Mainly, in this thread, I'd like to probe the situations where, in your opinion, top competitors should wait for their adversaries and where to take advantage of their situation.
As fair-play is a phenomenon that is arbitrary and pretty much crowd-wisdom, please contribute!
How much is fairplay important at all as there are no performance penalties? Effects of not respecting it seem rather short term, while sporting accomplishments are what goes into the history books.
Possible situations
(not exhaustive so add items to list)
- Mechanical
- Fall due to bad luck
- Fall due to own error
- Fear
- Lack of skill
- Hunger knock
- Sickness
- Injury
...
"Moral"/consistency questions
- How does the fact that adversary is in leader's jersey during the GT affect waiting/not?
- How things change considering GT and one day events (for example classics)?
- How good does the adversary have to be for top competitors to feel obliged to wait for him/her?
- How far can the adversary be in back/in front before the incident happens (in the stage and/or GC)?
- Do you close the adversary's current advantage if that means taking advantage of his situation?
- Does and, if so, how much does racer's popularity distort these guidelines?
- Are fairplay guidelines decided by the majority or the loudest?
- Is fairplay based on reciprocity? I.e. if some adversary didn't wait for you personally in the past you wouldn't wait for him/her? What if the adversary has history of not waiting for someone else (once or multiple times), but not you personally, should you wait for him or take advantage?
- If someone has a doping history, should you hold it against that certain someone on the account of fairplay and should you wait for such person?
- What if you are certain that someone is doping right now, should you wait for such person as doping is also a fairplay offence?
Few examples
AC not waiting AS during his mechanical (chaingate) while AS being in yellow and the resulting backlash.
AC's crash this year where handful of people accuse Astana for not waiting properly(although the same can be said of Kwia). Was that a situation with an error or bad luck and is the result for fairplay obligations the same?
Armstrong and Ullrich waiting/not for each other due to falls.
Greg Lemond saying in post-commentaries after the stage 14 on TDF'14 that he wouldn't attack Pinot on the descent?
As fair-play is a phenomenon that is arbitrary and pretty much crowd-wisdom, please contribute!
How much is fairplay important at all as there are no performance penalties? Effects of not respecting it seem rather short term, while sporting accomplishments are what goes into the history books.
Possible situations
(not exhaustive so add items to list)
- Mechanical
- Fall due to bad luck
- Fall due to own error
- Fear
- Lack of skill
- Hunger knock
- Sickness
- Injury
...
"Moral"/consistency questions
- How does the fact that adversary is in leader's jersey during the GT affect waiting/not?
- How things change considering GT and one day events (for example classics)?
- How good does the adversary have to be for top competitors to feel obliged to wait for him/her?
- How far can the adversary be in back/in front before the incident happens (in the stage and/or GC)?
- Do you close the adversary's current advantage if that means taking advantage of his situation?
- Does and, if so, how much does racer's popularity distort these guidelines?
- Are fairplay guidelines decided by the majority or the loudest?
- Is fairplay based on reciprocity? I.e. if some adversary didn't wait for you personally in the past you wouldn't wait for him/her? What if the adversary has history of not waiting for someone else (once or multiple times), but not you personally, should you wait for him or take advantage?
- If someone has a doping history, should you hold it against that certain someone on the account of fairplay and should you wait for such person?
- What if you are certain that someone is doping right now, should you wait for such person as doping is also a fairplay offence?
Few examples
AC not waiting AS during his mechanical (chaingate) while AS being in yellow and the resulting backlash.
AC's crash this year where handful of people accuse Astana for not waiting properly(although the same can be said of Kwia). Was that a situation with an error or bad luck and is the result for fairplay obligations the same?
Armstrong and Ullrich waiting/not for each other due to falls.
Greg Lemond saying in post-commentaries after the stage 14 on TDF'14 that he wouldn't attack Pinot on the descent?