With Panache Second IS Winning

It's been 24 hours now and most of the pave dust has settled back into the Flanderian farmlands for another cycling season. But with a week before we move on to the Wallonne it's worth considering the cobbles one last time - and the superman efforts and "strategerie", as our former President would have called it, of perhaps one of the finest "old school" cyclist of our time - Fabian Cancellara.

I say old school with great affection here. To me old school means 'panache', it means having the cojones to attack and make racing your bike what it is - fun! And when you are done it means knowing you gave everything and being incredibly proud of that.

Ya ya, I know it's professional, and sponsors pay for wins, and contracts are based on doing your job, but for heaven sake it's also about riding your bike. And that's why we love guys like Jens Voigt and Gilbert and Cancellara - they love riding their bike, they have panache. Somewhere along the line they found the old mold and discovered it wasn't broken. Ya know, the one that created Bernard Hinaut and Eddy Merkx, Fausto Coppi and Henri Pélissier.

"Cancellara’s biggest error was undoubtedly his performance in E3. It sounds perverse but did he need to show his hand that early, did he need to demonstrate such dominance in a race of mediocre importance? From that moment on, he moved from being Cancellara the favourite to being Superman, and every team, every rival, based their tactics not perhaps on their strengths but on his weaknesses."

Maybe Cancellara would argue there is no "race of mediocre importance". Cycling may be the one sport in the world where second is a winner: because it's done with panache - exploding out of a group of wheel-suckers (including the rainbow jersey wearer) to bridge a seemingly insurmountable gap to the remainder of the break group, then blow them away to finish second. Panache IS winning.

It would be interesting to the Cannibal's take on "biggest error."

The kids at CyclingNews went on to add -

"Yet it’s still hard to be critical of a rider who was essentially riding as a one-man team. The CN staff joked about letting him ride the TTT at this year’s Tour de France by himself this July. We stopped laughing once we realised he could actually win." - CyclingNews.com

Yes, I think the boy could knock off several other entire teams. Not because he is fast, which he is, nor because he is insanely strong, which he is, but because he would try it - he has panache!

Cancellara Inspires the Crotchety Old Guys

Ya gotta love the old Pros who pull no punches - the grand beauty of getting old - besides getting to tell everyone how old you are.

Gazzetta dello Sport also asked De Vlaeminck about Filippo Pozzato. He dismisses the Italian with some hard truths and blunt criticism about owning a Ferrari.

“Pozzato was a champion when he was young and had more class than Boonen. His problem is that he’s too good looking to be a rider.”

“A Ferrari is not the car for a rider, it’s for a footballer. The boss of Brooklyn (Giorgio Perfetti) gave me a Ferrari when I won Milan-San Remo but I couldn’t get my bike in the boot and had to take the saddle off, which I then forgot at home. I sold it after a year.”

More of Roger's bluntness: De Vlaeminck picks Cancellara as his Paris-Roubaix heir

The Weight of Insanity

Now that I'm back from the Gulf I no longer wake to the hurricane updates on weather channel, instead have returned to a rhythm of checking CyclingNews and VeloNews - a nice diversion from reality.

This morning I learned two things - one, Fabulous Fabian's Fourth ITT World Championship places alone atop the podium of cycling's greatest time trial greats.

The second, insanity has a weight, exactly 50 "picograms" or 50/1,000,000,000 of a gram. Looking around for a representative of that weight - good luck. Start with a gram and work down. A gram? For all you off-season gram junkies a gram is equal to a medium size paperclip, or a Bic plastic pen cap (only), or one US dollar bill. Now imagine something one trillionth that size, add 49 more and you have it, INSANITY. Yes, that's insanity - the weight of its actions, or reactions, is much weightier, generally devastating in fact, often life changing. The victim of this weighty insanity? - recent Tour de France winner Alberto Contador(read more here on VeloNews).

[The UCI] however, added that only a “very small concentration” of the drug had been found and that the case warranted “further scientific investigation” because the Cologne laboratory that detected the substance is known to be able to detect the tiniest traces of drugs.

“The concentration found by the laboratory was estimated at 50 picograms (50 trillionths of a gram) which is 400 times less than what the antidoping laboratories accredited by WADA (World Anti Doping Agency) must be able to detect,” the UCI said, adding that testing of a second “B” sample taken at the same time confirmed the result.

More on Clenbuterol and why no one knows what they are eating

I also booked my flights back to the Gulf to work on the post-BP spill mess, the hundreds of lives that have been destroyed or tossed on their heads, the environment disrupted for decades, that's an insanity I can measure and has real weight.

Cancellara to use aquatic bike that will float over the road with no effort

"It’s so stupid I’m speechless"

- Fabian Cancellara on claims of "mechanized doping" - that he used a motorized bike.

Fabulous Fabian

"A man for the Classics" the phrase goes - and they all say it, or write it - Phil, Paul, Sean, Andrew, cycling journalist of every accent and ilk. But the question eventually rises to the surface, just like the Cancellara cream last Sunday in Flanders - to be a MAN for the Classics don't you have to win one of the bloody battles? Better yet a couple of them?

