Hitchey said:
It's painful to read how some can berate him for expressing his opinion.
...ah but beration is a fact of life when people express opinions that reveal their lack of admirable qualities (however small they are). Tho hey, I love the fact he’s being open...i wish more of the radio-control freaks would be like that.
Hitchey said:
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.
*sigh* it’s not about his whether i’ve done what he’s done, if we were going to adopt that as a requirement for having an opinion then this forum wouldn’t exist.
And I’m sure almost all the riders (even the toughest ones) like it when they get a bit of a breather. But I’ve never seen any of them carrying on about how much they love getting a break, and the fact that TJ does in his blog, really ties in with his pro-radio stance, because without radios teams with sprinters like his will have to do a lot more work. So yes, I think he’s soft compared to a lot of others, and his attitude pretty much matches an attitude common in his age and generation.
Hitchey said:
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.
Like i said, i have no problem in seeing shorter stages if that’s what it takes for TJ & co to be more active in the race. BUT would that just lead to sprinters’ teams having enough energy to shut down every single break? Somehow i think that would be the only outcome. There need to be days for roulers and breakaway specialists to have a crack and a real chance at winning, so it’s not necessarily more mountains we need – rather, it’s less control from dominant teams.
Hitchey said:
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.
Not sure what planet you were on when you wrote this paragraph...logic101 says the points i made are:
- If Greipel can get in a successful breakaway JUST ONCE (as he did this week) then anyone almost can do it (so TJ is having a whinge)
- Fab and Gilbert watch and attack when they think they’ve got more juice and/or others aren’t watching.....nothing stopping TJ doing the same (tho not for the same target i’d wager)...
- breakaways are part of the sport, have always been and always will be, and TJ wants to complain about this?? Lol. Since you don’t think Canc and Gilbert are breakaway riders (rofl), perhaps I can recommend someone like Sylvain Chavanel to give TJ some lessons.
+ yes we know on any given day many small breaks are attempted and will fail until the right combination of riders are found at the right time...so no, it’s not easy. And it’s not meant to be easy, or why would we bother to care? But why is TJ complaining about this anyway? Isn’t he a TTer who can climb....there’s a different path for him than worrying about breakaways....(insert appropriate TJ blog beration here now)
Hitchey said:
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.
Well, thanks for understanding the point about DS’s turning their riders into robotic chess pieces, that is encouraging. But whilst the riders have experience of riding these races and i don’t, that doesn’t mean i can’t see what’s happening behind the scenes.
Here’s an analogy – you probably haven’t driven a taxi, but you would tell a taxi driver to slow down if he was driving too fast wouldn’t you? Even if you didn’t have a basic motor vehicle license, you’d compare his crazy driving to your dad’s steady driving and tell him you weren’t comfortable, yes? It’s the same thing with the radios...sure one group of people are doing this sport and we’re not (at that level), but that doesn’t mean our opinions are less valid, especially when the riders have other potential biases.
Hitchey said:
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.
Last but not least, it’s back to logic101. Pat and the boys have raced back in the days when there were no radios. And they remember for example, roughly what chance a breakaway had of succeeding. They remember this not just from racing btw, but also from watching, as does any cycling fan who’s followed the sport for that long. So they can compare how races turned out then, to how races turn out now. They don’t need to be in the peleton now to do this! Can you imagine if every sporting body adopted a policy like that? “Who are we playing this week? The Oldies?
”
TJ on the other hand, is probably young enough that he hasn’t seen or doesn’t remember watching pro races without radio...and that is why he cannot compare.
And on the flip-side, no i don’t believe the AIGCP should have any decision making power. They have a voice, and that is enough. If they need to strike over something like wages, i say more power to them (and certainly that was necessary in the past when domestiques were getting paid crackers). But they’re now crying out “radios for safety” and yet the riders barely responded to the CPA surveys in 08 and 09 (and the result was 50-50), and they’re not asking for a race neutral safety radio...so read between the lines mate, they have vested interests and are not the people to be making this decision.
If you have any further problems with what i’ve said, please, just go read Michael Barry’s blog pieces on the effect radios have had (
http://velonews.competitor.com/2009...hael-barrys-diary-the-peloton-unplugged_98897) (
http://velonews.competitor.com/2009/10/rider-diaries/michael-barrys-diary-radio-ga-ga_99071) , or think about the fact that riders like Gilbert are happy to see them go. And Barry btw, is still racing now, but was actually riding for Johan when he started using them to dominate the sport. So if ANYONE can compare....
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