Critérium du Dauphiné 2024, June 2 - 9

[Hugh Januss]

QUESTION!
Is it possible for a road to get wet enough that it technically becomes a (temporary) bathtub?
Is the real issue that none of the riders - presumably - were carrying rubber ducks?

Somebody alert Hansen, stat!

 

[Netserk]

That's not how racing works. You expect all 170 riders to agree with each other to go slow done the descent and wait for each other at the bottom, despite, no doubt, intense pressure from DS's to try to gain a racing advantage? You only need a couple of those 170 riders to try to gain an advantage, and the rest have to follow. Everybody has got quicker, bikes have got quicker, pressure has increased, fron all sides. To expect a peloton to disregard all of that and act purely in each other's interests when fatigue and adrenalin are high is utterly ludicrous. The only reasonable solution is to make bikes safer and slower. Putting the onus on riders to solve this problem is not going to work. Sorry, it isn't, and the meat grinder is going to get worse and we're going to miss out on seeing the best riders because they're in a hospital bed.

That used to happen, more or less. Greater hierarchy, stronger norms.

 

[King Of The Wolds]

That used to happen, more or less. Greater hierarchy, stronger norms.

So how do you implement that again?

 

[Gigs_98]

It's simply insane that I read "stage neutralized due to mass crash" and I was immediately 99% certain Roglic and Evenepoel must have been part of it.

 

[pelotonIQ]

Good luck staying up braking on a surface like that with disc brakes. Yikes.

 

[Danskebjerge]

Evenepoel said the exact opposite. "We waren niet echt aan het vechten voor de eerste posities, maar als iemand wegglijdt gaat het snel."
> We weren't really fighting for the front positions, but when someone slides away, things can go fast.

Someone around 5th position clipped a rear wheel and went down. He tried to avoid the riders in front of him, and thought he was succeeding, until someone slid in front of him and he had no more space to go. He flipped over.

No, I listened to the interview again, and Evenepoel said what I wrote. Fighting for position and all that.

I don't know what your source is. My source is the official interview.

 

[Netserk]

So how do you implement that again?

We Can't, We Don't Know How To Do It

That said, I guess today was mostly the extraordinarily slippery surface. Very much out of the ordinary.

 

[Danskebjerge]

Its not like he doesnt have a long history, despite his relatively short career, of spewing all sorts of gibberish post race and later apologizing/walking back, doesnt mean its the case here idk. Just saying

Could be.

 

[Oldermanish]

It's simply insane that I read "stage neutralized due to mass crash" and I was immediately 99% certain Roglic and Evenepoel must have been part of it.

Especially when 99% of the field goes down. Matteo didn't which meant he must have been up front?

 

[Oldermanish]

Good luck staying up braking on a surface like that with disc brakes. Yikes.

The French roads used in Tour organization events get absolutely gorgeous treatment before races. I've been in the Haute Savoie several times where the paving crew stopped me while they moved equipment and let me be the first to ride up Grand- Bornand or the Aravis. In warm weather it's still not cured enough to keep oil rising two weeks later. Add a film of water and there is almost no way to ride it which is why one of the break members seemed to hit the deck when he was going relatively straight.
Add to that the reality the teams may be stuck with neglectively over-inflated sponsor tires on a stage where they should be using 80lbs of air in a sticky tubular tire. Mix in the sudden grip of disc brakes and you have a rider blender.

 

[Logic-is-your-friend]

No, I listened to the interview again, and Evenepoel said what I wrote. Fighting for position and all that.

I don't know what your source is. My source is the official interview.

I copy/pasted it from Wielerflits. The transcription on Sporza is different indeed. In the interview he does say fighting for position before the descent... but he may have meant before they got to that section? It's not clear if he means that was the direct cause.

 

[Landeirovic]

Van Baarle fracture collarbone and Kruiswijk fracture in Hip

https://twitter.com/x/status/1798768449503809666

View: https://x.com/vismaleaseabike/status/1798768449503809666

 

[Sciatic]

Van Baarle fracture collarbone and Kruiswijk fracture in Hip

https://twitter.com/x/status/1798768449503809666

View: https://x.com/vismaleaseabike/status/1798768449503809666

Even if it’s not needing surgery the hip fractures always seem to be worse in terms of recovery.

 

[balac]

AS reporting that Ayuso will likely abandon the race. Nothing broken but big impact on hip and knee.

 

[Izzyeviel]

For Bahrain Kepplinger is out with concussion & Sutterlin is at the hospital for tests

 

[saunaking]

That's not how racing works. You expect all 170 riders to agree with each other to go slow done the descent and wait for each other at the bottom, despite, no doubt, intense pressure from DS's to try to gain a racing advantage? You only need a couple of those 170 riders to try to gain an advantage, and the rest have to follow. Everybody has got quicker, bikes have got quicker, pressure has increased, fron all sides. To expect a peloton to disregard all of that and act purely in each other's interests when fatigue and adrenalin are high is utterly ludicrous. The only reasonable solution is to make bikes safer and slower. Putting the onus on riders to solve this problem is not going to work. Sorry, it isn't, and the meat grinder is going to get worse and we're going to miss out on seeing the best riders because they're in a hospital bed.

What is this intense pressure from DS'? Sounds like BS to me. You think that was happening today?

