Category: Cyclo-cross

Nary a run, but plenty of fun

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments

It ain’t a cyclo-cross unless you get off the bike at some point and run, son. Sorry, but them’s the rules.

Still, today’s Superprestige Gavere was a great bike race. It’s hard to judge the quality of the surface when you’re watching streaming Internet video in an itty-bitty window, but that said you wouldn’t have caught me out on this course without a mountain bike. Maybe a double-boinger, too. It looked like one hell of a rough ride.

Sven Nys just squeaked past Kevin Pauwels at the line. Ten more meters of pavement and the kid would have punk’d him again. It was that close. Poor old Niels Albert looked like Death eating a cracker when he rolled in for third.

Tim Johnson scored a fine 12th-place finish after a rough start — “f’d the first few corners and paid the price big time,” he noted on Twitter.  Jonathan Page, who in contrast had a great start, rolled in a couple places behind Timmy J; VeloNews‘ man on the scene, Dan Seaton, says Page spent a bad night with the gut rumble, then cramped up on the bell lap.

Here’s mud in your eye

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments

Judas Priest. Today’s Superprestige cyclo-cross in Hamme-Zogge looked like a cross-country run through an open sewer in Hell.

If you missed the live streaming video, you can catch an edited recap at the series website. It’s worth watching, believe me. One of the running sections took a minute-fifteen to cover, and there was more than one running bit. Eight-and-a-half-minute laps. Filth everywhere. My kind of race.

World champ Zdenek Stybar looked like someone had stuffed him head-first down a septic tank, and Niels Albert wore a pained, muck-slathered expression that said, “Fuck this noise, I’m going to get a job in a nice dry factory somewhere.”

• Late update: Katie Compton and Tim Johnson both crushed it today in Fort Fun. It looked like a fun course, a little tackier than yesterday’s, which you’d think would favor a powerful dude like Ryan Trebon, as it clearly did KfC. But after a fast start the big guy popped like a nickel rubber and that was all she wrote. Meanwhile, Todd Wells screwed the pooch while bunny-hopping a barrier and was hauled away on a stretcher, which is rarely a fun way to leave a race. You get to be an old duffer like me, you git off an’ run them sumbitches.

’Cross comes to Fort Fun

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 1 Comment

If I didn’t have to work weekends I’d be up in Fort Collins today and tomorrow, spectating at the New Belgium Cup.

But I do, so I’m not. If you’re in the same boat you can catch the action live via streaming video over at VeloNews.com.

• Late update: Jesus, these guys suck. No focus on the real action, no details of same, lousy camerawork, no sense of timing. It’s like watching your dad’s home videos, if dad smoked a lot of weed. I updated my Flash Player for this? I don’t care how many Clif Shots Colt had — I want to know what lap folks are on, splits between the leaders and the chasers … you know, all that boring journalisticky kind of stuff.

• Even later update: Bad ugly mud up there at Fort Fun. Brick-making stuff, like the evil adobe goo we have in sections of Palmer Park and Sondermann Park, as I discovered the hard way. Now I stay the hell out of those places after a bout of what the Irish call “soft” weather. The Fort Fun car washes will collect many quarters tonight, while local motels endure the dread Brown Towel Syndrome.

Coyote ugly

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments

More dry, dusty cyclo-cross today, domestic and foreign alike.

At the U.S. Gran Prix of Cyclocross stop in Kentucky, Georgia Gould laid a humiliating beat-down on the women’s field, outclassing everyone for a second consecutive day, while Jeremy Powers took over from Tim Johnson in putting the ol’ Louisville slugger to Ryan Trebon.

Across the pond in the Czech Republic, Zdenek Stybar played the Roadrunner to Niels Albert’s Wile E. Coyote, going “Beep-beep” and then kapweeeng on the bell lap, leaving Albert standing there with his jaw on the ground, his Acme® ’cross bike collapsing into a pile of parts underneath him. I swear I actually saw the course rise and settle under Stybar’s wheels as he rocketed along to keep his undefeated streak intact in front of a partisan, boisterous crowd in Pilzner (mmm, beer).

I didn’t get out myself, unless you count a bout of leaf collection and removal in tandem with Herself. A neighbor uses our maple’s leaves for compost in her extensive garden, and it looks like we’ll have a record haul this season — we’ve already collected six bags’ worth and there are still a few green leaves on the tree.