Stage 3, La Neuveville-Charmey, 157.6 km

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Stage 2 finally finished with someone other than Team Sky taking the honors, as Cavendish again had troubles with the ups and downs of the Swiss roads, being shepherded in by Danny Pate at more than eight minutes back. With his difficulties in Stages 1 and 2, it will be interesting to see whether he makes it home with the autobus in Stages 3 and 4. Obviously, he has his sites focused on later in the season, so we will see how he does working himself into form here, and then at the Giro.

In the GC, Bradley Wiggins is still on top, although he decided not to show off his newly revealed sprinting skills in Stage 2, seemingly content to finish safely around 40 spots back in the same time as the winner and most of the rest of the peloton. He is followed on GC by his teammate Michael Rogers, and then four Rabobank riders and two Garmin riders mixed up in the next six slots⁽¹⁾.  Among that pack of riders, Stef Clement (4th) and Wilco Kelderman (7th) for Rabobank, and Dave Zabriskie (8th) and Andrew Talansky (5th) for Garmin all excel at the time-trial and it will be interesting to see which of them are feeling good and can keep up as the road turns up during the next two days, and what kind of output they have during the final, uphill time trial. Luis León Sánchez (6th) and Bauke Mollema (3rd) for Rabobank, along with the next rider after the Rabobank/Garmin pack, former winner⁽²⁾ Simon Spilak (9th) may all be a little better suited to challenging the Sky duo on the more serious climbs. Although given his success at Paris-Nice, his early form here, and the profiles for the rest of the race, Wiggins must be fairly happy with his position.

Stage three from La Neuveville to Charmey features several ranked climbs including a second category one in the middle, and then a substantial, but uncategorized one at the end. The stage will probably not provide much separation among the contenders, but the final climb could help weed out the ones who are not particularly interested in the overall and provide an opportunity for a break to get away. Chris Froome (Sky) and Jakob Fuglsang (Radioshack) both have climbing legs and have given up substantial time already, so could take a flier if they are feeling it tomorrow. The race will likely come down to the final time trial, as is surely intended by the organizers.

⁽²⁾Given the fact that there are so few teams represented in the top eight spots it may be hard to remember, but the race did not begin with a team time trial, rather it was a very short prologue. Also, it may help to note that Team Sky has the top two racers and three of the bottom four (Mark Cavendish along with his escorts Danny Pate and Chris Froome)

⁽²⁾He was originally second in 2010, but Alejandro Valverde was stripped of the title, along with a lot of other results after some entrepreneurial blood testing by the Italians during the 2008 Tour de France definitively connected Valverde to Operación Puerto and led to him being banned, partially retroactively, for two years, beginning in January 2010.

Stage 3 Profile

Stage 1, Morges-La Chaux-de-Fonds, 184.5 km

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Sky appeared to have brought a strong team to the Tour de Romandie, and they certainly did not suffer a let down in the opening time trial with Geraint Thomas winning in 3:29, Mark Cavendish in third at 6 seconds back, Michael Rogers right behind him⁽¹⁾ in fourth, and their leader Bradley Wiggins in 11th, nine seconds off the pace. Chris Froome also turned in a respectable showing at 28th, 13 seconds back. So whatever their plan going in, Sky will have a hard time getting rid of the jersey with all those guys up there at the top of the Prologue.

As often happens in time trials, rain came down and spoiled things for some of the starters, in this case the late starters. The biggest losers among the GC guys appears to be Ivan Basso, who finished 25 seconds down, Pierre Rolland at 24 seconds, Denis Menchov at 22, and Cadel Evans at 20. Although, you can knock 5 – 10 seconds off of that, since it is unlikely that Geraint Thomas or Mark Cavendish is going to challenge for the overall. The remaining difference of 10 to 20 seconds may not sound like much, but last year the race was won by 19 seconds and the top ten were all within a minute. Although there are a lot of hills in each stage, there is unlikely to be much separation among the main contenders until the last couple stages and the final time-trial, so these seconds may make a difference. In addition to the Sky riders, Bauke Mollema at Rabobank may have had the best day, slotting in ahead of Wiggins at only 8 seconds back.

