Worlds RR review

Today I spent some time watching the replay of the World Championship road race on Cycling.tv. First let me say, you have got to check out this site and watch some videos of recent racing. OLN who?

I watched Part 2 of the Worlds video containing the latter part of the race. Some things that stuck out to me are:

1 - Bettini was super strong. If he had known about Petacchi's lack of strength behind in the peloton the outcome of this race would have been different.
2 - Vinokourov attacked at least 5 times in the last 15k. Each time getting a modest gap only to have it chased down by the pursuing small chase group.
3 - The small group in the lead at the finish jacked around playing cat-and-mouse allowing the peloton to catch them with less than 500 meters to go. If they had continued driving with 1k to go they would have stayed away. Vino was leading the group from 1k to 500 to go, but at a less than maximum effort. I was surprised that nobody from that group didn't launch away to snatch the win.
4 - Boonen flew through the middle of the pack and smoked the sprint. His acceleration was matched by nobody. You wouldn't have known he had 169 miles in his legs at that point.
5 - I had seen Boonen interviewed before, but not at such great length. His English is excellent without any struggles with the language.

Overall quality of the race footage and commentary is exceptional. The commentators aren't exactly Paul & Phil, but they're adequate for the job.

This website should take off in the US. With the Outdoor Lance Network missing their main attraction for 2006 I'd say we all had better come up with a Plan B for our racing fix.