Amstel - The Most Dangerous Race?

It is a mental race, the only difference is that there's no chance risking a broken bone for the Tour of Britain whereas the Amstel is a proper classic.

Plus whilst the street furniture is insane, most of it has police and marshals waving flags and whistling, the rolling roadblock style of the Tour of Britain doesn't manage this.

FJS wrote:

I disagree with the most dangerous race qualification.
Yes, there is an enormous amount of street furniture, and much of the route uses very narrow winding roads. But because there are traffic islands all the time, and because more or less all roads in te finale are narrow, riders are concentrated all the time, and the peloton in strung out in the finale. Much more dangerous is a route with nice wide roads, and sudden street furniture, or a surprise bend/narrow road to be take by a full half asleep peloton. Twists and turns, and short steep hills, is what the Amstel Gold Race is about. It's unexpected objects that make a route dangerous. There aren't actually more crashes in the Amstel Gold Race than normal

Sean Kelly has in the past claimed it to be more dangerous than Roubaix.

Either way, Dutch commisars are famously unsympathetic to any rider in their race, which hardly helps the riders' psychology.

Bernardus wrote:

No, it's not the most dangerous race. In races like Roubaix and Flanders most of the "final" starts earlier, probably 50/60 km from the finish (and it's over at 20 km from the finish) , so the last hour of the race only the lead group with the specialists is shown. Every rider behind that leading group has his own story of crashes, near crashes and mechanical failures. The "final" of the Ardennes classics only starts at about 20/25 km, a lot more riders are in that leading group. So if a guy like Mandri crashes during that final, it is live on tv. If riders like him crash in Roubaix, there's a small chance you'd hear about it.

Also: once again Frank Schleck crashed, a rider with his bike handling skills wouldn't even think about starting in Compiegne.

my take is all the field is very big going into the back end of this race... last 35km to go everybody is still there... trying to craminto those small lanes



of note.. the crashes this year didn't happen in the final so much but more at the point when the break is being finally shut down and a controlling tempo is attempted by several teams which changes the pace in the bunch

But roubaix has more crashes

roubaix the crashes often happenwhen riders start going into the red trying to hold wheels , hence they become very race significant..

thor last year...


thinking about the classics some have late selections but few have late selections and narrow lanes full of traffic furniture and parked cars

the parked cars are a random variable that can catch you out even if you know the road

MSR has wide roads and the field is broken up on the cipressa enough...

LBL tends to thin the field down through out the day as does the fleche and they have taken out the descent of the k-berg from GW

lombardy the same

paris tours wide roads

flanders has a few crashes but tends to start selecting earlier than amstrel but street furniture at flanders has caught a few people out...


I must say for a classic race Amstrel looks fairly amateur hour with all those parked cars

I have a personnel phobia of car doors opening on me... the "door prize" as we used to call it

It may not have been Amstel Gold, but I remember a brutal crash, when a Tinkoff rider rode straight into an unattended traffic island. Anybody remember when and where this happened?

Bernardus wrote:

csp wrote:

It may not have been Amstel Gold, but I remember a brutal crash, when a Tinkoff rider rode straight into an unattended traffic island. Anybody remember when and where this happened?

This is probably the one you're looking for, Angel Gomez Gomez crashed into a (poorly) attended traffic island in Flanders.

http://www.garagetv.be/video-galerij/djvensterke/Val_Angel_Gomez_Gomez_Ronde_van_Vlaanderen.aspx

That's the one, thanks.

Rick Chasey wrote:

Bernardus wrote:

That's the thing I hate most about the Amstel, how hard can it be to park your car on another street for just a few days.

Holland's a pretty small place. The roads are too narrow to park your car in front of your house, so you get car slots at the end of each road.

There's literally nowhere else they can be parked.

I live in Holland and I've been to the hills of Limburg several times. Trust me, most people can find perfect alternatives to park the car.

The cars that are parked in the worst spots are often owned by the people who live next to the route. Some of them use it as a form of "protesting", because they think there are too many races in the region. The region does host a lot of races*, but since the mines closed its economy is partially based on tourism. And a race like the AGR generates a lot of tourism

* AGR, Hel v/h Mergelland, Olympia's Tour, Ster Elektrotoer, Eneco Tour, National Championships (most of the time) and a lot of amateur events.