Bad day for Team Discovery at Paris-Roubaix

George Hincapie was one of the favourites to win the 104th Paris-Roubaix (one of the Spring Classics)...unfortunately his steering tube "snapped" 45 km before the finish and he was left sitting by the roadside as the race went on without him. Just when Team Discovery thought things couldn't get worse two of their other riders Leif Hoste and Vladimir Gusev who finished 2nd and 4th, respectively, were disqualified for ignoring a red light at this train crossing. Fabian Cancellara from Team CSC was the eventual winner.

As an aside, the Paris-Roubaix is 259 km long and finishes with 2 laps on the Roubaix velodrome (this year the winner took just over 6 hrs, avg speed was ~42km/hr). Along the course the riders have to carefully navigate through 27 sectors of cobblestones that this year ranged from 200m to almost 4km in length. No wonder this race is considered to have the most gruelling cycling terrain.