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The Top Classic?
Roubaix
57%
 57%  [ 66 ]
Flanders
28%
 28%  [ 33 ]
Liege Bastogne Liege
7%
 7%  [ 8 ]
Milan San Remo
4%
 4%  [ 5 ]
Tour of Lombardy
1%
 1%  [ 2 ]
Total Votes : 114

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Wozza
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 07, 2009 2:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Is it Lombardy that is the ride of the falling leaves ? - cool name and i think also heard it mentioned that the race is the same age as me which is nice. Laughing
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Des
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 07, 2009 2:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Wozza wrote:
Is it Lombardy that is the ride of the falling leaves ? - cool name and i think also heard it mentioned that the race is the same age as me which is nice. Laughing


Never realised you were that old Woz Shocked
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lancewrite
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 07, 2009 2:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Tour of Lombardy first run in 1905.
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Stotti
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 07, 2009 3:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Billy Boy wrote:
Stotti wrote:
Flanders is the one i would guess would have the most beneficial effect on a career. Roubaix a great race but more luck involved.


How many Roubaix winners have been lucky? Was De Vlaeminck lucky to win it so many times?

Winning Roubaix demands so much of a rider, and one of those things is the ability to ride cobbles, which some riders can do much better than others. This is a skill alongside being able to climb or sprint in my book


Fair enough BB but i was meaning that there is a measure of luck required compared to Flanders. You are more likley to suffer a mechanical or fall off in PR than any other race.
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will10
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 07, 2009 4:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Flanders

Lombardy is often a great race, as everyone goes balls to the wall with it being the last race of the year.
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Roy Gardiner
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 07, 2009 4:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Stotti wrote:
Billy Boy wrote:
Stotti wrote:
Flanders is the one i would guess would have the most beneficial effect on a career. Roubaix a great race but more luck involved.
How many Roubaix winners have been lucky? Was De Vlaeminck lucky to win it so many times?

Winning Roubaix demands so much of a rider, and one of those things is the ability to ride cobbles, which some riders can do much better than others. This is a skill alongside being able to climb or sprint in my book
Fair enough BB but i was meaning that there is a measure of luck required compared to Flanders. You are more likley to suffer a mechanical or fall off in PR than any other race.
Yes, you have to avoid bad luck. But if you look at the winners, there are few who aren't really big stars, few 'flash in the pan' wins.
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Wozza
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 07, 2009 4:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

lancewrite wrote:
Tour of Lombardy first run in 1905.


Ohh dear Embarassed I retract my earlier comment then. Although has been said i ride like a 104 yr old. Laughing Laughing Embarassed Which one is the ride of the falling leaves then Confused Question
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Billy Boy
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 07, 2009 4:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Stotti wrote:
Billy Boy wrote:
Stotti wrote:
Flanders is the one i would guess would have the most beneficial effect on a career. Roubaix a great race but more luck involved.


How many Roubaix winners have been lucky? Was De Vlaeminck lucky to win it so many times?

Winning Roubaix demands so much of a rider, and one of those things is the ability to ride cobbles, which some riders can do much better than others. This is a skill alongside being able to climb or sprint in my book


Fair enough BB but i was meaning that there is a measure of luck required compared to Flanders. You are more likley to suffer a mechanical or fall off in PR than any other race.


Yes, because it requires more skill and attention to detail in terms of equipment and technique, neither of which are down to luck...
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Roy Gardiner
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 07, 2009 5:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Billy Boy wrote:
Yes, because it requires more skill and attention to detail in terms of equipment and technique, neither of which are down to luck...
Yup, Van Looy apparently, I read somewhere, didn't puncture once in all the P-R he rode, a matter of riding 'matured' tubs.

All that technique is essential; the luck is on top and part of the magic, IMO.
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JohnS
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 07, 2009 6:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

one man army wrote:
I wonder if in 30-40 years there'll be another one-day race that would make a poll like this? Or is that it now, that these monuments have become so engrained that nothing will be able to compete with them?
Maybe L'Eroica could develop into one? Didn't (or maybe still does)Denmark have a one-day race over cobbles?
What was the race just after the tour? was it the GP Zurich? That was alright with good parcours but it went bust.
Certainly the Rochester GP was never going to capture the imagination!

Rochester GP was where Jim Greaves burst a tyre and stacked up with back injuries in the early 60s. Was that at the back of the castle on the cobbles? Embarassed
Do you have any old programes listing the riders and events won in previous years - Ta Very Happy
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Tucker
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 07, 2009 7:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Id say Flanders too - the 20% cobbled climbs are more spectacular than flat cobbles IMHO, especially when someone attacks. Marvellous.
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one man army
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 07, 2009 8:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

JohnS wrote:
one man army wrote:
I wonder if in 30-40 years there'll be another one-day race that would make a poll like this? Or is that it now, that these monuments have become so engrained that nothing will be able to compete with them?
Maybe L'Eroica could develop into one? Didn't (or maybe still does)Denmark have a one-day race over cobbles?
What was the race just after the tour? was it the GP Zurich? That was alright with good parcours but it went bust.
Certainly the Rochester GP was never going to capture the imagination!

