THIS WEEK IN PRO CYCLING
Flèche Wallonne: Astarloa’s first for Spain
To breakaway on the first climb of a very hilly road race is usually not a smart tactic, especially when there are still 134km and nine more climbs to go. It’s usually even more stupid to attempt such a long shot in a classic as difficult as Belgium’s Flèche Wallonne. Luckily, the little Basque rider Igor Astarloa doesn’t think much of conventional wisdom.
On Wednesday, he became the first Spanish cyclist to win the Flèche; indeed, no Spaniard had ever won a classic in Belgium, France or the Netherlands. And Astarloa did it by being strong, audacious, confident, and very, very smart.
You had to be strong to be in the first group of riders at the top of the 13-percent Mur de Huy that opened the climbing hostilities 65km into the 67th edition of the Flèche Wallonne. You had to be audacious to then push ahead to help form a 15-man breakaway that also contained your Saeco teammate Aleksandr Shefer and Basque buddy Aïtor Osa of iBanesto.com. Astarloa’s confidence then shone through in the long, long breakaway, in which he never hesitated to work hard with Shefer to keep their lead hovering between two and three minutes for the rest of the day.
And when a strong chase finally materialized in the last 20km from Lampre’s Raimondas Rumsas and La Boulangère’s Walter Benetau (marked by Saeco rider Fabio Sacchi), and came within 40 seconds of catching them, Astarloa knew it was time to be smart. On the second-to-last climb the Côte d’Ahin, 13km from the finish, the 27-year-old Spaniard knew that an attack was needed if his group were to avoid being caught.
In fact, he went so hard that the other 14 riders immediately fell back to form three or four separate groups. But there was still a long way to go when you’ve already been off the front for three hours, and as Astarloa said, “I’m not a great time trialist.”
So when he turned his heads and saw that Osa was chasing him, he slowed down imperceptibly to make sure that Osa would catch up — and then the two of them worked brilliantly together on the narrow, mostly descending roads into Huy, creating a one-minute buffer on eight chasers (see the result for their names, they finished third through 10th) going into the third and final climb of the Mur de Huy.
“Osa is a great climber,” said Astarloa, who has the reputation of being a sprinter — in last year’s World Cup, he came in second to Johan Museeuw in the nine-up sprint that ended the HEW Cyclassics race in Hamburg; second to Laurent Jalabert in the five-up sprint that ended the Clásica San Sebastian; and fifth behind Erik Zabel in the mass field sprint for third place at Paris-Tours.
On paper, Osa should have been able to drop Astarloa up the Huy “wall” that has 19-percent pitches on the two switchbacks halfway up its 900-meter length. But like all that other conventional wisdom, Astarloa three it out the window. He calmly road alongside his Spanish rival, both of them out of the saddle to conquer the unrelenting grade, their pedal strokes perfectly synchronized. And when they reached the last steep pitch with 150 meters left, Astarloa used every last ounce of energy in his 5-foot-7, 130-pound frame to blast clear of Osa, maximizing the advantage of all those fast-twitch muscles.
At the line, the red-clad Saeco man on his red Cannondale bike was an incredible 16 seconds ahead of runner-up Osa, while teammate Shefer led home the other eight riders, to take third place, 56 seconds back.
Saeco’s day of triumph was completed by team captain Danilo Di Luca who became the “best of the beaten” by taking 11th place, 1:34 back; he sprinted across the Huy summit two seconds ahead of Rabobank’s Michael Boogerd, with Phonak’s Oscar Perreiro and CSC’s Tyler Hamilton another couple of seconds behind. No doubt, Di Luca, Boogerd, Hamilton and company will now hope to be in contention on Sunday at the more prestigious Liège-Bastogne-Liège; but on this warm sunny Wednesday afternoon on a crest of the Ardennes, the name that mattered most was that of Igor Astarloa.
RACE NOTES
• Before the race, Telekom’s Bobby Julich told VeloNews that he is still suffering from the heavy fall he took on his coccyx bone at Paris-Nice five weeks ago. “I must be getting older,” he said, “because I’ve never had back problems in all the 15 years I’ve been racing.” As he spoke, his former teammate Jan Ullrich, came up to Julich to shake his hand and wish him luck. Ninety minutes later, Julich was one of the 15 riders who broke clear on the Mur de Huy – he was third over three of the 10 climbs, but finally succumbed to that ailing back to tail off on the second-to-last hill and finish 62nd, three minutes back of Astarloa. And Ullrich, he rode comfortably all day to finish in 31st, 2:01 back.
• Christian Vande Velde, who has been having back problems all spring, was the highest placed U.S. Postal team rider, coming in with the main 50-strong pack in 47th place, 2:18 down. And how was the back? “It was all right,” he reported, “and I’m actually trying to get my legs back a little bit … just in time to finish up the spring. It’s good to finally get going in the right direction.”
• Tyler Hamilton was relatively happy with his finish up the Mur, fourth best of the main group. “That shows that I still had good legs,” he said, “but I was pretty isolated at the end.” Watch for him on Sunday at Liège.
• One of the race favorites, Davide Rebellin of Gerolsteiner, crashed after 44km and was taken to the hospital in Huy. The 31-year-old Rebellin suffered a small fracture on one of his left shoulder bones. He is expected to be out for at least three weeks. Rebellin had been one of the favourites for this Sunday's Liege-Bastogne-Liege one-day classic, the fifth leg of the World Cup, in which he placed second in 2001 and third in 2000.
• The 42.860-kph average speed was the second fastest in race history, only marginally slower than the 42.964 kph set in the 1996 edition by Lance Armstrong.
Check our live update window to see how the men's race unfolded.
The FULL RESULTS from both the men's and women's races are now posted.
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