Looking at the profile below for today’s stage you can see the abrupt transition from the lowlands by the lake up into the mountains. The main question for the day would seem to be whether Cavendish can get up and down all those bumps in the road, as he is one of the few pure sprinters in the bunch. If he does not make it, the question will become whether any break can stay away, although Sky will probably try to keep a pretty good lid on things. If they do not manage to deliver Cav to the line, it looks like it should be a pretty open race.

⁽¹⁾Literally right there, he was only 4 hundredths of a second slower than Cav

From Prehistoric Dwellings to Swiss Watches

Reconstructed pile dwelling on Lake Constance in Germany (click for larger image)

The 184.5 Kilometer stage from Morges on Lake Geneva to La Chaux-de-Fonds in the Jura Mountains carries us between two UNESCO World Heritage sites. We begin near prehistoric pile dwellings along the lake and finish at the center of Swiss watch manufacturing in the mountains of northwest Switzerland. An appropriate span for the first stage of a Swiss race perhaps,  as it takes us from the earliest settled inhabitants of the area, to the manufacturing for which modern Switzerland may be best known.

The prehistoric pile dwelling sites in Morges are part of more than one hundred scattered around the alps that were collectively declared a UNESCO World Heritage site. The dwellings are located near water sources, rivers or lakes, which accounts both for the piles driven into the earth on which they were built and the preservation of the wooden pilings until the present day. The settlements based on the pile dwellings were built during the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, ranging from 5000 to 500 BC. Unlike the residents of the Jura Mountains where we finish the day, the residents of the pile dwellings lived on rich agricultural land near reliable water sources, and so were able to settle down and become farmers. Because of the high quality of the preservation and the exactness with which dating can be done from the wood, they have proved to be valuable archaeological sites, providing insight into farming and trade patterns over the very long period of their existence.

At the other end of our course, La Chaux-de-Fonds, the arrival town, along with the nearby town of Le Locle are north of Lausanne and Morges, near the French border in the Canton of Neufchâtel. The towns themselves are recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site because of their long history of watchmaking. The towns are all the more remarkable, because like Chicago, fires allowed for a redesign of the cities from the ground up. The fires, in 1794 in La Chaux-de-Fonds, and 1833 and 44 in Le Locle, happened in towns that were already devoted to watchmaking, and when they were rebuilt they were entirely built around this one manufacturing goal. The buildings of the town and the workshops, factories and dwellings were all designed around the watchmaking industry, integrating peoples small businesses with their homes, and arranging the whole to facilitate the watchmaking business. A whole town designed by the precise minds of Swiss watchmakers.

The long history of watchmaking in the two towns is traced back to the now mythical figure of Daniel Jean-Richard at the end of the 17th century. Industry was encouraged in the region because the land, resting on porous limestone, was poorly suited to farming. During the 18th century the watchmaking continued to grow with vigor from new, innovative entrepreneurs, and survived challenges from American competition late in the century. By the mid-nineteenth century when Karl Marx wrote about it, the system was well-established, and in his discussion of the process one can see how a whole town could be built around a single industry. In Section 3 of Chapter 14 of Capital, Marx writes, discussing the watch as an example of heterogeneous manufacture(from the 1906 Modern Library Edition):

