So....cav outside time limit but race organisers let him stay in TDF

[lanternrouge]

Large group outside the time limit AGAIN. Now it is starting to seem like the riders are banding together to make the time limit worthless. I know it was only around 15 seconds, but 2 days in a row? PATHETIC

Oh dear. Cold in the cave is it?

 

[Marva32]

Oh dear. Cold in the cave is it?

No, just seems odd to me.

And my comment refers to the whole group both times, not any one person.

 

[Winterfold]

This thread continues to fail with repeated and continued ignorance that is profound even by Interweb standards.

No fecking rule has been broken - the rules on cut off limit are pretty clever and flexible because mass elimination would be a huge problem for the race.

 

[Richeypen]

If im reading it right, Anthony Roux is the only person to have no score in the points jersey this year.


If they eliminated everyone outside the timelimit Cadel would be in green right now. Long odds on that before the tour

 

[Four Winds]

About 50 climbers doing laps round paris with little or no teams would make for a great race

 

[Ragerod]

Large group outside the time limit AGAIN. Now it is starting to seem like the riders are banding together to make the time limit worthless. I know it was only around 15 seconds, but 2 days in a row? PATHETIC

I reckon you should ride these two stages after you've ridden around France for two and a half weeks. Until then you can't call any of those guys pathetic. The leaders were racing all day and everybody suffered, even those that took it slightly easier in the grupetto. Yesterday they thought they were miles outside it but Schleck slowed a little on the Galibier and today they missed it by a few seconds. Get a grip. These have been some of the toughest mountain stages in the TDF for a long time because of the way the favourite rode them.


At this point I hope they get rid of the time limit so we don't get all this moaning from guys sitting in front of a computer.

 

[Derrick]

Interesting to hear the opinion that as the riders were only seconds outside the limit they had clearly tried to beat the limit and so were re-instated when that is clearly not the case. If the riders had really been trying to beat the cut off we would not have seen 50 riders wandering along the finishing straight all together, after climbing Alpe d'Huez remember, but twos and threes coming across the line just as those at the front had done because they had indeed been trying. This could be a problem for the organizers because the riders have clearly cottoned on to the fact that if the group is big enough they won't be eliminated. The organizers wont want to eliminate so many because they fear the spectacle will be diminished and those who have money invested in teams wont like the idea of their riders not getting seen on television so don't expect to see mass eliminations any time soon.

 

[LaFleur]

Dude, losing only 25 minutes on a route like this is to Contador is a big fight from them. Face it.

 

[MartinGT]

So....Rojas outside time limit but race organisers let him stay in TDF. OMG(!)

I assume hes had points taken off?

 

[Dead Star]

I assume hes had points taken off?

Yep, both him and Cavendish.

 

[Mambo95]

At this point I hope they get rid of the time limit so we don't get all this moaning from guys sitting in front of a computer.

I hope they go back to last year's co-efficients. They've made them a touch tighter this year (for no apparent reason) - e.g. 9% instead of 10%. They may consider this a mistake (they would have made both time cuts on last year's co-efficients).

 

[thirteen]

I hope they go back to last year's co-efficients. They've made them a touch tighter this year (for no apparent reason) - e.g. 9% instead of 10%. They may consider this a mistake (they would have made both time cuts on last year's co-efficients).

+1

or maybe even open it up to 11%? either way, they need to get rid of the 20% rule as well, imo.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Again I see Rojas being called a journeyman sprinter. Rojas is younger than Cavendish.

Is Cavendish a better sprinter than Rojas? Of course he is, that's not the issue here.

The point Pisti was trying to make was that it is harder for a sprinter to be at the end for the stages Rojas wins (in all races, not the Tour obviously as he hasn't won a stage) than most of the ones Cavendish wins (as obviously there are exceptions, such as Aubenas 2009, which has to be by FAR Cav's best Tour win). Rojas doesn't have the ability in a full on field sprint, but he can win when the field is thinned out a bit - and the stages where the field is thinned out a bit are harder to make it to the end to (as evidenced by fewer riders still in the bunch). What Pisti's saying is that it's easy for a professional bike rider to make it to the end of your typical sprint stage as won by Cavendish in the main group, not that it's easy to win the sprint, because it isn't. Even for somebody who is clearly the class of the field as Cavendish is, there is a lot of concentration and dedication required to making sure you're on the right wheel at the right time.

