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

[woodie]

Interesting:
http://www.as.com/ciclismo/articulo/repescas-solo-habrian-llegado-56/20110725dasdaicic_5/Tes

Only 56 would have finished in Paris. The first 26 riders in Champs Elisées' sprint should have never been there.
Cadel Evans would have been the ITT winner. He would have also won the points jersey.

The green jersey is not a sprinters jersey, is a points jersey. It becomes a sprinters jersey if mountain stages are worth less points than flat ones. It also adds when the penalty for missing the time limit is less in a mountain stage than in flat one.

Stage races are about endurance and recovery and getting late to the finish is distorting the competition not only for stage or jersey wins, but also keeping helper riders in the race when they shouldn't be kept.

The current system makes the time limit unpredictable for riders in the bus as it depends on the speed of the stage winner and it varies in discrete steps of a few minutes, so there's room for improvement there. But riders missing the limit should be sent home.

What if the sprint in Paris is won by Taaramae instead of Cav, Farrar or Greipel? I don't care. Sprinters unable to climb over a bridge should go back to the track where they belong or try at 1-day races and the Tour of Qatar. Once we get rid of this kind of rider in stage races nobody will miss them in Paris because they will generate as many column inches as the guys of Saur-Sojasun. If we also get rid of their trains we'll have more unpredictable races. It will all be for the better.

We're not talking about bridges or medium mountain we're talking about high mountains thousands of metres above sea level. The fact that only 56 riders would have finished tells me that the time limit system isn't working properly, sprinters are not built to climb, thats not their fault. I don't think they should be allowed to soft pedal the mountains but as someone already mentioned thet are going flat chat in every stage just to survive! I'll miss the sprinters because the sprints are amazing, yes the lead up is boring but the last 20km is usually pretty good.

GT's are about all riders and should cater for all riders

 

[icefire]

We're not talking about bridges or medium mountain we're talking about high mountains thousands of metres above sea level. The fact that only 56 riders would have finished tells me that the time limit system isn't working properly, sprinters are not built to climb, thats not their fault. I don't think they should be allowed to soft pedal the mountains but as someone already mentioned thet are going flat chat in every stage just to survive! I'll miss the sprinters because the sprints are amazing, yes the lead up is boring but the last 20km is usually pretty good.

GT's are about all riders and should cater for all riders

I was referring to sprinters unable to stay at the front if they have to face a cat 3 climb with 10 kms to the finish. This is the kind of sprinter who is at the time limit in high mountain stages.
I already said that the current system to set the time limits has margin for improvement. But riders joining in large groups to get the favour of the commissaires if they are out to the time limit are distorting the competition taking wins away from those who do better in those difficult days or staying in support of their captains when they shouldn't.
I also enjoy sprints, but there's nothing to fear if the likes of Cav, Farrar and Greipel are sent home before the end of the race. Others will take their place to fight for stage wins. Watching on TV I can't tell the difference between a sprint at 70km/h and another one at 65km/h.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Do the rules allow for points deductions? I don't think so.

Yes, they do. That's why the points deduction penalty was applied.

 

[roundabout]

About time limits I think there should be a middle ground between the current version where half the field might be outside (on purpose or not) and one where a TTT of van Hummel, Napolitano and Furlan can avoid elimination.

 

[Four Winds]

"The green jersey is a points jersey not a sprinters jersey" blah blah blah

But what's the point in a separate green jersey where, if all the sprinters are excluded, looks very similar to either the polka dot jersey or the GC.

How would the climbers like it if they were told they had to finish in the top 100 of a sprint stage or face exclusion rather than "soft pedalling" in at the back of the peloton?

 

[icefire]

"The green jersey is a points jersey not a sprinters jersey" blah blah blah

But what's the point in a separate green jersey where, if all the sprinters are excluded, looks very similar to either the polka dot jersey or the GC.

How would the climbers like it if they were told they had to finish in the top 100 of a sprint stage or face exclusion rather than "soft pedalling" in at the back of the peloton?

Your comparison of climbers asked to finish in the top 100 every day defies any logic. The time limits are the same for everyone.