Formerly the individual work of a Nuremberg artificer, the watch has been transformed into the social product of an immense number of detail labourers, such as mainspring makers, dial makers, spiral spring makers, jewelled hole makers, ruby lever makers, hand makers, case makers, screw makers, gilders, with numerous sub-divisions, such as wheel makers (brass and steel separate), pin makers, movement makers, acheveur de pignon (fixes the wheels on the axles, polishes the facets, &c.), pivot makers, planteur de finissage (puts the wheels and springs in the works), finisseur de barillet (cuts teeth in the wheels, makes the holes of the right size, &c.), escapement makers, cylinder makers for cylinder escapement, escapement wheel makers, balance wheel makers, raquette makers (apparatus for regulating the watch), the planteur d’échappement (escapement maker proper); then the repasseur de barrillet (finishes the box for the spring, &c.), steel polishers, wheel polishers, screw polishers, figure painters, dial enamellers (melt the enamel on the copper), fabricant de pendants (makes the ring by which the case is hung), finisseur de charnière (puts the brass hinge in the cover, &c.), faiseur de secret (puts in the springs that open the case), graveur, ciseleur, polisseur de boîte, &c., &c., and last of all the repasseur, who fits together the whole watch and hands it over in a going state. Only a few parts of the watch pass through several hands; and all these membra disjecta come together for the first time in the hand that binds them into one mechanical whole.

After that extensive listing of parts, one is no longer surprised that watchmaking can sustain an entire town, rather that it does not take a large metropolis to cover all those diverse  endeavors, each with many individual workshops. He then goes on to discuss the difference between our new friends in Le Locle and La Chaux-de-Fonds, with their whole town approach, and the factories in Geneva, and he suggests the superiority of the independent, whole town, method:

The detail operations may further be carried on like so many independent handicrafts, as they are in the Cantons of Vaud and Neufchâtel; while in Geneva there exist large watch manufactories where the detail labourers directly co-operate under the control of a single capitalist…To carry on the trade as a manufacture, with concentration of workmen, is, in the watch trade, profitable only under exceptional conditions, because competition is greater between the labourers who desire to work at home…

Finally, to that discussion, he drops a footnote that brings us all the way into La Chaux-de-Fond:

1 In the year 1854 Geneva produced 80,000 watches, which is not one-fifth of the production in the Canton of Neufchâtel. La Chaux-de-Fond alone, which we may look upon as a huge watch manufactory, produces yearly twice as many as Geneva…

The watch industry has gone through many changes since Marx used it as an example of heterogeneous manufacture, having faced competition from all corners of the globe, but Marx may have been on to something about the quality of the method in Le Locle and La Chaux-de-Fond, because they are still making watches after all these years. Responding to changes in technology, the towns have also managed to diversify into manufacturing other small mechanical machines.

So as they are racing into town, keep in mind how many steps it takes to make a good watch, at least a mechanical one, and how the whole town was organized around this one endeavor. Perhaps next year they can manage to have a time trial from Le Locle to La Chaux-de-Fonds, although at about 9 kms it may be a little long for their incredibly short prologues.

Prologue, 3.34 km

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The Tour de Romandie kicks off with slightly downhill prologue that measures in at a whopping 3.34 km, running through Lausanne. The course features three 90 degree right turns and finishes along the shore of Lake Geneva.

Now normally, with an opening time-trial one would look at the experts in le contre-la-montre, discounting for the short distance. However, looking at the past results and given the short distance it seems pretty much like whoever happens to feel good for those couple minutes is going to win it. This year, there is a former winner of a Tour de Romandie prologue kicking around, Mark Cavendish, who won in 2008 when the prologue stretched to an awe-inspiring 1.9 km.

However, I would not expect Cav to duplicate the feat this year, and based on the fact that Taylor Phinney finished second last year and that David Millar stopped the clock in fifth (neither of whom are riding this year), looking at the time-trial specialists seems to be the only place to start, even if it is unlikely one of them will win. There will also be a second time-trial in the final stage, although there is 300 m of climbing and may not be suited to the pure time-trialers.  All-in-all, not the best of races for time-trialists.

Nonetheless, the place to begin is with the current and former World Champions in the discipline neither of whom are present. Both current champion Tony Martin and the man holding the championship for four of the preceding five years, Fabian Cancellara, are out because of crashes. However, they do not seem to ride Romandie very often anyway. With them absent, the three most notable time-trialists would look to be Gustav Larsson, riding for Vacansoleil, Dave Zabriskie riding for Garmin, and Bert Grabsch, who won the World Championship in 2008, when Cancellara focused on the Olympics and who is riding for Omega Pharma – Quick-Step.

