By Jeremy Arnold - Calirado Cyclist

Thoughts on Milan-Sanremo:

I know that many people in the English-speaking (ie arrogant and slightly mis-informed) World think it is actually spelled San Remo but sorry folks…the real name is Sanremo. The problem stems from a mistake made by an Italian official on some documents a few years ago that inadvertently created a new (read-fake) Saint – St. Remo. In case you were wondering…there is no such Saint. Unless he is a patron saint of typos. But in Italy…there is only Sanremo, which should be enough in its own right. From what I can tell, it’s a pretty nice place…even without a fictitious Catholic figurehead.

On a related topic — perhaps in the era of performance enhancing drugs there will be a coronation of St. Romo, in honor of admitted ‘roider Bill Romanowski of 49er, Bronco and Raider fame. Or infamy. The guy literally had a fishing tackle box full of pills, balms and syringes that he would take with him wherever he went. They even did a feature on ESPN about it. Oh…but just like Rumsas – it was all his “dieting” wife’s stuff. At least that’s what he said when the Feds came knocking on his door in Cherry Hills a few years back. That excuse didn’t work so well after he punched a teammate in the eye and ruined his career at a Raiders preseason camp. Not sure if dietary supplements cause ‘roid rage there Billy. This is an interesting legal take on the story if you’re curious.

Anyway…or should I say…Entonces…Oscar Freire confirmed his reputation as the most confusing and devastating bike racer on the planet with another easy looking victory at MSR last Saturday. It’s tough to overlook the 3 World Championship jerseys on his wall but I swear Freire is one of the best “forgotten” riders in the world. Even though he was a former winner of the event it seemed like all the focus was on Boonen, Petacchi, Bettini and the other core of Italians like Bennati and Pozzatto.

Question: Is there a bike racer that wants any piece of Oscar Freire when he’s healthy?

Answer: I don’t think there is. If there is…name one.

Guys like Boonen don’t want him in longer races like the Worlds and MSR that usually come down to sprints and guys like Bettini don’t want him either because he’ll hang with them in late surges and just doesn’t get dropped. He may be one of the most quietly respected riders in the world. Rarely does anyone act like they should have won when Freire beats them. Instead, there is just kind of a sobering acceptance that they were beaten by a better guy. Even the relative “cheapness” of his first MSR victory over the prematurely celebratory Erik Zabel is often seen as testament to his tactical savvy as much as a product of Ete’s mistake. Such a curious career.

If Freire were Italian or Belgian he would be the biggest star in the entire sport. But because he is a Spaniard on a Dutch team that performs in decidedly un-Spanish events…he is often overlooked by the mainstream media. I know he gets hurt a lot and has health issues but find me another rider that peaks at better times and pulls a higher percentage of big wins. I don’t think you can. When he is really on form, I don’t think that there is a tougher matchup than Freire at the end of a race. He is faster than Boonen, Bettini and Valverde and stronger than Petacchi, McEwen or Bennati.

The only thing that can slow down the Spaniard is yet another injury or some more ugly politics like those seen in last year’s Tour de France when he basically let Popovych off the hook during Stage 12 as a result of the Rabo/Disco relationship. If everything was equal (which it is NOT) I have to think he would have hung on to Popo and probably won his third stage of the race. But that’s a whole different story…

Anyway…Freire was not going to lose Milan-Sanremo this year. He was never more than a few places off the front (even though he appeared to be totally alone…maybe Flecha was with him for a minute) and was never in trouble at all. He just sat in, let Quick-Step and the others work and then made Boonen and Petacchi look like little kids on the Via Roma. Textbook. If Freire is healthy I don’t see how anyone can ever pick against him in events like this. 3 Rainbow jerseys and 2 MSR’s aren’t enough for you?

It would also be easy to overlook the performance of Paolo Bettini in this race because he didn’t really garner a top result. But anyone who watched the race will attest to the Cricket’s stunning performance. It should be noted that Bettini wrapped himself around a street sign during Tirreno-Adriatico and suffered a broken rib in addition to a number of other injuries. Last weekend, he was held behind a crash in MSR and made one of the more amazing returns to the group that I can remember. He was well behind the field at the bottom of the Cipressa and the helicopter shot showed him just flying past all the dropped riders in an effort to bridge back up. Seriously, from the bottom of the climb Bettini must have passed at least 50 riders as he worked his way from group to group and ended up at the front of the peloton by the beginning of the Poggio. Then he took over on the descent and was actually driving the group to catch Ricco and Gilbert. In case you were wondering…these guys Freire and Bettini…they are pretty good bike racers.

