More riders complain about wattages set at tempo (by Sky)

[thehog]

Re:

Worth pointing out that the first person to compare Sky to US Postal was Wiggins.

That is very true... I miss Wiggo, always good for a quote

 

[BigMac]

Rolland is just bitter he was duped by Vaughters. So many promises and he was a better rider at Europcar.

Two days ago he was ranting on twitter because Sky got gendarmerie escort and he didnt. Boo hoo.

I like him as a rider but too much of this and it starts driving the fans away.

 

[Catwhoorg]

Re:

Worth pointing out that the first person to compare Sky to US Postal was Wiggins.

That was sometime after his comparison to Man U though.

#UKPostal

I don't think his old Caonndale-Drapac (Garmin as was) to Wigin Athletic holds any more, more like Blyth Spartans,

 

[vward]

When Nibali dominates the TDF, it was the same, Astana made the tempo, nobody could really attack, except Nibali when he choose to. And the tempo made by Astana during the stages was not slower than the one of Sky. Proof is that we often saw the beakaway being caught by Astana, and Nibali won half of the mountain stages (3 of 6). When it's Sky, the breakaway have much more chances, they let more time for the breakaway, and keep their energy for when it's really important.

No Fun in TDF ? that's because he's "victim of his success". Nobody goes to the Giro or the Vuelta with a "A team" (except small continental teams). Domestiques are "weaker", so it's more difficult to control all the attacks. When you've got a strong team and you're the leader on the TDF, you can keep a high a pace, and it's really much more difficult to gain time if you attack far from the top.

 

[Catwhoorg]

Astana again today did a whole lot of damage to everyone bar Sky before the finale.

 

[PremierAndrew]

Re:

Wout Poels pulling back Valverde at will is just mind numbing to this viewer and frankly made me sit up and think WTF is going on here and doubt for the first time in a long time . What it must do to the psych in the other riders is perhaps inhumane

Bad example. Valverde attacking in the 3rd week having done the Giro is also ridiculous, and would usually not be a good comparison.

If you want a good example, use Poels taking about 10 seconds to catch Aru's attack

 

[Pantani_lives]

Re:

Two days ago he was ranting on twitter because Sky got gendarmerie escort and he didnt. Boo hoo.

It's another example of Sky getting a favorable treatment.

 

[BigMac]

Re: Re:

Two days ago he was ranting on twitter because Sky got gendarmerie escort and he didnt. Boo hoo.

It's another example of Sky getting a favorable treatment.

It's not about Sky, it's about being first in GC. The yellow jersey as all sorts of media commitments others don't.

Two years or so ago GC contenders were offered heli transport to town while the rest has to go by bus, arriving much later and consequently resting less. Rolland benefited from such privilege.

 

[Benotti69]

Re:

Nothing wrong with Sky signing all these guys who could be leaders on other teams. If Piet Van Berg, Alfredo Gonzalez etc are happy to work for someone else rather than going for the win themselves, that's their call. Like all sports it's a short career and you got to make your $$$$$ in a limited window and if a team can pay you top dollar but it means you sacrifice your chance of winning to help someone else try and win, I'm guessing 95% of people take it.

As for riders moaning about the Sky train. You've had several months to prepare stuff to try and derail it. Not like Sky have suddenly created this train tactic in the last 2 weeks.

Sky have the inside track with Uncle Brian. I think DDD got some inside track this year.

 

[red_flanders]

Re: More riders complain about wattages set at tempo (by Sky

The first point is that the wealth of a club or team has an enormous impact on its success across all major sports. This is a really blindingly obvious fact and there is absolutely no reason why cycling should be a startling exception.

This is the kind of analysis I was trying to get past. No, more money does not mean more success for no reason other than more money. See baseball in the US. Very little correlation between contracts and standings with many big spending teams languishing at the bottom of the standings. If more money means better equipment like in auto racing, that's a reason. Since that does not apply to cycling, unless one wants to argue better wind tunnel testing or better bikes–-but obviously that makes no sense because there is no appreciably better bike in the pro ranks and we know Sky don't do wind tunnel testing...except when they want us to believe they do. Anyway, the point is to say HOW more money equals better performance in the case of Sky. How does their money get them better performance, specifically? There are possible answers to this, but just repeating the "bigger budget" talking point doesn't answer it.

