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All my passion for the sport has gone :(
- Thread starter Ilmaestro99
- Start date
Yes and I don't have the passion to say more.
My passion has been transformed into rage for the time being, but I think I may be tuned out, when the next season comes around...
If all the mutants are at a similar level and its entertaining like 2022/23, I have no issue. This years TDF was not entertaining, and the last few days became a bit of a chore to watch, as we all knew what the outcome would be.
I agree with the OP.
Sport needs uncertainty, even for its main protagonists & stars. If there's the feeling 3 riders are totally invincible with everyone else 20 minutes down & there's also a huge 10 minutes gap separating those 3 invincibles, then there's nothing left worth watching.
It was just Pog > Vingegaard > Evenepoel in every major stage again, again & again, with varying gaps & only one real 'upset' of that order (le Lorian).
In the end only the clinic related jokes provided some entertainment.
Sport needs uncertainty, even for its main protagonists & stars. If there's the feeling 3 riders are totally invincible with everyone else 20 minutes down & there's also a huge 10 minutes gap separating those 3 invincibles, then there's nothing left worth watching.
It was just Pog > Vingegaard > Evenepoel in every major stage again, again & again, with varying gaps & only one real 'upset' of that order (le Lorian).
In the end only the clinic related jokes provided some entertainment.
Yep. I can accept some doping is always going to be around but it’s gone way over the top now. Completely kills the whole point of watching the sport, speculating, thinking about tactics, form, which riders are going to peak or fade in a race… now it’s just about who has a bigger NOS button. And it’s insulting to our intelligence. It’s too hard to take any of it seriously and feels gluttonous, then on top of that there’s the huge reminder it’s all about money and even political power and influence at the end of the day.
Thanks for sharing!
Anyway, my "passion" will never go away just because someone is better than everybody else. It would be much more likely to dissipate if everybody sucked, no matter how close the battle for first.
Anyway, my "passion" will never go away just because someone is better than everybody else. It would be much more likely to dissipate if everybody sucked, no matter how close the battle for first.
TLDR: If bored do something you have zero knowledge of as there will be a ton to learn and everything is fresh! Where you won't feel like a maestro! 
It's funny being a noob in this regard. I mean I started watching 2020. Imola was the first race I watched since that day Rasmussen was sent home.
I came for the clinic. It even started with my googling Rasmussen and his doping 2020, finding his Facebook and twitter and accidentally watch Imola and it was lockdown and hence why not get Eurosport to watch Tour de France I thought. But bummer it was already over. Then I heard about a race called the Giro and another called the vuelta. So I got Eurosport TV subscriptions. So far the only names I had heard was Alaphilippe and Roglic.
The first race I watched hence was giro 2020 Almeida in the maglia rosa and he was annoying until he dropped on Stelvio. Simultaneously I watched a bit of la vuelta but that Roglic guy was too dominant and so I stopped watching, (apart from impressive mountain stages for the scenery). Both those riders were quite boring to me until I got more backstory.
In the spring 2021 I watched Flanders and since I knew who Alaphilippe was and he got struck by a moto I turned it off. Still amused by the fact that I thought Wout Van Aert and Mathieu van der Poel was old men. Their names sounds like uncles! The first time I ever saw Wout I was appalled! Too much confidence and arrogance!
The first time I saw Jonas vuelta 2024; instant love.
At the end of 2020 the only names I had registered was Alaphilippe, Almeida, Masnada, Kelderman, Hindley, Thao, Tomas De Gendt, Roglic, Jonas, Vlasov and Hugh Carthy.
Oh and the names in the doping books and videos I watched. I am still bummed by Rasmussen book only being in Danish.
I started also learning basic stuff like draft, names of positions in the peleton, how cycling is a team sport and whatnot. It's much more fun when you don't know about it. Learning is the ***! If I wasn't mildly dyscalculectic I'd learn math to understand the watts better.
But overall; races where someone is too dominant is boring.
It's funny being a noob in this regard. I mean I started watching 2020. Imola was the first race I watched since that day Rasmussen was sent home.
I came for the clinic. It even started with my googling Rasmussen and his doping 2020, finding his Facebook and twitter and accidentally watch Imola and it was lockdown and hence why not get Eurosport to watch Tour de France I thought. But bummer it was already over. Then I heard about a race called the Giro and another called the vuelta. So I got Eurosport TV subscriptions. So far the only names I had heard was Alaphilippe and Roglic.
The first race I watched hence was giro 2020 Almeida in the maglia rosa and he was annoying until he dropped on Stelvio. Simultaneously I watched a bit of la vuelta but that Roglic guy was too dominant and so I stopped watching, (apart from impressive mountain stages for the scenery). Both those riders were quite boring to me until I got more backstory.