 

[zigzag wanderer]

Large group outside the time limit AGAIN. Now it is starting to seem like the riders are banding together to make the time limit worthless. I know it was only around 15 seconds, but 2 days in a row? PATHETIC

Amazing that the grupetto only came up with this idea yesterday

Nothing to do with the GC riders attacking 2 or 3 mountains out of course...

 

[Mambo95]

Again I see Rojas being called a journeyman sprinter. Rojas is younger than Cavendish.

He's got six wins in his entire career (six seasons). He's never come higher than 3rd in any GT stage.

He may be three weeks younger than Cavendish (who has 70 wins), but at 26 he is a lot older than:

Guardini (22) - 9 wins
Degenkolb (22) - 6 wins
Swift (23) - 7 wins
Howard (21) - 8 wins
Sagan (21) - 13 wins
Matthews (20) - 3 wins

Rojas is world class at coming 5th, he's one of the all-time greats at coming 5th, but a sprinter's currency is wins, so he's a journeyman sprinter in anyone's book

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Let's not forget that many people peak later.

Do I think Rojas will ever be a star sprinter? No. But he could mature into somebody for hilly classics. Think it's a bit too early to write him off as a journeyman, especially given some of the rides he's put in recently, such as climbing with Andy Schleck in the Tour de Suisse, and of course the Caisse 1-2 from the race last year, when Costa got the win. Rojas is more of an all-round guy than a pure sprinter à la Cavendish, and that's hurt his results. He can be competitive and score points in a much broader range of events, but Cavendish is the outright best at one of those events. Not to mention that Rojas is racing for a team which has, until this year, been predicated primarily on GCs, and so he's been given precious little support in his quest for wins and has often not raced as many events that go to sprints as many other sprinters - if he had a team that cared more about sprints (before 2011) and went to more events, maybe he could have more wins. But he doesn't. Some of it's to do with his physical limitations, some of it's to do with race calendars and team focus.

Besides, Thor Hushovd won the green jersey without a stage win in 2005.

If Mark Cavendish wins the green jersey, which is more than likely, he deserves it, because he's been the best sprinter in the race by a country mile.

If José Joaquín Rojas had won it, which is fanciful at best, he would deserve it, because he managed to find a way to win despite a system which didn't play to his strengths.

The points system has its strengths and weaknesses. It suits some riders better than others. But you can only win on the points system in place at the time.

 

[Mambo95]

Do I think Rojas will ever be a star sprinter? No. But he could mature into somebody for hilly classics. Think it's a bit too early to write him off as a journeyman, especially given some of the rides he's put in recently, such as climbing with Andy Schleck in the Tour de Suisse, and of course the Caisse 1-2 from the race last year, when Costa got the win.

I'm only 'writing him off', if that is what I'm doing, as a journeyman sprinter, not as a rider.

Let's face it, as a sprinter, he's probably not even the best in the Movistar TdF team.

 

[Dr. Maserati]

Interesting to hear the opinion that as the riders were only seconds outside the limit they had clearly tried to beat the limit and so were re-instated when that is clearly not the case. If the riders had really been trying to beat the cut off we would not have seen 50 riders wandering along the finishing straight all together, after climbing Alpe d'Huez remember, but twos and threes coming across the line just as those at the front had done because they had indeed been trying. This could be a problem for the organizers because the riders have clearly cottoned on to the fact that if the group is big enough they won't be eliminated. The organizers wont want to eliminate so many because they fear the spectacle will be diminished and those who have money invested in teams wont like the idea of their riders not getting seen on television so don't expect to see mass eliminations any time soon.

