|
It’s a bollocks this race! You’re working like an animal, you don’t have time to piss, you wet your pants. You’re riding in mud like this, you’re slipping, it’s a piece of shit …
—Theo De Rooy, in 1985 after abandoning Paris-Roubaix
OUDENAARDE, Belgium (VN) — Two days later, a rider might think he’d come down with the flu. But those who’ve ridden Paris-Roubaix before know better: there’s a sickness in their bones and joints, and it’s the lasting effect of the pavé.
Paris Roubaix is 254 kilometers long on mostly flat roads. It’s also one of the hardest races on the road calendar, and a race that 1981 winner Bernard Hinault summed up, simply, as “bullshit.”
Roubaix is a week after Ronde van Vlaanderen (Tour of Flanders) and riders generally race both, the cumulative effect of the cobbles of the northern classics deep inside them.
“It’s not much harder than this race to your body,” said Sky’s Bernhard Eisel on the Flanders start line in Bruges Sunday.
“In those two races you just squeeze everything out of your body. You’re riding 50ks of cobbles — it’s crucial. There’s a certain point you get used to it. We have the abilities and the body to do it. But at the same time, two days later, you just feel like two days after a big, big crash. Or you can — if people have never raced a bike — you can compare it like having the flu, or something.
“You start feeling your joints, and everything is just aching. And you probably have a good sleep, and you wake up in the morning and you’re like, ‘Oh. I had a flashback: I did Roubaix.’”
The Dutchman De Rooy, who called the race “bollocks,” was asked in 1985 if he’d ever do it again. His face covered in mud, he said that he would: “It’s the most beautiful race in the world.”
The Hell of the North has a special mystique among directors, racers and fans. It may not be as outright difficult as Flanders, which features a passel of ridiculously steep cobbled climbs over its 260km parcours, but its cobblestones are much sharper and rougher than those in Belgium.
“Both are really hard. There’s more climbs in [Flanders] and that makes it harder, but it’s hard on both,” Sky’s Edvald Boasson Hagen said.
The Paris-Roubaix route features 27 cobbled sectors, or more accurately granite setts, and finishes on the smooth surface of the Roubaix velodrome, ending the bumpy season of the northern classics. And, likely, it couldn’t come a kilometer sooner.
“It grinds them down. I think as you can see here, it’s not just so many people going off the front. It’s more — that the peloton is getting smaller and smaller and smaller,” Sky’s performance manger Rod Ellingworth said. “We know it just grinds them down. And that last hour — it doesn’t look like they’re going fast, does it? And I don’t think the attacks are, they’re nothing special.”
Nothing special, but good enough to earn a monument, if a rider can survive the granite.
첫댓글 영상을 1시간 39분 지점부터 보시면 칸첼라라와 보넨이 본격 등장합니다.
칸첼신은 47km 남겨두고부터 독주로 나서 3분 가까이 시간을 벌리며 우승합니다. 보넨이는 추격하다 지치고..ㅠㅠ
코블스톤을 어마어마한 속도로 질주하는 괴물들의 이야기..^^
이번 토요일날 저녁에 하는건가요??? 유로스포츠
현지시간 일요일 오전이니, 우리 시간으로 일요일 밤.. 9~10시쯤부터 볼 수 있겠지..^^
유로스포츠 중계는 통상 2시간정도..
진짜 거지가 따로 없군요..ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
보넨이 부상으로 불참에 이어, 사간이는 컨디션 관리를 위해 불참한다는 군요..
다음주 일요일과 그 다음 수요일에 있을 Amstel Gold와 Fleche Wallonne을 노립니다.
칸첼라라는 어제 답사 라이딩에서 또 크래쉬로 경미한 부상을..!!
올해는 cobblestones sector 거리가 52.6km네요.. 위의 표는 2012년 자료.