What can you say about the rest of the race? Well…Ricardo Ricco and Philippe Gilbert made good moves near the top of the Poggio but were not nearly as impressive as Popo and Bettini. Somehow Popovych managed to get off the front on no fewer than two occasions within the last 15km. And not just little “Voeckler-esque” efforts but real-live “I’m trying to break this race” style action. After he bridged up to Moletta and Pellizotti I was impressed, but after he got caught and then leapt off the front again on the bottom of the Poggio I was amazed. How do you do that? It’s not like they were taking it easy when they caught him the first time. I had to echo Bob Roll’s commentary of the event with a hearty “GO POPO!!” Very impressive stuff.

Not nearly as impressive (or maybe even more so in a sick and twisted way) was the descending skill demonstrated by the Gerolsteiner team. I have had nightmares about Andrea Moletta’s digger/impaling on the descent of the Cipressa and am still having flashbacks of David Kopp’s lifeless body and bloody face from the video coverage. I don’t know what kind of wheels the Water Boys were riding or if there was some kind of new tire used but I will not be anxious to test their gear from Milan-Sanremo considering their results. No fewer than five riders went down and Moletta’s crash was maybe the sickest thing I have seen since Joe Theisman’s leg injury on Monday Night Football.

Bob Roll had the Understatement of the Year when he claimed that Moletta had “Come to grief” after wedging himself between the cement wall and a steel lamp post at 40+ mph, breaking his femur (aka The biggest bone in the human body) and simultaneously causing C-Mac and I to scream at the television as if we had just seen a live homicide. Yeah…I’ll go out on a limb and say there might be some grief associated with that crash.

An interesting and disturbing side note observation was Fabian Wegmann’s reaction to Kopp’s seemingly dead body on the road after three Gerolsteiner riders all went down on one of the Capi descents. At first he was curled up and trying to get himself checked out after eating it but then he went over to Kopp to see if he was okay. Clearly he was not. With blood streaming out of his face as a result of a broken nose and clearly unconscious…it would not have been out of place to think that he was dead. Wegmann stood over his prone teammate and put his hands on his helmet in a show of shock and concern. But then the mechanic came by with a new bike and it was back to the race. So much for your concern Fabian – You have to race. So he got on his new bike, took one more glance at his potentially dead teammate and started flying down the hill in pursuit of the peloton.

Find me another sport that would have the contestants witness a possibly catastrophic injury to an athlete and then just have them jump right back into the fray like nothing had happened. I know Football and Hockey are tough sports but I’ll take a puck to the chin or a shot from a linebacker over a 40+mph digger on asphalt any day. And we don’t even have pads – straight lycra baby. Pads are for wusses and downhill racers.

In the ultimate show of toughness, Moletta made a promise to be back by the Vuelta and Kopp is actually contesting wins already after their brutal crashes. Okay, maybe it was the painkillers talking in Moletta’s case but does anyone out there want to argue about the toughness of professional cyclists? I didn’t think so.

Final Verdict – Milan-Sanremo is a tough, long race with lots of crashes and almost always a very deserving winner. Oscar Freire wins just about everything he wants to when healthy…I smell a four-time World Champion in the not-to-distant future. Or maybe that’s just the scent of burnt flesh from all the guys that bit it on the roads of Italy last weekend. Keep the rubber side down fellas…rubber side down. I know it’s a year away but I think Stuart O’Grady will win next year. Just a hunch.

Now for a quick Redlands Recap –

First of all…can a brother get any footage of domestic racing coverage? Please let me know if I am missing a media outlet because it would have been GREAT to see this race. I know most of the courses but it’s tough to do recounted play-by-play with mental images of Oak Glen and Sunset instead of real life images. Is it really easier to just buy the European feed of races like Tirreno-Adriatico and Milan-Sanremo? Really Versus?

Secondly…Holy Bajadali. Awesome. I really like Iceman Moninger but he’s won a lot of races (as in like…hundreds and hundreds) and I was happy to see another Boulderite take the cake in Southern California this past weekend. With all due respect to the BMC team and their support of Morning Hair, it is great for American racing to have guys like Baj and teams like Jelly Belly winning events like this.

With some solid team support from Colorado Buffalo Alex Candelario, Bajadali finally got the big result he’s been scratching at for the past few years. I still remember when the guy was rocking the Orange-Green-and-Purple of the Vitamin Cottage team as an amateur and now he has upgraded to the Lime green-and-rainbow of Jelly Belly in the pros.

Good for you Andy…may your next team kit be conservative in its color selection.

It would have also been nice to see Zajicek bridge the gap on Sunday because the math on his podium-crashing move was rather impressive. Five minutes to close a 1:20 gap on the likes of Wherry, Baldwin, Swindlehurst, Wohlberg and Jacques-Maynes is no joke at all. For real…but it resulted in a podium so it was worth it.

Too bad we couldn’t watch it happen.

