Recent content by Spine Concept

GOAT only “prods” when it’s arguable. In MvdP’s case it’s basically a description, not an opinion. :p;)

How is it even still a question who the CX GOAT is? Mathieu has 7 elite CX world titles (ties the all-time record and the heavy favorite for the record-breaking 8th title), holds the all-time World Cup wins record (51), and his career win rate is absurd (around ~75% wins in many datasets, and...

Despite a degree of inexperience evident in some of the comments, MVP is once again delivering an exceptional CX season: 6 wins from 6 starts and a very real chance of breaking the Cyclo-cross World Championship titles record he currently shares with Eric De Vlaeminck. I genuinely hope he does...

Who cares about the logistics of anything when you're drunk and angry? C'mon now.

I'm sorry, but no. If you do not wish to talk about it "for ages" (wild exaggeration of course) that's your prerogative. I, on the other hand, will keep talking about it. It only takes one of those "rare" moments to cause a serious accident. I do enjoy cyclocross, that’s exactly why this...

Except that’s not what I’m doing, and I think you know that. Nice try though. I explicitly marked the last two cases as unconfirmed, that’s called being precise, not evasive. Focusing on those two while ignoring the majority of confirmed cases is selective reading. The overall pattern doesn’t...

Fair enough, then this is mostly a wording issue. I agree that athletes shouldn’t be thrown off by every shout from the crowd, and that professionals develop coping mechanisms for that. Where I disagree is that this makes verbal abuse irrelevant or something to exclude from the record. The fact...

If the motives have “long since been identified,” that’s a reason to keep discussing it, not to drop it. The same incidents keep happening. Discussing the incidents is normal, but discussing the pattern and whether enough is being done about it is just as legitimate. Saying “we already know...

If you actually cared to read my previous post regarding this incident you'd have read that I’m not claiming to know his motive, and I explicitly said it could be unintentional. But you don’t know his motive either. The point isn’t proving intent from one clip, it’s that when similar incidents...

He made the same movements while other riders passed by, he just had to save his careless moment for when MVP passed by. Just makes it so hard to keep excusing these types of incidents. Oh well. Just another bonehead I guess.

Wrong again. Those two things don’t go together. Saying “you shouldn’t have to endure it” while also saying “you shouldn’t be bothered by it” is basically normalizing the behavior. Being a professional athlete means accepting that it might happen, not that it’s acceptable or irrelevant when it...

Cry me a river. A true professional and champion doesn't get the same satisfaction from not beating the best. It'll always be "but MVP wasn't there". I'm certain that Nys Jr. and WvA would attest to getting way more satisfaction from beating the very best then anyone else. You can clearly see...

It must become tiresome for MVP, organizers and Belgian pundits to have to explain away these incidents. That doesn’t mean this specific incident must have been intentional, it very well could have been an accident. The issue for me is the pattern, which makes it harder and harder to keep...

You did miss the point though, because the context you added reframes the issue as random probability, while my argument is about motive, not odds. If this were just a numbers game, abuse would be spread across riders. It isn’t. It follows Van der Poel across disciplines, countries, and years...

It's a description of everything that happened. Moreover, verbal abuse is still abuse, even if it doesn't physically interfere with the rider. Even if you need to have thick skin as a professional athlete in these instances it's still deplorable behavior by simple-minded "fans". Just because you...