spalco said:
Not really his fault if some of his fans are idiots though.
No, this is true. But it's a problem any successful athlete will have, especially when they divide the audience as much as someone like Cavendish does. People go from being ambivalent about somebody to actively wanting to see them beaten to shut up the incessant fanboying.
I remember this from when Lewis Hamilton hit the scene in F1, but it goes for practically any young phenom in any sport. I don't really mind Lewis Hamilton, but the army of fans he had who would hypocritically complain at other drivers "sticking their noses in the championship" by racing with him, yet would defend him as "the only real racer", who would cry conspiracy whenever he got punished, would search for excuses every time somebody else just happened to be better (or at least have the better car) on the day, who would pore over interviews by Massa, Alonso, Kubica or Räikkönen just looking for something they could construe as evidence of collusion against Hamilton, who would cry that Hamilton wasn't given his original points back
after he was caught lying to the stewards about an incident in order to defraud a competitor out of points so that he could get an extra one... those really got up a lot of people's noses, and meant a lot of people who had been neutral found themselves wanting to see him get beaten to shut those people up; but then these people then became almost indistinguishable from the trolls, wind up merchants and "haters".
At least the pro-Cav contingent don't have the race card to play, I guess.