The points classification is a sort of GC by stage positions instead of time. It's fine if sprinters don't get any point in mountain stages but some minimum requirements must be set on all riders to continue in the race. Otherwise they might as well drop from GC listings, get into the car and start afresh the day after. And this also applies to domestiques who take a day off from time to time. Don't worry if some sprinters can't meet the time limits and are sent home: sprints won't dissapear as other riders will sprint for the win.

 

[ultimobici]

What many are ignoring or not aware of is that the Tour has changed formats on countless occasions through the years. The whole race has been decided on points instead of time, The Maillot Vert has been a pure sprinter's competition, then a consistency competition and back to sprinting pure & simple. It is ASO's prerogative how it is slanted and as long as they do not bend the rules they are entitled to do what they did on the two Alpine stages this year.

The Tour's format is akin to having 100m, 1500m & marathon runners all in the same event. Some stages are purgatory for one group in particular and "fun" for others. Andy Schleck needed the race neutralised last year because he fell. How is that different from Cavendish's problem in the stage to Serre Chevalier with its 4 HC climbs?

 

[ultimobici]

Otherwise they might as well drop from GC listings, get into the car and start afresh the day after. And this also applies to domestiques who take a day off from time to time. Don't worry if some sprinters can't meet the time limits and are sent home: sprints won't dissapear as other riders will sprint for the win.

The very fact that they finish the stage is enough to mean that they are nigh on as knackered as they would be had they ridden a fraction of a kmh faster to make the cut, to think otherwise is naive. The first stage that they missed the cut was ridden at 29.8kmh rather than 29.98kmh. To boot riders out for a transgression so small would be churlish. They just missed the cut, they didn't take the mickey and miss it by a large margin.

 

[Irish2009]

I think theres a easy solution, riders 20% outside the time limit lose 20pts, riders 30% outside the time limits 30 pts excetera.

 

[ferryman]

What many are ignoring or not aware of is that the Tour has changed formats on countless occasions through the years. The whole race has been decided on points instead of time, The Maillot Vert has been a pure sprinter's competition, then a consistency competition and back to sprinting pure & simple. It is ASO's prerogative how it is slanted and as long as they do not bend the rules they are entitled to do what they did on the two Alpine stages this year.

The Tour's format is akin to having 100m, 1500m & marathon runners all in the same event. Some stages are purgatory for one group in particular and "fun" for others. Andy Schleck needed the race neutralised last year because he fell. How is that different from Cavendish's problem in the stage to Serre Chevalier with its 4 HC climbs?

Yes but Cavendish still wins 5 stages. How is that fair on the climbers where the different type and difficulty of finishes doesn't favour any particular one. So FIVE stage wins, a jersey, outside the limits twice without having to kill himself like the climbers but get in a grupetto and bluff the Tour organisers. I say not fair and he should not have got the jersey. And I would have said the same for anyone else in his position.

 

[Ragerod]

Yes but Cavendish still wins 5 stages. How is that fair on the climbers where the different type and difficulty of finishes doesn't favour any particular one. So FIVE stage wins, a jersey, outside the limits twice without having to kill himself like the climbers but get in a grupetto and bluff the Tour organisers. I say not fair and he should not have got the jersey. And I would have said the same for anyone else in his position.

I think you'll find Cavendish has to kill himself to finish in the grupetto on a mountain stage and more than the climbers have to on a flat stage.

Cavendish won five stages and a jersey because he is dominant. The climbers had a similar number of opportunities but didn't catch the breakaway or were not dominant enough to win five stages. It's not unfair, it's life.

 

[Dr. Maserati]

Right , let's answer a few questions here. It has been claimed, quite correctly, that that points deduction is a recent way of trying to combat what we've seen over the last day or so. Well it hasn't worked in this instance and my suggestion was that the organization will have to give it some serious thought. It has obviously been recognized as a problem otherwise race committees wouldn't have found it necessary to juggle with the rules.

The rules are the same since the mid 90's.

