Chiappucci - An old man's view

[Benotti69]

Re:

Chiappucci talking about panache. Oh dear.

One of the biggest donkeys in my list!

This. Why anyone would be interested in this guys opinion is beyond me.

 

[Angliru]

I'm surprised he didn't name either of his fellow Italians. Aru, I could understand somewhat because he's young yet and not really established himself as much but Nibali has a history of aggressive, entertaining riding. Is there bad blood (No pun intended!) between Nibali and Chiappucci?

 

[AJ101]

Surprised he doesn't lament Ricardo Ricco not being in the peloton these days as he had character as well. Character by the fridge full.

 

[pastronef]

Stephen Farrand ‏@stephenfarrand

I'd rather have riders with no personality who are just dull machines than riders with a 70% haematocrit.... just sayin'...

 

[blackcat]

Re:

Surprised he doesn't lament Ricardo Ricco not being in the peloton these days as he had character as well. Character by the fridge full.

i do miss ricky riccio

 

[86TDFWinner]

Re:

Par from excluding Nibali and some others, mostly those who ride in the Flandres Classics, el Diablo isnt wrong in his view. But this is all due to cycling being much more doping free nowadays.

 

[86TDFWinner]

Re: Re:

And what LS and Blackcat said, van Avermaet of course, brilliant panache, Tony Martin, Kwiatkowski, riders with cojones.

and if someone making judgements about Nibali sticky bottle, mentioning nothing about what he did really on bike and denying him posibility of anti doping talk (not mention it is offtopic) only because he is in Astana, is not even worth of response, anyway new member of my personal blacklist

Add me to any "list" of yours, as anyone who sticks up for a known doper like Nibali, is almost as delusional as he is. It was a fluke win, by a known doper, in a field where not all the top RIDERS were there= Fluke.

 

[Scarponi]

On the talk of "panache" I still think Nibs best performance was one he lost on, the multiple attacks on Papi on Angrilu

 

[Eshnar]

Re: Re:

And what LS and Blackcat said, van Avermaet of course, brilliant panache, Tony Martin, Kwiatkowski, riders with cojones.

and if someone making judgements about Nibali sticky bottle, mentioning nothing about what he did really on bike and denying him posibility of anti doping talk (not mention it is offtopic) only because he is in Astana, is not even worth of response, anyway new member of my personal blacklist

Add me to any "list" of yours, as anyone who sticks up for a known doper like Nibali, is almost as delusional as he is. It was a fluke win, by a known doper, in a field where not all the top RIDERS were there= Fluke.

He is a "known" doper just as your avatar is. That is, he is not. Please let's avoid this bold claims, thanks.

 

[The Hitch]

On the talk of "panache" I still think Nibs best performance was one he lost on, the multiple attacks on Papi on Angrilu

Yes but not Angliru.

Lombardia 2011.

 

[blackcat]

Re: Re:

And what LS and Blackcat said, van Avermaet of course, brilliant panache, Tony Martin, Kwiatkowski, riders with cojones.

and if someone making judgements about Nibali sticky bottle, mentioning nothing about what he did really on bike and denying him posibility of anti doping talk (not mention it is offtopic) only because he is in Astana, is not even worth of response, anyway new member of my personal blacklist

Add me to any "list" of yours, as anyone who sticks up for a known doper like Nibali, is almost as delusional as he is. It was a fluke win, by a known doper, in a field where not all the top RIDERS were there= Fluke.

He is a "known" doper just as your avatar is. That is, he is not. Please let's avoid this bold claims, thanks.

all are dopers...

The only think Nibali did wrong was hang on the car at the wrong time when the tv cameras were gonna broadcast it live.

If he had been Spanish, the producer/editor at the nationalbroadcaster would have flicked to a different shot, and we would be none the wiser.

What about Cav hanging on in the Giro when he gets dropped from the gruppetto and would have had a time DQ? He gets back on the autobus, makes the finish, then next stage he beats Tyler Farrar in the bunch sprint.

this is the argument about Cipo riding the first week then pulling out in the Tour, well, he never has to develop his climbing legs in training, he can basically focus on being Chris Hoy in the sprint.


ok ok ok, even a more lean Theo Bos, when he was an amalgam of a track endurance v a track sprinter body, 6'2" 180lbs, basically like Greipel, but taller, so effectively leaner... then he leaned up further for the road racing, and Theo Bos has never been very successful as a roadie, three wins a year dont make a sprinter... even if you got Graeme Brown leading you out!

 

[King Boonen]

Are we talking about the personality of the rider or the personality of their racing (Panaché)?

The main problem is so many things have changed. The media attention and scrutiny is much, much greater. We have much greater access and as such the cyclists are now see more as brand/team ambassadors when they are both on and off the bike. This means involving PR people, training and, unfortunately, shutting down people with differing view-points and interesting characters in case it reflects badly.

It's a sad state of affairs when Jens Voigt is seen as one of the personalities (off the bike) of modern cycling.


