Nibali's sticky bottle

[PremierAndrew]

Re: Re:

There might be more to what we actually saw as posted in the race thread:

In the Spanish TV, the camera moto commenter has just told what he saw and heard yesterday.

Apparently, the towing of Nibali was far longer of what we saw in the video ("at least more than 1-2 km").

There wasn't an official complaint made by any team, just some angry words in the moment of riders who were in the same group from where Nibali cheated.

The organisation acted by their own means because they thought it was too suspicious.

If this is true there are no questions about the decision. This goes beyond any sticky bottle or whatever ever so small incident who might slip under the radar. Shefer speeded with Nibali on tow to closest Astana-rider and left him there.

Astana claim it went on for 100-150m, yet 90 seconds after that clip started, when Nibali was with that group, he was 50 seconds ahead of the group he left...

 

[joe_papp]

Re:

Bad day for Nibs yesterday, crash, cheating by hanging to a car (after reminding the world that Froome did the same at the Giro 2008), wrongly accusing a guy of causing the crash (didn't he do that in the TDF already?), saying he was abandoned by his team. It would be interesting to know what Vino had to say about it...chances are Nibs told him to STFU based on his past cheating! Nibs will be lucky if he can maintain his salary in 2016...

The only thing left is for him to go positive trying to do just that...and then for Vino to totally throw him under the bus and have the website guys scrub any mention of him from the Astana team site.

 

[PremierAndrew]

I agree with you. The penalty should be applied consistently so I would also hope any sprinters that cheated in the same way were DQed for the exact same reason.

Here we go

It's being investigated - really hope he's not kicked out as it's nowhere near the same as Nibali's situation

 

[rhubroma]

Re: Re:

It is patently absurd that some people should be so offended as to make a moral issue out of it.

Pretty sure being a blatant cheat IS a moral issue.

I'd say hanging on to a car after a crash in a bike race to get back where you were, in the grand scheme of things, shouldn't concern us much in the moral department when we consider the world in which we live.

He was thrown out in any case, relax.

 

[coachkev]

Re:

Nowhere near the same thing. This is what everyone acknowledges happens all the time and is normal, not what we witnessed yesterday.

Exactly, everybody cheats a little but Nibali and his DS took it to far... i.e- everybody was doping but Lance doped more than everybody else

 

[Billie]

lols they gave Bouhanni 100 suisse francs. Twice what is standard. They have no idea what they're doing.

This is going to get real messy

If they didn't send Nibali home yesterday it would always have been the normal, standerd 50 francs fine for Bouhanni.

 

[hrotha]

Bouhanni was an idiot for doing that right after the whole Nibali thing, that much is certain.

 

[Pricey_sky]

Re: Re:

Nowhere near the same thing. This is what everyone acknowledges happens all the time and is normal, not what we witnessed yesterday.

Exactly, everybody cheats a little but Nibali and his DS took it to far... i.e- everybody was doping but Lance doped more than everybody else

Agree with the points above, nearly every rider does the old sticky bottle from time to time, what Nibali did was just laughable, especially from the heli shot.

 

[Master50]

How you do anything is often how you do everything. This was cheating and not his first time hanging on. He has little regard for the rules. It speaks to his character. You decide the limits he has. Whenever I hear anyone justify breaking the rules I wonder their limits?

 

[yespatterns]

Re: Re:

It is patently absurd that some people should be so offended as to make a moral issue out of it.

Pretty sure being a blatant cheat IS a moral issue.

I'd say hanging on to a car after a crash in a bike race to get back where you were, in the grand scheme of things, shouldn't concern us much in the moral department when we consider the world in which we live.

He was thrown out in any case, relax.

I'm quite relaxed thanks. I'm fact I spent the week surfing and cycling, not skitching on team cars. Just calling out a dirty cheat when I see one.

 

[rhubroma]

Re: Re:

It is patently absurd that some people should be so offended as to make a moral issue out of it.

Pretty sure being a blatant cheat IS a moral issue.

I'd say hanging on to a car after a crash in a bike race to get back where you were, in the grand scheme of things, shouldn't concern us much in the moral department when we consider the world in which we live.

He was thrown out in any case, relax.

I'm quite relaxed thanks. I'm fact I spent the week surfing and cycling, not skitching on team cars. Just calling out a dirty cheat when I see one.

I get your calvinist severity, all I'm saying is that you need to get a grip on what's really worth getting all riled up about there Down Under.

Shouting "cheater" is about as interesting as listening to a two-year-old cry in a world of grown-ups. We all know he broke the rules and he got the sanction the rules demand, thus the technical issue took its due course.

 

[StannisBaratheon]

Re: Re:

Nowhere near the same thing. This is what everyone acknowledges happens all the time and is normal, not what we witnessed yesterday.

Exactly, everybody cheats a little but Nibali and his DS took it to far... i.e- everybody was doping but Lance doped more than everybody else

Your comparison is bad and you should feel bad. Not going to discuss the Lance subject because this is Clinic material, but still, it is terrible.
You call a man a cheater because he hang on to a car for 150 meters in a flat stage where he was caught behind in a crash he didn't cause? Also, who's to blame, Nibali or the stupid DS who though himself as some sort of Vettel? Do you think Nibali said him to accelerate in such a blatant manner?
The same happened to Bouhanni yesterday, but his DS didn't go full *** with the gas pedal.