Secondly, look at who we are talking about here. Landa, Henao, Nieve, Poels. The only one who hadn't shown extremely high level climbing ability prior to joining Sky was Poels, and Poels was a promising if inconsistent climber whose development was disrupted earlier in his twenties by a near career ending crash.

This is extremely subjective, and I certainly never saw any of these riders other than Henao, consistenty at the sharp end of the tour before coming to Sky. Clearly they are better now, and by a long shot. Poels is the most comical of the group. Being subjective it's fine that we don't agree, but I don't buy that these guys are doing what they're doing. It's too much rinse/repeat, watching guys perform way beyond their previous levels.

Thirdly, look at what they are actually doing. They aren't riding like GC men. They aren't spending energy protecting their own GC positions. They have been allowed to take it in turns to have a day off on mountain stages. When they hit the front, they are working on the front in the full knowledge that they can burn themselves out without any negative consequences, unlike the riders they are controlling.

This is all true, and of course we all understand this. I account for this in my view of their performances. It remains that other teams can only come up with 0-2 domestiques who can keep up, and 0 leaders who can escape the efforts of Sky's domestiques. Historically, this is absurd. These guys are in the wind much more than GC riders, and have to do it day after day on the front and in the wind. The other teams' riders are getting dropped by them out of the wind. Both doms and GC favorites. Ridiculous. The only other team we've ever seen employ this formula is Postal. The only difference is that several of the riders on Postal had incredible palmares before coming to Postal. Sky gets these performances out of middle of the road (or worse) riders with some exceptions like Henao.

Fourthly, having more than three times the budget of Cofidis, themselves a weirdly over financed team, means precisely that they can offer a super climber more money to ride as a domestique than most other team could pay them to be a leader. Particularly if the rider concerned combines being an excellent climber with not having proven himself as a reliable GC leader. If you haven't regularly shown that you can hold it together for three weeks as a GC rider, that makes you riskier for a team looking for a leader than it does for a team who want you to be one of a rotating group of domestiques. This, incidentally, is basically the situation all of the guys working for Froome are in.

OK, I don't have the contract details which is why I asked it as a question. I'm surprised to hear they pay more but I accept that. The only beef I have with this is categorizing this group as "excellent" climbers. No way they all fit that description before getting to Sky, but again subjective.

There are lots of startling transformations involved in the Sky story. That Landa, Henao, Poels and Nieve working as a team of mountain domestiques can form a grimly effective train is not among them.

 

[Zinoviev Letter]

Re: More riders complain about wattages set at tempo (by Sky

This is the kind of analysis I was trying to get past. No, more money does not mean more success for no reason other than more money. See baseball in the US.

Baseball has two measures designed precisely to push teams towards relative equality - the draft and the luxury tax (a softer alternative to a salary cap). Even still the team that is by far the richest is also the team that is by far the most successful.

The idea of "getting past" the idea that finances influence performance implies that there is some less than obvious mechanism at work. More money means the ability to pay for better riders and better support for that rider. There is no guarantee that any given team won't waste that ability with unwise or differently focused uses of that advantage, but it is an enormous advantage.

Just look at the numbers. Sky has considerably more than twice Movistar's budget. It has more than three times the median World Tour budget. Even if you assume that Froome is on a huge salary and even if you assume that the bottom of the pecking order guys on the team are on better salaries than their opposite numbers on low budget teams, they still have millions of millions more euro to spend on domestiques than a Movistar does. What exactly are they doing with that money? They are paying fringe GC men and guys who have shown inconsistent but very high level climbing ability to work as domestiques rather than as leaders of small teams. Not just the guys who are actually doing it in this Tour, but the likes of Konig and Roche who didn't even make the squad but who are there to make sure that they can bring a full top quality train no matter who gets sick or injured or loses form. That's where the money goes, not on quilted toilet paper for the team bus.

