"Benjamin Weiner" wrote in message
news:4071923d$1@darkstar...
Tom Kunich wrote:
"Benjamin Weiner" wrote in message
Then Hoste handed Wesemann a gift by chasing down Bruylandts's
attack in the final km.

It was clear that Hoste either chaced Bruylandts down or it was Dave's
win.
Wesseman knew that he simply could not chace Dave and win the sprint.
Steffen performed like a genius.

He did ride smartly, but in the finale, Wesemann was the strongest
and had the most to lose. That's why Hoste could have waited a
fraction of a second, requiring Wesemann to chase. That's my point.
Wese probably could have chased down Bruylandts and still won anyway -
after all Hoste had been in the break all day.

Ten more seconds and Wesemann couldn't have caught Bruylandts. It was a big
gamble on Steffen's part because if he had gone first Hoste could have put
that same effort into a long sprint to the line and Wesemann would have been
SOL. When Hoste dug in and chased down Dave, he was putting in some evil
power to those pedals.

Not sure why (perhaps rather chase down
a rival Belgian team, damn the consequences?)

No, because he was on a different team - that's why their jerseys were
different colors. What is with this helping a countryman thing? Would
you
give away a race to someone from your home state if you might have a
chance
to win it yourself?

I don't really believe that scenario, and Jeff Jones has refuted it,
but I said the opposite of what you're replying to. You see the Spanish
teams lead the chase of each other's riders all the time, for
example. Rivalries are stronger between teams from the same country,
if only because commentators will say things like "Lotto is having a
good year, Domo is a disappointment" etc.

I'll let our Belgian friends put in a comment here. But you should remember
what happened a couple of years ago when the Belgian teams allowed their own
personal vedettas between rival Belgian teams to become more important than
the races they were in.