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Did Astana damaged Aru?

Italian press today reveal that yesterday, before the start, Aru bike was mounted differently as agreed with the team (without a 36 tooth cassette).
They add that his second bike had a damaged wheel so was unusable.
After the race Aru had a quarrell with Dmitri Sedun.
What do you think about?
 
Re:

staubsauger said:
******, even if the story is true.

This Vuelta plays out like nearly every other major race he started as team leader. His super-domestique eventually is the stronger rider.

The problem is Aru. Not Astana.
Silly post...
The question is not about Aru results (good in my opinion after his healty problems and his long season). The question is about fair play with a cyclist who will leave Astana next year.
 
Re:

SafeBet said:
Aru is normally the master of politically correct interviews.
If he complained about this it means Astana messed up. No way around it.
He made no interviews yesterday. He escape from journalists choosing to no comment. Third voices report this.
 
Re: Re:

Ciddaman said:
staubsauger said:
******, even if the story is true.

This Vuelta plays out like nearly every other major race he started as team leader. His super-domestique eventually is the stronger rider.

The problem is Aru. Not Astana.
Silly post...
The question is not about Aru results (good in my opinion after his healty problems and his long season). The question is about fair play with a cyclist who will leave Astana next year.
Astana was pretty fair with Nibali. So the problem must lie elsewhere as well with Aru. Apparently it already occurred at the Tour de France!
 
Aru start his season with Giro as main goal. After a bad crash He become Astana captain for the Tour instead of Fuglsang. Aru litterally sacrificed himself in Tour de Suisse to help Fuglsang but in the Tour the danish doesn't give the help back.
2-3 Days before Tour start Aru in an interviews said that he want guarantees to have the full support of the team before sign a new contract but He remain without team support. So, I think, during the Tour Aru and Astana relationships broke.

The Nibali case could have been part of the game. Vincenzo leave Astana for money and Vino seems not to happy in this time and start to decrease the italians component of his staff starting with athletes, doctors and finally at the Tour retreating Martinelli (a great director and Aru friends) in the second car with no decision power.
 
Jul 6, 2016
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This sounds a bit like that story told by Di Luca in his book about the 2001 World's when his crank size appeared to be messed up by the mechanics, apparently because the boss of Mapei (Squinzi) wanted Bettini and Freire to not being disturbed by some Cantina Tollo rider.
 
Not that I wouldn't put it past Vino. But this seems a little precious from Aru IMHO. Mechanics screw things up sometimes. Froome's bike keeps having issues, yet he never says anything publicly about it, much less about the mechanics making one fiftieth of what he's making. Uran at times lets the wrenches pick his gears and pressures and won a stage with two freaking gears for the last 20km. The time he ended up losing the Tour by he likely lost because his main TT bike was mms shy of UCI compliance, yet not a peep from him. It was leaked ouy later by his own DS.

If he rolled the dice and is riding without having inked his UAE deal, I get why he would feel like the weight of the world is on his shoulders. But if you get this worked up about equipment then do a Contador and insist on your own mechanic. Otherwise accept that while you're being given a free role you might not be the team's top priority at the moment. And that people make mistakes sometimes.
 
Re: Re:

Ciddaman said:
ice&fire said:
If I were a pro mechanic ... I'd check both my racing and spare bikes before having breakfast in the morning.
Now it sounds better.
Bike setup is the mechanics job, but a critical modification such as a special drivetrain for high gradient climbing should be checked in advance by the end user. Getting the bike at the stage departure with no time to correct mistakes is not an option.
 
May 26, 2010
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Re:

ice&fire said:
If I were a pro cyclist and had to race a climb with special gear requirements I'd check both my racing and spare bikes before having breakfast in the morning.

Stephen Roche claims his team mechanics cut one side of his fork in his Giro win. Made descending a tad interesting when he noticed it.

I think pros should check their bikes every day as part of their job.
 
