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Presidential Cycling Tour of Turkey 2011

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Libertine Seguros said:
I got totally fooled by not looking at the scale on the profile.

Sprint stages can be interesting if they put enough obstacles to make it uncertain or to throw the trains off their game. Earlier stages in this race did a passable job of this.

But if Guardini can make it to the finish untroubled, then you haven't put anything resembling an obstacle in the course.

Agreed, but given the profile made perfectly clear this was pan flat, I'm not sure there's much cause for complaint at the result.

In other news, Guardini now seems to be pretty set as world number 2 for sprinters. Doesn't really shock me, 90% of Cav's competition are just big powerful guys (Tom, Tyler, Andrei) rather than proper sprinters so as soon as someone else in the Cav mold comes along, he burns them.
 
Libertine Seguros said:
I fear that should Guardini continue to grow in this role, we will get some terrible Giro routes like the 2004 Gran Festival dell'AleJet.

I trust Zomegnan not to be an idiot though. I think.

Given the recent routes, I think your fear is more paranoia than grounded concern.

Anyhow, surely you're happy the 10 seconds of daily action might be slightly less predictable in future.
 
Waterloo Sunrise said:
Given the recent routes, I think your fear is more paranoia than grounded concern.

Anyhow, surely you're happy the 10 seconds of daily action might be slightly less predictable in future.

Only if both are in the same race, of course. If not, then we get twice as many races utterly predictable (well, presuming Guardini's climbing improves to reach the level of Cav).

The other problem is, it will result in more teams playing solely for the sprint.

ISD/Farnese Vini used to be such an exciting team, the solution to boredom in races. Remember last year's Tour of Turkey, with them putting four of their six riders in a break, and Visconti sticking it to the HTC train? This year they're just another train team in a péloton full of little other than train teams.

This race had been pretty interesting on a very similar parcours in 2008 and 2009. Last year's was pretty dull thanks to HTC, but Cofidis and ISD really did their best to make it exciting. This year we've had six sprints and a stage which wasn't contested, and Alessandro Petacchi won the queen stage. It's worse than the Tour Down Under!
 
I'm glad they decided not to send him to the Giro. Considering how he was dropped on every hill in here, the Giro would've destroyed him. I can see how it's very tempting for the team to bring him nonetheless though so cudos to them for being able to resist the temptation. Don't want to see another big talent being destroyed by racing too much, and we really need this guy to challenge Cavendish in the future to keep sprints interesting :p
 
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maltiv said:
I'm glad they decided not to send him to the Giro. Considering how he was dropped on every hill in here, the Giro would've destroyed him. I can see how it's very tempting for the team to bring him nonetheless though so cudos to them for being able to resist the temptation. Don't want to see another big talent being destroyed by racing too much, and we really need this guy to challenge Cavendish in the future to keep sprints interesting :p

They've decided he isn't going for sure? That's a good thing I think, there's no need for him to go he is too young I think and looking ath the giro course I think he would only have 1 or 2 chances to be in the sprint before the mountains killed him. They should take it easy with the young fellow and let him practice on smaller races he should have a lot of chances to ride the giro in the future.
 
Christ did anyone see Kirbys commentary for the last 2 k. I had to rapidly tap volume down so as not to wake the neighbourhood.


Most amazingly its in the Tour of Turkey.

Deserves a mention in the great commentary moments thread.

Have to say he gets some respect from me for that.
 

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