THERE WAS A BIKE RACE TODAY

wow, what a great bike race today, paris - roubaix was won by one tough, courageous stuey o'grady. paris - roubaix is the great equalizer and by this i mean that a rider has to rely on their own grit and team tactics are relegated to the breakfast table. this is true bike racing, mono a mono, hard against hard. where the brave raise to the cream of the crop. where equal parts of courage and crazy takes you to the top spot on the podium. too see someone like stuey work so hard through the season and never quite pull off a win, a tear comes to ones eye. what an effort, what passion, what pain.

he attacked with about 24Km to go, that is an eternity in bike racing, especially with someone like giant tom gunning for you. o'grady stuck it though and dug deep into his pain cave to bring his inner hard man to the fore. paris - roubaix has always been one of my favorites, if not my favorite race since i was 14 and watching the spectacle, the glamour on wide world of sports. it is so refreshing in this world of one race specialists, robotic like teams and tactics, media jealousy, to see a race so hard, so long, so steeped in tradition, come down to just the rider and his effort, his passion. i love bike racing and this is why. what other sport can have a great event like this that transforms a team sport into an individual sport and than back to a team sport. and least i forget to mention, where is there a sport where an old man on a second tiered low budget team, with very little support, can storm to third place, solely on determination, grit, and courage. way to weseman, way to sock it to the young guns one last time.

ok, it is now getting hard for me to see, as the tears of joy stream, time to find a tissue and wipe away the joy that flows from my heart [and i didn't even win, that is true testament to what a great sport this is].


weseman on the attack


magnus backstedt [trailing weseman] , my friend and my odds on favorite to win, punctured after this and had to settle for 47th [next year maggie]