This seems far fetched, i cant see astana knowingly sabotage their own riders.
I mean what is sabotaging aru s bike gonna accomplished? He is simply a non factor in this race. He is not riding for lopez neither against lopez, a sabotaged bike wont change anything.
The relation between vino and nibali is also much better then people seem to think here. Vino gave a nice interview about vincenzo after he was known to leave for bahrain. I was actually surprised vino did that without snarky remarks or little digs.
 
Sep 3, 2017
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please aru is a very good cyclist for gt , of course astana know that he will leave so they boycott it's pretty simple
 
Ciddaman said:
Italian press today reveal that yesterday, before the start, Aru bike was mounted differently as agreed with the team (without a 36 tooth cassette).
They add that his second bike had a damaged wheel so was unusable.
After the race Aru had a quarrell with Dmitri Sedun.
What do you think about?
I'd call it a bad coincidence!
At some point he was going to complain about something.
 
Re:

carton said:
Not that I wouldn't put it past Vino. But this seems a little precious from Aru IMHO. Mechanics screw things up sometimes. Froome's bike keeps having issues, yet he never says anything publicly about it, much less about the mechanics making one fiftieth of what he's making. Uran at times lets the wrenches pick his gears and pressures and won a stage with two freaking gears for the last 20km. The time he ended up losing the Tour by he likely lost because his main TT bike was mms shy of UCI compliance, yet not a peep from him. It was leaked ouy later by his own DS.

If he rolled the dice and is riding without having inked his UAE deal, I get why he would feel like the weight of the world is on his shoulders. But if you get this worked up about equipment then do a Contador and insist on your own mechanic. Otherwise accept that while you're being given a free role you might not be the team's top priority at the moment. And that people make mistakes sometimes.

A lot of Froome's mechanicals are allegedly due to how hard his riding style is on equipment. Armstrong discussed it at length during the Tour. He stated that his style was hard on his setup, and that Froome's riding style was probably 10x worse and would cause more issues on the road with his bike.
 
Re: Re:

perico said:
A lot of Froome's mechanicals are allegedly due to how hard his riding style is on equipment. Armstrong discussed it at length during the Tour. He stated that his style was hard on his setup, and that Froome's riding style was probably 10x worse and would cause more issues on the road with his bike.
That's a fair point, and the osymetric rings surely don't help things either.

But I'm also sure there are plenty of times he could've complained, yet he didn't do so publicly. Because he's a nice guy, maybe, because he knows where he's bread is buttered, well, surely that plays into it as well. Contador clearly was unhappy with his Specialized bikes, yet he waited until he was back at Trek to make the point, and mostly via comparison. Coincidentally or not the big S gave the Tarmac a big retool recently. There's a professional way to handle these things.

perico said:
According to Rasmussen, they screwed up Lopez's gears too, which would make sense, as he shouldn't have been dropped as easily as he was by Contador.
Huh. Makes sense. Even for an old-school Colombian he seemed to really be grinding it yesterday.
 
Re:

Ciddaman said:
Aru start his season with Giro as main goal. After a bad crash He become Astana captain for the Tour instead of Fuglsang. Aru litterally sacrificed himself in Tour de Suisse to help Fuglsang but in the Tour the danish doesn't give the help back.
2-3 Days before Tour start Aru in an interviews said that he want guarantees to have the full support of the team before sign a new contract but He remain without team support. So, I think, during the Tour Aru and Astana relationships broke.

The Nibali case could have been part of the game. Vincenzo leave Astana for money and Vino seems not to happy in this time and start to decrease the italians component of his staff starting with athletes, doctors and finally at the Tour retreating Martinelli (a great director and Aru friends) in the second car with no decision power.

Fulgsang offered himself alot in the tour, he was the main reason they gained so much time on mont du chat, he would probabaly have won the stage if aru didn't attack and pull the rest of the faves up to him. Fuglsang deserved to lead to, so co leadership was the right thing to do. And it was the criterum dauphne, not tour de suisse. Aru is a fantastic rider, but fulgsang was not the selfish one in the tour.