So while, none of these guys will have much of a chance to crank up their big engines in 3.34 km, they are as good a place as any to get a read on how the course is going and what kind of efforts it will take to win. Plus, it may be your only chance to focus on them since it will likely be the GC guys hoping for the overall who will dominate the final uphill time trial. You might as well watch the time trialists tuning up for later in the season, while you wait to see who feels the best for five minutes today.

Tour de Romandie overall

Well, with the spring classics out of the way it is on to the season for stage races, and the first one after the classics is the Tour of Romandie, which this year is opening up with the past four winners on the start line: Cadel Evans, 2011 (also 2006), Simon Spilak, 2010, Roman Kreuzinger, 2009, and Andreas Klöden, 2008. The second and third place finishers last year, Tony Martin and Alexander Vinokourov, are out after a nasty training crash and a retirement, respectively.

After a strong showing at the Ardennes classics, Astana is also coming in to the Tour of Romandie with a strong team. Not only only do they have the winner from 2009, but they are also bringing Janez Brajkovic, who finished seventh last year, when he was with RadioShack. Klöden, with RadioShackLëopardTrekNissan, and Spilak, who in addition to his victory in Romandie in 2010 has had a decent start to this year with a fourth place finish at Paris-Nice, with Katusha, are both riding for teams with reliable second options. Fuglsang is joining Klöden on RadioShackLëopardTrekNissan, and Denis Menchov is riding with Spilak on Katusha. Our last, and most recent, past winner, Evans, appears to be the main option for BMC, although he does have Tejay van Garderen, last seen smashing the field for Philippe Gilbert at Liège-Bastogne-Liège (not that that worked out terribly well in the end), to ride in support and provide another threat. It should also be noted, that with a victory Evans would tie Stephen Roche for most victories at the Tour de Romandie, with three (Eddy Merckx doesn’t have the record, which is always notable, but he did win once in 1968).

Among the teams not bringing former winners to the race, Sky is probably bringing the strongest team. They are presumably leading with Bradley Wiggins, who won Paris-Nice earlier in the year, but they also have Michael Rogers, who finished third at Romandie in 2010, and last year’s revelation at the Vuelta, Chris Froome. In addition to the GC type guys they also have Mark Cavendish returning to racing in preparation for a turn at the Giro. The Manx Missile had some success at the beginning of the year, but it is hard to tell his form after a poor showing at Milano-San Remo and a long layoff. Nonetheless, the man for the sprints, depending on how the racing goes over those few hills they have in Switzerland and whether he is strong at the end.

A few other teams coming with multiple riders, deserve mention. First, Ryder Hesjedal, who took a flyer at Flèche Wallonne and is also gearing up for the Giro. In addition, to him, Garmin is bringing Christian Vande Velde, who did not ride the classics and has been mostly under the radar so far this year. Rabobank, also has a couple riders who may be a threat, with Bauke Mollema, who seemed to always be close at the Ardennes, without getting through, and Luis León Sánchez, who won a stage at Paris-Nice.

Finally, Euskaltel is showing up with its usual stable of mountain goats, although it is always hard to tell what their form will be. Igor Anton is probably the most notable, although the young Frenchman(?!) Romain Sicard deserves mention as well. Although he has not had a lot of results since winning the U-23 World Championships in 2009, he is a young rider who bears watching. Finishing off our catalogue of threats, we cannot go without mentioning Ivan Basso, who is also prepping for the Giro, and Pierre Rolland, who will be riding without Thomas Voeckler, for whom he did such stellar work in last year’s Tour.

The race, as traditional, begins with a very short prologue and then proceeds with five more stages that are all relatively hilly without any high mountain finishes. A good opportunity for those hoping to play a role in the GC at the Grand Tours to test their form, but clearly not a make-0r-break proposition.

