Monday, April 12, 2010

Cycling Fan(atic), Part Deux

Anyone who might regularly read this blog (as often as there is anything worth reading) has to know that Drew is a major cycling fan.  He knows as much about cycling as he does about airplanes.  (And that’s saying a lot!)  His love of cycling is rubbing off on his progeny, and now we have two cycling fan(atic)s in the house. 

Yesterday was Paris – Roubaix, a century-old “classics” cycling race that is 262km long, over 20+ cobblestone sections.  It’s ridiculous!  It’s almost a sprint (a sprint for anyone not professional level), and the course is so narrow and treacherous that there are always major wrecks.  It’s really unbelievable.  It took the winner 6.5 HOURS to finish, going an average of 39.2km/hour.  Good Night Nurse!

Yesterday American “big George Hincapie” was riding it for the 17th time, and although we were pulling for him, we knew the race would ultimately come down to the two favorites: Fabian Cancellara (Swiss) and Tom Boonan (Belgian).  Jasper has been exposed to these two cyclists since before he could talk.  I have photos of them from bicycling magazines in his “image” book, and seeing as how Cancellara is such a cool name to pronounce, we would tell him of Fabian and eventually got him to tell others that “Fabian Cancellara is the world time-trial specialist” which he is … and a gold medalist.  But I digress. 

We let Jasper watch a short portion of the race last night before bed, and then he got to watch it almost in entirety this morning.  He thought it was great!  He looked intently for Fabian Cancellara (who kindly was wearing a red jersey and red shoes – very easy to pick out), and without any prompting from me identified Tom Boonan.  He called them out every time they showed up on the screen.  And he could not (really, he just couldn’t because he was so excited) say Fabian without an increasing intonation in his voice.  I recorded him as he watched the race so I could send it to Drew.  hopefully I can post a link to the audio later. 

In the end, Fabian Cancellara wiped away the field.  He was remarkable in his timing and his strength.  He pulled away with 45km left in the race and rode out the remaining course like he does all time trials, with great focus and precision.  At the end of the race last night, Drew declared “Fabian Cancellara is my favorite cyclist to watch!” 

I don’t have it recorded, but Jasper also kept saying things like “Fabian is going to win.  He’ll raise his hands up in the air like this” (giving me a demonstration).

cancellara_paris_roubaix and so he did! 

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