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

[Flamin]

Koen de Kort ‏@koendekort 4 u4 uur geleden
I have never missed time cut in my life. Not once. Does this say enough about how hard the Vuelta has been? I think so, it's been brutal.

Koen de Kort ‏@koendekort 1 uur1 uur geleden
@stuckinoregon @kathrynebrown @Kiss_my_Panache we had no chance of making timecut so finally we thought about each other and stayed together

guy thinks we're complete morons.

 

[Billie]

Koen De Kort claiming on twitter how he didn't took an easy day today but on Seldon's link you can literally see him smiling while talking to another rider.

http://imgur.com/a/ZZafN

 

[Kwibus]

Apparently the grupetto sticked together. They agreed to ride the slowest riders pace thus not forcing anyone to go home.

They wouldn't have made the timecut anyways is the opinion. So now they stood together as the race has been gruesome so far and everyone was dead.

Well that's all very nice and very collegial, but it's not very collegial toward the riders that did make the timecut.

 

[Vladivar]

It should only apply to Team Sky

 

[jsem94]

I specifically remember when Koen De Kort went up and had a laugh with 85km to go, clearly not even pedaling. And now he has the stomach to come out and cry. What a joke.

 

[SKSemtex]

Does anybody remember one single time when any of the F1 rules have been crossed and been unpunished?
The breaking rules in cycling is everyday staff. Starting with sticky bottles and ending with "no give a ***" about the time cut.

 

[hrotha]

You know, the normal response to "I'm not going to make the time cut" should be "Maybe I should consider withdrawing from the race", not "I won't even bother".

 

[Amnes2015]

no, it happens everytime when to many riders don't make time cut

just few pages of noise from sky haters who think everything is about sky

 

[SKSemtex]

I am still surprised Oleg did not make the protest. He can afford it. Probably still drunk.

 

[Jagartrott]

On twitter it's pretty clear the riders who did race (and several of those were also in yesterday's breakaway btw) find it unfair that their colleagues are still in the game. I'd say they themselves can judge pretty well when something is off.

Hoping for some kind of signal tomorrow.

Judges decision is simply indefensible.

 

[seldon71]

Wouldn't have made a timecut anyways is just another piece of crap. Guys like Pfingsten, Keukeleire, Roson, Vervaeke, Grmay, Gogl finished some 12 minutes inside the time limit. Why?

'Cause they were
a) alert enough to get into the "Froome-group" and then
b) kept riding at their own pace (note words "riding" & "pace") to the finishing line.

The gruppetto of shame was just some 5 minutes or so behind the "Froome-group" when they sat up. They would have only needed to "almost" match the effort of those guys mentioned for the rest of the race (actually they could have lost another 6-7 minutes to them) and there would have been no discussion. It was not like they would have been "raced to death" - not the big majority of them anyway... But instead they pee'd on the sport and took a complete rest day - something planned to be utilised in theirs / their team's favor later in the race.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Re:

no, it happens everytime when to many riders don't make time cut

just few pages of noise from sky haters who think everything is about sky

No, you just want to make it all about Sky so it can continue to fuel your us vs. them storyline.

If they'd missed the time cut by 2 or 3 minutes, because it was raced hard, and they'd tried to make the timecut but failed, then they'd look at the size of the group, say, yea, they'll do the usual, dock them the points, and continue. Happens not all the time, but regularly enough that it would wash. But they didn't, they missed the time cut by 20 minutes. It was clear nobody gave a flying one about the time cut in that group, otherwise they'd have got closer to it. You'll see some people actually claiming that, though they missed the time cut, it's fine that Bewley and David López (a Sky rider, no less!) get leniency as they tried to make the cut but failed after having given their all; lots of riders in the grupetto, however, did not.

This was not just the autobus failing to make the time cut and being allowed to stay in because of the number of them. This was a flagrant disregard for the rule of the time cut that showed that, rather than a special dispensation, the riders see being allowed to stay in the race despite missing the time cut to be their right, and it's that attitude, and the fact that the blatant refusal to even attempt to play by the rules makes a mockery of that rule in the first place, that has rubbed fans - and many fellow riders - up the wrong way.