 

[Libertine Seguros]

What is this intense pressure from DS'? Sounds like BS to me. You think that was happening today?

The other thing is it's something of a self-fulfilling prophecy; the pace is high and there are crashes because of too many riders in too small an area because every DS wants to get their riders up to the front; but the riders want to get their riders up to the front to be in front of any crashes when the pace is high.

There isn't any racing reason for DSes to be pushing for incredibly high pace in the circumstances, especially when the break isn't given enough rope to ever be a credible threat to foil the sprinters. It's all about positioning in the pack, and the more everybody pushes for the same piece of road, the faster the pace will get as they fight over it, and not only is a crash more likely, but the same type of crash is likely to have worse effects as there are more riders in a closer proximity and they're going faster and so have less time to react to a situation unfolding.

This is bad enough in good weather, but when you add the road conditions to the mix, there needs to be some acknowledgement in the team cars that sometimes discretion is the better part of valour.

 

[Danskebjerge]

I copy/pasted it from Wielerflits. The transcription on Sporza is different indeed. In the interview he does say fighting for position before the descent... but he may have meant before they got to that section? It's not clear if he means that was the direct cause.

At least we can conclude that riding safely down the mountain wasn’t what they were thinking of in the front of the peloton.

 

[danielovichdk2]

Something is wrong in the peloton. Whether it being faster bikes or idiocy amongst rookies I don't know.

But it's bad for business that's damn sure.

 

[yaco]

They are probably fighting for positions instead of descending in a slow safe way. They have to respect the riders in front and so on.

Did you watch the race? On the previous descent of around 10kms the peleton lost 45s on the break. And the break of three had issues on that descent with one of the three crashing and another twice narrowly avoiding crashes. The peleton rode cautiously down the last descents.

 

[yaco]

It's a combination of all things culminating in an increased number of mega crashes.

- rider behavior + DS behavior (shouting on the radio telling their riders to get to the front)
- stage profiles (like a bunch sprint stage with little cols & descents 30k from the finish)
- modern road bike technology (like disc brakes)
- road surfaces (some of these roads turn into a literal ice rink in rainy conditions at this time of the year)
- street furniture etc.

Armstrong has remarked a few times how back in his day the descents were taken carefully, whereas now they're drilled. This Dauphiné stage 5 was the last opportunity for the sprint teams so the chase was on irrespective of the road conditions. That played a role as well. We already saw the break riders have traction issues/crashing/slipping, so the peloton had been forewarned.

I could see that crash coming from a mile away & knew it would happen once they hit the descent of that small cat 4 climb, so I was not surprised at all.

Chasing two riders who were 17 seconds ahead with 20kms to go. You can do better!

 

[AmRacer]

Did you watch the race? On the previous descent of around 10kms the peleton lost 45s on the break. And the break of three had issues on that descent with one of the three crashing and another twice narrowly avoiding crashes. The peleton rode cautiously down the last descents.

Look at the X post in this thread and you will find out.

 

[Rackham]

Chasing two riders who were 17 seconds ahead with 20kms to go. You can do better!

The peloton just happened to be riding fast comme par magie eh.

I already said it was also the DS's fault as well for the usual 'tactic' of teams wanting to be at the front for the descent.

So it's a combination of factors. The interest sprint teams had in the stage was also one of them.

 

[search]

Verona always writes a bit about the stages on Strava, and also today (google translated from Spanish):

"The truth is that I don't know what happened, personally in the first of the three descents today, I have already seen that the ground was much more slippery than usual, since I started with "dry" pressure in both wheels, and Right at the start I decided to deflate the front wheel a little but not the rear one since normally there are never grip problems on this one... but on that first descent, the rear wheel did a couple of strange things on me and I had to leave it alone. to the AG2R rider I was racing with because I felt completely out of my comfort zone.

Later we heard on the radio that in the escape a rider had fallen, that two motorcycles from the organization had also fallen, and on the second of the three descents I led the peloton as slowly as possible to try to reduce tension in the group and that the teams in the general classification saw that we only and exclusively wanted to compete in the sprint, but in the last descent and only 20km to the finish line, we all wanted to be in front even though my intention was the same as in the previous descent, and although I managed to stay at the head of the pack, we all wanted to be there, no one wanted to lose a weather to be ahead and the way the road was today, the last thing we could do was brake... but we didn't all get on the road, we have passed the first five and Then some team will have wanted to speed up the braking to gain positions and ciao... a millisecond that changes everything, and what could have been a day of great teamwork has ended up being a day of resignation and satisfaction for being all on our bikes. ."

Stage 5, Dauphiné, 🇫🇷 | Strava

Hola a tod@s!! Hoy hemos disputado uno de los días más extraños de mis 14 años como ciclista profesional. Creo que nunca - si no me falla la memoria - he sido de partida en una carrera que se haya tenido que anular por falta de ambulancias producto de una caída masiva. Como precisamente os...

www.strava.com

 

[King Of The Wolds]

What is this intense pressure from DS'? Sounds like BS to me. You think that was happening today?

Something is wrong in the peloton. Whether it being faster bikes or idiocy amongst rookies I don't know.

But it's bad for business that's damn sure.

Agree with all if that. The only solution I can think of is 35mm tyres. Anyone got anything else which is easily implemented? Not sure how much more I want to watch. I'm a hardcore fan, but I've had enough of watching young men crash and brake bones at high speed.