This year’s 258km Paris-Roubaix was almost entirely defined by its crashes and mishaps. Belgian’s Tom Boonen (Quick Step’s Team leader) endured a puncture during the Arenberg Forest section before finally crashing out, whilst Bjorn Leukemans (Vacansoleil), Roger Hammond (Garmin-Cervelo), Sylvain Chavanel (Quick Step) and Filippo Pozzato (Katusha) were amongst others that went the same way. In the end though Garmin-Cervélo’s Johan Van Summeren took first in 6:07:28 for the biggest win of his career to date, with Fabian Cancellara in second for Leopard Trek and Maarten Tjallingii (Rabobank) third. Those looking at technical innovations may have noted that Van Summeren was resplendent in the new SpeedSuit (which has been called “possibly the fastest bit of clothing ever created for road racing”) which was trialled by Garmin-Cervelo at the Milan-San Remo in March.
Some comfort though for Cancellara; despite yesterday’s second place (and missing out at both Milan-San Remo and Tour of Flanders) he has moved into the top spot of the Union Cycliste Internationale’s latest WorldTour ranking with 236 points. The new UCI rankings now look like this:
Rider
1 – Fabian Cancellara (Leopard Trek) 236 points
2 – Matt Goss (HTC-Highroad) 203 points
3 – Andreas Kloden (RadioShack) 202 points
Nation
1 – Italy 525 points
2 – Australia 517 points
3 – Belgium 466 points
Team
1 – RadioShack 465 points
2 – HTC-Highroad 453 points
3 – Rabobank 392 points
Image © Garmin-Cervelo