So, "clearly" they timed their effort so that they would finish just 20 seconds outside the time limit?

 

[SirLes]

We must be thankful that the people who actually make the rules and implement them have a clue about the sport.

 

[bikebottles]

A race or an exhibition?

Is the TDF an exhibition?

We think that it would be great if the TDF was a real race, none of this gentleman's rule of waiting and if you are out of the time limit, you are out.

As has already been stated, now we will have racers joining together in a pack just to avoid the cut. This is unfair to the lead racers that are actually racing, using their precious energy and will have to race again the next day.

 

[kurtinsc]

Is the TDF an exhibition?

We think that it would be great if the TDF was a real race, none of this gentleman's rule of waiting and if you are out of the time limit, you are out.

As has already been stated, now we will have racers joining together in a pack just to avoid the cut. This is unfair to the lead racers that are actually racing, using their precious energy and will have to race again the next day.

What does a time limit have to do with a race?

It's an artificial addition to the race. There's really no reason why someone finishing an hour outside the time limit shouldn't just be another hour down on the GC... other then a desire to keep people from totally sandbagging. For an advantage. If every top ITT and sprinter is arriving together, there's no advantage... it simply doesn't matter in any way toward the race.

The simplest solution if people think this is a problem is to set the time limits at double what they are now... and enforce them strictly.

 

[RedheadDane]

I actually heard on TV today that the rules for setting the Time Delays are from 1996!
Even the organisators of the race admitted (off camera) that it's time to change them.

 

[Derrick]

I'm not quite CLEAR how you come to that conclusion Dr M.
There seems to be a lot of concern about rule breaking here but it's obvious {I'd better not say clearly again} there is no rule. Directly one introduces "at the steward's discretion" the rule book is just a movable feast.Especially in a dodgy pastime like bike racing.
Just as a matter of interest , or perhaps not, I've just a raked out results from a similar stage, starting up the Galibier after only 7km and followed by a time trial from 1959. The difference is that the stage was 243km in 7hr 48 min. and it seems nobody finished outside the time limit! Even Jos Hoevenaers who punctured 4 times. Perhaps a certain amount of discretion was used but I can't find any reference to it. For those of you are concerned that eliminating riders today would only leave 60 or 70 riders which is not enough to race with the final stage was contested by 66 riders, one of whom retired, and was 331km in 9hr. 56min. Despite endless 6 and 7hr mountain stages the first 7 finishers on the last stage were all known sprinters and stage 11 in the Pyrenees was won by sprinter Andre Darrigade. So can we please stop feeling so sorry for today's sprinters.

 

[SirLes]

Is the TDF an exhibition?

We think that it would be great if the TDF was a real race, none of this gentleman's rule of waiting and if you are out of the time limit, you are out.

As has already been stated, now we will have racers joining together in a pack just to avoid the cut. This is unfair to the lead racers that are actually racing, using their precious energy and will have to race again the next day.

Do you think the Autobus idea has only just been thought of?

Ever thought it odd that none of the riders have ever complained about it or that riders from different teams have happily cooperated in it's formation?

The idea of a cut off is an artificial one created primarily for logistical reasons. As there is an element of guesswork in it's creation the organisers can see fit to waiver it. The system has worked perfectly well for years and yet suddenly on this forum we have lots of people who seem to know better

But you are right, it is unfair that some riders use their precious energy actually racing. We should ban all drafting as it is ridiculous that the likes of the Shlecks, Evans and Contador's have been able to sit sheltered in the peloton having food and drinks brought to them whilst there poor domestiques have to flog their guts out in the wind. Also why should it be a time limit and not placings. That would make them all have to hammer away at the front and sprint for the win, rather than drift in afterwards AND GET THE SAME TIME! It's a disgrace!!

 

[Praetor]

The points system has its strengths and weaknesses. It suits some riders better than others. But you can only win on the points system in place at the time.

It woud be fairer if today's winner would have also received 45 points for his win (and Cavendish and Rojas would have lost 45 points). Ridiculous to award more points for sprint stages.