Re: Re:
loge1884 said:
Dazed and Confused said:
Doha, the place is dreadful and the race was dull. Period.
few will disagree with that ... the question is rather, is Peter Sagan's title worth less than Cadel Evan's title in 2009? I am not contesting the race in 2009 being more spectacular, I am just saying no one will be saying Cadel Evans's title is worth 100 whilst Mario Cipollini's title in 2002 only 30 ... both have won a World Championship road race and that's it ... I don't disagree that the STYLE Cadel Evans won his WCRR was more memorable, but that does not affect the title ...
if you start judging the value of a win/title based on the course and the competition you would also have to put the events of the race into consideration ... so e.g. Vinos Olympic Gold would only be gold-plated instead of pure gold because the main contender and strongest man in the race (Cancellara) crashed - same for GVA's gold in Rio btw (with the crash of Nibali and Henao) ... and yes, Gilbert is not a great winner of Ronde, because if Sagan wouldn't have crashed, he and GVA would have caught Phil .... sorry, but those are pure and simply 'alternative facts' ....
This is a difficult one to judge though. I mean, in a
literal sense, all victories at the same race are equivalent, but in a figurative sense they aren't. The prize money is equivalent, the prestige is in theory the same (the title that you get to take with it - Monument winner, World champion, Tour stage winner, and so on). The actual literal title and prestige conveyed with the win are the same, yes (at least in theory; for races of this calibre, it's fine, but often races' levels change considerably. Wesemann's 5 Peace Race wins in what had become the equivalent of a fairly middling 2.1 stage race mean absolutely jack compared to Szurkowski's 4 wins in what was the biggest amateur race of all time in its heyday, for example; also races like Castilla y León were fought as strong prep races for the Ardennes and as early season closers by major climbers and GT racers 10-15 years ago, whereas now it's a 3-day race that draws some decidedly average fields).
But there is more outside of that in terms of the history of the sport. The visibility and profitability that come with various achievements and, importantly, the manner in which they were achieved. On paper, Bernard Hinault's win at Liège-Bastogne-Liège in 1980 is worth no more than Simon Gerrans' one in 2014, but do we think people will still be talking about many of the modern editions in forty years' time? Degenkolb's Roubaix is of equal value to Hayman's, but we'll be showing people the 2016 Roubaix in years to come as evidence of what a great sport this can be, while the 2015 edition will be a footnote in the race's illustrious history. That's not to belittle Degenkolb's achievement in winning it, because it's worth the same - but Hayman will benefit more in the long run when the race is a memory, because people will recall him as a champion much more easily and there will be more attention given to that particular race down the years than less memorable editions. Similarly, dozens of legendary sprinters have won on the Champs Elysées, but every year people talk about somebody "doing a Vino". We talk about the Duitama Worlds and their brutality to this day, 22 years later, but I could tell you next to nothing about several Worlds that happened in the intervening period. And as for Tour stages, the problem is that a good sprinter will gain you more opportunities to win than any other type of rider, but the majority of those wins are evanescent and forgettable, except in the statistical column. You get more exposure in the short term because numerically those stages value higher, but potentially not as much in the long term as somebody who wins less often but in stages that linger in the memory, and which get mentions in various books, videos and sources years down the line. Cavendish has won a LOT of races, but there's only a handful of those that I truly remember well - San Remo, København, the Tour stage to Aubenas in 2009, the Romandie stage where he flipped off the crowd in 2010, and the Champs that year after Renshaw was thrown out the race for headbutting and he proved he could forage on his own once and for all. There are people who've got several GT stages but who people will forget about in a few years' time, but one stage won in the right way at the right time, and you're set. And Paolo Bettini won a lot of high profile events, but Lombardia 2006 was the stuff of true legend and will be his defining moment (and rightly so), and is the greatest single performance in a monument of recent years.
Hell, you don't even have to win. TV Tommy Voeckler got a lot more that's remembered to this day out of his odyssey in the maillot jaune in 2004 than any stage winner that year other than Lance. It took me a few seconds to remember that Paolini won Gent-Wevelgem in 2015, but I remember Jürgen Roelandts becoming a king amongst men very vividly. Raymond Poulidor and his quest to win the Tour is the most obvious example of this of course, where the fact he didn't win became more famous than any single win would have been, while I honestly remember Laurent Jalabert sitting up for Bert Dietz more than any of the stages he actually won in that 1995 Vuelta. I can tell you all about the Mendrisio Worlds entirely from memory, from the early breakaway group including people like José Rujano after his year of exile in Venezuela and Purito being nudged up the road when he was still seen as Valverde's kid brother by Unzué, to the chase group of around 25-30 (and probably name half of them), to the way the finale played out with Samu and Valverde trying to move but Purito being the only one who could mark the moves, Cancellara pulling with them in his wheel to try to get across to the eventually decisive move, with Spain having the problem that they had Purito up the road after marking the decisive move with Evans and Kolobnev. I can give you vivid details about the final lap of Firenze, how Purito played every card right after he and Nibali had been on the move, Purito even attacking on the descent, and every moment of how the finale played out when El Imbatido fell asleep at the wheel because he was busy marking Nibali and Costa crept away on the horseshoe-shaped corner over the railway line, and on that long, sapping 1km straight you had Rodríguez, the miserable time triallist, cooked from his solo attempts, looking over his shoulder and seeing Costa coming and his teammate nowhere in sight, trying desperately to prevent the Portuguese from catching up to him but knowing he was doomed.
I can't even tell you who won silver and bronze behind Cavendish in 2011 or Sagan in 2015. So while the literal value of a win in the same event is equal, there's more to the status or legend of a victory than just that.
:lol:
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