So why doesn't the bunch just, you know, ride slower in the flatter days, like the old days of the Vuelta? When you had "those" stages in baking heat, with somebody from Andalucía-CajaSur riding off alone 16 minutes ahead of the field then the bunch dawdling for a while so they didn't suffer too much, then reeling in the small break? This would also have the effect of giving the riders a bigger time gap to get to the finish in and although the longer stage would mean the tolerance % of time would be smaller, the amount of leftover energy to fight to make the time cut would be higher.
Farrar's argument that everything is too hard now is at odds with the actuality of the course, where as usual the Vuelta has produced hard finales in lieu of stages that are difficult all the way through. Sunday's stage is not particularly hard and the péloton's uniting around its ability to basically invoke a go-slow to protest a difficult route is entirely at odds with a) the history of the sport, and b) the actual racing that has gone on in this race, since their go-slow protest of the difficulty of the race came just two days after they had another go-slow protests. I know that Spain is full of those uncategorized "bonus bumps" and that unless you're up on the meseta very little that looks flat truly is, but that's also part of racing in Spain. You know that going in. It's why the country's produced so few great sprinters, and those it has done have been guys like Tarzán Sáez and Óscar Freire who are durable. But there are very few 200km+ stages at the Vuelta, the stage they protested was the shortest road stage other than the flat parade, and you know, saying we should praise the péloton because it achieved unity in refusing to take one of the biggest stage races of the year seriously is to miss entirely the point of why so many fans are angered by it. It's the fact that the péloton has united in
refusing to obey the rules and pretending that you didn't know about that rule (which is clearly belied by the pride Warbasse shows in the effectiveness of their unintentional protest) that irritates. And the fact that there is a clear exclusion towards those riders outside the grupetto without GC interest who felt slighted that their efforts to survive have in fact hurt them since they are punished for actually trying to make it inside the time limit by being more tired than riders who refused to try, or those inside the grupetto who did at least briefly try to get them to ride. I mean, it wasn't like they said "let's go for it, but not taking any unnecessary risks", which would be fair enough. They cruised in 20 minutes outside the time cut. They could have climbed like Ivan Quaranta and descended like Ivan Basso and not lost as much time as they did if they were trying in the areas it was safe to and not taking risks they didn't have to. They might have missed the time cut, but it wouldn't have caused the kind of arguments that this has, it would just be another day when the grupetto didn't make it in time. Instead, they decided to flaunt their inability to make time, taunting the race organizers.
The other issue is that what the riders are supposedly protesting is how goddamn hard the Vuelta has been, much of which isn't really seen by the fans, when we see several days of the péloton giving the breakaway more than enough rope to get away comfortably over and over again that was reminding me of 2009. The only stages won by the GC elites have been Lagos de Covadonga and Peña Cabarga, both effectively one-climb stages, although I guess you could count the one Yates won given his current GC position. Formigal is a bit of a special case, admittedly, also. But if it were really about the insane pace that Movistar and Sky are drilling at the front that makes it so hard for the riders that they need to have three rest days out of five, then those breaks would be brought back. Maybe it's just about the poor pacing of stages and their layout, with lots of cumulative ascent but none of it at relevant times, but it seems absurd to be protesting the difficulty of a race on a 120km stage when they've just had the ONLY truly tough multi-col stage of the entire race. It's not like it came off the back of Zoncolan-Gardeccia in 2011, or Pampeago-Fedaia-Kronplatz in 2008, where I could see the reasoning at least.
At least with the Extreme Weather Protocol stuff they had the excuse of using safety as a pretext, but incidents like this are going to - not unreasonably - spark in many fans a view of the riders as wanting to be pampered. From Cavendish moaning that the Vuelta has become stupid because there aren't enough sprint stages to Warbasse indulging himself on people power, it reeks of a desire for easier, more comfortable racing. Maybe it isn't like that, but surely they must be aware how it's perceived. Yes, I know I haven't turned a pedal in anger, but it's not like this Vuelta is an abnormally difficult GT; in fact, as PRC has shown, the Vuelta has
consistently had the least accumulated climbing in its toughest mountains out of all three GTs for the last six seasons consecutively. Yes, I appreciate the Vuelta is in September, it's the end of a long season for many. But you knew the parcours before you started, it's not like the Peace Race where they suddenly sprung the ski jump climb on the riders. The race as held is actually easier than presented thanks to the changes to stage 13 (even before the riders held another unofficial rest day on it). The Clinic argument doesn't wash either because the GTs were longer in the 80s too, which while far from clean were not doped to anything like the degree of the 90s and early 2000s routes. They'd often be much longer than the current races, while including sometimes up to 200km of time trialling.
It's hard to see what the riders exactly hoped to achieve. They've had their rest day, but at the expense of a lot of acceptance of the practice of time cut-hopping, because the degree of disregard they showed for the cut has actually put a lot of fans against them and rather than feeling sympathy for the riders because of the difficulty of the race, are feeling sympathy for the race organizers for having to put up with the riders holding them to ransom. Instead of making people want race organizers to reflect on what they make the riders do, instead the reaction has been more that people want the authorities to act to prevent riders from making a farce out of a historic and traditional race.
), but the temperatures have been abnormally high for September for the last week, mid 30's everyday (don't know fahrenheit, apologies!). It's not been pleasant, although like you said, it's usually alot worse further south (mid 40s today anywhere south of Madrid).
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