Last month in Road Cycling

Hey, so I don't really know what happened. One week of pushing TWIRC off turned into two, and before I knew it an entire month had passed without any updates. I know most of you rely on my blog entries, and schedule your entire life around it. I'm sorry, I hope you remembered to eat and sleep.

But here it is, back in all of its glory -- except there isn't really a whole lot of interesting stuff to discuss. There are no road races happening in Arizona, and the only pro race that happened that was of any importance was the Japan Cup.

The Japan Cup, they should really call it the "Italians Racing Each Other in Japan Cup." Twelve times in the races 17 year history the race has been won by an Italian, and the last 4 editions have been an all Italian sweep. Even the podium this year was completely Italian. Damiano Cunego (Lampre) managed to hold onto his awesome season ending form that had garnered him the win in Lombardia the week before. In second was that guy who definitely spends considerable time eyebrow shaping, Giovanni Visconti (Quickstep). But that guy in third. It took me a little while to figure out who that guy was. Turns out his name is Ivan Basso, and I guess he's kind of a big deal. The picture from Wikipedia shows me that he was on Discovery Channel, which means he's probably famous because he knows Lance.

But seriously folks, the mighty Ivan Basso is back from his suspension with a new team and a stupid looking bike. It seems he's going to be just as mighty as ever. If you don't know what he was suspended for I recommend you look it up, because I don't like discussing it -- at least not on this blog (Ask me in person and I'll discuss it at length). Anyway, with absolutely no racing in his legs for two years Basso proceeded to blow the race apart on the final climb and created the selection that consisted of him, Visconti, and Cunego. Cunego beat out Visconti in a two up sprint for the win. What happened to Basso? He was just kind of hanging out -- Ivan doesn't sprint.

Pretty uninteresting stuff I know.

Even less interesting is some of the changes that have been happening over the course of the off-season. For example, the return of Floyd Landis. It probably won't be that interesting for the one-time winner of the 2006 Tour to be racing for the team formerly known as Healthnet.

Another completely uninteresting piece of new is that Rock Racing has hired Rudy Pevenage to be their new Director Sportif. Wait, actually this is extremely interesting. Who is Rudy Pevenage? He is the former director for T-Mobile and famously regarded as the mentor of Jan Ullrich. A few years ago some stuff happened, and the guy kind of dropped off the map. His return to racing is just one more step towards what will hopefully be the return of Jan Ullrich (my apologies for the crappy music in the video).

A lot of Cyclocross has been happening too, I guess that'll probably be a little bit more interesting.

Of note so far this year is that Sven Nys is encountering quite a bit more competition from two young riders: Lars Boom, and Niels Albert. Since the last time I've written, the elite 'cross racers have ridden two more world cups and three more superprestige races. With these two young racers blocking keeping Nys from winning in the biggest races. Unfortunately for Albert though, a serious crash and ruptured his spleen, knocking him out for the rest of the year. Since then, Nys has been spending more regular time on the top step of the podium.

Oh hey, check out how crappy the weather in Belgium has been lately.

Until next time,

Anthony

P.S. If anyone has any questions on anything road racing, or would just like me to look stuff up and write about it, feel free to leave a question in the comments section. It's going to be a little boring going through the 'cross results for the next month or two.

*all images courtesy of cyclingnews