2021 season, One-day races, Tweets of the week

Roubaix Tweets of the Week : The mud, the blood, the caked crusaders

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It was a Weekend in Hell – for the first time, we had women’s Roubaix on Saturday and men’s Roubaix on Sunday. It was all about the mud, the blood, the snot, the tears, the ache, the cobbles. And we loved it! (Thank you, @abagofspanners, for the phrase Caked Crusaders). Hopefully, we’ll give you a real sense of the weekend and showing you little treasures you may have missed! We also say goodbye to Andre Greipel and Nicolas Roche. Oh – and at the end? We have Italian riders dancing in cleats!!!!!

An historic Saturday

Ashley and Jered Gruber were at both races and, as always, their photographs told such heroic stories. Make sure you flick through all the photos – they are superb.

Riding over Oreos

Let’s loosen up with a few quirky tweets about Roubaix. Sort of like riding on tarmac before we get to the cobbles.

The star rating for nether region numbness …

An epic Sunday

Roubaix is a beast in the sunshine; it’s a monster in the rain

Arenberg. The name gives me chills. It is a lonesome, sacred place – and the riders skidding and juddering through it with baying crowds at the side makes it more lonesome and more sacred.

The force is with cycling Twitter

At one point it looked like Gianni Moscon might actually win. This is why we didn’t want him to.

Nearing the Velodrome

I haven’t seen shoes that white since going to a golf course in Boca Raton

The final sprint for the line

I think this scene was played out all over the cycling world

Florian our Florian

The disappointment is real

I feel like this is one race that might just haunt Mathieu van der Poel.

And it’s not just the guys who were tantalisingly inches away from the victory who cried. It’s guys like Yevgeniy Fedorov who wanted to do their best in the Roubaix debut.

A hearty splash of Mudmen

Wout van Aert – hot favourite for the win – finished 7th. Having to ride without glasses for much of the race, at the end, he looked like he’d gone 15 rounds with the cobbles …

Wout certainly doesn’t sugar coat his performance, admitting that sometimes he was too scared on the cobbles, that he wasn’t in a good position and in the end just didn’t have it.

You have to hand it to Christophe Laporte – riding the cobbles while trying to brake by putting his foot on his backwheel. Je ne regrette rien … 

Taco van der Hoorn crashed hard a couple of times, but hot damn, he still made his lap and a half in the Velodrome. All hail the mighty Taco! 

Hey ladies, how you doin’? 

The cobbles did not like Stefan Kung on Sunday and they bit him in the ass every chance they got. Whenever they showed a crash, it was pretty good money that Kung would be a part of it. There’s only so much a man can take – Kung was a DNF.

I guess this is one way to get that mud crust to shift, although it looks almost as painful as the race itself …

Now you can watch all the highlights!

Farewell to the Gorilla

It was Andre Greipel‘s last race in the pro peloton and no, it wasn’t at Roubaix. Wise man.

And farewell Nico

And a little light entertainment before we end. Italians dancing in cleats

The last word

 

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