)

I was thinking the same thing when posting here this morning, we need a new Classics thread! I'm looking forward to playing the game again, although I would like to keep the rules the same as last year. There were a few suggestions as to changing them up but most of them just seemed to make it more complicated than necessary.. After all it's just a game we enjoy over a few beers in front of the TV ;)

We do need to get that thread going. You want to MC it this year?

And also an ST cobbles group ride.

Fuglsang comes up very big at 34 years old and Ferrari is seen around Astana in Catalunya AND Nice/Monaco? The optics are very ugly.. Lots of Euro pros riding around that area right about now. Wonder who the whistleblower is.
Really not that unlikely that he’d turn up again. One would think that his business can’t be booming otherwise.
On to Omloop!

Riding with mates at any speed is a good time! Doubly so when done in Belgium.

Done! https://forum.slowtwitch.com/...*Spoilers*_P7141695/

I'm up for an ST cobbles ride. I'll be in Belgium April 1 through April 11th.

Good thing about starting the thread early, of course, is to hammer out the details before it all kicks off :)

Personally I think a minor tweak would be five picks total, 3 podium, with the last two being either top-5 or total long shots. The total long shots (at least 50:1) would reward people for picking Pedersen at 2018 de Ronde or Dillier at 2018 Roubaix.

Whoever in charge should at least be proficient enough with data entry to take into account of all these.

Oof. Somewhat plausible for Lutsenko given he's 27, and just entering his prime and was on an upward trajectory since 2014. . Harder for a guy who's 34. At least Valverde was pretty much always winning....