Also, de Kort's words would have greater sway if it weren't for the fact that the riders had an unofficial day off on the bike on Friday too.

 

[Fergoose]

I'm actually amused to see anyone trying to seriously suggest that literally half the race should be DQed with a week to go. Are there any precedents for that?

I do think they should look at introducing some kind of sanction though. Its a fair point that a grupetto should not just be allowed to coast in at a time of their choosing.

I don't know if it being such a short stage made it easier or harder for the grupetto, or if the length of the stage would be a factor?

 

[hrotha]

Re:

I'm actually amused to see anyone trying to seriously suggest that literally half the race should be DQed with a week to go. Are there any precedents for that?

I don't see why this would be a problem from a sports point of view. 70 guys is still more than enough to make a peloton in terms of protection and drafting.

 

[seldon71]

Re:

I do think they should look at introducing some kind of sanction though.

Great. A sanction. Yeah, that takes care of it...

Hell, there is NO sanction (except DQ) which could be levied in egalitarian terms and which would cause any effect of behavior of these riders :

1) Time penalty. Everyone of these riders just voluntarily lost 54 minutes on the road. What will an additional time mean after that??? A penalty of, say, half an hour would have most meaningful effect on Leopold König. He would lose his enormously valuable 31st spot in GC and plummet down to 49th. Wow. Everybody else would care less if there is shades of differences between nada and nada. So, time sanctions would be irrelevant for each and every rider in gruppetto.

2) Points penalty. Again - the highest points classification "contender" of this gruppetto was Gianni Meersman who lays at 12th spot with 35 pts. Meersman should probably win 3 of remaining stages to possibly put up a challenge for green jersey. No one else has even a theoretical claim in that competition = 90 riders who don't care whatsoever about points penalty. And frankly, Meersman doesn't care either...

3) Team classification penalties. Well, it is a competition which interests very few teams to start with (and has been pretty much already won by BMC here). Besides, the worst offender teams (ie. those without even three riders finishing inside time limit) would be ones who already are eliminated from team competition buy the stage results themselves so this sanction would only hurt the teams which did have multiple riders making an effort (not that they would care)

4) Monetary sanctions. Yes, monetary sanctions make themselves "felt" by everybody. In that sense, they are better prerogative than the other three. Problem comes with the scaling of the sanction. The same sanction which is no more than "a slap on the wrist" for the biggest teams - could pretty much drive the continental wild-cards to extinction. So, this is a bit of a Pandora's box too...


All in all - disqualification is clearly the best sanction for being OTL. No wonder that is the rule.

Now it only need to be forced and especially forced when missing the cut is due to a blatant lack of "esprit sportive"

 

[lartiste]

If I remember correctly, something even more ridiculous happened during Tour de France 2006 during the stage in which Óscar Pereiro won the yellow jersey, since only 4 riders in break were in time limit, the whole peloton in the chaos when Lance Armstrong retired discussed too long who will be responsible for chase, that they all miss the time limit... . If I remember correctly the other guy in break was Jens Voigt, I do not remember the others.

And what happend? Nothing. OK, it would be really funny if there would be just 4 guys reaching Paris . And maybe in reaction to it the the rule of 25% riders was introduced.

Anyway I would support to disqualify all of the riders in grupetto today, since the riders show just contempt to the rest of the riders, race and fans and sponsors as well. What I pretty do not understand is why at least Sky with several riders did push hard to try to join Froome ... .

 

[seldon71]

Re:

If I remember correctly, something even more ridiculous happened during Tour de France 2006 during the stage in which Óscar Pereiro won the yellow jersey, since only 4 riders in break were in time limit, the whole peloton in the chaos when Lance Armstrong retired discussed too long who will be responsible for chase, that they all miss the time limit... . If I remember correctly the other guy in break was Jens Voigt, I do not remember the others.

And what happend? Nothing. OK, it would be really funny if there would be just 4 guys reaching Paris . And maybe in reaction to it the the rule of 25% riders was introduced.

Checked it. Breakaway had 5 members, not 4. Andriy Grivko dropped out of it earlier, but still only lost 6½ minutes. Voigt won the stage and the other members were Sylvain Chavanel & Manuel Quinziato.