This is extremely subjective, and I certainly never saw any of these riders other than Henao, consistenty at the sharp end of the tour before coming to Sky.

Part of the attraction of these guys from a rich team's point of view is that they (a) do have extremely high level climbing results but (b) have precisely never been at the sharp end of the Tour, or even shown that they are a reliable climber every day. The inconsistency lowers their value to teams looking for a leader and makes them more of a gamble to those teams. Sky, on the other hand, don't care if one of their superdomestiques is prone to randomly losing half an hour on some bad day. Just as they didn't care if that was true of Porte.

Poels looked absolutely freakish today, and is the most apparently improved of the bunch since joining Sky, but this is a guy who, despite losing nearly two years of his career, had already come second on Angliru and Zoncolan before joining Sky. He had days of his career where he was great climbing. But what he didn't have was any proven ability to do that for three weeks and some considerable evidence that he can't. And he's not doing it for three weeks here either. Nieve has won some of the toughest GT Queen stages in recent years, having days of excellence, but has consistently failed to cut it as a leader who can do more than try to scrape a top 10. Again, a combination of traits that makes him more valuable to Sky than to small teams looking for a leader. Landa, well he certainly has made quite a leap forward, but he did it before he went to Sky and they bought him precisely as a rider seen as one of the best climbers in the world. Henao, well, we seem to be in agreement on him.

I'm not making an argument that therefore Sky are clean. Or that all of these riders are clean. I am making an argument that it is not really surprising that the richest team can hire superdomestiques who can on their day climb with the best. And that in the history of unexpected transformations at Sky, these four riders being able to form a grimly effective mountain train does not rank highly. This argument is independent of anyone's view of the prevalence of doping in the peloton, unless they are convinced that Sky are at it and the rest aren't, which is what an "it's doping that's causing this" explanation tends towards. The richest team can buy the best climbing support in a doped peloton or in a clean peloton and at almost every point in between.

 

[observer]

I know Nibali has a Giro in his legs, but it was absurd seeing him go full gas and for only one of the sky train to falter.
Rosa couldn't even go on with it. Nibali i'd rate higher than any of the Sky domestiques.
Sky pay money to get the best train so they can burn them out, but the issue is that they don't get burnt out.

 

[CheckMyPecs]

That point when one cyclist's whines are used as "proof" that other cyclists are doping.

 

[BYOP88]

Re: More riders complain about wattages set at tempo (by Sky

This is the kind of analysis I was trying to get past. No, more money does not mean more success for no reason other than more money. See baseball in the US.

Baseball has two measures designed precisely to push teams towards relative equality - the draft and the luxury tax (a softer alternative to a salary cap). Even still the team that is by far the richest is also the team that is by far the most successful.

The idea of "getting past" the idea that finances influence performance implies that there is some less than obvious mechanism at work. More money means the ability to pay for better riders and better support for that rider. There is no guarantee that any given team won't waste that ability with unwise or differently focused uses of that advantage, but it is an enormous advantage.

Just look at the numbers. Sky has considerably more than twice Movistar's budget. It has more than three times the median World Tour budget. Even if you assume that Froome is on a huge salary and even if you assume that the bottom of the pecking order guys on the team are on better salaries than their opposite numbers on low budget teams, they still have millions of millions more euro to spend on domestiques than a Movistar does. What exactly are they doing with that money? They are paying fringe GC men and guys who have shown inconsistent but very high level climbing ability to work as domestiques rather than as leaders of small teams. Not just the guys who are actually doing it in this Tour, but the likes of Konig and Roche who didn't even make the squad but who are there to make sure that they can bring a full top quality train no matter who gets sick or injured or loses form. That's where the money goes, not on quilted toilet paper for the team bus.

This is extremely subjective, and I certainly never saw any of these riders other than Henao, consistenty at the sharp end of the tour before coming to Sky.

