who himself is just a **** remco

For a stage that had almost zero impact on GC today was pretty compelling.

Vine is superhuman. Not sure if he is a **** Magnus Cort, but motherofgod.jpg what heart to not only not abandon after that crash but to chase down the group and go on the attack.

Good to see Bardet back in form after what seems like has been a **** year for him.

Vine not even the most combative of the stage

They must have used a different definition of combative- I mean the Burgos rider that they chose did take out an ISN rider and sent him limping back to the peloton.

En garde!

I know it’s dumb but I find it amusing that Christian Vandevelde on the US tv coverage refuses to say the word “intermarche”.

Great Vuelta and quite the surprise on today’s stage. Tomorrow just a formality.

hopefully the Netflix crew was around Movistar car yday

Seriously though did anyone figure the logic behind telling Lopez not to chase, how was that bad for Mas chances for 2nd?

The only thing I could kinda see is limiting Mas chances at winning the stage but then Mas was pretty passive & ballless when it came to actually trying to win the stage

I don't know if we'll ever get the full story, but it's mind-blowing on both ends -- a team potentially telling a guy with a podium spot who has looked stronger than Mas to hold back, or a guy with a podium spot just flat out quitting.

I doubt that Movistar expected Bernal to not chase and I can see them telling Lopez not to help him out, but once it was obvious that Bernal wasn't coming back they could keep the gap down or let Lopez try to drop him. If Lopez had legs like he did the day before he could have pulled back a couple minutes on his own before the last climb easily.

WvA wins four stages and the GC in Britain, outsprinted Cav and Greipel at the finish. What a beast.

**** me.

Chris Anker Sørensen has just passed away at the age of 37 in Belgium where he was covering the World Championships when he was hit by a car while cycling

He was a great person, warm, always kind and down to earth and has been a fantastic figure in Danish cycling for many years (and continued to be as a commentator and expert for TV2 on most races). This one hits hard, I'm devastated, he was one of those people who made the world a better place, a great human being, on and off the bike. And he leaves behind a wife and 2 young girls. This is too much.

Rest in peace, Chris.

man, as a Belgian not sure how to feel right now

Gutted for Wout, ridiculous all the medals he has in major championships without a win

WC circuit is 10km away from where I live

Considered going but it'd have likely been craziness and I wanted to be able to follow the races end-to-end

Watch Belgium completely overwork and give it away to Italy

Great race, and what a performance by Alaphilippe, he is otherworldly when he is at his best.

Belgium's tactics were suspect, I don't see the point of burning Remco when it's already clear the group isn't getting caught, and he would have been useful later to chase down the attacks. That said I doubt WvA would have won either way, he looked like he had an offday, and Alaphilippe was flying. Remco seemed stronger than WvA today, but it's difficult to know in advance who's going to look good after 250 km of racing.

Also nice to see Valgren get a medal after what has been a difficult week of mourning in Denmark for cycling fans, riders and experts alike after last weekend's tragedy. Valgren's been looking strong recently after a long while off pace, hopefully he can continue.

Hats off to Alaphilippe, winning back to back World Championships is an incredible feat.

I don't even know who makes the calls for team Belgium given no earphones etc but it's just so infuriating watching Remco making the same mistakes over and over again, he's got some blame to take and I'm sure he will within Belgium. The fact that Wout didn't feel good today is no excuse

Merckx is an idiot for calling him out as selfish but Horner was completely right for calling his strategy the one of a knucklehead

And I don't want to hear -like at the Olympcis- that he was not going to win anyway. 1) we don't know that and we never will because we can't compare a guy's strength who was in the lead with 180KM to go vs the one of a guy who went in with 20km to go 2) even if he didn't, he's clearly hurting his team by not being available to chase in the end

After two and a half years, this Sunday will finally once again be the stage for the (in my humble opinion) best single day of cycling there is on the calendar. "The Hell in the North", Paris-Roubaix, will be raced again after being canceled once and postponed another time due to COVID lockdowns.





The race is infamous for its grueling pavées, sections of cobbles of dubious quality. This year's race will have a total of no less than 30 cobbled sections, meaning that 55 of the races 257 km will be ridden on cobblestones.



The weather is always a key factor in Paris-Roubaix, and based on the forecasts it seems we may get a wet one this year, which makes the race all the more dramatic and chaotic - and interesting. The race is notoriously unpredictable due to the difficult course and countless punctures and many crashes. The pavées are very narrow, and it is very easy to be caught behind others if you're not up front, which adds to the stress. You can lose this race in a hundred ways, and many of them are not in your own hands.



