Should the grupetto have been DQ'd on Stage 15?

[Libertine Seguros]

It's more that it isn't like they tried to make the time cut but missed by a minute or two because the stage was raced hard - they never even paid any mind to the time cut because they knew they were numerous enough that they wouldn't be penalized.

Maybe the forfeit should be that they have to race the stage again on the rest day, with anybody who misses the original time cut from today's stage being summarily dismissed.

 

[jsem94]

Re:

It's more that it isn't like they tried to make the time cut but missed by a minute or two because the stage was raced hard - they never even paid any mind to the time cut because they knew they were numerous enough that they wouldn't be penalized.

Maybe the forfeit should be that they have to race the stage again on the rest day, with anybody who misses the original time cut from today's stage being summarily dismissed.

That would be fun but logistically impossible.

Organizers from now on have to take this matter seriously. This was out of hand and they are being let off the hook.

 

[yespatterns]

Cowards, the lot of them. They basically just pissed on the rulebook.

 

[Finn84]

Probably for the future, make some rule change that each team would need to eliminate some of their riders in these cases. Every team had at least one member in the 53'54" group while Lopez (SKY) and Bewley (OBE) were alone outside time limit but ahead of gruppetto.

53'54" group had
7 DEN
6 BOA, EQS, LTS, SKY, TLJ
5 IAM, KAT, TGA
4 ALM, BMC, COF, DDD, FDJ, OBE, TSF
3 LAM
2 AST, CJR, TCS
1 CDT, MOV

Something like each team with 2-4 riders would have to drop one rider of their selection and teams with 5 or more riders would have to drop two riders of their selection from the race. Cannondale and Movistar who had one rider in the group could keep them.

 

[DanielSong39]

I think docking WorldTour points and a fine would be sufficient. Along with appropriate time and classification points penalties.

I just want the grupetto to pick it up a little.

 

[SKSemtex]

Re: Re:

It's more that it isn't like they tried to make the time cut but missed by a minute or two because the stage was raced hard - they never even paid any mind to the time cut because they knew they were numerous enough that they wouldn't be penalized.

Maybe the forfeit should be that they have to race the stage again on the rest day, with anybody who misses the original time cut from today's stage being summarily dismissed.

That would be fun but logistically impossible.

Organizers from now on have to take this matter seriously. This was out of hand and they are being let off the hook.

In order to eliminate their "advantage" of power saving they should start 53 minutes behind the peloton and if they miss the cut again they should be DSQed. Fair enough and easy to make.

 

[RedheadDane]

Now, I get I'm probably gonna be very unpopular now. But I'm kinda curious about how it's so well known that they never even tried. As soon as they gave up trying to get back up to the Froome-group we didn't really see them anymore. However, we do actually know that they tried pretty hard to catch up, maybe they simply went out of energy in the end... if they were tired they couldn't ride faster than they did. And maybe some riders in the gruppetto - the Sky riders - really didn't try, whereas some might actually have had a hard enough time keeping up with the pace as it was being run. What's slow for some might be fast for others. Should the jury have judged each case individually? As it stands I simply believe that the jury probably are the best people to judge.
However, I've never really understood the way the time-limit is being calculated; The faster the finish-time, the shorter the time-limit? So, if the race is being really hard, and the "fat guys" already have to struggle to keep up they then have to struggle even more. Yeah, might just be me, put I think that sometimes rules should be humane.
This is especially relevant on a stage like today; when the time-limit was being calculated did anyone expect that the stage would be raced like this? A short stage the day after the Queen Stage, and before a stage that might be seen as one of the few "sprint-stages", normally this might be considered a day for a breakaway to get away. Which, I know, is technically what happened today, well... normally the race leader doesn't go into the breakaway. And of course with the way yesterday's stage was being raced people might simply have been tired.

 

[Googolplex]

Re:

However, I've never really understood the way the time-limit is being calculated; The faster the finish-time, the shorter the time-limit?

It isn't.

