Pro Tour/ Euro/Whatever road thread

from what ive heard, the coaches will ask their riders to buy their own spinners so they can monitor easily. no facility needed for that.

serious bullshit right here:

http://blog.oregonlive.com/horner/2009/06/astanas_chris_horner_explains.html

― cutty, Friday, June 26, 2009 12:12 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

mmm. i like horner, he's a PRO. he does as ordered and spends 100% as asked. if contador wanted the strongest team with a guy who follows management's orders, he'd demand horner. i think horner's take is right--and contador doesn't trust bruyneel. with paulinho, ac will have a guy who'll follow his own commands. and if ac jumps teams, he'll take his flunky too, anyway.

cant help but believe that if youre serious about winning gc, you take a team to back one guy 100% to win gc, no concessions.

― iro with the brown bag (Hunt3r), Friday, June 26, 2009 9:31 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

can't believe that horner was dropped for a dude that probably won't finish the tour (scroll way down):

http://www.letour.fr/2009/TDF/LIVE/us/400/classement/index.html

Watching Cancellara do his TT run at the worlds and he is in a completely different league from everyone else 38s in front at the first split.

Wiggins looks done, I think he just had cancellara and Larsson come past in quick sucession.

Although that still puts him in a fight for third with Tony Martin. the fact that cancellara is a minute ahead of a guy who is a minute ahead of everyone else is staggering.

And that's it for Wiggins, bonked.

OK, not him the bike, damn the lack of commentary on the universal feed.

u watching this on eurosport ed?

On Universal Sports in the US. I expect you can get the whole phil ligget experience on eurosport.

Cancellara is amazing, he beats the guy who beta the rest of the field by a minute thirty by a whole other minute thirty. In a race that they consider it necessary to time down to 1/100th second. This guy is absolutely amazing. Looked so composed and in the groove. Roll on sunday.

Prolly on drugs :(

I am counting on his swissness to make that not true.

Famous for their scrupulous morals, the Swiss.

"He is on another planet," said Zirbel of the winner. "Second place would be a win in any other generation. That's how you have got to view it. We were all scraping for second and third."

Cycling Moves to Phase Out Use of Two-Way Radios

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Article Tools Sponsored By
By JULIET MACUR
Published: September 24, 2009

The International Cycling Union voted this week to phase out the use of two-way radios in all categories of road racing, a move that will most likely cause controversy at the top level of the sport.

Riders in the junior and under-23 categories are already barred from using the radios, but the cycling union’s management committee said in a statement Wednesday night that the use of radios at other levels “distorts the nature of cycle sport.”

Riders competed radio-free until about the mid-1990s, when they became commonplace among professional squads. Before then, riders would speak to their race director face to face during the competition, pulling beside the team car to receive directions. These days, most top-level competitors rely on the radios for race strategy.

If last summer’s Tour de France is any indication of how riders and teams will react to the ban, its implementation will not be easy. Officials tried to ban the radios on two racing days. Their motivation was to make the stages more interesting, as riders would be forced to think on their own rather than rely on cues from race directors talking to them via a headset.

The ban lasted only one day, on which some riders appeared to be pedaling slowly on purpose. By the second day, it was rescinded.

Johan Bruyneel, team director for Astana, which was Lance Armstrong’s team, led a resistance to the radio ban. He drew up a petition, and most of the teams signed it.

Those team directors and riders said that the ban was too dangerous and that the Tour was not the place to try something new. They said the safety of the riders could be in jeopardy if they were unaware of a crash ahead and not given enough notice of it.

“You could also have two days without a helmet. How about that?” Jens Voigt, a German rider on the Saxo Bank team, said during the Tour. “Or two days where we cut the cables from the brakes.”

The cycling union’s ban did not call for a specific timeframe during which the radios would be phased out.

could race organisers run a neutral radio service to alert riders of crashes?

wiggo's bane:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdrBXuwID2o

Wiggins, however, says that to improve in 2010 he has to move elsewhere.

Despite improving immensely during his spell with Garmin, he used a rather unflattering football analogy to summarize his thoughts on the issue.

"It's a bit like trying to win the Champions League and to win the Champions League you go to Manchester United and I'm probably playing at Wigan at the moment.

"I'll probably have to make that step to do it," Wiggins told the BBC.

haha, class, dude. good luck with that tdf.

http://www.velonews.com/article/98562/wiggins-looking-skyward

damn they pulled that story down fast!! someone musta hated it. now its back to smoochyville.

what a ride by zirbel; cancellara is a fkn beast. he has a horse's legs

road race is on. nasty crash already, looks like one of the austrians has busted his collarbone.

cadel!!!

