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Pro cycling: General Chat


leviramsey

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Dumoulin's performances have been special so far. Even better because I picked him up for 6 in my velogames team. Obviously it will all fall apart for him and Chaves on Wednesday though, possibly the most brutal day of Grand Tour riding I've ever seen:

 

vuelta_stage11.JPG

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  • 10 months later...

Terrible decision in Tdf today. They fall for Sky's pressure I guess. Bauke Mollema sums it up:

"What's going on? Seems like everybody gets time bonuses. I wonder what would have happened if I would have been the only one to go down…"

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I was saying it at work that I would have thrown my water bottle at those motorbikes yesterday , the groups lined up in echelons to cover from the wind and 4 bike beeping to get past a rider trying to focus on the climb ...I would have **** the bottle at them 

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19 minutes ago, NoelVilla said:

Terrible decision in Tdf today. They fall for Sky's pressure I guess. Bauke Mollema sums it up:

"What's going on? Seems like everybody gets time bonuses. I wonder what would have happened if I would have been the only one to go down…"

He's probably right too. If it had been him who went down, I'm not so sure anything would have happened... Anyway, today the Belgians showed once again who the strongest riders are ;-)

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2 hours ago, NoelVilla said:

Terrible decision in Tdf today. They fall for Sky's pressure I guess. Bauke Mollema sums it up:

"What's going on? Seems like everybody gets time bonuses. I wonder what would have happened if I would have been the only one to go down…"

It wasn't a terrible decision at all. It was about the only possible sensible decision. 

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9 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

It wasn't a terrible decision at all. It was about the only possible sensible decision. 

agreed. Some ill informed comments on this page IMO. It was the spectators (and the tour organisers) who caused that crash, not the bikes. The stage was shortened due to high winds by several km's. Therefore, the spectators, who crowd around the cyclists at the best of times up a steep mountain, were even more squashed together in the final few k's. Many of them apparently pissed up too, and blocking the motorbikes from getting through. Basically, the motorbikes either had to stop suddenly, or basically ride into/over the crowd, possibly causing fatalities. Porte said as much. There should have been more barriers erected to prevent this.

Yes, the motorbikes have caused a lot of problems recently, in other tours/races especially. But this one was not down to them. Had it not been the m-bikes having to stop suddenly, it would have been the riders themselves. Crowd control should have been better.

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So every time a stage is shortened the rules of cycling should not apply anymore and the organisers could make up new rules? Seems great for the integrity of the sport. It's a racing incident and should be treated as such. When does this exceptions end? Will it be applied if something happens to a breakaway? (Flecha a few years back springs to mind) or it is just for the yellow jersey?

 

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It is absolute nonsense to blame the spectators.

The reason the motorbikes had no space was because they were unprepared for the spectators with the re-jigged stage and as such got caught having a large number of motorbikes in the crowd tunnel. This is why they typically ride behind the cyclists or farther in advance. When the crowd got large, that particular motorbike should have stopped and pulled over to let the competitors pass, instead they carried on until disaster. Not the spectators fault, this is on ASO 100%.

I assume that if Porte had fell and taken Froome down, and then he went off running that he would also get a free pass also? As it was close to the end some re-normalization was warranted in this case, but Froome should have been punished for running sans-bike in contravention of the rules. 

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