Secondly, "they were only 20 odd seconds outside the limit". Precisely! And that limit was already a 25 minutes and 9 secs. extension over the winners time.
Dr M. reckons that I think riders were acting as individuals. This is a complete reversal of what I claimed. The whole basis of my argument was that riders had colluded to exploit the rules. Had they acted as individuals we would have seen twos and threes crossing the line.{Can individuals cross the line in twos and threes?But you'll get my point}

Yip, "the rules" - if they had not stayed together many would have been eliminated at the very first mountain stage, with the rest of the members of the 'autobus' getting eliminated over time - and BTW that would include riders like Nico Roche & Levi who came in with the autobus at different times.

One contributor suggests that I want every rider to fight for the win in every race. Too ****** true. Wouldn't it be great. Only a day or two ago a poster said he liked Gilbert because he acted as though he wanted to win every time he pinned on a number "like old time racers". If only !

Ah, which race? Its a grand Tour - there is a race for the overall, a race for Stage 1, a race for Stage 2, a race for .... you get the picture.

That is one of the beautiful aspects of this sport - that all riders, irrespective of their individual abilities have to complete the full course.

However it's Hawkwood who hits the nail on the head. It's all about television coverage and logistics and entertainment and money. Sport doesn't really come into it. It's "professional" after all and the words professional and sport don't always sit comfortably together. Hawkwood is right again when he tells us that the rules of tennis have been changed but not only tennis but what about football. We don't have replays any longer we have penalty shoot outs.Every body hates them but it's the television schedulers who call the shots. Even snooker used to be first to 77 frames but that's too long for today's attention span and tele programmers.
It's become apparent that organizers have tried to toughen up tours of late. There was a time when tour riders were idolized because their exploits were seen as superhuman but now it seems that even tour organizers have realized the "cycling as entertainment " has gone too far and a degree of man against the elements must be re-introduced.

But your whole point is based on entertainment, not sport.
You want riders (who do not have that specific ability) to contest every race for the win.

The best thing for me about this tour has been Thor Hushovd,on being interviewed after his stage victory,saying "to win---wearing this jersey---on my own."
Off on holiday now chaps . No wasting time on computors for a week or so. Enjoy your tour.

You realize that Thor wouldn't have finished the Tour you wish for? And as he finished almost last in the grupetto the day before his first win if he had been racing as an individual as you wish he would probably have finished outside the time limit.

 

[Dr. Maserati]

Interesting:
http://www.as.com/ciclismo/articulo/repescas-solo-habrian-llegado-56/20110725dasdaicic_5/Tes

Only 56 would have finished in Paris. The first 26 riders in Champs Elisées' sprint should have never been there.
Cadel Evans would have been the ITT winner. He would have also won the points jersey.

The green jersey is not a sprinters jersey, is a points jersey. It becomes a sprinters jersey if mountain stages are worth less points than flat ones. It also adds when the penalty for missing the time limit is less in a mountain stage than in flat one.

Stage races are about endurance and recovery and getting late to the finish is distorting the competition not only for stage or jersey wins, but also keeping helper riders in the race when they shouldn't be kept.

The current system makes the time limit unpredictable for riders in the bus as it depends on the speed of the stage winner and it varies in discrete steps of a few minutes, so there's room for improvement there. But riders missing the limit should be sent home.

What if the sprint in Paris is won by Taaramae instead of Cav, Farrar or Greipel? I don't care. Sprinters unable to climb over a bridge should go back to the track where they belong or try at 1-day races and the Tour of Qatar. Once we get rid of this kind of rider in stage races nobody will miss them in Paris because they will generate as many column inches as the guys of Saur-Sojasun. If we also get rid of their trains we'll have more unpredictable races. It will all be for the better.

I have to object to the highlighted.

"Sprinters" by their very definition are 'poor' climbers, in many cases they have to work a lot harder than many good climbers who sit up when their work is done.

If you want a reference on how good these sprinters do on Tour climbs the Etape du Tour fastest finisher was 3:39:10 for the stage to Alpe d'Huez - the grupetto's time was 3.38:32.

