Dewulf said:
He goes on to talk about how they like easy days, they love pee breaks (!)....and reading further into that i think it's not hard to say they also like only riding as hard as their ds tells them to, and they definitely don't want to have to chase breakaways anymore than necessary...so sorry guys, but your radios need to go, and we ask tour directors to cut the course length if it's too hard, but we don't want to watch a bunch of guys on auto-pilot.
Oh and 'breakaways suck'? This is why Gilbert and Fabian are legends whilst others are mere mortals. Fer crissake, GREIPEL was in a breakaway AND WON.....methinks TJ is protesting like a typical "please make it easy for me" gen Y brat.
And he wants someone with experience making these decisions? Ha, i agree "those old men" are often out of line, but they have all raced, and they've raced without radios. They know what it's like, they CAN compare races with and without radio, can TJ do that? Was he even old enough to get a thrill out of watching races without radio, does he know what that's like? I guess not.
My apologies for not having posted a link to the original article I referenced.
It's painful to read how some can berate him for expressing his opinion. One might not agree with all he states but there are just too many bench experts being too harsh. One interesting feeling I take from this most recent blog is the honest way in which he states how glad he is for the easier days and the breaks throughout. Rather than beat his chest and glamorize or glorify what he does, he appears to be someone that's not too macho to describe how difficult the days can be and the seemingly little things we don't often hear about in the pro peloton that brings relief.
I'm not sure if your mentioning his comments regarding the lulls in racing and pee breaks as being a *** but how many 35 hour weeks have you put in on a bike, much less at race pace? Now multiply that for 3 weeks in a row. I would assume the statistical probability of that is fairly low- so how would you know how difficult it is what these guys are doing? Not that making the stages shorter or the stage races easier would eradicate doping but it might go a bit towards reducing the problem.
I also feel that it's exactly this mentality of "get to work and ride and stop whining because we can sit here in our UCI referee car or office and dictate how far and how long you must ride and race to serve the spectacle" that pushes the riders beyond reasonable physical limits- DAY after DAY. Oh.. but wait, you must just suffer because we did it in our day, only twice as far and with glass shards in our shorts. If I had a dollar for every time I've heard an old timer tell me how many hours a day they've spent on a bike with only half a hard baguette to eat all day and a glass of water to drink, I'd be rich.
Greipel? He is one of the most protected riders in the peloton and saved for the sprints. How many other races can you cite where he has been in a break and worked much less won? Very few if my recollection serves me right. He has not had much luck lately in the last several races winning bunch sprints so perhaps he thought he would try something different. Good on him. But using him, Gilbert, and Cancellera as examples of breakaways is in my opinion, quite the lack of understanding of how those races unfold. Gilbert and Fabian are the type of riders who attack deep into a race and only at points where there has been a lot of attrition and racing in the legs and at key locations such as a small berg late in a race in a classic. Such are points in the race where no matter what a team or other riders do, there's just not enough horsepower left to chase or catch on. That's not a breakaway in my book.
I will agree that not having a DS telling a team what to do and exactly how many kph they need to ride per km to catch a break 3 km from the finish does make for more successful breakaways and perhaps more exciting racing. But I also believe that the guys in the races probably have a more experienced perspective and more reasons for than against and that fact alone leads me to believe that the riders are the ones who should decide whether they should have them.
Please inform me as to the last race Pat McQuaide participated in with a race radio (as you claim he CAN compare) since the best I can find was that he was a pro for only 2 years and I'm not seeing that race radios were used in racing in 1979 around the time he last competed. While you're at it, please inform me as to the races TJ competed in on the US National team or prior where he did use race radios, since your implication is he "can't" compare.
Here's an errand thought that's a little off topic but relates to the UCI and their immense experience. Imagine what our bikes or components would look like if the good ole boys who are so wise at the UCI were to get out of the stone ages. The standard bike/frame we might ride everyday might look like the classic Lotus bike rather than a double diamond frame that the regulations stipulate. Bars, wheel design, literally the bicycle as we know it, even down to the commuter you see locked up at the local train station is essentially being held hostage to the current UCI regulations and a frame design that is essentially 100 years old. Hard to imagine that isn't it?
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