Things have changed in racing too. There are now more competitors likely to win each race and this has lead to people being unwilling to lay it all on the line. It was fine when you would get caught and lose 1st to take 3-7th, but losing a top 5 to end up 30th+ has become a big deal with UCI ranking points being a big motivator for signing people. It's all lead to conservative racing in my view.

 

[WheelofGear]

Stephen Farrand ‏@stephenfarrand

I'd rather have riders with no personality who are just dull machines than riders with a 70% haematocrit.... just sayin'...

Really?

I must admit I'd rather have some juiced-up fun than the reduced sprint Gerrans-styled races.

 

[hrotha]

It's a false dichotomy.

 

[Robert21]

I think that Chiappucci has a point, as when he says, “All pros nowadays are like machines," he added. "Everything is about paperwork and numbers." These days everything is much too calculated, whilst in the past a rider could still be a bike rider first, riding from the heart, and pro second.

For me a good example of this in relation to Chiappucci is the way he represented Italy at the world cyclo-cross championships at Leeds in 1992. He plugged round in just about last place but obviously loved the crowd's reaction and the whole experience. These days doing such a thing would be viewed as producing the wrong number of watts, for the wrong length of time at the wrong time of year, or some such, and so would likely never happen.

 

[Echoes]

No doubt riders of the Merckx, Gimondi era bemoaned the lack of personality in Chiappucci's generation.

Who? Tell me.

Anyway, I disagree strongly with the notion that panache and doping have anything to do with each other.

That's a truly amazing notion.

It's quite obvious that panache has nothing to do with doping. The LACK of it has to do with it.

You only need to look at Milan-Sanremo's evolution. Until 1989, a hilly race, even suitable for climbers. From 1990 to 1996, a transitional period in which EPO was reserved to a happy few, riders with up to 60% hematocrit rate, dominated the rest in an impressive way.

1997 onwards, with the UCI blood tests and the generalization of doping, Milan-Sanremo gets to easy such a doped peloton, every rider being equally doped.

We can notice the same phenomenon in other races of course. Ardennes races are just races that favour explosive riders or even uphill sprinters. Flat stages in stage races are strictly sprint fests while in the old days bearkaways could regularly prevail. The kilometre flyer type of riders like Jelle Nijdam has disappeared, etc.

It's obvious that with regards to cycling, blood doping has given the sport a boring aspect for the viewers. Of course some would point to other factors such as the new equipment, lighter bikes, race radios, powermeters, etc. But I do believe that doping is the key factor behind this outcome. Those other factors however true they are are just minor factors.

No wonder that some would feel nostalgic. It's not nostalgia for its own sake, look at the causes for it.

 

[Derrick]

What a pathetic article that was by Phil Gaimon {who?} in response to the remarks of Chiappucci. If the bunch is full of similar minds to Phil Gaimon it's no wonder the racing gets more and more boring by the season. These days if something actually happens during a race it counts as memorable. Gaimon's last sentence mentions "entertaining the fans." Unfortunately entertainment seems to be the very last item on the agenda in most instances. Mr Gaimon talks about being "out there for our sponsors" but I wonder if he and his manager have considered that you get a lot more television time by being out in front for 3 or 4 hours in a "forlorn hope" beakaway than you do by sitting in the middle of a 200 up bunch all day only to end up in a barely remembered fourth or fifth place in a hundred up gallop. We have developed a standard formula whereby, be it sprint or uphill finish, very little happens until the last 10 minutes. So ,if it's entertainment you're after just watch the last ten minutes.

 

[fmk_RoI]

Who? Tell me.

Jan Janssen

"We got very good money, of course. And, to be truthful, the French franc was worth a lot more than now. But I think the motivation has changed with the professionals as well. You get riders like [Steven] Rooks and [Gert-Jan] Theunisse saying after the Tour they're stopping at home because they can't be bothered with critériums, and that's not so attractive to the public. I don't think you're serving the sport doing that, because the more popular cycling is, the better it is for every one of the riders.

"Its good that they're well paid now, of course, but they have to give everything they've got. [...] The whole sport has changed. They aren't hungry any more. There's so much money to earn now, even for a third-rate rider. Twenty-five years ago, a third-class rider didn't get jam on his bread. So if they got fifty guilders for a critérium, they rode. But now, every rider is well paid, so they don't do much for it. They say, 'Oh, I've got a good contract from the firm, I'm okay.' The hunger to ride well, to succeed and only then earn money is over."

WRT

We can notice the same phenomenon in other races of course. Ardennes races are just races that favour explosive riders or even uphill sprinters. Flat stages in stage races are strictly sprint fests while in the old days bearkaways could regularly prevail. The kilometre flyer type of riders like Jelle Nijdam has disappeared, etc.

You say doping, others would sensibly point to the changes wrought on the sport by the influx of money in the 1980s. The way teams operated changed, there was less room for individualistic baroudeurs, team orders became more important. Team sponsors were being asked to pay more, so they demanded more: no more gifts of stages to breakaway fodder. Specialisation became more of a thing, teams needed their classics specialists and their stage race specialists. The nature of the sport evolved.

