Some lessons are best learned the hard way. And the lessons of yesterday’s Tour of Colorado, er USA Pro Cycling Challenge were obviously lost on the riders in Spain this morning.
At least in Spain we got to see the textbook downhill attack that Liquigas orchestrated on the final descent of the day. Yesterday in Colorado we got to see the finish line while the attack of the week took place and young gun Tejay van Garderen put the stick to Levi Leipheimer. Phil Liggett gave Levi some credit saying – maybe at his age he was more cautious on the wet descent – but that certainly doesn’t explain why 38 year old George Hincapie went with Tejay’s downhill attack and easily out sprinted him and four others to win the stage.
Two examples of perfectly timed attacks on courses that weren’t supposed to be won on the downhill. That’s why we race and that’s why a PRO needs to pay attention in every race. The future of cycling looks very good right now – Tejay is takin’ it to the old men and Nibali and Sagan are double teaming the way-we-used-to-race. Impressive. The way Sagan sat back until he knew Nebali couldn’t take it and then easily accelerated around to win the stage was impressive.
Watch this perfectly timed quad-attack!
Tomorrow is supposed to be a sprint stage… with very few sprinters in the race it’ll probably end up being Boonen vs. Bennati in a cluster of a finish. I’d like to pick Boonen, but that guy doesn’t like the heat and still isn’t back to 100% - so I’m going with Bennati for tomorrow. A Trek rider won today in Colorado so maybe a Trek rider can win tomorrow in Spain.
Are we gonna see this tomorrow? Oh and more to the point will this jersey have more on it next year?
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