Tour de France Tour de France 2021, Stage 3: Lorient - Pontivy, 183.9 km

[thiscocks]

That's why the video has subtitles

As he says most of the crashes are caused by rider mistakes. Blaming it all on the parcours is pointless. There will never be a perfect danger free route. If the first 3 or four crashes of the race handn't happened (by fan intervention and rider mistakes) then we wouldn't even be mentioning the route.

 

[thiscocks]

Okay... I'm confused. I'm pretty sure he's speaking French, and that there are in fact a lot of people who speak French and the subtitles available are in French, and everything is just FRENCH!

I concede I should have said only the French speak French!

 

[Lequack]

And I guess the Belgians sometimes.

 

[Volderke]

No one speaks French

He said something about:
Caleb Ewan fracture la clavicule
Coureur propose neutralisation. Calmer le temperament du peloton. Final extremement dangereux.
Disscussion avec l'organisation. ASO = d'accord. UCI = pas d'accord
Nervosite. Erreur de pilotage. risque. securite. grosse erreur accepter le parcours

So in English:
Caleb Ewan fractured the clavicula.
Coureurs proposed neutralisation, calm temperament peloton. Final extreme danger.
Discussion with organisation. ASO said OK, UCI said not-OK.
Nervous. Error of pilots. Risk. Safety. Big error to accept the parcours.

no difference at all

But what I remember:
Gilbert admitted that some crashes are due to errors / the peloton being nervous. But he pointed out that the riders knew the finale was dangerous, and that the CPA asked to ASO to neutralizethe race at 5K.
ASO (the race organiser) agreed, but the UCI-commissaires said no.

 

[RedheadDane]

And I guess the Belgians sometimes.

Canadians, also. Same with the Swiss. And then there are the odd people who've just... learned French.
So, nobody speaks French, except those who do.

 

[Jan the Man]

No you don’t

The point is to move it, to where the sprinter trains are not yet fighting hard, thereby decreasing the pressure of being in front significantly.

Most sprint trains switch on between 5K and 3K, depending on the route.

disagree - unless you were to switch the rule to say 20/25km from the finish- which would be ridiculous. The riders suggested 8km but the only crash which may have been avoided would be the penultimate one and even if the rule is in place it only kicks in if there is a crash it doesn’t stop the risk of a crash actually occurring as you may have found opportunistic teams attacking anyway to gain time.

 

[topt]

It doesn't make sense if the team leader has just had the crash that puts him out of the race. Which, for a good 5 minutes after Roglic's crash, was a distinct possibility. And at that stage, vanAert would have been another 3-4 km up the road, so to help Roglic chase, he probably would literally have had to go backwards on the road.

Thomas crashed at 142km to go, and chased on his own for a long time after. It was almost 10km before Ineos sent Castroviejo and vanBaarle back to him. The 2 situations do not compare.

Obviously getting vanAert into yellow for a couple of days before he gets dropped in the mountains isn't worth as much as Roglic winning the whole thing. But for a few kms after his crash, that couple of days of yellow was genuinely looking like all J-V would get out of this Tour, and vanAert WAS the team leader. Until they knew Roglic would start the next day, there was no sense in hampering vanAert's chances.


All that said, where I do agree with Horner is that Roglic really should not have been on his own fighting with the likes of Colbrelli for tarmac space there. He should have been glued to vanAert's wheel for the duration of that finale.

I think given the same chance Vingegaard would be higher in GC than Wout at the end but what can you do; JV is paying Wout more money than Roglic, kind of a shocker but it is what it is.

 

[gregrowlerson]

This would work I think

I can see Woods' great great grandfather disgustingly sitting in behind Valverde's great great....

Actually he's just sitting in behind Valverde.

 

[Pirazziattacks]

What has to change the most is the attitude with which riders and DS-s approach those first week flat stage finales. There's far too much nervousness in the Tour peloton, too much fear of stupid small time losses, which often leads to losing the race altogether in some stupid and completely avoidable crashes. Too often this is accepted as inevitability and most of the attention turned to ASO-s road planning even if out of all the crashes so far, only one can be attributed to roads being too twisty and narrow for a sprint stage.

Riders and specially DS-s need to take a hard look at themselves, and find ways to cut down this nervousness. Specially the GC teams have very little to gain and everything to lose in those flat stages first weeks. Maybe the 10k rule would help a bit, as the sprint leadouts and fight for the position are usually yet to get going at that point. But more important is to change the attitudes like that of a GC team having to fight for position with sprint teams in the lead up to the neutralisation line in order to keep their leaders safe.

Some changes in the rules may help, but I don't believe that those alone can do enough. The teams need to sit down and come to some kind of working agreement on how to approach those flat stages, if only for the Tour, as other races aren't usually this kind of demolition derby. They have the responsibility to do so for their own riders and the sport of cycling as well.

Crashes have always been part of this sport, but when the biggest race of the year turns regularly into a demolition derby due to excessive nervousness of the peloton, then that peloton has no excuse of doing nothing about that nervousness. Concentrating only on road planning issues is no solution.

As Red Rick said in post #424 the problem is that it's a zero sum game. What's the incentive for a team like Ineos to stop riding the way they do? They simply won't do it. Any Ineos domestique not wanting to ride at the front may as well tear up their contract on the spot. Although maybe if that abomination were to be somehow removed from the peloton...

Seriously though, any realistic solution has to come from cooperation between ASO, teams and rider representatives. That or ASO attempting to enforce a solution of some sort, something that would be about as likely as Froome winning the Tour.

 

[thiscocks]

Should UCI mandate collar bone protectors?

Full leathers?

 

[BlueRoads]

I think given the same chance Vingegaard would be higher in GC than Wout at the end but what can you do; JV is paying Wout more money than Roglic, kind of a shocker but it is what it is.