Lausanne and the IOC

Ah, Switzerland, and its 200 year of history of armed neutrality, defending its mountainous redoubt from the warring armies of Europe, or perhaps using their admirably discreet approach to banking to buy off the combatants when all else fails. Either way, for Lausanne, sitting near the middle of the northern shore of Lake Geneva, this neutrality has brought to it the home of the International Olympic Committee, that great organization founded on a fearless commitment to amateurism and fair-play, and now resting on the desire to wring as much money out of Coca-Cola as possible and get rich off the efforts of the best professional athletes in the World, while using the patina of the pureness of sport to get out of paying them. Truly a glorious system, and perhaps, given its lucrativeness, a decidedly Swiss one.

For our purposes we’ll only note that the IOC is managing to cause a minor blip on the cycling season this year by holding their main event⁽¹⁾ in August. Coming right after the Tour de France, there seems to be lots of talk, especially among the home country Brits, about the importance of the Olympics, but their actions suggest that the Games of the XXXth Olympiad are not important enough to distract anyone from the real jewel in cycling’s crown, La Grand Boucle.

Mark Cavendish, who won a little tune-up race on the course last year⁽²⁾ is mainly focused on the Green Jersey, with a gold medal as a nice afterthought. If Mark Cavendish, who seems to be the only living British Cyclist without a gold medal, is not focusing on it, it seems unlikely that many are. Although, perhaps the Olympics will in the end provide a nice diversion and an opportunity for someone a little off the radar and not riding in the Tour
to pick one up.

⁽¹⁾Not to be confused with their winter clambake, The Northern European and Diaspora Ice and Snow Championships

⁽²⁾Although, it should be noted that the course was shorter than the Olympic one, with fewer trips around the loop and up the one hill on the route

La Doyenne (1)

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Liège-Bastogne-Liège clocks in at 257 km and marks the end of the Spring Classics, the last chance for the one day specialists before we head off into the week long stage races and the grand tours for the summer. Some riders like Ryder Hesjedal² are honing their form, looking for good results as they target the early stage races. Others with their focus on La Grande Boucle or other later races are looking for a final good result out of the spring before turning their focus to prepping for the rest of the season, and then there are the one day men like Gilbert who may have had varied fortunes, but have a last chance to cap their spring campaign with a win, while they are still the stars of the show, before they are relegated to stealing stages while the focus is on the GC guys.

Liège has some interesting recent history, since it was the sight of intrigue in 2010, when Alexandr Kolobnev and Alexander Vinokourov stayed away and finished in second and first respectively³. However, after the race there were reports that Vinokourov, who has since retired, had transferred 100,000 Euros to Kolobnev, who is not racing Liège this year, and that he had bought the race. It was one of Vinokourov’s first races back from a doping suspension and it looked like he could have been desperate for a good result and was in a position to make it worth Kolobnev’s while. Obviously, all was denied, but certainly a little excitement reminiscent of the good (bad) old days of cycling.

Not a likely outcome for this year, though, so let us begin with GreenEdge, which went into the Ardennes with Simon Gerrans as their leader for Amstel Gold and Liège⁽⁴⁾. However, he finished 20th at Amstel and in his absence at Flèche Wallonne Michael Albasini turned in an impressive second place behind Joaquim Rodríguez. On the bright side, this gives them two cards to play, however, it also sows some doubt about who should be their leader going into tomorrow.

In addition to Gerrans, Thomas Voeckler and Sammy Sánchez will both be back after having skipped Flèche Wallonne. Voeckler gives the French some reason to hope after his win at Flèche Brabançonne and strong fifth place finish at Amstel Gold, and Sánchez was also in the mix and Amstel, finishing seventh.

Passing close to the Schlecks’ home of Luxembourg the race will provide a last chance for RadioShackTrekLeöpardNissan, which has not had much to show for the classics season so far, with Spartacus’s broken clavicle dashing any hopes on the cobbles and Andy Schleck not showing much in the Ardennes. However, his brother Frank has put in respectable showings, and he and Andy, along with Christ Horner, could prove to be a pretty formidable team should anyone aside from Frank show some form.

