McEwen's interesting training ride from Nashik to Mumbai - a good story

With all of the assumed and presumed doping and what have you going on you could easily lose sight of what makes the bike so enjoyable - the sheer pleasure of covering long distances under your own steam. It's what drew me into the sport in the first place, a mere 37 years ago! Bravo to the likes of Hunter, Elliott and McEwen for taking the scenic route!

Robbie McEwen and Co. head cross-country in India

McEwen was joined by RadioShack teammates Sam Bewley and Robbie Hunter, the South African Bonitas team, keen to put in some miles ahead of next week’s Tour of South Africa, and members of the UK-registered Motorpoint team, including racer/manager Malcolm Elliott.

They rode 140km, heading out of Nashik and taking in the opening 50km of Friday’s race route. Instead of turning around at the bottom of a wide gorge, as they did Friday, they kept on heading southwest toward Mumbai.

The 2 Robbies deliver on flat tyres... didn't Sean Kelly specialise in this sort of rim-riding?

It's always disappointing to feel that softening tyre under you, more so when you've ridden through all but the last few kays of a race. So Hunter can be doubly pleased to still get the win.

I can recall Irish hard-man sprinter Sean Kelly doing something similar back in the 80's but can't remember which race that was. I think he won on the rim itself - but maybe not? As McEwen said, it's hard to control the fishtailing when you have bottomed out.

The ‘two Robbies’ deliver big weekend in India for RadioShack

“We actually both punctured. He won the race on a half-flat tire. When I was coming off the bridge with about a kilometer and half to go, I felt it was half-gone, but as I got across the bridge, my rim was hitting the road. I couldn’t pedal without my bike just fish-tailing,” McEwen said. “Just as I was about to tell Rob – I saw him bouncing on his (wheel) – he turned around and said, ‘I’ve got a flat!’ I said you have more air than I have, so go for it. Mine was totally gone, but it was too late to change a wheel and get back, it was never going to happen. We were coming down the bridge at full speed, so I told Robbie, you’ve got to sprint on yours because mine is gone.”

Le Tour de France 2007 - Stage 11 - Robbie Hunter hunts down a win

Well he had to win eventually, especially with that other Robbie out of the frame and Boonen down in a fall. Nice to see Cancellara continuing to 'have a go', too. The lesson of the day is 'don't give up'. The other lesson is 'go hard'. The breaks happened when the pace was continually forced - the winner's time meaning a very fast 48km/h average over the 180-plus kilometres. Given the pace, the crashes and the crosswinds it was inevitable the elastic would break, and it did. With the splits in the peleton tactics became confused and gaps grew.

Those who lost out were some of the sprinters, like Hushovd and Zabel, and overall contender Moreau, who lost time after a crash and broken cleat. Of course it was bad timing - especially so as Astana chose that moment to attack - and some were upset about it, not least of all being Moreau. But that's racing. It's a funny thing, these team radios - you'd think they'd communicate something like 'Moreau in crash, do the respectful thing and wait for him to bridge back' but instead it seems they fall back on 'but we didn't even know he was dropped'. Now if we didn't have these rider radios that'd be true, but we do.. so it was 'that's racing', wasn't it?