30 km/h+: 19 min
32 km/h+: 22 min
34 km/h+: 25 min
36 km/h+: 28 min
38 km/h+: 30 min
40 km/h+: 32 min

Of course, between steps it gets always slightly smaller, but then increases again when going into next step.

 

[hrotha]

The time limit is subject to all sorts of factors, like the length of the stage (shorter stages make for a larger time limit, percentage-wise), the speed (faster stages have a larger time limit) and the difficulty (tougher stages have a larger time limit). All of those combined today to make sure the time limit would be pretty forgiving for a stage like this, but they still missed it by 20 minutes. They didn't try, simple as.

The time limit is already ridiculously forgiving 90% of the time. It's become very unusual for anyone but very sick riders to miss it. It was a joke before today, and it's only got worse.

 

[Tarnum]

Re:

I'm kinda curious about how it's so well known that they never even tried

Finishing 54 minutes back in a 118km stage is pretty strong evidence.

 

[Tank Engine]

Re:

Probably for the future, make some rule change that each team would need to eliminate some of their riders in these cases. Every team had at least one member in the 53'54" group while Lopez (SKY) and Bewley (OBE) were alone outside time limit but ahead of gruppetto.

53'54" group had
7 DEN
6 BOA, EQS, LTS, SKY, TLJ
5 IAM, KAT, TGA
4 ALM, BMC, COF, DDD, FDJ, OBE, TSF
3 LAM
2 AST, CJR, TCS
1 CDT, MOV

Something like each team with 2-4 riders would have to drop one rider of their selection and teams with 5 or more riders would have to drop two riders of their selection from the race. Cannondale and Movistar who had one rider in the group could keep them.

This seems to be a particular case of my proportionate rule: when more than 20% of the riders do not make the time limit, the number of riders from a team to be eliminated should be proportional to the number from that team who did not make the cut, so that approx. 20% are eliminated.

Here, 93 riders did not make the cut out of 164. 20% of 164=33 (to the nearest integer). Hence, if a team had k riders
who did not make the cut, then eliminate 33*k/93 of them (rounded to the nearest integer). What comes out, is your decision.

 

[RedheadDane]

Re: Re:

Then why do they always talk about the time-limit being an issue if the stage is being quick? That's how it every time we see one of these short-quick stages. Immediatly after the firing starts the talk about time-limit comes up. Whereas with the long slow stages - like Friday - where supposedly the time-limit should've been really short; no problem (other than slightly joking because the situation was so silly.)

Anyway, I'm not gonna change my opinion that sometimes you just have to be humane. What kind of race would it have been with all those guys out anyway? Surely not one that's fitting for a GT. The race-jury - who're the once you'd assume have the expertise here - made a decision; it's not the place for any of us to "change" the verdict. Disagree personally, sure, but don't accuse the jury of not doing their job properly.

I'm kinda curious about how it's so well known that they never even tried

Finishing 54 minutes back in a 118km stage is pretty strong evidence.

They sure tried in the beginning. And then, yeah. maybe they then decided to take a bet and trust the the Jury would follow the rule allowing for dispensation if too many were outside the time-limit. The Jury did, and they probably know what they're doing.

 

[mb2612]

I think that if you just say that if over 20% of riders miss the time cut, then the last 20% of finishers are disqualified. Then the grupetto can't afford to sit up as there is no longer safety in numbers.

 

[burning]

Re:

Now, I get I'm probably gonna be very unpopular now. But I'm kinda curious about how it's so well known that they never even tried. As soon as they gave up trying to get back up to the Froome-group we didn't really see them anymore. However, we do actually know that they tried pretty hard to catch up, maybe they simply went out of energy in the end... if they were tired they couldn't ride faster than they did. And maybe some riders in the gruppetto - the Sky riders - really didn't try, whereas some might actually have had a hard enough time keeping up with the pace as it was being run. What's slow for some might be fast for others. Should the jury have judged each case individually? As it stands I simply believe that the jury probably are the best people to judge.
However, I've never really understood the way the time-limit is being calculated; The faster the finish-time, the shorter the time-limit? So, if the race is being really hard, and the "fat guys" already have to struggle to keep up they then have to struggle even more. Yeah, might just be me, put I think that sometimes rules should be humane.
This is especially relevant on a stage like today; when the time-limit was being calculated did anyone expect that the stage would be raced like this? A short stage the day after the Queen Stage, and before a stage that might be seen as one of the few "sprint-stages", normally this might be considered a day for a breakaway to get away. Which, I know, is technically what happened today, well... normally the race leader doesn't go into the breakaway. And of course with the way yesterday's stage was being raced people might simply have been tired.

