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The Pro Cycling Thread (Part 2)
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aggs
23-07-2016
Originally Posted by tealady:
“wot like 'peleton' ”


I always liked 'fallen' for 'chute'
aggs
23-07-2016
Originally Posted by tealady:
“Confused
At the top of the last climb with about 10k to go we had nibali, pantano and alaphilippe in contention then mysteriously izagirre wins but itv4 gave no explanation.
Where did izagirre come from to win ?”

He was always there - in the original group of 30? In the original break and then in the breakaway from the breakaway of 8 or so. There was a bit of too-nig and fro-nig on the climbs and descents but he caught back up.
tealady
23-07-2016
Originally Posted by aggs:
“He was always there - in the original group of 30? In the original break and then in the breakaway from the breakaway of 8 or so. There was a bit of too-nig and fro-nig on the climbs and descents but he caught back up.”

OK
He must have done a hell of a descent.
gemma-the-husky
24-07-2016
Podium in the TDF, in cycling generally seems somewhat irrelevant.

Cycling is the iconic " so and so first, the rest nowhere".

I expect yates isn't bothered at all between 3rd and 4th
Mark F
24-07-2016
How many more can Froome win?

Where does he stand against the likes of Cav and Wiggins who are maybe more popular than Froome?

Well done to Yates - great achievement to be 4th in his 2nd tour.
Eater Sundae
24-07-2016
Originally Posted by Mark F:
“How many more can Froome win?

Where does he stand against the likes of Cav and Wiggins who are maybe more popular than Froome?

Well done to Yates - great achievement to be 4th in his 2nd tour.”

Wiggins stands out because he is the first British TdF winner. Something that Froome can never be. But Froome is the better rider, and so will ultimately be ranked higher in Tour terms when we look back in years to come. Although Wiggins has track credentials as well.

Cavendish is up there in the record books because of the number of stage wins, but of course he would never win the GC. Generally, most of the other top stage winners were also serious GC performers, which shows how great these others were.

I think ultimately it is GC performance that matters. The other jerseys and stage wins are "nice to haves", and help to keep sponsors and teams interested, but it is GC that rules.

Part of me thinks that more should be made of the runner up placings in GC, but I also realise that there are many potential GC contenders who do not get anywhere near the top of the GC standings simply because they have been sacrificed on some stages of the tour, used up in order to help the team leader succeed in GC. Also, they have treated time trials as a training ride only, in order to save themselves in readiness to help their leader on the hext day. So in any year, the final GC standing is still false in terms of the runner up places.

The same happens in the case of sprinters, where potentially good mass sprinters are relegated to being lead out men only and will never get the chance to win a stage.

This happens across the board - the best team (Sky) doesn't win the team prize because in concentrating on GC, their others riders are used up and then spat out of the back, and so a poorer team wins the team award.

Out of all the awards, GC and stage wins seem to be the most important. The polka dot and green jerseys are a little too false, IMO, contrived purely to add a bit of interest in the middle of a boring stage. I think they should try and sway the points in each more towards the finish of the stage, and less on the intermediate. (Just as an aside, I wonder if the scoring has changed over the years, as we don't seem to see GC winners picking up other jerseys, such as Eddy Merckx did, or is it just that Merckx was so exceptional?)

Edit. Just been on Wikipedia. Other than last year when Froome won KoM, Sastre was the last GC winner to win KoM, in 2008. Before that, we go back to Merckx. The scoring system does get tweaked over the years.
John259
24-07-2016
For the media and the general public, only the Yellow Jersey winner is of interest. Most people don't know the other jersey competitions exist, or don't understand them.

Within the sport and its serious fans, most of the other performances are of interest, to a large extent because they affect reputations and contracts.
swingaleg
24-07-2016
Originally Posted by John259:
“For the media and the general public, only the Yellow Jersey winner is of interest. Most people don't know the other jersey competitions exist, or don't understand them.”

that's true.......

before I got into the sport properly I thought the riders just stopped during the day and had a separate sprint race.............as though the marathon runners would all stop after 10 miles and have a 100 yard sprint.......
culttvfan
24-07-2016
Originally Posted by Eater Sundae:
“Wiggins stands out because he is the first British TdF winner. Something that Froome can never be. But Froome is the better rider, and so will ultimately be ranked higher in Tour terms when we look back in years to come.”

Unfortunately that is true. That's why Froome was making such a massive sacrifice supporting Wiggins in 2012 when he was clearly way (yes, way) stronger - he wasn't just sacrificing one Tour win, but the far bigger prize of becoming the first British TdF winner, and everything that goes with it. Froome is leagues ahead of where Wiggins ever was as a GT rider though, and this year has shown just how multi-dimensional he now is.

