Omloop Het Nieuwsblad 2011

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Ladies & Gentlemen, cycling fans of all ages: The 2011 races of Spring are upon us.

This is racing.
This is racing.

Photo credit: http://velonews.competitor.com/2011/02/news/sebastian-langeveld-beats-juan-antonio-flecha-at-het-nieuwsblad_161791.

I had no faith in our Mr. Sebastian Langeveld. I did not believe he could hold off the likes of last year’s winner in a very motivated Juan Antonio Flecha (who is a very hard man, indeed).

It was brilliant, and I enjoyed watching it very much. Why can’t sporting events such as this be televised in my country, the United States? Why are we beholden to bullet-head ball-sports (baseball, basketball, football, et al) and soulless mind-fucks such as NASCAR?

Whatever. At last it was on the internet.

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About big jonny

The man, the legend. The guy who started it all back in the Year of Our Lord Beer, 2000, with a couple of pages worth of idiotic ranting hardcoded on some random porn site that would host anything you uploaded, a book called HTML for Dummies (which was completely appropriate), a bad attitude (which hasn’t much changed), and a Dell desktop running Win95 with 64 mgs of ram and a six gig hard drive. Those were the days. Then he went to law school. Go figure. Flagstaff, Arizona, USA

25 Replies to “Omloop Het Nieuwsblad 2011”

  1. BJ, do not speak ill of my beloved Picksburgh Stillers. But having said that, fuck motor”sports” in general and NASKKKAR in particular. Any pussy can step on a gas pedal.

    Fuck, if the drooling and obese MAL*WART shoppers want “go fast, turn left”, let ’em watch match sprints. Jeeze, I’ll tell ya what-If that shit don’t fire you up, you better check for a pulse.

  2. …now the real racing begins…

    …sorry ‘tour down under’, i think you’re great but while the locals get to appreciate the pros, that’s way too early…

    …tours of quatar & onan…oil rich sheiks masturbatory cycling fantasy…warms up the legs & lines everyone, including eddy’s pockets with gelt, how many actual ‘fans’ they got lining the roads ???…
    …reminds me of formula 1 & some of their new venues – “welcome to the grand prix of ‘we’re only in it for the money'”

    …little tours in spain & portugal ???…well, at least the scenery is nice but hey, don’t eat the beef, ya ???…just sayin’…

    …but now, the hard men come out to battle each other on the narrow cobbled roads, in the elements, where pride & the old traditions are once more at stake…

    …love it !!!…

  3. Joe, I’m a PA native with a lot of love for the western end of the state. I watch a fair bit of football, and I enjoy it too. I just wish professional cycling wasn’t as marginalized as it is. The Spring Classics are really great sporting events. It’s too bad it hasn’t gotten the attention, recognition, and respect it deserves in this country. All anyone knows or cares about is the Tour de France (which is, of course, awesome in and of itself).

  4. With ya on all points, Jonny. For the life of me I don’t know why cycling gets so little coverage. Or bass fishing so much. But don’t get me started.

  5. Bass fishing, bowling, bull riding… I’ve done the first two, and it’s a damn good time with friends and beer. The third I’ve only seen, and those bulls are ridiculously large beasts when you see one in person. Spooky big. When does the K-B-K live blogging kick off over at pavepavepave.com?

  6. …uh, greg ???…when i mention both “onan” & “masturbatory” in the same sentence, a sharp intelligent mind might deduce (& i’ll concede to the word “might”, as in maybe) that while i’m actually making a point with the majority of the comment, i’m also making a little “play on/or with words”

    …but i guess that just kinda went ‘zoom’, straight over the top, huh ???…

    …hey, stay in touch…lemme know if you find anything else hard to follow…

  7. Jon lets face it, it’s actually better to watch this stuff via internet then have some bullshit VS coverage where they are more concerned with their graphic intro/outros for the commercial breaks than actual racing footage.

    I think I learnt a little Spanish and got to see that cool camera-moto wipeout. Keep it in the margins, away from the tired old mainstream, where we can appreciate it.

  8. bgw +1.

    And that’s coming from someone who heard the zooming sound too.

    Onan. Had to Google that one.

    Nice to see I’m not too old to learn new shit.

  9. Actually, BGW, Onan makes a nice generator: starts most every time with a few quick tugs, then purrs right along till the job is done:)

    jizz.

  10. Did part of the course today… I live next to it :) We ended up in a totally radomn pack in Gent, a lead out started and we had our little sprint. I then waited for friends, and group after group did the same. It’s great to be kids!
    The paper here had 6/8 pages of coverage of this single race! A semi classic… I love belgium.

  11. The great thing here is that everybody and his uncle has raced at one level or another, so you get really good tactics and technique… In a slowmo kinda way… There was also an indoor cyclocross today. And a big race next thursday – at least.
    And next weekend, I have to choose what race I want to do… Too many races – for amateurs :)

  12. …@greg…good “touche’…” & ya, i was playing “mr smug” but don’t take it too serious, amigo…

    …my real point was that those races are totally ‘manufactured’…not that the riders don’t apply themselves but how many locals have any interest whatsoever or ever will about bike racing out that way…

    …gildas definitely wins…more real cycle fans in his bunch sprint than in the whole middle east…

  13. …dare i be the one to bring up cycling’s equivalent to ‘godwin’s law’ whilst speaking of the classics or as much as we’d all love to see the guy do it, are we in collective agreement that george hincapie just ain’t never gonna win one ???…

    …simply askin’…

  14. I went to Yemen a few years back, and if they could get their shit together, it could become cycling training mecca (pun intended). It’s just brutal and sunny – one road we drove on just climbed like mad into the mountains something like from 200m to 1600m in less than 40km in a landscape that looked like the moon on a dry day. 1st gear in a Land Cruiser in some places!!!
    And lets not even start talking about mountain biking…

  15. @23 oman has good mountainbiking..and its cleaner than switzerland. no harm done BGW …i was in a crap mood yesterday..

    I do think its funny they can manufacture races there and not here. Im not so sure that thhe locals would show here either.. Unless it was in Portland or another town that says its bike friendly..

  16. …@greg…the tour of california ‘seems’ to be working so far with good crowds & thus far with amgen (ironically) as a title sponsor but the question remains as to what direction they’ll look when amgen tires of footing the bill…

    …in this economy, the cities that vie for starts &/or finishes certainly have less to work with than several years ago, so they realistically have to consider as to whether are the fans being drawn in for the event actually contributing to the local economy…

    …in the middle east, despite a tanking economy as witness the halt on a lot of major construction projects in places like dubai, there’s still enough oil money that’s willingly spent to draw tourists, conferences, etc, to fill those new attractions…

    …thus far, the amount it costs to finance the logistics & infrastructure of a bike race appears feasible to some (still) deep saudi pockets but i wonder how long their little fascination with bicycle racing will hold up…