As you probably remember, what should have been Roger Hammond’s season highlight – Paris-Roubaix – ended in a hospital bed. He sent me this update and allowed me to share it with you (Roger’s wife works in a hospital, so you’ll notice Roger takes particular interest in that area!):

Just a quick update…

The good news… I’m finally starting to heal now. The stitches are out and I have to say the hospital in Valenciennes did a great job, quite a neat scar when you take into consideration what they started with. And no sign of infection. Although I was on a huge dose of antibiotics for 8 days just in case. The reason for such a high dose, they weren’t taking any risks. They let me know just before they took me to surgery, they’d had a rider in about 8 years ago that had a really nasty infection after crashing in Arenberg. I guess they were trying to make me feel better about the impending surgery!

The bad news is I still have a lot of pain in the elbow joint itself and it is still swollen. I’ve been waiting for improvement but it is a lot slower than anticipated. I’m starting to get impatient so I’m going to see Matt (team chiro) to get his opinion on how best to treat the injury. I subsequently found I had broken a rib in the crash too, which just added to the sleeping difficulties!

Another Spring classic, another thought on Fabian. Let’s face it, he is the man around whom all the Classics revolve so far. With his decision to participate in the Amstel Gold Race, will this one be any different?

There are actually two BIG differences. First off, he’s not the favorite, Gilbert is. Secondly, he’s on arguably the strongest team in this race, not one of the weaker ones.

What isn’t so different from last week, ironically, is the type of race. Sure, Roubaix is flat as a pancake with horrible roads while Amstel has 3,000 little climbs and the world’s largest collection of road furniture (when did that stop being called speed bumps and road signs?). But for a rider like Cancellara, that hardly matters as he excels in both (witness his performance on the Poggio and the Leberg).

More importantly, Amstel and Roubaix are the two races most prone to the dozen little groups scenario, almost every year these races explode in small fractions and the accompanying tactical chess game of who’ll rides and who won’t. Which in turn means it’s all about the numbers. If Cancellara jumps away alone or in a small group, who will chase him down with one or both Schlecks (likely one as the other will invariably crash in Amstel) on their wheel? My guess would be that eventually, nobody will fully commit, and instead the chase will shrivel in self-pity and frustration. Not unlike Roubaix of course.

The only question mark over such a scenario is Fabian himself. He was strong all the way back at Milan-SanRemo, is it possible to still be strong today? Or is the candle burnt up after E3, Flanders and Roubaix? Boom or Bust, not much in the middle.

I did not understand why Sep Vanmarcke had to help Fabian at some point. Why did you guys do that?

Jonathan Vaughters answered that to Podiumcafe: “We wanted the gap to be tight (40secs) so the others in the break were forced to work hard. And… so that Fabs [would] think he could get across towing Thor. A big gap (2mins), the break starts to look at each other, and [Fabian Cancellara] gives up.”

Well, that Paris-Roubaix certainly unleashed some emotions. Some are upset with Thor for not working with Cancellara. Five things on that:

1. Thor had his teammates Sep Vanmarcke and Gabriel Rasch work to narrow the gap on the front group. Why didn’t Cancellara have his teammates help? Oh that’s right, they weren’t there. It’s not Thor’s fault that Cancellara moved to Leopard, he had offers from Sky and BMC, both of which have strong classics teams.
2. When the gap wasn’t closed, should Thor do the work himself to close down the gap? I think it has been the case for 100 years that if you have a sprinter and a rouleur, the rouleur needs to try and drop the sprinter before they get to the finish. Remember Paris-Roubaix with Van Steenbergen and Coppi out in front? Van Steenbergen won the sprint (expectedly) but said afterwards: “If Fausto had jumped one more time, I would have had to let him go, I was done.” To which Coppi replied: “If I had been able to jump once more, I would have.”
3. It seems Cancellara and l’Equipe feel that Thor should pull Cancellara to the front group and waste his energy so that Cancellara can then jump away from him. Only a dumb rider would do that, and Thor ain’t dumb.
4. If Cancellara was really that strong, he would have dropped Thor on the cobbles. He didn’t, in fact Thor followed with relative ease. Now he dropped him on the final drag. Thor was caught out of position there and made Flecha try to close the gap first, who couldn’t. Could Thor have? If he had been in position, maybe.
5. In the end, Cancellara can complain all he wants but he himself chose his team, he chose to show off his strength at E3 and make himself the absolute top favorite. Despite that, the other teams basically handed him the win in Flanders with their early-race tactics but he over-estimated his strength in trying a 50k breakaway. In Roubaix, I don’t think he was on Superman form and combined with being outnumbered it was going to be very difficult in any scenario. I can understand that he is frustrated for being the strongest rider in the Spring and not winning any of the big races, but he can’t complain that his competitors didn’t help him. Last time I checked that’s not their job. Maybe he’ll do Amstel and/or LBL and win there.

Andrew Hood wrote an insightful piece for Velonews about Garmin-Cervelo’s biggest win, Vaughters and the tactics that made it happen at Paris-Roubaix. It’s really worth a read. The part where he quotes l’Equipe is hilarious:

Hushovd honored the unwritten code of not attacking a teammate up the road, something that lesser riders might not have done, but L’Equipe — the respected French sports daily — didn’t quite see it that way. In Monday’s edition, the paper gave Hushovd a one-star rating out of 10, writing: “Hushovd didn’t respect the rainbow jersey. He wanted to play hide-and-seek with Cancellara. Luckily for him, Van Summeren (won). He earns one point. One.”

I’m not quite sure how to read this. To get 10 stars, you need to betray your teammate? Of course, all sorts of jokes related to the country l’Equipe hails from spring to mind, but let’s not forget that it is France that gave us this most beautiful of races to begin with so “Vive la France, Vive le pavé.”

On Saturday, Garmin-Cervelo’s Spring Classics season was dubbed a failure, 24h later they appear one of the big winners. What a difference a day makes.

So, does this mean the results are now the only thing that matter (which I had answered negatively in this blog)? Of course during a race the result is what matters, but afterwards, it makes more sense to evaluate the process. Even if you win.

Personally, I think the team rode the strongest race tactically in Flanders, but that wasn’t very visible. In Roubaix the tactics were very complicated (they usually are because there are so many small groups and the situation is so fluid). It’s impossible to get all the calls right, but as long as the majority of the tactical calls are correct you’ll be OK. And the one crucial call that had to be made was made and Johan jumped clear of his group while Thor demoralized the group of the big favorites. If Johan had finished second instead of first, would the evaluation of the team’s tactics have to be diametrically opposite of what it is now? Of course not.

Speaking with Thor, Gabba and a few of the other riders afterwards, you realize just how strong they all were and how much they sacrificed their own chances for the team’s success. In fact, hearing from them how strong they felt really increased my admiration for them even more. In a way, the winner has it easy.