Well done to the moody Aussie. It's nice to see him finally win something. I thought he was unlucky not to win the Dauphine this year, and pretty unlucky in the Vuelta as well.

World Champion Cadel Evans just doesn't sound right but whatevs.

aw good on him

great ride

are there any good articles out there that explain the tactics and psychology of these kinds of road races? watching it yesterday was really interesting but I think a lot of the subtlety was lost on me. I still don't really understand fully how cancellara lost it, was it just that he made his move too early? the commentators on the BBC were saying that he was being 'ridden out of it' by the two spaniards in front of him who 'were no longer going to ride'

ha

ha it's v.complicated or ha u silly noob?

i don't think it was that he made his move too early as he was up against some pretty strong climbers. cancellera is the world's fastest man--on flat. send him up a hill everything changes.

i didn't see the entire race but i assume the "ridden out of it" part means the people in his chase group had some incentive to stop working. cancellara couldn't do all the work himself and therefore he loses.

cycling is such a tactical/psychological sport, i wouldn't know where to start. if you read krabbe's "the rider" it's kind of a primer on road racing in narrative form.

(xpost) He's not a sprinter, but he's a great time trialist and a fantastic descender, so his best chance of winning was to break away on his own near the top of a climb, lose everyone on the descent and 'time trial' his way to the finish. However, everyone knew he was likely to try this so he was being marked and when he made his move people jumped on him and didn't let him get a decent gap. When the break got past him he was left in a very difficult situation: the Spanish wouldn't help him in the chase because they had a man up ahead in the break (they weren't going to chase down their team-mate), which meant he would have to do all the work on his own to bring the break back. The problem is, if he did that then he would be knackered and one of the other Spaniards would immediately launch another break.

thanks dudes... again sorry for the ignorant qn but what kind of 'help' are you talking about? pace setting/drafting?

Yes - they were making Cancellara ride at the front and just sitting on his wheel (which is much easier). If Cancellara had hauled them back up to the break then one of the other Spaniards would have suddenly leapt out of his wheel and broken away. If Cancellara had then towed everyone back up to that break then another Spaniard would have done the same. Not necessarily just Spaniards - there were several Italians up there as well. So he was in a no-win situation.

yeah, I noticed a few times he gestured them forward (the commentator said something about him flicking his elbow being the internationally recognised signal) but some times when he did that they continued to let him ride point, which is kinda lol

thx again

(highlights are up on the iplayer btw)

we don't get iplayer here

hotspotshield is ur pal

so was this the first bike race you've watched?

ha..... um yeah. my boss tried to get me to watch the tour de france last year but no dice.

Finally watched some highlights, poor fabian, he was just a marked man and he had no one to work with, however, can't fault cadel who kept a low profile, let cancellara break the lead group up before timing his run perfectly. Can't fault the guy, he did well.

Tour 2010:

http://www.letour.fr/2010/TDF/COURSE/us/le_parcours.html

tourmalet and Aubisque on the last tuesday, then rest day and a finish on tourmalet on the final thursday, individual TT on the final saturday. All the flat is in the first week

wait, only one tt? not even a ttt?

daer lance: FU
love, aso

Just reading about the stage that finishes at Arenberg and I can't work out if they actually go over the famous 'Forest of Arenberg' cobbled stretch from the Paris-Roubaix. It says "The finish line will be located at the entrance to the notorious Arenberg Trench", which makes it sound like they stop just before it - surely not?

They are doing the big climb from liege bastogne liege backwards on day three. The Arenberg day has 7 pavé sections totalling 13.2km. Having though the first week may be boring the barrodeur and pavé stage should make it less so.

I have to be in London on July 9th, and Lisbon the weekend before. I am definitely going to Arenberg and possibly the Ardennes as well.

Giro is going to have significant dirt roads this year, sucks to be a GT rider it seems.

yeah the 5k leading up to the pave/gravel will be a dangerous misery for the gc guys. countdown to evans crying about how unfair and ridiculous it is.

Jonathan Vaughters, Garmin-Slipstream: “It’s harder than last year. On paper, that’s better for Christian (Vande Velde) because he’s always stronger in the third week.

WIGGO TO SKY ALERT!!!

Doesn't look great for Wiggins or Cavendish, really

WHAT? VDB DIED? guess i hadn't really been following the news over the last few days.

Damn :(