By Jeremy Arnold - Calirado Cyclist

Life is full of good things and not-so-good things. How’s that for some philosophizing? It’s true though…and the cycling world is no different. The good things generally outnumber the not-so-good but for the sake of argument (and symmetry) I will compartmentalize the past week of racing into 5 things I liked and 5 things I did not like.

Things I Liked:

1) Alberto Contador – What else can you say about the performance this guy put on during Paris-Nice? It helped that he had the power of a great team behind him to set the table but the Spaniard’s effort over the final stages of this event was what bike racing is all about. In order to win the race (and make up for a sloppy 17 second deficit he took early on when the group split and Disco dropped the ball), Contador had to be willing to sacrifice himself for breakaway opportunities and risk everything. While other riders were content to look after their Top Ten Overall placing by following wheels, Contador made no effort to conserve himself at all and just went crazy.

After breaking away and driving the lead group on the penultimate stage – only to be unceremoniously dropped by Luis Leon Sanchez and caught by the group within sight of the finish – it would have been fairly easy for Contador to get discouraged. Instead, he went out the next day, had his entire team (including the likes of Leipheimer and Danielson) set him up for the final climb up the Col d’Eze and subsequently rode the entire peloton into the ground with yet another ferocious attack. At 5′9″ and 138 lbs, the Spaniard is rather adept at uphill accelerations but it was his aggressive descent and drive to the finish in Nice that was almost even more impressive.

Compounding my appreciation of Contador’s performance was the replay of his near-death experience on the same descent a couple of years ago when he was off the front and pulled his foot out while accelerating out of a corner. I recall the sequence very vividly and even mentioned it in my Pro Tour Preview piece earlier this year. I can’t find it on YouTube or anything yet but during the replay on Sunday it made me holler, even though I have watched it probably 10 times. I mean…the guy pulled his rear wheel entirely off the ground and made a 45 degree turn toward a rock wall and a cement telephone pole at probably 40+ mph but somehow managed to keep it together, using his released foot to settle himself, touch the ground and keep from slamming into the curb. It all happened SO fast but the replay puts it into perspective. Then he just clips back in and starts hammering away again…didn’t even look down at his pedals. “Oops…Okay almost just killed myself…now back to work.” Awesome.

I had forgotten that Contador had a serious brain injury as a result of a crash a few years back which jeopardized his career. Sixty stitches in his head and a brain hemorrhage can dampen one’s enthusiasm for the sport sometimes. But Alberto kept riding and seems to appreciate what he has accomplished. Hopefully Contador’s story can serve as inspiration for Saul Raisin as he returns from his head injury.

There are lots of ways to win bike races but this past Paris-Nice was an example of a rider simply breaking both the will and legs of his rivals. You could argue that there may have been a little politicking in the peloton but the bottom line is that Contador was the strongest rider both mentally and physically. And he knew it too. Maybe Bruyneel and Demol have some liquid courage or something that they give to their riders that makes them just feel superior to everyone else. That level of confidence is rare in bike racing but the Disco boys seem to have it in spades.

2) Discovery Channel – Speaking of which…is there really any question about who the strongest Pro Tour team is? With all due respect to CSC, Discovery is just an absolute stage racing machine. Between Leipheimer, Contador, Basso and Danielson they can challenge virtually any multi-day event and they seem to have more guts and confidence than just about anyone else. What other team would be able to ride the front for the entire Tour of California to protect the lead and then turn around and ride the front to set up winning attacks during Paris-Nice? Once again, it is rare for a team or a rider to just simply enforce their will on an entire Pro Tour peloton, but the Disco boys have done that now in both of the biggest events on the calendar so far.

It is a shame that Hincapie will not be challenging the cobbled Classics this year because if he were able to notch a win at Flanders or Roubaix, we could be looking at one of the most dominant team performances of all time. Barring a re-opening of Operacion Puerto it is virtually a given that Basso will repeat at the Giro, Levi will be positioned well to repeat at the Dauphine and it is conceivable that Disco could have three riders in the Top 10 at the Tour. Not to mention the Vuelta – where I expect Contador and Danielson to contend.

At this point, the only question about this team revolves around its sponsor for the coming years. As an American, I can only hope that the team remains registered in the US and does not turn entirely into a European squad. They should have no trouble securing a new title sponsor but for the good of the sport it should remain a US team.

3) Davide Rebellin - “Tin Tin” may not have won Paris-Nice but he put up one heck of a fight. I have always thought of Rebellin as a one-day racer but it turns out that he has had a number of good results in Paris-Nice and has finished on the podium a number of times. He will always be primarily known for his historic Fleche-Amstel-Liege sweep a few years ago but those wins overshadow a very consistent and intelligent career.