 

[icefire]

I have to object to the highlighted.

"Sprinters" by their very definition are 'poor' climbers, in many cases they have to work a lot harder than many good climbers who sit up when their work is done.

If you want a reference on how good these sprinters do on Tour climbs the Etape du Tour fastest finisher was 3:39:10 for the stage to Alpe d'Huez - the grupetto's time was 3.38:32.

You went to far back in my posts, probably missing a few clarifications.
We might argue about how to compute a "reasonable" time limit depending on the varying circumstances of the race. But once the rule is set, the time limit has to be observed as a condition to continue in the race.
We're talking here of riders missing the time by a few seconds, but in the Sierra Nevada stage of the 2009 Vuelta the last grupetto was late by more than 5 minutes and almost 8 minutes after the preceding riders.
I already knew that the slowest pros are faster than the most devoted amateurs, but if they are still not good enough they should do something else (read try a different race) no matter how hard they work. In real life hard work may not be enough if the outcome doesn't fulfil some minimum requirements. Why should a bike race be different?

 

[ultimobici]

Yes but Cavendish still wins 5 stages. How is that fair on the climbers where the different type and difficulty of finishes doesn't favour any particular one. So FIVE stage wins, a jersey, outside the limits twice without having to kill himself like the climbers but get in a grupetto and bluff the Tour organisers. I say not fair and he should not have got the jersey. And I would have said the same for anyone else in his position.

DO you seriously think that it was a walk in the park? FFS he was 2 minutes outside of the first one and less than a minute on the second one. Both were on epic courses and the second was won at an average of 34kmh!

To say that the climbers have as hard a time in the bunch on a flat stage is ridiculous. Provided they can sit on a wheel and stay awake their losses are likely to be immaterial. If they can't do that it is down to a lack of application in their job, having no bearing whatsoever on their climbing & time-trialling abilities. A sprinter's challenge is purely physical and overcoming it will compromise their sprinting.

Prudhomme, himself said that they changed it to be a sprinter's competition.

He said: "The starting point was Mark Cavendish a rider who's won 15 stages in three years but never the green jersey. We said to ourselves that if Cavendish ends his career without ever winning it, despite making his mark on the history sprinting, that we need to do something.

"The two or three intermediate sprints which we used to have were almost never contested. So our team, led by Jean-Francois Pescheux, came up with a system, only one sprint but with lots of points available to 14 riders. So even if there is a breakaway there'll be a sprint.

"And now we can actually see that we'd get a different race, an interesting race, a sprint. Perhaps it would allow the best sprinter in the world, who has fewer potential wins, with all the uphill finishes to go looking for points elsewhere.

"We haven't done it for Mark Cavendish, we did it for an exceptional sprinter."

He seems happy enough.

 

[ultimobici]

You went to far back in my posts, probably missing a few clarifications.
We might argue about how to compute a "reasonable" time limit depending on the varying circumstances of the race. But once the rule is set, the time limit has to be observed as a condition to continue in the race.
We're talking here of riders missing the time by a few seconds, but in the Sierra Nevada stage of the 2009 Vuelta the last grupetto was late by more than 5 minutes and almost 8 minutes after the preceding riders.
I already knew that the slowest pros are faster than the most devoted amateurs, but if they are still not good enough they should do something else (read try a different race) no matter how hard they work. In real life hard work may not be enough if the outcome doesn't fulfil some minimum requirements. Why should a bike race be different?

When comparing times to the "amateurs" who win the Etape, Maratona etc you need to look at how amateur they actually are. These are not guys who sit at a desk monday to friday and train in their spare time. Far from it, they are professional in all but name. Indeed the 2009 edition was won by the French national road champion Dimitri Champion!

 

[Hawkwood]

Some good points being made. It seems that whatever the sprinters do they can't win (sorry for the pun). It was normal for riders such as Cipollini to ride the first week or ten days of the Tour and then pull out and be on the beach, I'm sure many sprinters who struggled through the Alps last week would prefer that. Now we're castigating sprinters who do try to finish the Tour. Cav and others had to survive in terrain completely alien to them, while preserving enough reserves to make it through the following day's stage, and while keeping enough back to enable them to contest sprints effectively.

