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School of hard knocks: Ups and downs mark Slipstream’s Ronde debut

by VeloNews.com

• April 06, 2008
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By Fred Dreier

Tour of Flanders 08: Farrar spent a long time on the attack, but finished the day 9:00 back.

Photo: Graham Watson

The American Slipstream-Chipotle squad endured a day of highs and lows at the 2008 Tour of Flanders, the American squad’s debut at Belgium’s biggest one-day race.

The high came at the finish line, where the team’s 24-year-old Belgian rider Martin Maaskant was the 12th man to cross the line, finishing 21 seconds in arrears alongside a handful of the sport’s classics stars, including George Hincapie, Alessandro Ballan, Fabian Cancellara and Tom Boonen.

The lows? Those came sprinkled intermittently throughout the day in the form of brutal weather, failed attacks and a host of crashes.

“I think it was hard on everybody because of the conditions. We had rain, snow, hail, winds and crashes — all of the ingredients of this race,” said team director Johnny Weltz. “But even though it was miserable out there, nobody gave in. The team stayed focused. Of course it’s always nice to have a guy in the top five, but we did a good job.”

The team came into the race hoping to place a man in an early breakaway as it did in its ProTour debut at Milan-San Remo on March 22. Will Frischkorn spent most of the day in a three-man breakaway that was caught only 40km from the end of the 264km race. The move earned the U.S. Pro Continental squad props from its ProTour adversaries.

But as the 200-strong field rolled out of Brugge and embarked on a circuitous journey to Meerbeke the pace revved up quickly. Finding a move that would stick proved difficult as the peloton’s 50kph pace swallowed all early attacks.

“We had a good crew of us gunning for that early break and it never happened. There was a tailwind, and we chewed through the first 100k like it was nothing,” Frischkorn said. “There were maybe 50 guys going for it and it just didn’t happen for us.”

The four-man break that finally got away contained Vincent Gerome (Bouygues Telecom), Sven Renders (Topsport-Vlaanderen), Janek Tombak (Mitsubishi-Jartazi) and Tom Veelers (Skil-Shimano), but no Slipstream riders.

Crisis struck the team a few moments later when an attacker at the front of the field hit a cameraman and went down. The resulting pileup sent Frischkorn and Mike Friedman tumbling to the tarmac.

“I went over the bars and hit my head pretty hard and got smacked around a lot. I had the instant headache and a sore neck,” said Friedman. “I smashed the bike pretty good. But that stuff happens, you just keep going.”

Frischkorn also destroyed his bike in that crash, shattering the fork. He received a backup only to be caught up in another mishap a short time later. Luckily, the Coloradan did not re-injure his ailing knee, hurt in a crash during the Three Days of De Panne. Frischkorn, Friedman and teammates Huub Dyuun and Danny Pate did not finish the race. The team’s 50-percent attrition rate was mirrored by that of the main field, which saw 99 riders abandon.

But spirits rose for the team when Maaskant found himself climbing the race’s toughest, steepest climbs, including the Paterberg and Koppenberg, alongside the race leaders. The 24-year-old lives in Belgium but was born in the Netherlands, and finished an impressive fourth place at Italy’s one-da Monte Paschi Eroica on March 8. While he didn’t have the legs to follow Stijn Devolder’s successful attack, Maaskant was part of the furious chase that stalled out just 21 seconds behind.

“Martin shows he has a really good future for this race,” Weltz said. “He showed he could stay at the front and stay with the big boys. He had the legs today.”

The team’s Flanders veterans, Tyler Farrar, Ryder Hesjedal and Magnus Backstedt, also finished, crossing the line in 9:13, 17:35 and 9:13, respectively. That bodes well for the team’s chances at next week’s challenge, Paris-Roubaix.

Backstedt, the 2004 winner of that race, believes Northern France’s cobbled classic is better suited for his squad. The Tour of Flanders is just a warm-up for the race dubbed the “Hell of the North,” he says.

“Each race the guys you can tell the guys are learning a lot and taking back a lot of information,” Backstedt said. “People seem excited to learn. This is a young team, and the whole motivational side is really high. Their motivation rubs off on me and it’s a good mix.”