In the spring 2021 I watched Flanders and since I knew who Alaphilippe was and he got struck by a moto I turned it off. Still amused by the fact that I thought Wout Van Aert and Mathieu van der Poel was old men. Their names sounds like uncles! The first time I ever saw Wout I was appalled! Too much confidence and arrogance!
The first time I saw Jonas vuelta 2024; instant love.
At the end of 2020 the only names I had registered was Alaphilippe, Almeida, Masnada, Kelderman, Hindley, Thao, Tomas De Gendt, Roglic, Jonas, Vlasov and Hugh Carthy.
Oh and the names in the doping books and videos I watched. I am still bummed by Rasmussen book only being in Danish.
I started also learning basic stuff like draft, names of positions in the peleton, how cycling is a team sport and whatnot. It's much more fun when you don't know about it. Learning is the ***! If I wasn't mildly dyscalculectic I'd learn math to understand the watts better.
But overall; races where someone is too dominant is boring.
Excactly! You just know that the strongest guy is going to dominate completely, so there is nothing to watch for. This goes for Strade Bianche, RvV, P-R, L-B-L, Giro, and Tour.
No. As with watching football my love for cycling isn't changed. I've suffered through the years of Armstrong, Sky, and I still love the sport. I made my peace with doping a long time ago, it's inherent within our sport and has always been so. 2024 is the centenary of the interview with Pelissier where he showed journalist what he used and uttered that quote,"we ride on dynamite". Enjoy the sport, warts and all.
nah i dunno if i've ever enjoyed a TDF more than this one and i'm not a Pogacar fan either.
it sucks the GC wasn't close in the end but there was still a chance all the way to stage 19. the Giro was a horrible joke though.
it sucks the GC wasn't close in the end but there was still a chance all the way to stage 19. the Giro was a horrible joke though.
Just do a Skijumper Roglic fan, seems to have watched Vuelta a Murcia in February, slapped his hand on his knee and decided well that's enough cycling for me for the year, and dipped out. Didn't want to imagine a world of cycling where Alex Vlasov and Brandon Mcnulty weren't the main protagonists. Keen cycling observers know that March to December is the real off season anyway, see you next year.
Basically I think I get it but I was lucky this time.
2019 I watched the Tour of California, not really active, but when I thought about it and managed not to forget to tune in. The only stage I remember is stage 6. As the race unfolded I decided I'd root for that young Slovenian kid, I had also ready about a while ago earlier when he was a junior by accident. He really had to fight that day, and in the end won less because of his good sprint, but because Higuita overcooked the last corner. So Pogacar won, I was happy, and I had found an exiting rider to cheer for. Little did I know I had struck gold.
That of course showed itself later that year, and I was pretty happy one of my favorites did so well. Fast forward some years and I lucked on cheering for the dominant guy for once. I was introduced to cycling when Ullrich came in 2nd, but I had no real idea of what was going on, as I was very young. Same happened when he won, though I do remember the celebrations about it on TV. After that came Armstrong, and then Sky and it was endless suffering when it came to GTs, especially because Sky was basically controlling any action out of the races. And things were ridden so defensively overall.
So not only was I lucky cheering for that guy, he also then turned out to be the kind of racer I really enjoy watching, so I only got more drawn in.
So, after 14 Tours won by Armstrong and Ineos, I kind of enjoy being on the winning side of the spectacle for once with my sympathies. I'm sure that won't be the case very often in the future.
But of course total dominance is at some point boring, and the it can't be avoided that the Dominator becomes a symbol of what is obviously going on at the moment.
Being introduced to cycling basically around the time Festina happened, and then Lance and the never ending story of his undoing, while also coming to an understanding that my own favourites didn't loose because they didn't dope, I was left with little illusions to the doping issues of cycling and sport in general. I for example clearly remember Jan Ullrich being asked about the charge of A samples being tested positive. He was not shaken even a little, and was obtimistic that nothing would come of it. What I was already convinced about before became a fact for me that day: all my heroes are doped as well.
I adopted the stance of my grandparents whom I watched the Tour with every summer for years when I was young, and visited them in their part of Germany. They were both very hard working people before they retired and said: Even if they dope, they still do hard work. That was enough for them to admire what was going on. It's not that my inner argument is the same, but I basically adopted trying to appreciate sports with the knowledge that the romantic facade was just that, a facade. Also it seemed to me, and it stills seems to me today, that cycling was the only sport in which the *** fairytale stories normal in any other sport were questioned and there were always people knowledgable and willing to discuss this. It's a much harder argument trying to get a normal football fan even to listen to you, when it comes to doping.
