saganftw said:
which post? that roche climbed good today and could have been close to top 10? yeah you can say the same about gadret
my point is that none of them is clear leader of the team,i doubt gadret would have declined f.e. menchov,AC,AS...
The actual point is the fact that Gadret's explicit job was to support Roche - not attempt to beat him in the GC.
There's really no room to argue this and try to justify Gadret's treachery by implying that his strength relative to Roche freed him from team orders. Furthermore, if I was building a team around a chosen leader, regardless of who that leader was, I'd want his support riders - his domestiques - to be as strong as possible. Stronger than the leader in their respective specialties would be even better.
The debate here isn't one centered on whether or not Roche had the "right" to expect team support, or if in fact Gadret had the "right" to abandon Roche because he sometimes climbs as well or better than the Irishman.
Team orders clearly dictated that Gadret was to support Roche in the mountains, which would include sacrificing his equipment in case of Roche's bike breaking down.
And when that happened, Gadret chose to ignore his contractual and moral responsibility and worry only about himself - not his leader or the team.
Finally, don't for a second buy the post-incident PR from the team, which would have you believe that Roche and Gadret have settled their professional differences. All is not well within that team, and Roche will never forgive Gadret, will never trust him, will never ride for him, and will never count on Gadret's loyalty. I wouldn't be surprised if the sponsor itself mandated the distribution of a follow-up notification that the team was stable, in order to protect its brand image and squelch further fall-out. It's in the director's interest to restore calm and order, too, but after what Roche wrote in his newspaper column...there's no repairing that.
And why would he want to? Gadret betrayed him. Roche properly called him out on it. Gadret didn't apologize. Roche made the decision that he couldn't risk further losses to Gadret by ever trusting him again. Of course we should expect the team to try to present a calm image, but no man implies that he truly wants to kill his teammate (as Roche - quite impressively - did) but then forgets his rage and lets bygone be gone within a matter of hours.
We as spectators should thank the Heavens for this drama, because it has the potential to become an epic, long-lasting feud that haunts those two for the rest of their careers. Five years from now we could see Roche ordering his team to the front to chase in some race, just because Gadret was away in the break and he wanted to deny him the chance to win.
Likewise, we might see a situation where Gadret starts giving interviews to French media in which he reveals a host of sordid, embarrassing details about Roche's bathroom habits, or claims that he used to call his daddy and demand that he try to force the team to select him for races...
Who knows?
All I'm certain of is that Gadret has balls for flicking Roche and not even attempting to express remorse or deny it, just as Roche has guts for telling it like it is and implicitly stating a desire to kill Gadret, and a fear that he might not be able to control himself.
So refreshing in an age of sterile media-management.