 

[huge]

Re: Re:

I'm quite relaxed thanks. I'm fact I spent the week surfing and cycling, not skitching on team cars. Just calling out a dirty cheat when I see one.

What do you think? Hanging him, chopping his head off or lethal injection?
We cannot leave such a terrible crime unpunished.

 

[King Boonen]

Re: Re:

The people suggesting he only get a time penalty need to have a think about what that would mean. Here's a little scenario:

Sky bury every domestique pacing Froome up Ventoux so he can launch a massive attack, after a few seconds the camera pans back and Contador leads the chase, followed by Quintana, Pinot and... A Sky Jag with all the rest of the Sky riders hanging on to it drinking macchiatos and laughing as they could care less about the time penalty they are about to recieve. Racing would become an absolute farce.

Sticky bottles, brake adjustments, drafting etc. get tolerated when they are to short and to bring someone back to a group they dropped from because of a crash, mechanical or getting bottles when the race isn't really on. They shouldn't be tolerated, but they are. Doing it to drop a load of riders is ridiculous, he got what he deserved.

My suggestion of a 10 minute penalty was based on what might be "fair" in such a scenario and as such is scenario dependent. Nibali was cheating to save his GC chances (OK, he had very bad luck to get in that situation). As such a 10 minute penalty would seem fair as a) it's a multiple of what he would have gained if he hadn't been caught (I would say 1-2 minutes).

And my point is that it's not fair at all. You leave one of the best GT riders of his generation to act as a domestique and tell every other domestique that it's fine to take a rest every now and then and get pulled back to the front group.

In your Sky scenario, suppose Poels and Porte hung on to the Sky car after allowing Froome to draft 3/4 of the way up Alpe d'Huez. The letter of the law says that Poels and Porte are disqualified. Froome still wins the tour and so Poels and Porte really don't care. So is that fair? No, but what should the punishment be?

I don't get the difference, that is my example. If they have worked themselves into the ground for Froome and then used a car to make the time cut/save energy they should be thrown out, a time penalty makes no difference to them. that is the only fair punishment.

It's impossible to give a penalty to different riders for the same infringement, so that the real cost of the punishment to them is the same, e.g. Peraud could not care whether he lost 10secs or 10mins. Nibali would have felt the difference.

However, it's impossible to take this into account and be objective in any way. The rule book says for hanging on to a car, you get disqualified. That was hanging on to a car and not a "push off". According to the rules, he should be disqualified. End of story.

Actually it's really easy, chucking someone out of the race affects them all equally.

 

[markjohnconley]

Where's the option; DS disqualified for life; Nibali given a 10 minute penalty and made to ride sucking a dummy till he gives Ewan an apology

 

[SafeBet]

It was the correct decision.
Shefer was probably more responsible than Nibali himself, so I'd say he should've been fined more.

 

[D Avoid]

Re:

Another update: Astana will only be allowed one team car the rest of the race.

Ruthless.

Astana are only down to one car for a few daze!!

 

[D Avoid]

I agree with you. The penalty should be applied consistently so I would also hope any sprinters that cheated in the same way were DQed for the exact same reason.

Here we go

It's being investigated - really hope he's not kicked out as it's nowhere near the same as Nibali's situation

You're either doing it or you're not, BOOM. Simple.

Cheating is wrong, enf of. Once we establish that properly, then there won't be any problem.

As it stands, it looks like cheating is accepted by many!!

 

[glassmoon]

I agree with you. The penalty should be applied consistently so I would also hope any sprinters that cheated in the same way were DQed for the exact same reason.

Here we go

It's being investigated - really hope he's not kicked out as it's nowhere near the same as Nibali's situation

You're either doing it or you're not, BOOM. Simple.

Cheating is wrong, enf of. Once we establish that properly, then there won't be any problem.

As it stands, it looks like cheating is accepted by many!!

+1
Bending rules and inconsistency of jury are creating the chaos. The "railway gate" is also good example - there could be casualties for f-sake. Ridiculous.

 

[Billie]

198 riders in the peloton and none consider it cheating. It's common practice.

 

[cineteq]

It's being investigated - really hope he's not kicked out as it's nowhere near the same as Nibali's situation

I really hope he is. STOP double standards!

 

[Red Rick]

Well kick Bouhanni out already.

 

[DFA123]

Big difference between the Nibali incident and the Bouhanni one is the quality of evidence. It's like in court; to throw someone out of the race you have to be beyond reasonable doubt that they cheated.

In Nibali's case this was very clear. The incredible acceleration for quite some time could only have been achieved by deliberately holding on to the car in order to obtain an advantage. The other riders provided a frame of reference for just how ridiculous and unnatural the accelration was.

In Bouhanni's case it's nowhere near as clear cut. He's still pedaling and from the camera angle it's impossible to see if there was an increase in his speed. He's also not touching the car, so there just isn't enough evidence to DQ him.

 

[SafeBet]

I'd like to ask: as per the UCI rule on this matter, does the time you hold onto the car or the speed you reach make a difference? Or it's all in the hands of the race commish?

 

[Bolder]

Heh, well, I voted for 2 minutes. Yeah it was blatant but 2 minutes for a GC contender ought to be punishment enough. Given that everyone gets a "turbo bottle" and drafts whatever vehicle they can, an actual blatant offense doesn't really bother me. Besides, it was a crash, not just the fact that he was tired. I'm sorry he's out of the race, and I'm also pretty sure that if he were a spanish rider on a spanish team he'd still be in it.