At 85k to go, the group was ~5 minutes behind, so they lost 50 minutes in 2 hours, which is completely outrageous for any pro cyclist. They knew that they would be safe if they stay together, so they just kept on riding with cyclotourist pace.

 

[ice&fire]

Re:

Now, I get I'm probably gonna be very unpopular now. But I'm kinda curious about how it's so well known that they never even tried.

Last rider in Aubisque finished 41 minutes behind Gesink. The stage was 196 kms long and had harder climbs. Now compare that to 53 minutes in 118 kms.

 

[Googolplex]

Re: Re:

Then why do they always talk about the time-limit being an issue if the stage is being quick? That's how it every time we see one of these short-quick stages. Immediatly after the firing starts the talk about time-limit comes up. Whereas with the long slow stages - like Friday - where supposedly the time-limit should've been really short

The total time allowed usually gets smaller when winning speed gets higher, although that kind of makes sense as when winner goes high speed, the conditions are usually good. Of course it can just mean that the stage is raced harder.

On long slow stages the time limit is usually a bit bigger due to bigger winning time and also, the grupetto gets help from the peloton longer due to slow pace, so they usually are alone only the last 1-2 climbs.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Re: Re:

I'm kinda curious about how it's so well known that they never even tried

Finishing 54 minutes back in a 118km stage is pretty strong evidence.

I'd like to support the case with this result. It's from the Giro Rosa, and it was the day after the women did the Mortirolo.

It's a stage of almost identical length to today's, and was actually significantly harder - here's the profile:

While it doesn't look too difficult, here are the last three climbs:
Colle di Nava 10,5km @ 6,6%
Colle Caprauna 8,3km @ 7,1%
Madonna della Guardia 11,5km @ 6,1%

So we're talking a more difficult stage that finished on a tougher climb, over the same distance (which is actually a fairly long stage for a women's stage as opposed to a short stage for the men, so the time limit rule would otherwise be stricter, however the % time needed is more forgiving in women's races to cover for the difference in péloton depth anyway - is more strin). Ah, but today's race was hard from the gun, I hear you say! Yes, but on the stage to which I refer, the best young rider, 7th on GC, went solo on the first climb of the day, and over 50km out the race leader and 3rd placed rider dropped everybody on the penultimate mountain to ride across to them. It's 6 minutes from the first finisher to the 10th, and this field includes almost all of the best climbers in the women's péloton - even super-strong riders like Elisa Longo Borghini were losing 17 minutes. So this was raced hard. And the gulf in quality between the strongest and weakest riders in top level women's races is typically noticeably more than in men's races because of the difference in budgets and financial capabilities, as well as the number of big names being concentrated into a small number of teams means you have quite a few very small Italian teams who exist around the chance to get some TV coverage in a short 15-minute summary of their breakaway antics in the Giro Rosa, for whom keeping hold of riders who show real talent is difficult because the bigger Italian teams like BePink or Alé-Cipollini will take them on if they aren't tempted overseas, and whose riders on the start are often very inexperienced and young.

But still, the stage took the strongest nearly an hour longer than the men at Formigal today, yet the absolute weakest riders on the day, on a harder stage, racing to meet a more lenient time cut than the men are given, were still seven minutes closer to the leaders than literally half the men's péloton, and including guys like Darwin Atapuma, Robert Gesink, Tejay van Garderen, Riccardo Zoidl, Alexandre Geniez, Leopold König and Peter Kennaugh. Guys who've top 10ed GTs, won mountainous stage races, won stages of this very race, and sat in the top 10 of the GC until today. That ought to show you that they didn't take the time cut seriously.