I always thought there was also fairly bad blood between Froome and Cavendish in 2012 but apparently that wasn't quite the case. Interestingly, according to Froome, Cavendish suggested to him that he should ride for himself because he may never get another chance to win the Tour.

Regarding the Rio Time Trial, with Dumoulin injured, surely that makes Chris favourite, particularly as it's pretty hilly.
Mark F
24-07-2016
Wasn't there some spat between the "WAGS" of Froome/Wiggins over the 2012 tour?
culttvfan
24-07-2016
Originally Posted by Mark F:
“Wasn't there some spat between the "WAGS" of Froome/Wiggins over the 2012 tour?”

I think so, but I thought it also involved Cav and Chris's partners too.
aggs
24-07-2016
Most of the overall yellow jersey winners tend to be quite high in the KoM standings - purely because they need to finish fairly high up every stage (especially the mountain top finishes where the big points are).

People like Claudio Chiapucci and Richard Virenque used to look at the profiles, pick the stage with the most points on offer and go for the win there and virtually guarantee themselves the jersey. When you think that Marco Pantani didn't even win the KoM on the year he took yellow, it shows how important the smaller cats are. Same as the intermediate sprints in the green jersey - which is actually for most consistent finisher, not sprinter. In the early days it will be worn by a sprinter because they tend to be the ones winning the stages but by the time the intermediate sprints and mountains have been factored it, it's going to be more a strong man rouleur than out and out sprinter (with the points as they are, when Cav won, I think the points system had been adjusted for less intermediates and more points on the finish line). It's why Cippo knew it wasn't worth trying to get over the mountains.

On and off over the years, there has been an attempt to have something called the 'combined jersey' - which took the yellow, KoM, green standings and ranked them to get a best all-rounder prize (not sure it worked as they hoped because Merckx, Hinault and LeMond all won that as well). As a note, it was a truly hideous piece of kit. If you imagine a patchwork of yellow, green and KoM it was as bad as it sounds.

Of course, these days there are other considerations that come into play. One team or rider dominating totally tends to leads to awkward questions being asked. It also helps the general mood in the peleton if the 'lesser'? prizes are shared around a bit.
aggs
24-07-2016
Originally Posted by Eater Sundae:
“Wiggins stands out because he is the first British TdF winner. Something that Froome can never be. But Froome is the better rider, and so will ultimately be ranked higher in Tour terms when we look back in years to come. Although Wiggins has track credentials as well.”

To me, personally, it's because I've followed Cav and Wiggins since they were young. I've stood on the side of roads to watch and seen them training at Manchester. They were part of Team GB before there was a team GB when marginal gains were just a twinkle in Peter Keen (and Chris Boardman's) eyes.

Wiggins is an awesome rider - to switch from the track to the road and be a GC contender is impressive, Chris Boardman could never manage that - although he was super lucky with Roger Legeay and Gan that they saw his potential for prologue sand TT's and we're happy with what he could bring them.

With Froome I feel a bit cheated, because I/we missed out on all that. He is possibly a better rider than Wiggins for the GT GC now but Brad's ability to win on the track, retrain for the road (which is a whole different beast), win on the road and then convert back to track is beyond impressive. World champion road TT, Paris-Nice, Dauphine, Romandie, stages in the Giro, World championships on track, 7 Olympic records and the hour record. There's enough there even without the TdF win!
Eater Sundae
24-07-2016
Originally Posted by John259:
“For the media and the general public, only the Yellow Jersey winner is of interest. Most people don't know the other jersey competitions exist, or don't understand them.

Within the sport and its serious fans, most of the other performances are of interest, to a large extent because they affect reputations and contracts.”

It affects contracts because of the advertising boost that the sponsor gets, so it is worth winning. However, I think the riders' reputations are more about what they do for the team. So Renshaw and Eisel are highly regarded at the TdF. Similarly, Porte and Thomas.

Regarding the general public only being interested in the yellow jersey, there is, in my opinion, a bit of a chicken and egg situation. Sky tried, and managed, to combine chasing stage (bunch sprint) wins/green jersey in the form of Mark Cavndish, whilst also attackingbthe GC, but ultimately gave up on the sprints and concentrated on the GC. I don't know if that was because they thought that the advertising return from GC was so much better than the return from stage wins, or just because it was so hard to maintain a realistic attack on both.
wns_195
24-07-2016
Wiggins has gone back to the track because he will never win another grand tour again. He started to fade after winning the TDF.

Perhaps it has been to Froome's advantage that he hasn't had the same amount of media attention as Wiggins and Cav. He can quietly get on with preparing for the next race he wants to win. he doesn't have to contend with big British personalities either, and thatmay be a unifying factor for his team.