Another rider deserving of mention is, Jelle Vanendert, who has probably done the best of those not named Enrico Gasparotto or Joaquim Rodríguez during the Ardennes (Meuse) campaign, having finished second at Amstel and fourth at Wallonne. He along with Jurgen van den Broeck, who finished tenth at Wallonne after a poor showing at Amstel Gold, give Lotto a strong team going into Liège. A little behind Vanendert in that they stuck at the front of both races but have not yet standing on the podium are Bauke Mollema and Maxim Iglinsky, who have finished both races inside the top 15. In addition to Mollema Rabobank also has Gesink who was well out of it at Amstel Gold, but improved to finish about 20 seconds down at Flèche Wallonne. Iglinsky rides for Astana who obviously already hit gold at Amstel with Gasparotto.

Finally, as one must do for one day races, Philippe Gilbert has been improving his form during the week and bears watching. He may not be on the form he was last year, and may not be a dead cert like he was at this time last year, but like he was at Flèche Wallonne, he will probably be the wheel to follow if he is still around crossing the Meuse.

⁽¹⁾Meaning, the oldest, it is so-called, prosaically enough, because it is the oldest of the classics, having first been raced in 1892

⁽²⁾Who, along with the Norwegian Lars-Petter Nordhaug, animated the end of Flèche Wallonne and probably bears watching at La Doyenne

⁽³⁾The field finished about a minute behind, and unsurprisingly, since he is always there, Gilbert led the field in, finishing third^(a)
(a)Well actually, there was more intrigue, Alejandro Valverde finished third, but was stripped of the result after testing positive. The point about Gilbert, however, still stands, since he was right in the mix of things either way.
⁽⁴⁾He had been planning to skip Flèche Wallonne from the beginning

NUTS!

Liège-Bastogne-Liège takes us from the beginning of the First World War to the end of the Second World War and back. As the name suggests, the race begins in Liège, on our old friend the Meuse, which winds its way through the Ardennes Classics, goes to Bastogne, which is near the home of the Schleck brothers, and then returns to Liège, well near Liège for the finish.

As we saw in the preview of Flèche Wallonne, the Siege of Liège, and the surprisingly strong resistance to the German invasion bought the French and British enough time to hold off the Germans and survive to live through the horrors that would be the following four years of war. The Schlieffen Plan relied on speed and in a time before armies were motorized⁽¹⁾ speed depended on railways. However, unlike trucks and tanks, railways only run where the tracks are, and Liège was a critical hub for the Germans since it connected lines coming from Germany to those headed to Brussels and into France. To advance quickly supplies had to be brought as far as possible by rail, and so if the Germans tried to bypass Liège, they would have had serious problems sustaining any deep advance into France, and certainly one on the order of which the Schlieffen Plan envisioned.

On the other side, the Belgians understood the importance of Liège and had constructed a series of forts around Liège. The forts were largely underground and in the case proved to be relatively effective as the last Belgian fort managed to hold out until 16 August, 11 days after the battle began on 5 August. This resistance seriously hampered the German advance, and possibly saved the war for the Allies.

Leaving Liège, and the Meuse, the race heads south and although the ground covered by the race saw occupation and warfare during both World Wars, the most notable action at the turnaround of Bastogne happened during the Second rather than the First, and happened as the Germans were retreating towards home, instead of while they were attacking into the lowlands. Fueled by the mass delusions and desperation of the Nazi leadership, the German Army husbanded enough troops from their retreats on multiple fronts during the second half of 1944 to engage in one last offensive on the Western Front. One could question the strategy of attacking the Americans instead of the Soviets, but at that point the finer points of strategy were being buried under the inevitably of defeat.

