From a machine translation of a French story quoting Quick Step’s Tom Boonen on winning his third Paris-Roubaix: “Paris-Roubaix is just a very long day. It is important to not die.”
6 thoughts on “Words to live by”
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From a machine translation of a French story quoting Quick Step’s Tom Boonen on winning his third Paris-Roubaix: “Paris-Roubaix is just a very long day. It is important to not die.”
Comments are closed.
Mad Blog Media 
As tough as that race is, I’d say that’s a reasonable goal.
“Paris-Roubaix is just a very long day. It is important to not die.”
Hard to argue with either statement.
Wow, what a race. It was like the Paris Roubaix’s in the rain and mud when you never know who is going to crash next, only it was dry and fast and easy…fast and easy will jump up and bite you in all the wrong places, sometimes.
Just so nobody accidentally misses it, you have got to see today’s Frazz:
http://news.yahoo.com/comics/frazz;_ylt=AlWwiCulL1W5EWnvm5x8ySgA_b4F
Now, I didn’t get to see the race, I was only able to follow it via the live update on-line, but it didn’t sound like all that thrilling of a finish to me. Boonen won by virtue not only of his power on the bike but by his bike handling skills as well: namely, he managed not to fall off in the last few kilometers (unlike his competition). But compared to some editions in the past, most notably the 1990 edition in which Steve Bauer lost by two centimeters or less, it didn’t sound like the finish to this race was very interesting. Maybe it would have been different had I had a chance to actually watch it.
To those of you who were able to actually watch the race, what did you think?
I thought yesterday’s Paris-Roubaix finish was pretty decent. I watched it online (in French although the only words I understood were the names of the riders and the occasional ‘Ooh la la’). At around 17 kilometers to go the leading group of six riders was still together. Boonen had tried to shake them off earlier but couldn’t. I was wondering if they would all make it to the velodrome and, if they did, who would win in the sprint? Then in the next 3 to 5 kilometers they had all crashed except Boonen and Pozzato and Pozzato was only 15 seconds behind Boonen. At that point I was wondering if Boonen was strong enough to stay ahead and did Pozzato have the legs to close the gap? Boonen’s lead slowly increased so the finish certainly wasn’t exciting like a two man sprint would’ve been. Still, I enjoyed the race. I always do. 🙂
I logged into cycling.tv just in time for the charge into the Arenberg and watched to the finish, and found it pretty damn’ riveting, for teevee on a laptop. Boonen was on fire — that bike swap he did was top notch — but he couldn’t shake the break, and I was looking forward to a real punch-up on the way to Roubaix.
Didn’t get one — all of a sudden people started falling over — but hey, that’s bike racing, no? A smart, strong, aggro’ dude who keeps the shiny side up and the rubber side down has a good chance to win the race. And I always like to see a rabbit flogging himself solo to the line with a bunch of hounds baying at his heels. Remember how you could always count on Ekimov to jump in the last kilometer if he didn’t have any other pressing chores? I love stuff like that.