Velominati Super Prestige: Paris-Tours 2016

Paris-Tours

One doesn’t appreciate how many touring companies there are in Paris until you do a search for “Paris-Tours”. Refine the search to “Cycling Paris-Tours” and the results are not noticeably reduced. I imagine that adding the year to the search will do little to improve the situation.

The fact is, as popular as Cycling is, it remains a fringe sport, at least as far as Paris and Tours is concerned.

My internal clock is all fucked up. And so is the 2016 VSP calendar, because we don’t have the Men’s World Road Race Championships on there at the moment (we will put that little nugget on there, worry not). But when it comes to Paris-Tours, we should not be talking last major trade team road race of the season for the blokes. But we are, because up is down and down is up. Just wait for the green flash.

Paris-Tours is supposed to be a sprinters classic, but it is remarkably lumpy towards the end and you never know what might happen. Richard Virenque won the thing once; for fucks sake, anything can happen if Tricky Dickie can win the “flattest” classic of the season.

In any case, the season is winding down, but we have some serious racing to come. With the Worlds being a Sprinters’ course, this could be a final warm-up; either that or all the sprinters head off to the Middle East last-minute to acclimate to the heat to leave a load of twiggy climbers to fight it out, dismally.

Time to put your chips down, and stop fooling around. If you’re going to make a play for these VSP prizes, you’re going to have to show up with some game. Good luck!

[vsp_results id=”73917″/]

frank

The founder of Velominati and curator of The Rules, Frank was born in the Dutch colonies of Minnesota. His boundless physical talents are carefully canceled out by his equally boundless enthusiasm for drinking. Coffee, beer, wine, if it’s in a container, he will enjoy it, a lot of it. He currently lives in Seattle. He loves riding in the rain and scheduling visits with the Man with the Hammer just to be reminded of the privilege it is to feel completely depleted. He holds down a technology job the description of which no-one really understands and his interests outside of Cycling and drinking are Cycling and drinking. As devoted aesthete, the only thing more important to him than riding a bike well is looking good doing it. Frank is co-author along with the other Keepers of the Cog of the popular book, The Rules, The Way of the Cycling Disciple and also writes a monthly column for the magazine, Cyclist. He is also currently working on the first follow-up to The Rules, tentatively entitled The Hardmen. Email him directly at rouleur@velominati.com.

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View Comments

KogaLover says:

Oct 9 2016 at 6:02 am

why no VSP for men's or women's TTT at the Worldchampionships?
Rick says:

Oct 9 2016 at 7:34 am

Wow, who had this result? Thank goodness Coquard kept me from being totally shut out.
Rick says:

Oct 9 2016 at 8:12 am

Perusing the picks some did get the result correct-well played!
dinosaurJR says:

Oct 9 2016 at 8:18 am

Oh, that went well...
Randy C says:

Oct 12 2016 at 4:24 am

I love Gaviria's finish ! And the black sox too btw. I delgado'd the VSP and completely missed the race. But I've watched the final km a couple of times each of past mornings. And this am I'm still saying to myself, so cool. What a great attack and finish. To ride away from a peloton full of sprinters in final km ??? So strong. Wow.