I think the way sports is run is reflective of our societies which are run pretty badly imo, and I've personally decided to enjoy sports when I can, also as a distraction, and instead focus my anger not on it, but on the deep *** we are all in.
2019 I watched the Tour of California, not really active, but when I thought about it and managed not to forget to tune in. The only stage I remember is stage 6. As the race unfolded I decided I'd root for that young Slovenian kid, I had also ready about a while ago earlier when he was a junior by accident. He really had to fight that day, and in the end won less because of his good sprint, but because Higuita overcooked the last corner. So Pogacar won, I was happy, and I had found an exiting rider to cheer for. Little did I know I had struck gold.
That of course showed itself later that year, and I was pretty happy one of my favorites did so well. Fast forward some years and I lucked on cheering for the dominant guy for once. I was introduced to cycling when Ullrich came in 2nd, but I had no real idea of what was going on, as I was very young. Same happened when he won, though I do remember the celebrations about it on TV. After that came Armstrong, and then Sky and it was endless suffering when it came to GTs, especially because Sky was basically controlling any action out of the races. And things were ridden so defensively overall.
So not only was I lucky cheering for that guy, he also then turned out to be the kind of racer I really enjoy watching, so I only got more drawn in.
So, after 14 Tours won by Armstrong and Ineos, I kind of enjoy being on the winning side of the spectacle for once with my sympathies. I'm sure that won't be the case very often in the future.
But of course total dominance is at some point boring, and the it can't be avoided that the Dominator becomes a symbol of what is obviously going on at the moment.
Being introduced to cycling basically around the time Festina happened, and then Lance and the never ending story of his undoing, while also coming to an understanding that my own favourites didn't loose because they didn't dope, I was left with little illusions to the doping issues of cycling and sport in general. I for example clearly remember Jan Ullrich being asked about the charge of A samples being tested positive. He was not shaken even a little, and was obtimistic that nothing would come of it. What I was already convinced about before became a fact for me that day: all my heroes are doped as well.
I adopted the stance of my grandparents whom I watched the Tour with every summer for years when I was young, and visited them in their part of Germany. They were both very hard working people before they retired and said: Even if they dope, they still do hard work. That was enough for them to admire what was going on. It's not that my inner argument is the same, but I basically adopted trying to appreciate sports with the knowledge that the romantic facade was just that, a facade. Also it seemed to me, and it stills seems to me today, that cycling was the only sport in which the *** fairytale stories normal in any other sport were questioned and there were always people knowledgable and willing to discuss this. It's a much harder argument trying to get a normal football fan even to listen to you, when it comes to doping.
I think the way sports is run is reflective of our societies which are run pretty badly imo, and I've personally decided to enjoy sports when I can, also as a distraction, and instead focus my anger not on it, but on the deep *** we are all in.
i suffered through the 2012-2018 tours (yeah there were a couple decent ones in there) to get to here, it was worth it. the spring classics and Giro were much better in those years for the most part, though.
It's still a beautiful sport to watch but there is a rotten culture firmly engrained within it and sadly it seems to be growing. There is only small crumbs left for the small guys as those at the top call the shots and dictate the terms of engagement by using soft power and their wealth to almost ensure an inevitable outcome. The UCI are mere lapdogs and have enabled a slippery slope post Lance era.
This skewed competition is happening in a lot of other professional sports too though and is certainly not exclusive to cycling. We've also seen the growing influence of middle eastern oil states in golf, football, boxing, Formula One etc and none of it has been a positive for those respective sports.
Lets just hope that none of Pogacar, Vingegaard or Remco go to ride the Vuelta and at least we might get something resembling a competitive race next month.
This skewed competition is happening in a lot of other professional sports too though and is certainly not exclusive to cycling. We've also seen the growing influence of middle eastern oil states in golf, football, boxing, Formula One etc and none of it has been a positive for those respective sports.
Lets just hope that none of Pogacar, Vingegaard or Remco go to ride the Vuelta and at least we might get something resembling a competitive race next month.
I really do think the ground is fertile for a Cobo/Horner style winner, it's why I'm really excited for it, none of the big guns going, Roglic ****ed.... Enricky Mas..... peaking at the right time(!?).
As depressing as this tour was, there will always be the next race.
The competition side of it has gotten really bad, but I still enjoy the scenery and thinking how much fun it would be to ride those same roads
I watched on and off since 2008 when I was very young and started to watch seriously since 2012 after the tour. I started riding and racing , I had no friends or family who shared the passion and my family didn't have money so I had bad equipment. But since then I have been following the sport with a passion
I could tell you the race program which Landa or Masnada did every year of their career, I could tell you every Nibali result in each grand tour and which stages he won. I'm watching el pony winning the Colombia nationals on a Sunday night on a terrible stream in february.
