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Tony Martin cries About the DL Prologue

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Jun 26, 2012
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TONY MARTIN

more dangerous

Considering the chance to crash it is safer. Yes, fans might be a problem, but from what I saw, they were well behaved. Certainly Alpe d'Huez or some other mountains during the Tour are worse. Maybe if it were a Tour prologue, organizers should take better precautions regarding fans.

TONY MARTIN

But this course was simply excessive. Some 15 riders would be competitive on this profile and could ride for the win. The rest had to fight to survive. If the 25 percent time limit had been applied, as is usual in a time trial, then the tour would already be over for 30 riders, because they would have finished outside the time limit.

Unlike in the flat prologues, where half of the peloton is competitive for the win...
And if time limit was applied, maybe some riders would ride harder to actually catch it, although I don't deny it would be hard for them. I do believe some sprinters took it a bit easier, since they have a chance to win today.

And for the end I would like to add they have the option of 34x32 (at least those on Shimano, but I think it is the same for SRAM in Campagnolo), which at the cadence of 60 rpm would make you go 8 km/h, so maybe except for those 2 minutes or whatever it took them to do that steep sections, no way they would be undergeared.
 
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PremierAndrew said:
So a mountain TT is boring to watch but a flat TT isn't?

Let's kick them both out of cycling, I wonder how Mr Martin feels about that.

That was my thought; what prologue is exciting to watch? For that matter, what TT is exciting to watch?

How about a downhill ITT? Or better yet, MTT up in the AM, MTT down in the PM!
 
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hrotha said:
This prologue is perfectly fine by itself, but it does come against the backdrop of the constant reduction of time-trialing stages and kilometers, which I imagine is the real problem.

This will continue until race organisers and broadcasters find a better way to cover time trials for TV audiences. At the moment it's simply better TV to have two guys neck and neck on a mountain stage, looking into each others eyes for weakness, attacking and covering attacks, surrounded by fans, than the same two riders doing a pan flat 50km TT three minutes apart on empty roads with two measly time checks along the way. They really need to learn from sports like skiing and F1 and have more immediate information about how the riders are doing relative to each other.
 
Jul 16, 2010
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I wish they got rid of flat stages instead, mass sprints are by far the most dangerous thing in cycling. At least put a hill in the final to stretch the peloton out.
 
Specifically there's Simulcam which you can use to make it look like two skiers are racing head to head. A 2 minute downhill skiing run is always going to be way more spectacular than a flat time trial though.
 
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vedrafjord said:
This will continue until race organisers and broadcasters find a better way to cover time trials for TV audiences. At the moment it's simply better TV to have two guys neck and neck on a mountain stage, looking into each others eyes for weakness, attacking and covering attacks, surrounded by fans, than the same two riders doing a pan flat 50km TT three minutes apart on empty roads with two measly time checks along the way. They really need to learn from sports like skiing and F1 and have more immediate information about how the riders are doing relative to each other.

There should indeed be more intermediate split points. In cross country skiing 15 km individual race usually has 8 split points and it takes about 35-40 minutes. Usually only 3 of them is shown in TV (even that is usually more than in cycling), but you can follow all in live timing. Obviously it is easier as with 5 km lap they need 2 in the course and 1 in finish area, but there should be at least one in every 8-10 minutes in cycling too. And they should be shown more. I don't understand how it is so hard to show them with 2-3 minutes intervals when it worked well in skiing with 30 second intervals (nowadays the favourites usually come with 1 minute intervals).

Making flat TT's more regular might also make them more exciting as hopefully more riders would be targeting for them.

But whining for one uphill prologue is quite silly.
 
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BigMac said:
More intermediate splits would also kill much of the suspense.
Yeah, that's also the main reason why I dislike the Idea of having a gps in ITTs, it kills a bit of suspension.
Tony is a whiner, but we need more flat ITTs, just replace 1 or 2 boring, plain flat sprint stages with decent length TTs, more stages for the specialists and decent time gaps that will force the climbers to attack in the mountains.
 
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BigMac said:
More intermediate splits would also kill much of the suspense.

I don't think so. I like to see how race evolves and a decent amount of intermediate points just add more suspense points. Obviously no amount of split points make a dull race to interesting one, but in interesting races, where the gaps grow and then get smaller again and positions are switched, good amount of split points definitely add suspense for me. (That's why I miss 50 km individual starts in skiing as they often had a few twists with skiers cracking and some speeding up/keeping their speed later.)
 
Jul 16, 2010
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Angliru said:
Is there a reason he chose to ride the Dauphine instead of Tour de Suisse? It seems the latter would be more to his liking and all of the routes were available beforehand for him to have made that decision.

Dauphiné is the best way to get into top shape for the Tour, or that seems to be the consensus of the peloton at least. The extra week rest might be important for him. He's a bit of a whiner off the bike, but he has some epic wins in his career, so I let it slide.
 

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