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Teams & Riders He's coming home!!!! Alejandro Valverde comeback thread.

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What will Valverde's impact be the cycling world in 2012

  • Nuclear Holocoust

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Right, because that makes sense...
It makes total sense. Valuing Olympic trinkets over the greatest traditional events of the sport devalues and disgraces the traditions of the sport and the sport itself. The Olympics is for trivial sports with no audience of their own. It should still be for amateur cyclists only, but failing that it’s a nice consolation prize for the likes of Sammy Sanchez.
 
It makes total sense. Valuing Olympic trinkets over the greatest traditional events of the sport devalues and disgraces the traditions of the sport and the sport itself. The Olympics is for trivial sports with no audience of their own. It should still be for amateur cyclists only, but failing that it’s a nice consolation prize for the likes of Sammy Sanchez.

The majority of Olympic athletes are currently professions and have been since the 90's. That isn't going backwards.

Also you have riders like Valverde and Nibali who are specifically targeting the Olympics and doing their calendars for that.
 
It makes total sense. Valuing Olympic trinkets over the greatest traditional events of the sport devalues and disgraces the traditions of the sport and the sport itself. The Olympics is for trivial sports with no audience of their own. It should still be for amateur cyclists only, but failing that it’s a nice consolation prize for the likes of Sammy Sanchez.

The Olympics go back to ancient Greece, and in modern times 1896 which means that they predate all major bike races except Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Paris-Roubaix (which began the same year).

Furthermore, they are the biggest sporting event in the world, and yes, they do include non-interesting sports like synchronised swimming, skeet shooting (and regular shooting) and way too many weight-classes of different fighting sports, but that has nothing to do with the magnitude of the prestige of the cycling road race.

You can only assess that magnitude properly by listening to what the riders say, looking at how they plan their seasons, not by grumpily sitting at home listing (and inventing fake) minor sports which also have a place at the Olympics.
 
Either are impossible…

I suspect we know Alejandro's answer simply by comments he's made to reporters. He's listed his calendar and his goals. His goals being the Ardennes, Tour, Olympics, Vuelta, Worlds with the Olympics being the biggest one. However in both he's never once mentioned even racing MSR and we also know it's not one of his favorite races anyway. When he listed the races he's doing he listed Mallorca, Valencia, Murcia, Andalucia or UAE, Catalonia, the Ardennes, possible Rute de Sur, Tour, Olympics, Vuelta, Worlds. Now there are likely a few more races that he'll be racing such as Strade Bianche, National Championships, Lombarida, and at some point or other he'd mentioned racing Dwars, then likely flying back to Spain and racing GP Miguel Indurain.
 
The Olympics go back to ancient Greece, and in modern times 1896 which means that they predate all major bike races except Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Paris-Roubaix (which began the same year).

Furthermore, they are the biggest sporting event in the world, and yes, they do include non-interesting sports like synchronised swimming, skeet shooting (and regular shooting) and way too many weight-classes of different fighting sports, but that has nothing to do with the magnitude of the prestige of the cycling road race.

You can only assess that magnitude properly by listening to what the riders say, looking at how they plan their seasons, not by grumpily sitting at home listing (and inventing fake) minor sports which also have a place at the Olympics.

The Olympics have as much to do with the ancient Greeks as Caesar’s Palace Las Vegas has with the ancient Romans. It has a history in pro road cycling dating all the way back to 1996 making it exactly as venerable as the Hamburg Cyclassics and it is older than precisely one semi major race on the calendar, Strade Bianchi. It is an AstroTurf event.

The Olympics has a radically flattening effect on sports. One gold equals one gold, equals one bonus point of reflected national glory, equals one day of local press coverage pretending to care about a sport, equals one tick on a medal table. This is great for minor sports with no traditions anyone cares about, no audience except the one they borrow from the quadrennial festival of jingoism, little money and little glory. For them the Olympics is everything because otherwise they have nothing.

The situation is different in actual mass spectator sports, with their own audiences and their own histories and their own major events. In fact these sports usually go to some lengths to stop the Olympic marketing machine from impinging on the actually important events in their sports. They don’t get dragged up by the Olympics like dressage or curling. They get dragged down to the level of trivial sports. They don’t bother to participate, they restrict it to amateurs, restrict it to age group competitors or simply treat it as a nice minor prize.

Road cycling is not one of the very biggest sports but it is still a mass spectator sport with its own audience, major events and history. Unfortunately it also has a useless governing body which governs a wide range of other bicycle sports only one of which, cross, has even a small audience. The rest of its events are Olympic sports with no mass following, track, mountain bike, bmx. The UCI needs the Olympics in a way that road cycling does not, so it isn’t adequately defending road cycling from the Olympic hype machine and making very sure that rubes don’t start to mistake it for a very important event. It’s not going to pick a fight with the IOC no matter what.

If you think that Chris Hoy is one of the major figures in cycling history you should continue to inflate the significance of the Olympics. If you have any love for the sport of road cycling and for its traditional events you should loathe it.
 