And while peloton lost a half an hour (29:57 to be exact) - it was a long stage of 231 km. That made peloton to be only at 9,26 % compared to the winning time. Maybe the theoretical limit was clearly tougher in such stage but it was FAR FAR AWAY from 31 % time difference of today.

 

[lartiste]

Re: Re:

If I remember correctly, something even more ridiculous happened during Tour de France 2006 during the stage in which Óscar Pereiro won the yellow jersey, since only 4 riders in break were in time limit, the whole peloton in the chaos when Lance Armstrong retired discussed too long who will be responsible for chase, that they all miss the time limit... . If I remember correctly the other guy in break was Jens Voigt, I do not remember the others.

And what happend? Nothing. OK, it would be really funny if there would be just 4 guys reaching Paris . And maybe in reaction to it the the rule of 25% riders was introduced.

Checked it. Breakaway had 5 members, not 4. Andriy Grivko dropped out of it earlier, but still only lost 6½ minutes. Voigt won the stage and the other members were Sylvain Chavanel & Manuel Quinziato.

And while peloton lost a half an hour (29:57 to be exact) - it was a long stage of 231 km. That made peloton to be only at 9,26 % compared to the winning time. Maybe the theoretical limit was clearly tougher in such stage but it was FAR FAR AWAY from 31 % time difference of today.

If I remember correctly, they really missed the time limit since it have been discussed even on this forum. But agree FAR FAR AWAY from 31% time difference today.

And many thanks for corrections! Really do not remember any other Grand Tour stage like this :surprised: , this one is closest in my opinion.

 

[seldon71]

Re: Re:

And many thanks for corrections! Really do not remember any other Grand Tour stage like this :surprised: , this one is closest in my opinion.

There was another like that in Tour 2001, which catapulted Francois Simon and late Andrei Kivilev to overall contention (finishing 6th and 4th, respectively). That dreary, cold, rainy stage had a breakaway of 14 and peloton lagging 35 minutes behind.

btw, I don't think any Grand Tour-winner has ever come back from as far behind as Lance did that year. After that stage 8, he was 35:19 down to Stuart O'Grady in yellow.

 

[TeflonDub]

Missed a great opportunity to test out what reducing team sizes would look like from an entertainment perspective It's a team sport, and your team's riders not making the time limit could greatly affect your team leader's chances. So make the freaking time limit or empty yourself trying, aka, do your job.

 

[thehook]

IMHO. If you do not enforce 1 rule.......You have NO RULES!

UN-Pro to say the least.. Remember when Ted King was out of LeTour for 6 seconds. Froome on Ventoux. The list can go on and on. I'm not a fan of PGA. But they enforce the RULES ON EVERYONE!

 

[Ricco']

Earlier this week, Nathan Haas was sick and did the majority of the Bilbao stage alone, arriving more than 50 minutes after the first.

Today, 90 riders didn't bother to race, doing their third rest day of the week (after Tuesday and Friday's stage).

Poor Nathan was sent home after his effort to keep racing. The 90 lazy were kept in the race. Go pro cycling!

 

[orangerider]

Definitely doesn't seem to be fair. These guys willfully chose to ride a ridiculously slow pace, knowing full well they would be outside the time limit, while others killed themselves to ride as hard as they could to start within the limit. Now they all will have fresh legs in comparison to everyone else and will be able to provide massive support to their team leaders, or ride for themselves by winning in a break. Not enforcing the rules in this kind of situation just promotes willful cheating at all levels.

 

[Electress]

I can understand exceptions when you have people struggling after crashes, or poor weather or being stuck behind a crash etc. What made today unacceptable is the clearly cynical approach - they didn't even try. For that, rather than the absolute sitcking to the rules, they should be made an example of. Very unsporting.

 

[hoolaparara]

Well I just had a brainwave. The trouble is most punishments are brief so how about we give riders a 5 minute penalty on subsequent stages until the penalty is bigger than the time gap between the riders and the cutoff. In this case I believe it was 20 something minutes, so for the next 5 stages all the riders would be penalised 5 minutes and put back on the stage to the relevant point. Its severe and would work particularly well for this because it would cover the TT meaning everybody in that group would have to work their arse off to avoid being OTL in the time trial! where they otherwise would probably take a day off.