Rebellin and Gerolsteiner were basically bullied out of the win this past weekend by Contador and Discovery, but the barrel-chested Italian hung in there for longer than I expected. He admitted after the race that he knew it would be tough to keep the lead into Nice and seemed to handle the disappointment with a lot of class. I think a lesser gentleman could have easily pointed to the lack of team support as a likely reason for his loss. It could be argued that one teammate to help him drive the descent into Nice could have made the difference. I was pleased that he didn’t go there although it would have been justified. Gerolsteiner had some close calls this past weekend between Schumacher in Tirreno-Adriatico and Rebellin in P-N but I’m pretty sure these two will get some W’s here soon enough.

The other cool thing about Rebellin is that the guys from Cycling.tv pronounce his name like it’s the modified version of “rebelling.” Like, Hey Rebellin…you gellin’? Good times.

4) Chris Horner - Smiley was very visible in the Rebellin group on Sunday up the Col d’ Eze and proved to be the first American on the road for a while. He was working for a laboring Cadel Evans and actually helped steady the gap to Contador for a good portion of the final climb. The final group with him was Rebellin, Luis Sanchez, Pelizzotti, Schleck, Sammy Sanchez, Valjavec and Evans - all of whom had GC aspirations. Not only is that a select group in its own right but when you consider the motivation for the other guys compared to Horner who was looking out for Evans, it’s even more impressive.

He made a big surge before the summit and then dropped off the pace but once again, it’s always fun to watch Horner race a bike. I just hope that his service for Evans doesn’t compromise too many opportunities. He’s smart and talented enough to be of service to Cadel, look out for stage wins and go for a good overall placing all at the same time. You can’t say that about too many riders. Jens Voigt, Hincapie…not many others.

5) American Domestiques - Speaking of helping out, how about the work of Tom Danielson and Levi Leipheimer in service of Contador? Pretty good stuff. Honestly I think Danielson is probably more suited to work like that than to go out completely for himself. He’s obviously one of the best climbers in the world but I just think he fits better in a team role than as an outright leader. He did good work for Levi in California in that role as well.

As for Levi - one would assume that he held something back during Paris-Nice in deference to Contador and it bodes well for Discovery that so many quality guys are willing to work so hard for the team. Basso and Hincapie were selfless in the ToC, Levi and Danielson sacrificed in Paris-Nice and the Disco crew is 2 for 2. They’re like the Yankees - only not Evil.

Things I Did Not Like:

1) Crashes - Bettini crashed twice and got a little banged up so he may not be 100% for Milan-San Remo. And he certainly will not be at 110% because that is impossible. Matt White bailed hard on a descent and had to abandon Paris Nice while Iban Mayo hit a traffic island on the last stage. This week wasn’t especially bad in the grand scheme of things but it reinforced the reality that nothing is given in this sport. Anything can happen at anytime and form is nothing if you don’t keep the rubber side down.

2) Belgium Doping Investigation - I don’t know much about it yet so I will reserve judgment until more comes out. Not good for Marichal though. Not good at all.

3) No Unibet in Paris-Nice - The race was so good that it was almost easy to overlook the fact that one of the best teams in the world was not in attendance. But I will not overlook it. Despite the quality of the race, the fact that the UCI caved to the ASO and basically turned their back on Unibet was at best a disservice to the product of bike racing and at worst a politically motivated challenge to the competitive landscape of the sport. You’re telling me that Agritubel was better for that race than Unibet would have been? I know that’s not really the argument (although the gambling thing is SO weak) but the point I am making is that the overall product was diminished by not inviting Unibet. This whole thing is such a shame. More later of course…as the saga continues…

4) Cycle Sport - I know it sounds silly to criticize a publication that I have subscribed to for years…but Cycle Sport will not let go of this Tyler Hamilton bashing. The latest tactic is to publish sugary letters from readers defending Tyler and then put a picture of him at the bottom of the page with the caption “Hamilton: Are you happy he’s back?”

I just find it odd that they are being so plainly anti-Hamilton. I understand that there is little middle ground in the cycling community when it comes to Tyler - you either like him or you don’t - but their readers are calling them out and then getting mocked. It just seems like a strange choice for a fairly reputable publication.

If Hamilton is able to come back and win again it will very interesting to see how they handle it. I am also curious to see how he is received at the Tour de Georgia. I personally believe that he will get a lot of support…just not from Cycle Sport. I really do like the rest of the magazine most of the time though.

5) Not actually being in Nice - Anyone who caught any of the footage of the final stage of Paris-Nice or has been to the area knows…Nice is very, very nice. I highly recommend it. Cannes and Monaco are pretty sweet too. Good place for a bike race, well…unless you’re Unibet. D’oh.

Coming Soon…Milan-Sanremo (that’s actually the correct spelling) and Redlands!