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If a Belgian professional cyclist would seriously prefer being one of 1200 winners each cycle of a prize also won by horse dancers, curlers, head first tea tray sliders. clay pigeon shooters, synchronised swimmers and tiddlywinks players to winning the one and only Ronde Van Vlanderen then they do not deserve to ever win any race again.
There was an interview of him here on Cyclingnews a couple of days ago where he said that Olympics are his big target along classics for next year, and that despite having already won four years ago, he even talked about taking easy the last week of the Tour to save energy for them.
 
The Olympics have as much to do with the ancient Greeks as Caesar’s Palace Las Vegas has with the ancient Romans. It has a history in pro road cycling dating all the way back to 1996 making it exactly as venerable as the Hamburg Cyclassics and it is older than precisely one semi major race on the calendar, Strade Bianchi. It is an AstroTurf event.

The Olympics has a radically flattening effect on sports. One gold equals one gold, equals one bonus point of reflected national glory, equals one day of local press coverage pretending to care about a sport, equals one tick on a medal table. This is great for minor sports with no traditions anyone cares about, no audience except the one they borrow from the quadrennial festival of jingoism, little money and little glory. For them the Olympics is everything because otherwise they have nothing.

The situation is different in actual mass spectator sports, with their own audiences and their own histories and their own major events. In fact these sports usually go to some lengths to stop the Olympic marketing machine from impinging on the actually important events in their sports. They don’t get dragged up by the Olympics like dressage or curling. They get dragged down to the level of trivial sports. They don’t bother to participate, they restrict it to amateurs, restrict it to age group competitors or simply treat it as a nice minor prize.

Road cycling is not one of the very biggest sports but it is still a mass spectator sport with its own audience, major events and history. Unfortunately it also has a useless governing body which governs a wide range of other bicycle sports only one of which, cross, has even a small audience. The rest of its events are Olympic sports with no mass following, track, mountain bike, bmx. The UCI needs the Olympics in a way that road cycling does not, so it isn’t adequately defending road cycling from the Olympic hype machine and making very sure that rubes don’t start to mistake it for a very important event. It’s not going to pick a fight with the IOC no matter what.

If you think that Chris Hoy is one of the major figures in cycling history you should continue to inflate the significance of the Olympics. If you have any love for the sport of road cycling and for its traditional events you should loathe it.

We will probably never agree on this matter but football is the only Olympic sport that has restrictions on who can play at the Olympics, so I don't really see that your point there holds much merit. American football and rugby "don't bother to participate" but otherwise all big sports are included at the Olympics and with the best participants in the world.

I also have no idea what you mean with:

"The Olympics have as much to do with the ancient Greeks as Caesar’s Palace Las Vegas has with the ancient Romans."

That's just wrong. But I guess you have just decided to dispute everything I say in this thread even if it's just lies for the sake of lies.

And I do get a part of your point about all medals being equal, ending up in a tally to divide the nations, but that's not how I see it.

I think that some Olympic medals are worth MUCH more than others but I know that's not how it officially is.

But come on. Nobody will say that winning the 57 kg Judo gold medal is as big of a victory as winning gold in the 100m. Hence, all medals are not equal.
 
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I think you can randomly walk up to a person anywhere and ask what Paris-Roubaix and they'll probably ask if it's a brand of wine more often than guessing it's a cycling race. There's a very wide appeal to the Olympic Games that's very easily ignored in a hardcore fan bubble like an online forum.

it’s precisely that indiscriminate view among non fans that any Olympic event is important because of the borrowed hype of the Olympics that reduces all sports to a similar level, erodes the specific traditions of individuals sports and loses what is special about them. The Olympics is a big bonus for sports that can’t earn their own audience and a threat to ones that can. This is very well understood by the governing bodies of just about every other significant spectator sport and they act to make sure that nobody gets confused about the status of the Olympics in their sports if they participate at all. That the UCI needs to keep the IOC sweet at all costs to keep the other bike sports as going concerns at all is very much to the detriment of road cycling.
 
it’s precisely that indiscriminate view among non fans that any Olympic event is important because of the borrowed hype of the Olympics that reduces all sports to a similar level, erodes the specific traditions of individuals sports and loses what is special about them. The Olympics is a big bonus for sports that can’t earn their own audience and a threat to ones that can. This is very well understood by the governing bodies of just about every other significant spectator sport and they act to make sure that nobody gets confused about the status of the Olympics in their sports if they participate at all. That the UCI needs to keep the IOC sweet at all costs to keep the other bike sports as going concerns at all is very much to the detriment of road cycling.


Please explain how the Olympics are a threat to the NBA and the NHL. I'm not understanding this at all. The NHL has literally shut down their season to allow their athletes to compete at the Olympics.
 
We will probably never agree on this matter but football is the only Olympic sport that has restrictions on who can play at the Olympics, so I don't really see that your point there holds much merit. American football and rugby "don't bother to participate" but otherwise all big sports are included at the Olympics and with the best participants in the world.

I also have no idea what you mean with:

"The Olympics have as much to do with the ancient Greeks as Caesar’s Palace Las Vegas has with the ancient Romans."

