The finish of today’s Amstel Gold Race has set Twitter abuzz – with some viewers reaching for the smelling salts as they wondered whether it might be the best-ever finish of a one-day race.
A relative newcomer to the calendar compared to the five Monuments, each of which have now celebrated their 100th birthday, –54th edition makes the Dutch race a stripling.
But the drama today was equal to anything we have seen in recent years at Milan-San Remo, the Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix, Liege-Bastogne-Liege or Il Lombardia.
World cyclo-cross champion Mathieu van der Poel has had a stellar debut Classics season on the road.
The big ones may have eluded him – though fourth at Flanders and, a week earlier, Gent-Wevelgem – suggests that the 24-year-old will be winning races of that stature over the cobbles before long.
However, victories at the Grand Prix de Denain, Dwars Door Vlaanderen and the Brabantse Pijl mark him out as perhaps the star of the past month’s one-day races – and all that while riding not for a megabucks outfit, but for a UCI Professional Continental team, the Netherlands-registered outfit, Corenden-Circus.
Today, the action switched from Flanders and Norrthern France to the trio of races that make up Ardennes Week (only the second and third of which are actually in that geographic area, we know, but that’s how they are collectively termed).
As it headed towards its conclusion, today’s 265.7 kilometre race from Maastricht to Berg en Terblijt seemed destined to end in a two-way tussle between Jakob Fuglsang of Astana and Deceuninck-Quick Step’s Julian Alaphilippe.
Coming towards the final half-kilometre, a third rider bridged across and entered the equation – former world champion Michal Kwiatkowski of Team Sky.
And then, incredibly, like a locomotive – pulling as he was a train of riders behind him, as he had done for the previous 7 kilometres as he pretty much single-handedly reeled in a deficit of almost a minute to the leaders – the young Dutchman, whose father Adri won the Amstel Gold Race 29 years ago today came through to take a victory for the ages.
What a finish. Twitter, as you can imagine - or at least the cycling part of it - went into meltdown.
Almost as if it's never hijacked by the left....
As wtjs says though - the issue is that animals are erratic (yes - including people, will get there). Lots can't control their dogs. Horses are...
If you count every comment. Pernickity. I don't need to reread it, you screenshot it so I can always ask you if I forget something.
I dont know that its ignorance of the rules thats fully the problem and I dont put much store in these kinds of surveys anyway...
As an aside to this story, a driver (who under Martins rules did nothing wrong as drivers who go through red lights are less dangerous then...
This doesn’t surprise me in the least. Take a look at the comments on social media whenever there’s a post by a Road Policing Unit either...
or more specifically Fat Lass At the Back in this case....
...he doesn't want to do it on his own time
This seems to be my theme ATM but I think almost every infra / legal story here could be ended with the following and have the majority of the...
It sure is!