The picture tells much of the story. Di Luca was charging down this hill 15 kms from the finish, probably trying to distance the second group and set up a smaller selection for the finale. Bettini looked sharp but perhaps he had too much on his hands, as this group wasn’t going to split up until the final dash up the Mur de Huy.

Valverde (in black) was obviously biding his time in this move and we noticed that he moved straight to the back of this group after the climb and shake and stretch his legs out on the descent – he probably knew what was coming then! We saw Patrick Sinkewitz in Mallorca a few weeks ago and he looked very sharp, however the T-Mobile rider was in a very dark place in this breakaway as there are two of the best one-day race riders (Bettini and Di Luca) driving the break. His day will come.

The CSC boys perhaps showed their inexperience as two of them could have made some more noise on the run-in and split up the big hitters. One thing is for sure though, the final 10 kilometres were very fast, so trying to split off and breakaway was never going to be easy.

More at the Flèche Wallonne Official Site

We’ve got some pictures of Oscar Friere’s Rabobank Colnago C50 in race prepared state, coming soon…

Phonak seemed to miss the moves	Eddy Merckx is making a comeback	Rabobank’s bottle strategy