This is not to say that doping is not part of the equation. Just to point out that it would absurd to think it was the only part of the equation. And maybe even absurd to think it was the key part.

 

[hrotha]

no more gifts of stages to breakaway fodder.

This still happens like all the time.

I think people typically overestimate the impact of that specialization and money. What we saw in the 80s just like now in the 10s is that, when the race is actually raced hard so as to put everyone's limits to the test, only the top guns survive.

 

[Dazed and Confused]

Give me a handful of GvAs in the peloton today and for god sake grow some balls and dump the ear piece ffs, Nobody can be a man by being remote controlled to death.

 

[turtle420]

from a team car perspective you would all probably be surprised how little 'instruction' takes place. anyway maybe an explanation for the lack of huge attacks and so on is that there is not as much difference between the best guy and the worst guy in the race these days than there was 30 years ago?

 

[red_flanders]

Re:

from a team car perspective you would all probably be surprised how little 'instruction' takes place. anyway maybe an explanation for the lack of huge attacks and so on is that there is not as much difference between the best guy and the worst guy in the race these days than there was 30 years ago?

It is certainly the case that the differences are much smaller now than 30 years ago between the big champions and the doms. Of course one of the things which evened the playing field to a great extent was EPO.

There were long audacious attacks in the 80's and before. Not sure parity explains the lack of them now, it seems to me much more about the change in team tactics---which were of course enabled by EPO.

 

[railxmig]

I'm too young to even remember 90's, not to talk about earlier days. Maybe it wasn't that much about dope (there was dope way before EPO and the punishment for dope was just a mere slap in the hand, ask Zoetemelk for that) i dunno. Maybe because EPO is a lot stronger than anything before and the responsivity to that actual dope was more important than actual abilities (Rominger, Riis, Ulrich, Indurain)? I dunno much about dopes and I'm not that interested in knowing more.

Obviously the coverage is better - TV, GPS, Computers, radio etc. Now you know who is in the break and you can do the optimalization on catching the break while losing as less energy as you only can. The amount coverage and overall checking of the roads limits the importance of suprise factor. It was 1987 when Roche and Fignon(?) attacked Delgado(?) on a feed zone because there was a narrow bridge just before the feed zone and Delgado or somebody else threatning didn't know about the bridge and was badly positioned? I think I've readed somewhere about that or maybe it's just my imagination. I think that lack of coverage helped Delisle to take the yellow jersey from Van Impe in one of the last stages in Pyrenees and be a very dangerous contender to win overall before having a very bad next day.

There is less or no amount of bonus time you can get thanks to your sprint abilities. There's no way guy like Saronni, de Vlaeminck or Maertens can stack up 3 minutes on the rest of GC before first mountain stage. The roads are better so no wet, muddy, gravel roads in the mountains, less cobbles. maybe the roads are partly the reason why you don't need any extra pounds and why sprinters and flat specialists (Boonen, Benoot, other Belgian PR/RVV specialists, German big guys) lose more time than before? It's just a theory, propably a bad one.

Van Springel, Maertens, Roger de Vlaeminck, Kelly, Anderson. They could somehow fight in GC while being pretty awful in mountains and not that exceptional in TT, and it wasn't because the course favoured them. The Tour's edition where Maertens was top 10 was one of the hardest one in Tour's history. How was it going? Maertens lost only like 5 minutes on l'Alpe d'Huez (no slouch of a climb) while Zoetemelk and freakin' Van Impe were murdering each other. The closest thing I can think of nowadays is Kwiatkowski's 11th place overall in 2013 TdF yet still he lost like 6-7mins to Quintana and Purito on l'Alpe.

 

[fmk_RoI]

The amount coverage and overall checking of the roads limits the importance of suprise factor. It was 1987 when Roche and Fignon(?) attacked Delgado(?) on a feed zone because there was a narrow bridge just before the feed zone and Delgado or somebody else threatning didn't know about the bridge and was badly positioned? I think I've readed somewhere about that or maybe it's just my imagination. I think that lack of coverage helped Delisle to take the yellow jersey from Van Impe in one of the last stages in Pyrenees and be a very dangerous contender to win overall before having a very bad next day.

Indeed, this is why you never see a coup de bordure happen any more, everyone knows which way the road turns and which way the wind's blowing so no one's going to find themselves blown out the back of the third echelon, never ever, all the data's been mined and the positioning pre-programmed. (And it was Jean-Francois Bernard, defeated by hubris and a little local knowledge in 1987. As for Delisle, it was Van Impe's manager protecting his rider by playing a little divide and conquer with a rival team.)

 

[Beech Mtn]

Indeed, this is why you never see a coup de bordure happen any more, everyone knows which way the road turns and which way the wind's blowing so no one's going to find themselves blown out the back of the third echelon, never ever, all the data's been mined and the positioning pre-programmed. (And it was Jean-Francois Bernard, defeated by hubris and a little local knowledge in 1987. As for Delisle, it was Van Impe's manager protecting his rider by playing a little divide and conquer with a rival team.)

(OK, there was a crash. )