Anti-climax
Oooooh. Shocker. Boom won. Who'da guessed that one? Honestly, I'm stoked for him and the Dutch. Lars oozes class and now has accrued all kinds of world champion stripes. Good on him.
The interesting parts beyond Lars winning though are:
a) Stybar. Another world champ (U23) and is going to do something special next year. His Kalmthout win this year was huge and next year I think he can pull a rabbit out. 5 seconds behind Boom today is insurance of the kids abilities. My man Klaas didn't follow through for me this year the way I thought he was going to but a win at Torhout and a top 10 today ensured his great season.
b) The time gaps were SO SMALL! You've all seen CyclingNews by now and the deltas between riders were nuts! the Top 25 all cam in within 1 minute behind Lars.
c) Rhinos! Who was not using them today? You'd be crazy not to especially with that 45 degree off camber grass slope and that crazy hill climb.
Congrats Netherlands!
Sunday, January 27, 2008 at 12:24PM
Reader Comments (7)
No surprise here.
Didn't you mentioned LB as the man to watch earlier this year?
Rhinos: I may have to pony up for some next year. My experiences with an alternative brand were less-than-happy, w/ flats at crucial times (CO States and Natz, hmmm...) I think it crystalized when the lovely (and wise, tolerant, etc.) wife asked: "weren't you originally gonna get some other tire? Why didn't you just buy *those* in the first place?"
I'm taking that as license to stock up...
Finally, wrong post, but now I have something else to consider aside from the Nomad PW!
-Lane
Hi Greg,
For your info, Rinho were not the tire... the ideal one was Rinho Bambino, freshly released model...
You can't see any difference with the normal Rinho except that in place of 3mm nubs it's 2.2mm high...
That was the choice of Boom, Nijs, Franzoi and a couple of the other big gun being griends with the Richard.
Michel, you're my ear to the ground!! Very cool to hear that Dugast is coming out with these! I LOVE the tread pattern but it's not good for 3/4 of the courses anywhere....they are just too damn burley! A smaller profile of that same tread pattern with that sidewall will be PERFECT. Tell Stu to sign me up!
ah heck - you could just use the old ones on the road a few times to wear down the nubs that much!
Sacrilege, Gewilli. Sacrilege.
No, you can't do that gewilli. Assuming you can't get ahold of the new model, the PRO thing to do would be to have your mechanic clip the tread to 2.2mm.
I'll stick with my Michelin Muds!
Put the top crossers in the world in a winner-takes-all-the-glory everybody's-peak-season race. Put them on a ridiculously fast and unchallenging course where nobody could be bothered risking breaking the race apart and you get a totally uninteresting yawnfest of a Worlds. Something wrong - lame course and attack-shy racers equals a world TT champion winning without much problem.