That's just wrong. But I guess you have just decided to dispute everything I say in this thread even if it's just lies for the sake of lies.

And I do get a part of your point about all medals being equal, ending up in a tally to divide the nations, but that's not how I see it.

I think that some Olympic medals are worth MUCH more than others but I know that's not how it officially is.

But come on. Nobody will say that winning the 57 kg Judo gold medal is as big of a victory as winning gold in the 100m. Hence, all medals are not equal.

What am I supposed to be lying about?

The Olympics has no connection to the ancient Greeks. A French aristocrat borrowed the name for marketing purposes. The Greek Olympics died out more than 1,600 years ago. You might as well claim a pedigree for the Taj Mahal curry house going back to the Mughals.

The biggest sport in the world is soccer, which treats the Olympics as an age group event. Second biggest is cricket, which doesn’t participate. Baseball doesn’t participate, but when it did it was for amateurs only. Rugby participates but restricts it to the minor 7s form. American football doesn’t participate. Boxing, the major combat sport, restricts participation to amateurs. MMA the secondary combat sport doesn’t participate. Tennis, golf and basketball participate but on a basis where everyone involved understands that the Olympics is less important than the major traditional events of the sport.

In all cases these sports are careful to protect the preeminence of their own traditional events. Sports that don’t do that are the sports that have little to protect and everything to gain from borrowing an audience they can’t pull otherwise.
 
What am I supposed to be lying about?

The Olympics has no connection to the ancient Greeks. A French aristocrat borrowed the name for marketing purposes. The Greek Olympics died out more than 1,600 years ago. You might as well claim a pedigree for the Taj Mahal curry house going back to the Mughals.

The biggest sport in the world is soccer, which treats the Olympics as an age group event. Second biggest is cricket, which doesn’t participate. Baseball doesn’t participate, but when it did it was for amateurs only. Rugby participates but restricts it to the minor 7s form. American football doesn’t participate. Boxing, the major combat sport, restricts participation to amateurs. MMA the secondary combat sport doesn’t participate. Tennis, golf and basketball participate but on a basis where everyone involved understands that the Olympics is less important than the major traditional events of the sport.

In all cases these sports are careful to protect the preeminence of their own traditional events. Sports that don’t do that are the sports that have little to protect and everything to gain from borrowing an audience they can’t pull otherwise.


Football isn't in the Olympics because there likely aren't enough countries that actually play it. For new sports they need an invite to participate. Baseball has never been more than a "trial" sport for the Olympics.
Again both basketball and hockey send pros. Please tell us how the Olympics has hurt either of those two sports. By the way due to the 1988 Olympics basketball will always send pros.
 
Football isn't in the Olympics because there likely aren't enough countries that actually play it. For new sports they need an invite to participate. Baseball has never been more than a "trial" sport for the Olympics.
Again both basketball and hockey send pros. Please tell us how the Olympics has hurt either of those two sports. By the way due to the 1988 Olympics basketball will always send pros.
In both basketball and ice hockey, the premier form of competition is between clubs. International competition is seen mostly as an easy way to advertise their wares. Basketball is the only genuinely major team sport that participates “fully” in the Olympics and if the Olympics ever started to rival the NBA in importance in even the slightest way that would end tomorrow.
 
I’m not completely hostile to the Olympics, by the way. It has very real positive sides alongside the jingoism, corruption and crass flattening of the differences between sports. The most important one being its enormously positive effect on women’s sports. When all sports are primarily a way to gain reflected national glory on a medals table, a woman winning is as useful as a man. It’s only in Olympic dominated sports that women get any kind of remotely fair split of the attention and glory (tennis being the lone partial exception among big sports).

in road cycling it’s the only time the women get real equal billing.
 
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In both basketball and ice hockey, the premier form of competition is between clubs. International competition is seen mostly as an easy way to advertise their wares. Basketball is the only genuinely major team sport that participates “fully” in the Olympics and if the Olympics ever started to rival the NBA in importance in even the slightest way that would end tomorrow.

You do realize the entire reason for pushing for pros to compete in the Olympics in basketball was because the US college kids lost to USSR pros in the 1988 Olympics, right? It will forever be pros competing due to that reason.
 
Dwars is on his official schedule. He must really love that race.

Traveling all the way from Catalonia to the Flandrian region just to race a warm-up race doesn't really make any sense to me.

Unless he wants to ride the Ronde once again.


He has specifically stated he is not racing Rhonde. It hurt his spring races last year too much. He's highly unlikely to ever race it again. He's most likely racing Dwars and then flying back to Spain to race GP Miguel Indurain the next day. Who knows maybe he Roelandts and Erviti are giving a master call in racing cobbles to their new young teams at Dwars this year?
 
That's his schedule/goals for next year.

For 2020, yes. Those are his big goals. However, knowing him and the way he races, technically if he's on the start line the race is a goal. His full schedual is much more extensive obvious to include Mallorca, Valencia, Murcia, UAE or Andalucia Catalonia, Dwars (have heard Strade Bianche), possibly Rute de Sur, National Championships, and likely Lombardia.
 

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