And yet I didn't once watch a tour stage after the Pyrenees , and was almost embarrassed to check the results. I can't remember who won the stages .
Now you have 2 or 3 teams who have all the resources and can buy all the talent. It no longer feels like a sport that rewards courage, intelligence, hard work, team work in addition to physiological prowess.
You are one of the top teams and each year buy a couple of physiological super talents, outbidding your rivals,, you put them on a ridiculous program and send them to whatever races are lleft. Because they are young boyish and they attack from far and immediately destroy all competition, their abilities to sprint up mountains faster than pantani and Armstrong, day after day, with no fatigue , is not questioned by anybody.
The sport biggest race feels more and more like an absurd circus rather than a cycling race. With team sky it felt also a bit like that, but the other big races were great. Giro, classics, world championships. But in this new era every race is like a tour with sky, except even more invincible.
I feel like clinical and financial dominance will always determine how the sport plays out, and I never like any of the characters that benefit from that.
I feel like if I keep tuning to watch I encourage this rocket fueled circus full of dodgy and bad people
I could tell you the race program which Landa or Masnada did every year of their career, I could tell you every Nibali result in each grand tour and which stages he won. I'm watching el pony winning the Colombia nationals on a Sunday night on a terrible stream in february.
And yet I didn't once watch a tour stage after the Pyrenees , and was almost embarrassed to check the results. I can't remember who won the stages .
Now you have 2 or 3 teams who have all the resources and can buy all the talent. It no longer feels like a sport that rewards courage, intelligence, hard work, team work in addition to physiological prowess.
You are one of the top teams and each year buy a couple of physiological super talents, outbidding your rivals,, you put them on a ridiculous program and send them to whatever races are lleft. Because they are young boyish and they attack from far and immediately destroy all competition, their abilities to sprint up mountains faster than pantani and Armstrong, day after day, with no fatigue , is not questioned by anybody.
The sport biggest race feels more and more like an absurd circus rather than a cycling race. With team sky it felt also a bit like that, but the other big races were great. Giro, classics, world championships. But in this new era every race is like a tour with sky, except even more invincible.
I feel like clinical and financial dominance will always determine how the sport plays out, and I never like any of the characters that benefit from that.
I feel like if I keep tuning to watch I encourage this rocket fueled circus full of dodgy and bad people
Not for me—I get discouraged about some results and lose interest for awhile, but then start looking forward to different races. In addition, I know that chemical and other hijinks in the mainstream American sports are as bad or probably worse, but 99% of fans think it’s all aboveboard except for a few bad apples. Because we have means of measuring performances (speed, watts, recovery) in cycling and athletics it’s easier to notice aberrant performances than in most team sports. So it’s more challenging to blithely assume everything is cleans.
I also love watching cycling.
Also: autocorrect kept trying to change “hijinks” to “bikinis” which is food for thought 😉
I also love watching cycling.
Also: autocorrect kept trying to change “hijinks” to “bikinis” which is food for thought 😉
I still love it. Will watch the Vuelta for sure, probably Lombardia. Do it all over next year.
But it doesn't matter to me that these guys are doping. I stopped worrying about that a long while ago, resigning myself to the fact that it will never change.
I made it through the obviousness of Banesto. The obviousness of Telekom and Pantani. Not sure who won the next 7 in a row but I remember it being total domination that effectively continued for 4 of the next 5 Tours. Short transition period then watched the same team win 7 of the next 8 with 4 different riders which is a totally normal thing that can easily be explained by chainrings that aren't round.
Watching two guys pass it back and forth for the last few years without anyone else really threatening them after 2020 is not all that strange to me, and does not detract from the overall appeal of the sport.
But it doesn't matter to me that these guys are doping. I stopped worrying about that a long while ago, resigning myself to the fact that it will never change.
I made it through the obviousness of Banesto. The obviousness of Telekom and Pantani. Not sure who won the next 7 in a row but I remember it being total domination that effectively continued for 4 of the next 5 Tours. Short transition period then watched the same team win 7 of the next 8 with 4 different riders which is a totally normal thing that can easily be explained by chainrings that aren't round.
Watching two guys pass it back and forth for the last few years without anyone else really threatening them after 2020 is not all that strange to me, and does not detract from the overall appeal of the sport.
Its like how I felt after the '99 tour except we have no David Walsh nor any journalist that will go after UAE, Mauro and Pogi. We live in a delusional idiot filled world where millions believe he's clean, so the new fairy tale , the new Merckx like wins shall continue and at least we have this forum to vent our frustrations.
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