I think it is disrespectful to the race to pull out to concentrate on another event as Cav has done. The organisers should ban riders who do that for a year.
aggs
24-07-2016
That doesn't bother me, to be honest. At least while Cav was there he was competing - unlike Nibali who may well finish but has let it be known he was only riding the Tour for training purposes, which is just as bad.

Originally Posted by Eater Sundae:
“It affects contracts because of the advertising boost that the sponsor gets, so it is worth winning. However, I think the riders' reputations are more about what they do for the team. So Renshaw and Eisel are highly regarded at the TdF. Similarly, Porte and Thomas.

Regarding the general public only being interested in the yellow jersey, there is, in my opinion, a bit of a chicken and egg situation. Sky tried, and managed, to combine chasing stage (bunch sprint) wins/green jersey in the form of Mark Cavndish, whilst also attackingbthe GC, but ultimately gave up on the sprints and concentrated on the GC. I don't know if that was because they thought that the advertising return from GC was so much better than the return from stage wins, or just because it was so hard to maintain a realistic attack on both.”

I think we have to remember recent history for cycling, as well. A team who does a Telekom and wins just about everything (everything except the KoM, I think - which went to Virenque) is, rightly or wrongly, going to be given the side eye in a big way. Brailsford/Froome have said the French press this year is much more friendly than it has been - and that is mainly because of the way he and the team have riden.

They seem to have taken a leaf out of the Banesto book - conentrate on the GC and allow other riders and teams their time to shine. The Tour is the biggest shop window for cyclists and their sponsors. One team or rider taking everything isn't good for the rest of the peleton, especially the smaller wildcard teams. There's a reason Indurain was liked as Patron and a reason why, by and large, rumours about him have been pretty thin on the ground. He targeted the top step - everything else was up for grabs. Of course for Banesto - like Sky this year - it means a supreme confidence on the team leader. There is no plan B. If wet weather, road markings and poor bike handling had resulted in anything more than stiffness and road rash they would have been up the creek without a paddle - Henao is next on classification about 20 minutes back.
RRL
24-07-2016
may I ask a question re the prize money etc.

My understanding is all the riders are on a contract so basically they get a salary. With the prize money I understand that is shared between the whole team of riders (and maybe others). So for arguments sake say someone wins the Tour has several stage wins and other team members have KoM, Green or stage win money does all the money go into one big pot and then get divided equally between the nine riders (and others if included)?
wns_195
24-07-2016
I tuned into Eurosport because their coverage started earlier, and a few minutes ago the commentary completely disappeared. When I switched to ITV4 the same commentators who had been on Eurosport were commentating on ITV4. I wonder why Eurosport don't have their own commentators this year as they did last year, or whether they are having technical problems.

I hope Barnes can finish on the podium.
grassmarket
24-07-2016
Rochelle Gilmour, the female commentator here is in fact the Team Manager of the Wiggle team, so her insights into Wiggle team tactics are probably pretty reliable.
swingaleg
24-07-2016
Originally Posted by RRL:
“may I ask a question re the prize money etc.

My understanding is all the riders are on a contract so basically they get a salary. With the prize money I understand that is shared between the whole team of riders (and maybe others). So for arguments sake say someone wins the Tour has several stage wins and other team members have KoM, Green or stage win money does all the money go into one big pot and then get divided equally between the nine riders (and others if included)?”

My understanding is that all prize money throughout the season goes into a pot and is shared out

But there is a tradition that winners of the Tour de France don't take any of the prize money for the race and share it out between their team-mates (they make loads from personal appearances and advertising etc after the race)
RRL
24-07-2016
Originally Posted by swingaleg:
“My understanding is that all prize money throughout the season goes into a pot and is shared out

But there is a tradition that winners of the Tour de France don't take any of the prize money for the race and share it out between their team-mates (they make loads from personal appearances and advertising etc after the race)”

Thank you, that seems fair to me.
swingaleg
24-07-2016
quite a lot of crashes on the Champs........
swingaleg
24-07-2016
Rochelle's team wins.......

It's always amazing to see the difference in speed when the sprinters go past the rider who's tried to go for a long one !
Edward_Sloley
24-07-2016
It's been a great WWT mid-season for Chloe Hosking - she's won the Tour of Chongming Island (GC + stage), a stage of the Giro Rosa and now La Course. The only one I believe can deny her a rainbow jersey in Doha is Kirsten Wild.

Here's hoping her teammate Lucy Garner will be enjoying that level of success before too long.

It must have been a little weird for her to be interviewed by her team manager for the world feed!
wns_195
24-07-2016
Originally Posted by swingaleg:
“quite a lot of crashes on the Champs........”

A lot in the final 5 km. Not as many as last year. The women should do Paris-Roubaix. I don't think many of them would complete the race.

Mixed ffortunes for Wiggle.
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