Part of the attraction of these guys from a rich team's point of view is that they (a) do have extremely high level climbing results but (b) have precisely never been at the sharp end of the Tour, or even shown that they are a reliable climber every day. The inconsistency lowers their value to teams looking for a leader and makes them more of a gamble to those teams. Sky, on the other hand, don't care if one of their superdomestiques is prone to randomly losing half an hour on some bad day. Just as they didn't care if that was true of Porte.

Poels looked absolutely freakish today, and is the most apparently improved of the bunch since joining Sky, but this is a guy who, despite losing nearly two years of his career, had already come second on Angliru and Zoncolan before joining Sky. He had days of his career where he was great climbing. But what he didn't have was any proven ability to do that for three weeks and some considerable evidence that he can't. And he's not doing it for three weeks here either. Nieve has won some of the toughest GT Queen stages in recent years, having days of excellence, but has consistently failed to cut it as a leader who can do more than try to scrape a top 10. Again, a combination of traits that makes him more valuable to Sky than to small teams looking for a leader. Landa, well he certainly has made quite a leap forward, but he did it before he went to Sky and they bought him precisely as a rider seen as one of the best climbers in the world. Henao, well, we seem to be in agreement on him.

I'm not making an argument that therefore Sky are clean. Or that all of these riders are clean. I am making an argument that it is not really surprising that the richest team can hire superdomestiques who can on their day climb with the best. And that in the history of unexpected transformations at Sky, these four riders being able to form a grimly effective mountain train does not rank highly. This argument is independent of anyone's view of the prevalence of doping in the peloton, unless they are convinced that Sky are at it and the rest aren't, which is what an "it's doping that's causing this" explanation tends towards. The richest team can buy the best climbing support in a doped peloton or in a clean peloton and at almost every point in between.

That's not actually true. The team with the biggest payroll and budget is the Los Angeles Dodgers and in the 3 years they've been #1 in budget they have not won a WS. The team that had the biggest payroll and bugdet before the Dodgers were the (New York) Yankees, who last won the WS in 2009. The current WS champs are the Kansas City Royals(they also made the WS in 2014).

2016 opening day payroll:
1.Los Angeles Dodgers $253,000,000
14.Kansas City Royals $137,000,000
30.Milwaukee Brewers $63,000,000

With the draft, yes the team that finished with the worst record the year before gets more money to spend than any other team. But players don't have to sign for the team that drafts them, they can opt to go back to college or go play in independent ball if they're too old to return to college.

With the luxury tax, only 5 teams(Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers, Angels and Tigers)have paid it(The Yankees and Dodgers will currently be charged at 50%) and since it came about in 2003, only the Yankees have paid it every year. In that time the Yanks only have 1 WS.

 

[Cannibal72]

Re: More riders complain about wattages set at tempo (by Sky

No, more money does not mean more success for no reason other than more money.

It does. Multiple studies have been done of the Premier League (a completely free market system, like cycling and unlike baseball), which show the correlation between wage spend and eventual league table finishing position is almost exactly 1:1. In other words, if your salary bill is the fifth highest in the league, you will in well over 95% of seasons finish fifth.

 

[mavmav]

Baseball is an extremely bad analogy. the impact a single player has on a game differs widely (and is generally small). You can buy the best pitcher, but he'll only be on the field for 25% of your games and in those games only 50% of the time... And Baseball is a skill game were the opponent influences what you (can) do. In cycling every one has his own bike and Froome riding fast doesn't prohibit any other rider to ride fast as well. A pitcher can neutralise a batter.

The analogy with football makes more sense imho. Messi wins titles with Barcelona. But he's got some of the other best players in the world around him as well. If you put him on Stoke City does he make Stoke win the CL? Would Froome win the tour if he swapped teams with Rolland?

 

[argel]

Yeah the Baseball thing is a bit of a strawman.

Cycling is it's own world, and for the reasons stated above (and that I hate) Sky are able to pay climbers to be SD's for Froome and bury themselves for the GC campaign, knowing that there will be days when they can't even stay with the main group. Poels himself is a good climber, probably the best on Sky bar Froome, yet why would he go to another team as a leader? He knows that if he did, Sky would replace him with another super domestique (or 3) and just ensure through sheer weight of numbers that they retain their dominance, while he becomes another Mollema or at best a Porte, scrambling to get in the top 5 and with an uncertain team future should the major sponsor pull out.