Rochester GP was where Jim Greaves burst a tyre and stacked up with back injuries in the early 60s. Was that at the back of the castle on the cobbles? Embarassed
Do you have any old programes listing the riders and events won in previous years - Ta Very Happy


I'm talking about that BINFEST of a world cup race during the '90's

That race in the 60's sounds better especially if Ian St Johns side-kick was riding. I can imagine him standing there with a punctured tyre saying "well Saint, its a funny old game"
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Tucker
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 08, 2009 6:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

one man army wrote:
JohnS wrote:
one man army wrote:
I wonder if in 30-40 years there'll be another one-day race that would make a poll like this? Or is that it now, that these monuments have become so engrained that nothing will be able to compete with them?
Maybe L'Eroica could develop into one? Didn't (or maybe still does)Denmark have a one-day race over cobbles?
What was the race just after the tour? was it the GP Zurich? That was alright with good parcours but it went bust.
Certainly the Rochester GP was never going to capture the imagination!

Rochester GP was where Jim Greaves burst a tyre and stacked up with back injuries in the early 60s. Was that at the back of the castle on the cobbles? Embarassed
Do you have any old programes listing the riders and events won in previous years - Ta Very Happy


I'm talking about that BINFEST of a world cup race during the '90's

That race in the 60's sounds better especially if Ian St Johns side-kick was riding. I can imagine him standing there with a punctured tyre saying "well Saint, its a funny old game"


Laughing Brilliant.
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Harmon
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 09, 2009 8:35 am    Post subject: Re: The Top Classic? Reply with quote

Roy Gardiner wrote:
Billy Boy wrote:
Following on from a comment Royston made...
Harmon started it on Sunday banging on about his favourite being Flanders.

Roubaix
Flanders
Liege
San Remo

by Autumn I've kinda lost interest Very Happy

Lombardy


'banging on' ....how very dare you.......
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Roy Gardiner
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 09, 2009 8:38 am    Post subject: Re: The Top Classic? Reply with quote

Harmon wrote:
Roy Gardiner wrote:
Billy Boy wrote:
Following on from a comment Royston made...
Harmon started it on Sunday banging on about his favourite being Flanders.

Roubaix
Flanders
Liege
San Remo

by Autumn I've kinda lost interest Very Happy

Lombardy


'banging on' ....how very dare you.......
Very Happy At the risk of being a creep I thought the commentary first class, as usual.
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Dan Souf
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 09, 2009 9:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

For me it has to be Roubaix.
You can't say much about it that hasn't been said before, but it's the pure spectacle & brutality that, I think, makes it the favourite.
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van eijden
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 09, 2009 9:46 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Leiths "A Sunday in Hell" did a lot to establish P-R as a classic classic. Its a close call between that and Flanders - for me the climbs add that bit extra to Flanders so thats why it gets my vote.
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one man army
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 09, 2009 10:03 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

There's something about the bleakness of the Paris-Roubaix landscape and grimness of the villages that it passes through that, oddly, gives the race part of its epic feel.

For those Villages who probably never see anyone from outside the area all year apart from this one weekend in April, it must be bewildering. Certainly, I notice people literally stop in their tracks at the site of a GB number plate.

I broke down in one a few years ago while trying to watch the race. Those few hours spent waiting for recovery are now etched in my memory. I was ABDUCTED by a mentalist mechanic & his very fat wife in an old Peugeot 205 to be taken to the next village where, I worked out, his mate had a 'camion'. His mate wasn't in, or if he was, he was ignoring the mental mechanic bellowing at the top of his voice up to his window.

The mechanic got his fat wife to take me back to my car whereby he started smashing 7 shades of sh'it out of the starter motor with a large flat-bladed screw driver. He then turned the car round to try to bump start it down the hill (I had a feeling the cam belt had gone, which it had but lacked the french to get this across) before giving up a few minutes later.

He buggered off and came back an hour later with fat wife &, this time, spotty youth only to be warned off by another mechanic that turned up with his own camion who loaded my car up and took me all over 15minutes up the road to Cambrai before dumping me off and telling me someone else would be along shortly to take me to Calais.

I never did see the race but did learn some new french words relating to car engines.

So, yeah, Paris Roubaix, great race innit...
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Joursans
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 09, 2009 11:56 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

one man army wrote:


I broke down in one a few years ago while trying to watch the race. Those few hours spent waiting for recovery are now etched in my memory. ...


If that's the emotional strain PR can put on spectators I can't begin to imagine what it does to the riders.
Sad
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one man army
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 09, 2009 12:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Joursans wrote:
one man army wrote:


I broke down in one a few years ago while trying to watch the race. Those few hours spent waiting for recovery are now etched in my memory. ...


If that's the emotional strain PR can put on spectators I can't begin to imagine what it does to the riders.
Sad


No emotional pitfalls for the riders - sore bottoms & numb hands are their bugbears.

On the subject of sore bottoms - that 'Roubaix Shower' thing is a bit h0m0-er0tic innit? Maybe thats where the 'big' George hincapie thing comes from?
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