Those of us who have tried know better.
The last stage of the tour de suisse was won by fabian cancellara, a swiss rider on the danish CSC team.
Fabian wins a lot of races, and they're usually rather spectacular.
Watching the coverage on VS network yesterday, I was focused rather intently on the finish. Philip Gilbert took a flyer at about 1.5 K to go, here is the play-by-play courtesy of cyclingnews.com:
16:52 CEST 166km/2km to go
The tight turn is used by a Lotto rider to attack, but it is not much of a gap.
16:53 CEST
Förster and Zabel are there.
16:53 CEST
Gilbert goes! He doesn't want to sprint against the Germans!
16:54 CEST
And who goes after him? Fabian Cancellara!!!
16:54 CEST 167km/1km to go
Gilbert tries to stay away, but the Swiss rider is coming up strongly, encouraged by the locals.
16:55 CEST
Gilbert turns around and worries as he sees Cancellara coming up.
The peloton cannot come to terms with the attack of the Belgian and the Swiss.
16:55 CEST
A few hundred metres. Gilbert is still ahead but Spartacus closes in.
16:56 CEST
Gilbert goes out of the saddle and tries to squeeze the last ounce of energy out of his tired legs. He stays to the left hand side of the road.
16:57 CEST
And there comes Cancellara! He gets into the slipstream of Gilbert, then comes out and passes him on right!
Another great and incredible victory by Cancellara, but he is exhausted and sits down immediately.
You can't tell in the photo, but they never had more than ten seconds on the field. Ten seconds, and fabian chases the lone breakaway down like a dog and passes him in the last few meters for the win.
Of course, it doesn't quite play out here as well as it did on the TV. Watching Fabian close the gap was like watching a young lion slowly closing in on its prey.
Earlier in the day I had gone for a ride with a few friends (who knew I had that many?). at one point the flames got lit, whatever the impetus was, I don't remember. I closed the gap on the guy in the lead, then pulled through. We had a gap on the other three. I pulled up over a small rise and opened is slightly further. My escape companion pulled through, but the chasers closed the gap on the down hill. Once it flattened we pulled away slightly again. I pulled through, and managed to maintain the gap. Another rotation, and the other half kept on the gas, but I have done _NO_ speed work all year. This was the third week since february I've managed more than 100 miles in the week, so I didn't have alot to go on. Still, I felt good going for as long as we did, if only for a few minutes.
So I can identify with fabian, probably more so with Phillipe, and even more so with Andoni Lafunete. Who, you ask? The poor sob who finished in last on GC.
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