Just imagine: We could've had Frapporti, Zana, and Bais up the road at 3 minutes, with FDJ chasing behind for an obvious stage win for Demare.
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I don't get it. Those stages were known for a year. If you don't want to ride 250 km a day after the Stelvio, don't go to the race or at least complain earlier.
My problem isn't that I don't think riders shouldn't have a right to protest at all, it's that in these situations very often the complaints of a few lead to a protest of the whole peloton no matter whether the entire peloton originally wanted to protest. It's like Tony Martin and JV in general blocking the road on stage 1 of this years Tour because they deemed it too dangerous to race while in fact Astana wanted to attack. Today I honestly wonder what someone like Tao is thinking of this shortening. His main rival in the gc cracked pretty badly yesterday and will now definitely profit if the next stage is more of a day for recovery. That way a decision like this could genuinely decide the final outcome of this giro. And maybe it's just me but I don't think Adam Hansen not feeling like riding 250 km today should decide who wins the giro.
My problem isn't that I don't think riders shouldn't have a right to protest at all, it's that in these situations very often the complaints of a few lead to a protest of the whole peloton no matter whether the entire peloton originally wanted to protest. It's like Tony Martin and JV in general blocking the road on stage 1 of this years Tour because they deemed it too dangerous to race while in fact Astana wanted to attack. Today I honestly wonder what someone like Tao is thinking of this shortening. His main rival in the gc cracked pretty badly yesterday and will now definitely profit if the next stage is more of a day for recovery. That way a decision like this could genuinely decide the final outcome of this giro. And maybe it's just me but I don't think Adam Hansen not feeling like riding 250 km today should decide who wins the giro.
I think you missed my point; if the stage had been run in full, there would likely have been people complaining about how pointless it was.
Red Rick
BANNED
I think it's just making up excuses to not have to do hard things. Yeah there's safety issues in cycling, yeah there's health issues, but this is just riders taking the piss with the race, just like the gruppetto in the Formigal stage. They're not worried about their health, they just wanna do less work for the same results. That'll be the reason for most riders to be on board, screwing up riders to have incentive to race the full stage in the process.
It's also exactly the reason why I'm so strongly against this. Yeah it's a pointless stage, but that's no excuse to piss on the race. I'd have been fine if it had been a 160km flat stage initially. I might have memed if it had been only 100km but I wouldn't have been annoyed. But now I am legit annoyed.
I've always admired cyclists for not being diva football players basically, now I'm thinking half the peloton should consider that career change.
yes people would complain, but the issue here at least for me is changing the stage at the last minute with a weak excuse about safety.
Blame the teams cowered to follow along. If Ineos clearly told Vegni that they would race, nothing would stop them.
Well yes but the same logic today would mean they'll refuse to ride legit stages. Imagine if we still had the full original stage tomorrow and they started complaining it was too hard cos of the rain and their immune systems will be compromised
I’m in favour of riders organising and in favour of them standing up for themselves. I think it’s unfortunate that most examples of them doing so successfully are over relative trivia like not fancying a long day in the rain.
Im more annoyed by two GTs scheduling sprint stages on the same day than I am at losing 70 km of slow pedalling in the rain. I do agree with people who’ve been pointing out that skipping an extra two hours of being wet and rained on could have a serious impact on GC recovery even though they’d be doing 150 watts
Im more annoyed by two GTs scheduling sprint stages on the same day than I am at losing 70 km of slow pedalling in the rain. I do agree with people who’ve been pointing out that skipping an extra two hours of being wet and rained on could have a serious impact on GC recovery even though they’d be doing 150 watts
Anyway, there's a front trio, a larger chase group at 20ish seconds, with the peloton about one minute back.
This is it for me. It's a late change to what was planned and that has a knock on effect on the way things are raced.
It's not just the recovery factor too. It may well be that today wouldn't hurt Wilco more than he already has been in either circumstance and we'll never really know, but if they did know today is 100k shorter you might have seen Tao risk a bit more on the final climb yesterday knowing this isn't a real slog before tomorrow.
(It also gives Wilco a bit of a let off given we all know he messed up with the jacket yesterday).
Bora had a guy in the 2nd group but he had a flat and dropped out so now they are chasing.
Front group:
- Victor Campenaerts (BEL)
- Josef Cerný (TSJ)
- Simon Pellaud (ZWI)
- Giovanni Carboni (ITA)
- Marco Mathis (DUI)
- Iljo Keisse (BEL)
- Nathan Haas (AUS)
- Simon Clarke (AUS)
- Lachlan Morton (AUS)
- Alex Dowsett (GBR)
- Sander Armée (BEL)
- Albert Torres (SPA)
- Jacopo Mosca (ITA)
- Etienne van Empel (NED)
That's another thing, the myth that shorter stages make for a better show. They're interested in upholding that myth because they're lazy and don't like cycling.
So to sum up: Half the stage is cancelled because it's raining.
Is Koronin on the rider committee?
Is Koronin on the rider committee?
I don't like this change either. For all we know Ineos might have planned to throw Wilco into the lake and blame the crosswind, now they don't get the chance.
More seriously teams make strategies based on the details of stages both past and to come. Change one, or two in the most critical phase and you may mess up some riders' chances. At least the changes in stage 20 were forced by external factors, but I think they should have ridden the distance today.
I don't mind if this means that future GT flat stages get shortened a bit - that might even make me happy. But I'm sure someone like Tao or even Sagan aren't that happy today.
More seriously teams make strategies based on the details of stages both past and to come. Change one, or two in the most critical phase and you may mess up some riders' chances. At least the changes in stage 20 were forced by external factors, but I think they should have ridden the distance today.
I don't mind if this means that future GT flat stages get shortened a bit - that might even make me happy. But I'm sure someone like Tao or even Sagan aren't that happy today.
The timing of the protest wasn’t that unreasonable, by the way. There were definitely earlier complaints about this stage from riders on social media at least. A guaranteed sprint stage that goes way over the usual max for any stage was always going to annoy some. But then you had a few additional factors in the immediate build up: long and exhausting transfers, less sleep, bad weather and a decision to actually add a few kms which I think was received as an added insult.
Armchair cyclist
Moderator
I'm not happy with the decision but ya it is late October and if it's anything like where I am I wouldn't do 250+ km in it
Did any teams put their bus in the break away in the first 100km.
Or did the Bora bus just drill it at the front of the caravan ?
Or did the Bora bus just drill it at the front of the caravan ?
Go check Eisel's twitter. Some rather brilliant reporting from the bus race.
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Bora doesn't seem to want to let this go.
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