Velominati Super Prestige: Women’s Ronde van Vlaanderen 2016
Has anyone checked the weather report for Sunday? Seriously. Have you checked? Wind. Rain. This. Is. Going. To. Be. EPIC. And you can all thank me for that because this is the year I chose not to head over there, naturally. I’m annoyed that we didn’t do a Women’s Gent-Wevelgem; we somehow missed it even though we should know better because Belgium is way ahead of all the other countries in terms of holding both Men’s and Women’s events. But we’re not missing this one.
Queen Lizzie has been crushing it this year, but since I can’t find a start list I’m just assuming she’s on it for Sunday. The weather will be a real wild card because wet cobbles are very different to gobble up than dry cobbles, especially when it comes to cornering hard and climbing steep bergs; if they haven’t trained riding the Paterberg or Koppenberg in the wet, those could be decisive in the outcome. And while we focus on the cobbled climbs, there are significant secteurs of pavé on the flat and rolling terrain, sometimes involving tight, high speed corners; wet cobbles could play a significant factor there as well.
And I’m not an expert on wind strength, but 16 kmph of wind seems like it might be strong enough to blow some of the ladies off the road if they are on deep section rims, so that will be interesting as well.
Remember there are prizes on offer; Don Walker is giving a free custom steel frame to the winner of the VSP overall, and Café Roubaix is awarding a set of their CR Wheelworks Arenberg wheelsets to the runner-up. Third place gets a free V-Kit. Boom. So get prognosticating and get your picks in before the clock goes to zero. Good luck!
Update: Thanks to @hudson for a start list.
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It’s cobbling time!
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Armistead wins, Johansson second, and Blaak third?
@mulebeatsdrums
Sweet!
Awesome finish! @The Don takes the win and the VVRVV badge for the year!
[vsp_results id=”40379″/]
One better in the women’s Ronde. Winner plus four of the top five right.
How the fuck do you find the VSP rules and overall standings?
@RobSandy
I got a plus one!
@RobSandy
Bottom of the page in the black section, under “Pages”. Click “Super Prestige”. It took me a long time to find it, too.
Seventeen points on the day between the men and the women. I’ll take it.
@Skip
Or, y’know, here…
Great result for Armistead. Tough for Johannson to be beaten on the line but seeing as she had drafted most of the final straight it seems a fair result.
I am developing a dangerous crush on Lizzie.
@RobSandy
Yeah but I almost took it away again for that fucking dumbass remark.
@Mikael Liddy
Yeah. It’s only the top fucking banner on the site. FFS.
@frank
@frank @Mikael Liddy Kids these days eh ! Always looking at the pictures, never reading the articles.
@frank
Way ahead of you on that one, fully fledged fangirl right here. Led Johansson for the whole finishing straight & still beat her in the sprint.
@frank
how the hell have I never noticed that before? Repentance.
I will meditate on the V tonight. It’s TTT training so I’ll have plenty of opportunity to hate life.
@frank
Me too. But the accent… Oh, the accent…
Oops – meant to hit “quote”, not “reply”.
I am referring to the diction and inflection of Queen Liz, of course…
@frank
Same here too,have a pic of her in full world champ gear and bike on my desktop plus a cycling weekly poster of her crushing everyone on her way to the title.
Hope she does the women’s tour of Britain so that I can embarrass the VMH by getting a ProCycling cover signed,,,,
So we’re judging the winner of the Ronde by her accent and how cute she is? Awesome. Great to see how far we’ve come in valuing women’s racing.
@frank
No worries, though, if they keep on racing like that! Let’s hope for next Sunday.
Evie Stevens flying the colours for the Yanks in cyclingnews.com interview of Team Boels-Dolmans:
“”The secret to their success?
“We train really, really hard, and we have no social life,” said Armitstead.
Evie Stevens, who rode in support of Armitstead today, piped up to add: “We trust each other, and we commit, and we eat a lot of fucking oatmeal.””
Pass the Quaker Oats, please!
And what der fuerk!!!
Why is there no Women’s Paris-Roubaix???
Fucking blows!
@Oli
Well, my wife is quite the Peter Sagan fan. She really doesn’t know much about cycling, the pro peloton, the classics, grand tours, or Slovakia for that matter, but she likes watching Peter Sagan. In fact, when he is on TV, she just stops everything and stares.
Why? Is there something attractive about Peter Sagan? His aggressive riding style? Maybe his choice of socks? Bottomline, I don’t care why, if it means she’ll sit with me and watches two hours of a race. Bonus: She doesn’t object to scheduling vacations around UCI events!
@frank
It’s taking you this long???
@Oli
Ahem!
@Oli
Not to be picky, but I didn’t notice any comments on how cute or otherwise Lizzie is. The comments to me implied the crush is there because of her penchant for crushing her opposition.
And in an earlier thread for wearing the champions kit properly.