The favorites:

These days it is a rare thing for Wout van Aert to participate in a cycling race and not be considered among the favorites, and Sunday will be no different.
After a disappointing World Championship on home turf, he has a chance for redemption on the French cobbles.
He was also among the favorites the last time the race was raced in 2019, but a couple of punctures ruined his chances.


You can't say WvA without also saying MvdP. Mathieu van der Poel has recently come back from a nasty injury in the Olympics mountain bike competition where he crashed. His form was therefore questionable going into the World Championship Road Race, and while he wasn't at his peak, he finished 8th overall and first in the group with Wout van Aert, so he is clearly not completely out of it.


Another rider who had a poor World Championship was Mads Pedersen. The former World Champion crashed twice and abandoned the race. He has never finished top 50 in Roubaix in 4 tries, but he is seemingly in OK form and absent crashes or punctures he could be a contender (I hope).


"The Wolfpack" aka Quickstep are, as always in classics, a many-headed juggernaut. Realistically at least 5 different Quickstep riders might win this race, and their strength in numbers have time and time again proven to be difficult to deal with in these races. If I was a betting man, which I am, I'd back QSTP to win, but as always Paris-Roubaix is very unpredictable.


Therefore the final favorite is literally anyone. In this race, anything can happen. Perhaps most best demonstrated in the 2016 edition, where the race was won by Australian Mathew Hayman, undoubtedly a rider of quality in the cobbled classics, but nevertheless a rider without a long list of wins. The win was made all the more impressive by the fact that he beat Tom Boonen, one of the best cobblestone classics riders of all time, and 4 time winner of Paris-Roubaix (tied for most with Roger de Vlaeminck) in a sprint.

This was only Hayman's third ever professional win - in fact his only ever win on the World Tour. I haven't bothered to check, but I dare say you won't be able to find (m)any other riders in recent history, who have only ever won a single World Tour race and it happened to be a monument (thank you Bettiol for winning that Giro stage earlier this year), certainly not over a 19 year career. It speaks to the unpredictability of the race.




To warmup and get in the mood, I recommend the documentary "En Forårsdag i Helvede" (lit. "A Spring Day in Hell), by Danish journalist, cycling enthusiast and commentator, poet, filmmaker etc. Jørgen Leth. The documentary follows the 1976 race from preparations to finish, with legends such as Eddy Merckx, Roger de Vlaeminck, Freddy Martens and Francesco Moser being in the center of the race.

https://youtu.be/KkQub5pPZFQ here's a link to the original with English subtitles, here is an English narrated version https://youtu.be/zxBTVU9JDrA. I can't recommend it enough, even to outsiders of cycling I think it gives a great insight into what makes cycling races great, both as a sports competition but also as a cultural event that captivates an entire region once a year.

The peloton is basically 10 riders with 130km to go

Wonder how much I'd have to be paid to race this under those conditions. They should just do whoever is last to fall on his bike wins the trophy

This is mayhem.

Flat tire and now a crash for Moscon.

And a crashing motorbike.

Unbelievable scenes.

Incredible race, one of the best I've ever seen. The drama, the fight, the heartbreak (though Moscon isn't exactly likable), this race had it all.

Any of the final three would have been very deserving winners. Colbrelli attacked with like 100 km to go, MvdP was perpetually attacking the last 80 or so km. Vermeesch keeping up and also looking strong the whole day. Just a monumental performance by all of them, though nobody today was stronger than Moscon, but the cobbles are merciless.

Give wet Paris-Roubaix every year, please.

damn those cobblestones must be hell on those skinny tires

i've gone pretty fast on a mountain bike on similar and there were a number of times i thought i'd bail

Race definitely delivered. Colbrelli is a beast.

Pogacar wins Il Lombardia.

2 monuments, 3 Tour stages + overall, 3 other stage races, an Olympic medal (albeit bronze) and several more stage wins and podiums.

What a season he's had - and he just turned 23.

Van Aert just doesn't know how to prepare an objective, dude is going full gas all year long at 90% of his peak instead of being 100% in April for Ronde and Roubaix then at 100% on the tour. Sure you'll finish all your races in the top 10, but alaphilippe targeted Ardennes tdf and worlds and delivered on all those races and did nothing in every other races he didn't gave a **** about

He won 4 stages 2 weeks before the worlds while Ala Philippe was just preparing his legs

He needs to step down on bullshit like riding for the Gc on tirreno after a cx season

Evenepoel riding a gravel event in Kansas on the 31st? That's about three WATs in one sentence.