Unless you speak Flemish and can read Sporza, finding anything out about top-flight euro CX racing as an English speaker is pretty difficult. It's getting better with the likes of CXmagazine covering a lot of euro races, and riders like Jonathan Page and Ian Field blogging from Belgium, but actually getting any empathy with the "toppers" is pretty difficult.
Which is why I was please to find these two vids. I'm not a big Niels Albert fan but Stybar is an absolute dude — the guy just smashes it the whole time, which is what you want really isn't it. Yeah, Niels does that too, but I dunno, I'm British, we prefer losers and Stybar is not a big winner. Albert makes it look too easy.
2 comments:
Super super shot of Lars - I miss him too, from the ponymullet to the awesome acceleration when he put the hammer down.
Stybie does it for me to - he always looks like he wants to win, whilst Albert is almost too smooth. The punters like to see some human frailty, no? Looking forward to more battles between them this season.
What I liked about Lars was the he was a thinker, much like Sven, whilst still showing some frailties. Stybar is undoubtedly my favourite of the moment, but he doesn't seem to have much finesse - he's like a greyhound who just can't help himself from going full-gas until he blows. It's admirable, but it doesn't win you many races at that level.
With any luck Fieldy will be contesting for the top spots by the end of the season and I'll have someone else to cheer on.
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