First impressions:
It was an interesting and exciting race. With only 3 sprinters (me with a team for the last 50 km, Warriors with only one flat rider, and la FR des jeux, a weird guy who doesnt answer to any questions) Vs franconia's armada, I expected a fairly "easy" win for the generalissimo.
Warri and Conia started to control the group, I joined a the Turchino, and the double--tripple-puller group was decently controlled.
But then came le manie, and guys like allagen, alkworld and die adler of course went for a farmertrick which i didnt not really see coming, to be honest
![Confused :?](./images/smilies/icon_e_confused.gif)
The sieb was hard, the gap was big (classics with 1' on cordero, warri and my sprinter 1' further behind), which forced me to kill many riders to keep a slight chance. The sprinter configuration looked very good to me, having a weak 91 versus a strong 91 and a 93, the wheel selection would have been easy and probably in my advantage.
After a very hard race, franconia was able to catch the classic group, where almost everybody was making tempo for a "better ranking", even guys who are able to win more tours with a helper than 50% of the managers with their whole team... Cat 6 seem to confuse a lot of people, even our greatest stars.
Our two sprinters were still 35" behind the leader's group, when franconia decided to wait for us and to build a 3 man collaboration, where he would still have chances to win, instead of riding a suicidal race against all the other opponents.
Finally, we joined the peloton a couple of kms before the capi's. But with a lot of dead riders, it would be less easy than expected to hold it together... (nosrati, zandi and saracen were around 400 energy then, only kelderman and casey were fit)
Then came the cipressa sieb. Wilco and copado were able to keep the gap small on the classic group, with some help from john casey. Followed by the Poggio where pietropolli and wagner did a great job. Nevertheless they were unable to keep the bad bayernfan's vietnamese leader purnomo under control, who attacked on the most difficult part and was able to create a 10" gap. On the last 3 kms, the mass tempo, led by john casey the powermonster, almost sufficed to catch the evil asiat. But with 1" on the line, he won the first monument of the season. In a confusing sprint, kügerl and bruel were fighting for cordero's backwheel, warriors got it and he became the first of the losers here in san remo. The third medal was taken by the spanish sprinter, and bruel as usual didnt show up in the palmares. Is he really going to be Dürr's heir ?
Any comment on my race would be welcome as well, since there were many spectators, maybe they can teach me something.
Qui sème le vent récolte le tempo...