In December the Germans were ready to attack, and with friendly cloud cover and the dense canopy of the Ardennes Forest protecting them from the Allied air superiority, the Germans counterattacked against the Americans creating a bulge and the eponymous Battle of the Bulge. In the midst of the bulge was Bastogne and in Bastogne was the 101st Airborne Division. The Screaming Eagles, however, did not retreat and were not captured, but were surrounded defending Bastogne. Given the situation, the commander of the XLVII Panzer Corps, General Heinrich Freiherr von Lüttwitz, sent a message to the commander of the 101st, General Anthony McAuliffe, asking that he surrender Bastogne. McAuliffe concisely replied: “NUTS!”, and the Americans spent Christmas in the snow, surrounded at Bastogne.

Meanwhile with their armies headed east, the Allies needed troops to disengage and reconnect with the 101st. As anyone who has seen Patton will know, Patton commanded his chaplain to write a prayer for good weather and then sent his Third Army with Creighton Abrams commanding the leading elements⁽²⁾ to attack northwards. With the weather cooperating and the attendant air cover, the Third Army relieved Bastogne and the American along with the Brits continued their inevitable march into Germany.

From Bastogne, the race then heads back towards Liège, back to WWI, covering different roads, finishing in Ans, and giving the Ardennes Classics one final crossing of the Meuse before the peloton heads off for stage racing.

⁽¹⁾Even in World War II much of the German Army outside the Panzer divisions wasn’t motorized

⁽²⁾Abrams to be seen later commanding US forces in Vietnam and to have the main US battle tank named after him, although it is unlikely that either of those things could be made to have any connection with cycling.

Flèche Wallonne: More Surprises?

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After Amstel Gold, some challengers are weeded out while others who were not in the picture assert their presence. The positive performances at Amstel Gold should begin with the men who did all the work on the front only to get caught at the end, which was inevitable, but should not detract from their efforts. The final men remaining from the break were American Alex Howes and Frenchman Romain Bardet, lasting until 10 km from the line, and with Howes having enough left in the tank to finish 30th, only 47 seconds down.

With the long break of the day reeled in, Oscar Freire took his turn at the front building up a gap of more than 10 seconds and holding off the field until the base of the Cauberg. It was a valiant and determined effort, but in the end it left him where he seems to have been a lot recently, just off the podium, slotting in at fourth place. Following him were a not unexpected trio of Voeckler, Gilbert, and Sanchez. Peter Sagan, who like Freire has had many near misses recently, started his sprint too early and ended up in third. Burying the lede, this leaves us with the two big surprises of the race, Enrico Gasparotto winning the whole thing (although not a complete surprise, since he had finished third in Amstel Gold in 2010), and Jelle Vanendert in a surprising second (although he also had some classics success, with a sixth place finish in Flèche Wallonne last year).

The list of people to watch for Flèche Wallonne, then, are much the same as those for Amstel Gold, however in addition to the top two finishers there are a couple other riders who finished strong, including Fabian Wegmann and Rinaldo Nocentini. Among riders who were mentioned as possibilities for Amstel Gold, Frank Schleck had a pretty good race, finishing in 12th, while his brother did not have a good race, finishing nearly six minutes down. Cadel Evans, also had a poor race, pulling out with 75 km to go, and announced that he will be skipping Flèche and Liège-Bastogne-Liège. Sagan, after his strong finish, also announced that he would be shutting his racing down for awhile. Another, pre-race favorite, Simon Gerrans did not do as well as he would have liked, finishing 20th, but he had previously announced that he would skip Flèche to focus on LBL, so he will be back on Sunday. Although his teammate Michael Albasini did not finish high up at Amstel, he may bear watching at Flèche, since he will be able to ride for himself.

However, with the races all on top each other this week, frequently there is only limited overlap among who does well from one race to another. So in addition to the certain surprises there is plenty of time for riders who had a less then stellar ride to reassert themselves. Looking at the top finishers in Amstel Gold, and the contenders mentioned before the race should give a fairly good sense of who to watch for the race, and Gilbert is not exactly looking like a bad bet after his sixth place finish.⁽¹⁾

⁽¹⁾The last time Gilbert finished worse than sixth at one of the Ardennes classics was at the 2009 Flèche Wallonne.