Fabian was fabulous in Flanders on Sunday - period - full stop. His victory was storybook. The kind of win freckle-faced Flanderian kids lie awake at night an dream of - attack on the Muur and solo to the line. He said, "The way I won, for me, it's quite special." and, "When I get old and I can say to the young riders: 'I won the Tour of Flanders alone and I attacked on the Muur,' it's a perfect scenario – the gladiator won the battle." Attack on the Muur, solo to the line - it's the final pitch grand slammer over the green monster at Fenway in the world series, the buzzer beating trifecta in the NCAA national championship - it was why they made the movie Breaking Away. As Fabian said, "it was one of those days your legs feel 100%, so in your head you feel even stronger."

And a Man for the Classics has to be smart - there is no tomorrow - no opportunity to get a few minutes back on GC - Fabian knows that, Classics are two-handed surgical wins, a tactical scalpel in one hand, a laser-knife conviction of confidence in the other; Fabian wheeled them both: “If I could have stayed with him, then I think I could have beaten him in the sprint, and I think he must have known that,” Boonen said. “He was never planning on going to the finish with me. The only place where he could attack me is where he attacked me, and he put me into difficulty.”

Georgey Porgy -
“I’m disappointed,” he said. “I had good legs on the Molenberg and I hesitated when Fabian and Tom went. That was a big mistake, and from then on everyone in the chase was watching each other. I got a little caught behind the breakaway guys we were catching on Molenberg, and that was a big mistake. I really think I could have gone there, but it’s Flanders, and you have to be 100 percent focused at all times. It’s really unfortunate, I think I could have gone with them. I had really good legs today.” from VeloNews.

In an article over on CyclingNews entitled "Hincapie regrets missing Cancellara and Boonen attack", George did some whining. It's like 6:30 Am, I've been up since 5 watching this, with a cuppa tea and dose of hope, watching to see if George can finally make his fate. Then it happens, the camera angle is perfect, staring into the face of the contenders, the cobbles are dry, all the "Men for the Classics" are there, Cancellara strikes up the right, Boonen negotiates wheels and accelerates through the leftside and they are gone, up and over the Molenberg - GEORGE WHERE ARE YOU????????

George resigned himself to sit-in and hang for the final sprint for fifth place. He finished sixth, behind fellow American Tyler Farrar (Garmin-Transitions), first time Flanders rider Tyler Farrar (hang on folks, Farrar wins Scheldeprijs Vlaanderen this kid could be a Man for the Classics).

This is crazy, George Hincapie has placed 10 times in the top 10 of Flanders, six times in the top 10 at Paris-Roubaix, not to mention a host of other spring northern Classics, so, the power is there, the opportunity is there, the experience is there, so what isn't there?! What is it you don't get? Maybe we have all been drinking the American-cycling-media cool-aid. Or maybe our perspective a bit too distant from this side of the Atlantic. As the broadcaster on Eurosport online offered during the race, somewhere around 35kms to go and George still looking for someone else to take up the chase - "...is he really a man for the Classics? Or is this just American marketing?"

All I know for certain is there were definitely two men for the Classics Sunday - they took matters and the race into their own hands, Boonen was brilliant, but Fabian was Fabulous. Three down and two to go - Liege and Lombardia - watch Cancellara reinvent himself.

Photo above copyright Roberto Bettini

Channeling Cancellara

There are those days when you feel fast - your legs feel fast, your reactions are fast, your brain feels fast, your bike feels fast, and the guys you ride with just roll their eyes and go "oh no - it's not going to be pretty today". You love being on the bike and want to ride forever. I like to think of those days as "Channeling Cancellara". Not just because Fabian Cancellara is fast, but because he loves being fast and is a REALLY nice guy. That makes fast fun.

I've been lucky enough to be around him twice at the Tour of California, hang while he was warming up on the trainer for the Prologue once in San Francisco and last year in Sacramento. And even when the guy was cooking up a 103 degree temp with the flu, and would have to drop out the next day in the monsoon, he was still kind, gentle and accommodating - and bloody fast!

Today he scorched the field in Mendrisio, on home turf, in the UCI World TT Championships; if scorched can aptly describe that kinda fast. At the first check point of the 48.7km, three circuit course, Cancellara was already 38 secs up on the nearest rival Tony Martin and flying away. At the 25.7km mark he was 1:17 faster, and moments later he "humiliated Wiggins and Sebastien Rosseler, who had started two and four minutes ahead of him respectively, by overtaking the pair.", as VeloNews put it.

Again from the Velonews article, “I don’t know if it was the best time trial of my life, but I knew that I would be very fast today,” Cancellara said. “My legs were strong, but my head was even stronger today.”

Britain’s David Millar tagged it when he said he’d “rather race for the win in the road race than second in the time trial" - that's coming from the guy that just won the final TT in the Vuelta. And really that's the point, Cancellara defines fast. To paraphrase a line from the movie Bull Durham, it's as if the gods looked down and turned your legs into thunderbolts, you've been given a gift. The really great thing is, Fabian knows it, appreciates it, and is respectfully humble about it - how the hell can you NOT want to channel THAT?

Today, even Cancellara was channeling Cancellara, and that made fast fun, very fun!

Photo: Casey B. Gibson