 

[Billie]

absolutely disgusting

 

[Red Rick]

Typically, in an MTT, where you find the largest differences in % of time, about 30% is usually more than enough for even the worst climbers to make the time limit. Today, they missed it by a larger percentage, on a stage where there was barely any climbing over 7%, most of it was around 5% or lower, with large amounts of flat inbetween. I think that says it all

Would the gruppeto people proudly upload their strava files from today's stage?

 

[RedheadDane]

Okay, maybe they could (should?) change the rules so that if a large time-loss is clearly due to an "attitude issue" then there would be no opportunity for dispensations. However, as it is now the Jury can simply decide that if too many riders were outside the time-limit they can all be re-instated.
All I know is that I'm not in Spain, so I kinda have to believe that the race jury who is probably know what they're doing.

 

[SafeBet]

Disgraceful decision. Thks is why people don't take cycling seriously.
Riders who finished in the time limit, some doing it alone in a painful effort, should stage a protest of some kind.

 

[seldon71]

This video at about 1 hour 6 minutes shows exactly the moment they stopped trying. It also shows few riders who were specifically active/vocal in cutting down all the effort to ride.

http://www.steephill.tv/players/youtube3/?title=On-Demand+Full+Stage+15+Broadcast&dashboard=vuelta-a-espana&id=PcD24uBIZ7Q&series=0,PcD24uBIZ7Q,B0qQoy7J7zo&series_type=part&yr=2016

Only monetary (but that would need to be scaled against team budgets) penalties or DQ's are going to have an effect. Docking time, points etc. won't matter whatsoever - they just lost 54 minutes and none of them are points classification combatants (Meersman at #12 is best).

Yes, sending more than half of the peloton away with still 5 road stages to go would have been, well, different. Still, that would have been "setting example". Previous precedents were not that valid as we haven't had a case of gruppetto being almost double the OTL-limit behind.

Personally, I would have made an exception for Lopez & Bewley as they were not cases of "extra rest day" and thus didn't gain an unfair advantage. Rest could have been kissed goodbye.

Many will see that opinion as "Sky-hate" and yes, it would have been nice to watch Froomey trying to save a podium with none or one domestique. (although I also believe Sky would have left the race as a protest if DQ was to come).

But it would not have been just Sky. Direct Energie would have been a real laughing-point for getting their wild-card chance thrown down the drain with full team ejection. Elissonde would be defending his polka-dot without any team help etc. etc.

P.S. How difficult it would have been for organizers to tell DS's that time limit will be applied no matter the size of gruppetto..? Maybe when the gap hit 15 minutes/20 minutes?

 

[Eyeballs Out]

A few days ago Nathan Haas was sick and rode most of the stage on his own finishing half an hour after everyone else. No way of knowing for sure but I'm guessing he would have been trying his rocks off - otherwise he would just have climbed off. He was kicked off the race. Today the gruppetto didn't try at all, had a bit of a giggle and they are still in the race. One of them will win tomorrow. Heartwarming stuff

 

[Kwibus]

It's the way they did it that makes me say yes. All go home.

Shameless and disgusting showing. If any of those suckers win a stage or make an impact on this vuelta from now on then it's a fraud.

 

[hrotha]

Re:

A few days ago Nathan Haas was sick and rode most of the stage on his own finishing half an hour after everyone else. No way of knowing for sure but I'm guessing he would have been trying his rocks off - otherwise he would just have climbed off. He was kicked off the race. Today the gruppetto didn't try at all, had a bit of a giggle and they are still in the race. One of them will win tomorrow. Heartwarming stuff

Yeah, it's infuriatingly unfair.

Cycling really needs to get serious about the time limits. Just enforce them, no if's and but's. If a race here or there has to go on with only a few dozen riders (and let's assume that'd be bad for the race, although I'm not sure it would be), then so be it - it'll be a small price to pay for the greater good in races to come.