That's why people go to work for Sky - they're getting more money than they could make being leaders elsewhere and have the security that comes with knowing the principle sponsor is in it for the long haul. Money is no object and in return, they know that they'll be expected to have good, but not great careers as domestiques.

I hate sky. I've referred to it before as 'money doping', because they've bought multiple tours now as well as to be fair to them, being very good at identifying the type of riders who will work for them. If we get past the Froome debate, we find a team that has such a major financial advantage over it's nearest rivals (Movistar and BMC) that it could buy Quintana tomorrow and he'd happily ride as Froome's super domestique for the rest of his career.

That is the fundamental problem with cycling today, that Sky have a formula that works and is largely predicated on being able to do what Red Bull did in F1, eg: buy the best facilities and hire your competitors' best assets (Newey). You're not only adding to your own team, but decimating the opponents.

Actually the best analogy may be teams like Chelsea, Real, Barca and Man City hoovering up young talent across Europe to sit in their reserve teams or play bit-parts for them, but paying them enough that they don't care and in turn denying their rivals that asset. It ruined football, but the only thing that will stop it is some kind of limit on team spending. I'd be interested to see the effect that had on Sky...

 

[Benotti69]

Posters dismissing Landa as a climber before he signed for Sky must only watch racing in July.

 

[BYOP88]

Re:

Posters dismissing Landa as a climber before he signed for Sky must only watch racing in July.

They need to read what Walsh said 14 months ago about Landa. :lol:

 

[PremierAndrew]

Re: Re:

Posters dismissing Landa as a climber before he signed for Sky must only watch racing in July.

They need to read what Walsh said 14 months ago about Landa. :lol:

Backstory:


1.

2.

3.

Toon:

:lol:

 

[BYOP88]

Re: Re:

Posters dismissing Landa as a climber before he signed for Sky must only watch racing in July.

They need to read what Walsh said 14 months ago about Landa. :lol:

Backstory:


1.

2.

3.

Toon:

:lol:

This place needs a 'like' button.

 

[argel]

Ha, that Homer thing as a gif would be amazing.

 

[Zinoviev Letter]

Re:

I know Nibali has a Giro in his legs, but it was absurd seeing him go full gas and for only one of the sky train to falter.

Nibali got smashed by all of Caruso, Cummings and Impey on a long climb earlier in the Tour. His name is impressive, but his legs rather than his name pedal the bike.

 

[roundabout]

Re: Re:

I know Nibali has a Giro in his legs, but it was absurd seeing him go full gas and for only one of the sky train to falter.

Nibali got smashed by all of Caruso, Cummings and Impey on a long climb earlier in the Tour. His name is impressive, but his legs rather than his name pedal the bike.

And dropped by about 20 people from the break last Sunday as well.

 

[red_flanders]

Re:

Yeah the Baseball thing is a bit of a strawman.

Well, I don't think you understand the meaning of the term "strawman" to use it as you did, but never mind. "Red Herring" may be the term you're looking for.

That said, fine. As I said in my post,

the point is to say HOW more money equals better performance in the case of Sky. How does their money get them better performance, specifically? There are possible answers to this, but just repeating the "bigger budget" talking point doesn't answer it.

More money = more wins is simply not true. It may have a tendency to be true, there are certainly examples where it is true, but it is untrue often enough that it is not an explanation in and of itself. I really don't see how that can be argued.

I simply tire of Sky apologists (for the most part, and certainly NOT including ZL in this) using "bigger budget" as some kind of argument that they are doing this clean. The argument does not hold up to any examination of the logic.

Now if someone is to say "they win more because their budget allows them to do X/Y/Z specific things, and here is specifically how these things give them N amount of improvement over the field", then there is a conversation to be had.

But we don't see that. We see talking points like "marginal gains" and "bigger budget" as if these stand up to any scrutiny. Which they do not.

People will believe what they want to believe.