Finally Prudhomme and his team know what the public want and they set out this year to deliver it, job done.

 

[zigzag wanderer]

Yes but Cavendish still wins 5 stages. How is that fair on the climbers where the different type and difficulty of finishes doesn't favour any particular one. So FIVE stage wins, a jersey, outside the limits twice without having to kill himself like the climbers but get in a grupetto and bluff the Tour organisers. I say not fair and he should not have got the jersey. And I would have said the same for anyone else in his position.

I think Rojas must be insane. On Stage 18 he puts in a bit of effort, finishes inside the time limit, sees Cavendish deducted 20 points and moves within 15 points of the green jersey.

So Stage 19, what happens? On the first climb he sees the grupetto are making no effort to keep up with Contador and are planning another day off. A little bit of effort like yesterday will see him take the lead in the green jersey competition. What does he do? He takes the day off and rides in with the grupetto

Explain that one to me.

 

[woodie]

I think Rojas must be insane. On Stage 18 he puts in a bit of effort, finishes inside the time limit, sees Cavendish deducted 20 points and moves within 15 points of the green jersey.

So Stage 19, what happens? On the first climb he sees the grupetto are making no effort to keep up with Contador and are planning another day off. A little bit of effort like yesterday will see him take the lead in the green jersey competition. What does he do? He takes the day off and rides in with the grupetto

Explain that one to me.

It wasn't, and never is, a day off. The grupetto go flat chat on the flats and decents and as fast as they can go to stay together on the climbs. The grupetto rarely, if ever, has it easy. If anything it's the climbers and GC riders who get a day off on the flat stages

 

[icefire]

I think Rojas must be insane. On Stage 18 he puts in a bit of effort, finishes inside the time limit, sees Cavendish deducted 20 points and moves within 15 points of the green jersey.

So Stage 19, what happens? On the first climb he sees the grupetto are making no effort to keep up with Contador and are planning another day off. A little bit of effort like yesterday will see him take the lead in the green jersey competition. What does he do? He takes the day off and rides in with the grupetto

Explain that one to me.

He knew his only chance to get the points jersey was with Cav out of the race. Even if Rojas had made the time limit on stage 19 and the points penalty applied only to Cav, he still had to beat Cav in Paris to get the jersey. He just gave up.

 

[zigzag wanderer]

It wasn't, and never is, a day off. The grupetto go flat chat on the flats and decents and as fast as they can go to stay together on the climbs. The grupetto rarely, if ever, has it easy. If anything it's the climbers and GC riders who get a day off on the flat stages

Sorry, I thought the sarcasm was obvious. Clearly not.

 

[woodie]

Sorry, I thought the sarcasm was obvious. Clearly not.

My bad, but it didn't come across that way initially

 

[zigzag wanderer]

My bad, but it didn't come across that way initially

No worries. Sarcasm on the internet is a tricky thing. If it wasn't obvious it's my fault not yours.

 

[Winterfold]

this thread continues to fail in so many ways.

the main one being the idea that the grupetto are lounging around when they swan in just on or behind the time limit

I'd like to see any poster whining about cutoffs beat Cav and Thor's time up Ventoux in 2009.

there is a good clue in the Etape fastest time as to your likely chances

(the sarcasm in the Rojas post was just a little too subtle)

 

[Hawkwood]

this thread continues to fail in so many ways.

the main one being the idea that the grupetto are lounging around when they swan in just on or behind the time limit

I'd like to see any poster whining about cutoffs beat Cav and Thor's time up Ventoux in 2009.

there is a good clue in the Etape fastest time as to your likely chances

(the sarcasm in the Rojas post was just a little too subtle)

+1

The times I've heard people complain that sprinting is easy, all you have to do is follow the wheels and suddenly turn on the effort in the last 200 metres. Funny if it's that easy that top sprinters are so rare, surely all pros would see this as the easy route to winning races? It's horses for courses, and we need all types of riders to make an enjoyable Tour.