From Where Failure Stems...

An old cycling axiom held true for George Hincapie today at Paris-Roubaix; If you have good form and good legs you don't need good luck, you just have to stay away from bad luck. After traversing over 200 of the 259kms, Hincapie's recent failure to win the coveted race quite literally stemmed from his stem, which broke and sent him into a ditch (as in 2002, as a flat ended his day while riding for US Postal).

The stem that failed?
Copyright Anthony Tan/Cyclingnews.com


The car equivalent (I was driving along and my steering wheel popped off...)
Photo: AFP

As for the favorite, Tom Boonen, his failure to win is directly tied to his recent efforts from winning the Ronde. Although he didn't seem to recover as well as Hoste (this year's Discovery Channel P-R bridesmaid), he was nonetheless in the race. Leading a third group chasing back the leader, their attempts fell short when they were held up by a TRAIN! Gee, that "I failed to make the split because a train passed in front of me" excuse never seems to grow old.

UPDATE: More bad luck for Discovery Channel as the official decided to DQ the 2nd to 4th place riders (Hoste, Van Petegem, and Gusev) because of the train incident. WHAT???? Lucy, you have some 'splaining to do!