WWI and the Mur de Huy

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Flèche Wallonne begins in Charleroi, the third largest city in Belgium, passes my Namur and then finishes on the Mur de Huy (the Wall of Huy) in the eponymous town. Namur and Huy are on the Meuse, which we last saw passing through Maastricht⁽¹⁾ at the start of the Amstel Gold Race. Charleroi, for its part, is on the Sambre, which flows into the Meuse at Namur. Like Maastricht, there has been human settlement at Charleroi since before Roman times. It is named after Charles II of Spain, although it is located in one of those parts of Europe that has seen a lot of different owners over the years, from the Dutch, to the Spanish, to the French, to the Austrians, to the Belgians and of course the Germans.

Given this long history, and many changes of nationality, there are a lot of interesting tidbits and a fair amount of warfare in the area, but nearly 100 years ago it was the sight of some of the most important early fighting in World War I. After being held up longer than they expected besieging Liège (coming Sunday: Liège-Bastogne-Liège) the Germans continued their advance through Belgium, towards France. In the meantime, the Commander of the French Fifth Army, Charles Lanrezac, had finally convince the overall French Commander, Joseph Joffre, that yes the Germans were coming and perhaps they better do something about it, and so was advancing North to meet the German attack.

The initial confusion at the outset of the war on the French side, arose because both the French with their Plan XVII, and the Germans, with the Schlieffen Plan, were determined to go on the offensive. Unfortunately for the French, the Germans had anticipated the planned French attack into Alsace-Lorraine⁽²⁾, and were planning to sweep around any French attack, cutting the French lines of communication and threatening Paris. The French on the other hand had been worried about a German advance further south and so were not expecting the German attack through Belgium, even after the siege of Liège suggested that the Germans might be pretty serious about coming through Belgium.

All these moving bits and pieces brings us back to our race, because by 20 August, Lanrezac had the French Fifth Army holding the high ground along the line of the Sambre, with his forces centered on Charleroi and the British Expeditionary Force commanded by John French on his left flank.⁽³⁾ The Germans however, had their First, Second and Third Armies bearing down on the BEF and the French Fifth Army. The German superiority in numbers and poor French intelligence, aided by Belgian intransigence before the war, meant that Lanrezac’s attempted to hold his ground near the river. In fact, in the confusion, the French did not even manage to defend all of the bridges.

After fighting on 21 and 22 August the French were forced to begin to retreating on the 22nd. With Namur on his right flank falling on the 23rd and the Fourth Army retreating from the Ardennes, Lanrezac and then the BEF, were forced to continue with his retreat to shorten the defensive line and maintain contact with units on their flanks. Joffre, looking for someone to blame criticized Lanrezac for his lack of offensive spirit, for after being late to realize the danger at the beginning of the battle, Joffre had ordered Lanrezac to attack at the same time the Germans were attacking.

Despite the defeat and subsequent retreat ending Lanrezac’s career, his decision to retreat kept a massive hole from opening in the French line and, along with the siege at Liège may have bought the French enough time to keep the war going. Of course, the war was long and bloody, so a quick loss may have been better for many concerned, and the Schlieffen Plan may just have been too ambitious for the current state of transportation technology and infrastructure, so the Germans may have become bogged down even if more of Lanrezac’s forces had been lost. In any case, one can at least make a good case that the line of the Sambre, along which the race begins, played a pivotal role in the early history of World War I, even if the Mur de Huy did not prove to be enough of an obstacle to stop the German advance altogether.

⁽¹⁾Whose name is derived from the Latin for crossing at the Meuse, Trajectum ad Mosam

⁽²⁾In fact some versions of the plan had called on deliberately allowing the French to advance into Germany, to further entrap them

⁽³⁾John French, despite any impetus that his surname may have given him to study the language, did not speak French, which led to some annoyance on the part of Lanrezac. In fact, he would have made a poor race announcer for Flèche Wallone, because his failure to pronounce Huy correctly while inquiring about Germans scouts crossing the Meuse particularly exasperated Lanrezac.