I don't know in which form Wout is, if after his surgery and pause he really doesn't have the legs to hang on in the mountains and he already knows it, then it really makes no sense to spare him the work for Roglic. However, at his best, he has a chance for a podium himself. And then it's not about the money.
Van Aert knew what his role would be when he signed his contract, but he's one of the best riders in the peloton, and to use him as a domestique instead of a leader himself only makes sense as long as that leader is competetive for the win.
One more thing, although I don't want to put blame on Roglic for the crash, it would probably not have happened had Roglic stayed on van Aert's wheel. So to "punish" van Aert for Roglic not holding his wheel would add something to the situation...

 

[simoni]

What has to change the most is the attitude with which riders and DS-s approach those first week flat stage finales. There's far too much nervousness in the Tour peloton, too much fear of stupid small time losses, which often leads to losing the race altogether in some stupid and completely avoidable crashes. Too often this is accepted as inevitability and most of the attention turned to ASO-s road planning even if out of all the crashes so far, only one can be attributed to roads being too twisty and narrow for a sprint stage.

Riders and specially DS-s need to take a hard look at themselves, and find ways to cut down this nervousness. Specially the GC teams have very little to gain and everything to lose in those flat stages first weeks. Maybe the 10k rule would help a bit, as the sprint leadouts and fight for the position are usually yet to get going at that point. But more important is to change the attitudes like that of a GC team having to fight for position with sprint teams in the lead up to the neutralisation line in order to keep their leaders safe.

Some changes in the rules may help, but I don't believe that those alone can do enough. The teams need to sit down and come to some kind of working agreement on how to approach those flat stages, if only for the Tour, as other races aren't usually this kind of demolition derby. They have the responsibility to do so for their own riders and the sport of cycling as well.

Crashes have always been part of this sport, but when the biggest race of the year turns regularly into a demolition derby due to excessive nervousness of the peloton, then that peloton has no excuse of doing nothing about that nervousness. Concentrating only on road planning issues is no solution.

We are venturing into some fairly interesting economic theory here, prisoners dilemma. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma

It will be extremely difficult to get this to work in practise because no one trusts anyone else and will assume that if you play the game "fairly" someone else will take advantage. In this context, no rational team will be able to assume that none of the other GC contenders will try to attack if they sit away from the front of the bunch. You can't blame them for that. Occasionally there might be a truce on a slippy descent or whatever but these never last longer than necessary.

Some crashes are always going to happen. They are all fundemantally down to rider error and the risks they are prepared to take but the route of the race will affect how frequent or severe crashes are. I think something has to change as every year the TDF gets more competitive, the prize gets bigger, the gaps get smaller and the risks riders are prepared to take get higher. The organisers have control of the route and need to be more careful about it in my opinion.

 

[Broccolidwarf]

disagree - unless you were to switch the rule to say 20/25km from the finish- which would be ridiculous. The riders suggested 8km but the only crash which may have been avoided would be the penultimate one and even if the rule is in place it only kicks in if there is a crash it doesn’t stop the risk of a crash actually occurring as you may have found opportunistic teams attacking anyway to gain time.

Crashes can happen all over a route, obviously.

The point here (still) is, that the dangerous part is when the sprint trains start working for position, at the same time as the GC teams want to be up front.

It's the convergence of those 2 forces that creates most the problems - GC teams and sprinter teams, all wanting the front, at the same time.

That effect starts - at the earliest - at 10K (usually later), not at all at 20/25K as you suggest.

Also, as said numerous times now, I am not advocating moving the current "safe zone", I am advocating changing how it works entirely.

Feel free to read my previous posts on the subject.

 

[gregrowlerson]

Sounds like a great title for a mysterious movie:

The Rider In The White Helmet

 

[Broccolidwarf]

I concede I should have said only the French speak French!

And the people in:

Canada
Belgium
Switzerland
Congo
Cote d'Ivoire
Madagascar
Cameroon
Burkina Faso
Niger
Mali
Senegal
Haiti
Benin

- and all the people that had French in school, in all the other countries.

But other than that - NOBODY speaks French

 

[gregrowlerson]

Anyway, this is all pretty hard to keep up with.

Can someone just let me know who ended up winning this big bout between Primoz Roglic and Sonny Liston?

 

[topt]

I don't know in which form Wout is, if after his surgery and pause he really doesn't have the legs to hang on in the mountains and he already knows it, then it really makes no sense to spare him the work for Roglic. However, at his best, he has a chance for a podium himself. And then it's not about the money.
Van Aert knew what his role would be when he signed his contract, but he's one of the best riders in the peloton, and to use him as a domestique instead of a leader himself only makes sense as long as that leader is competetive for the win.
One more thing, although I don't want to put blame on Roglic for the crash, it would probably not have happened had Roglic stayed on van Aert's wheel. So to "punish" van Aert for Roglic not holding his wheel would add something to the situation...

I dont belive that, I mean it could happen in a really weak tour like 2019, other than that I just dont see it.
You think he deliberately lost Wouts wheel... even Pogacar said it was crazy hard to keep the team together cause of narrow roads, also I dont understand how they were on completely different sides of the peloton

 

[Bolder]

Canadians, also. Same with the Swiss. And then there are the odd people who've just... learned French.
So, nobody speaks French, except those who do.

Most of the Sahel and Maghreb too...

 

[gregrowlerson]

A prologue imo doesn't solve anything. The next day it's still the same, riders are wanting the win.

Let's ban winning then.

Or if you can still win, then all you can win is an asterisk belt.

 

[BlueRoads]

By the way, thankfully Gilbert speaks French in the most understandable way I can imagine.

 

[CyclistAbi]

Roglič decided to proceed with the invasion of France. In my opinion it is a stupid decision but i can't watch my king die alone on the battlefield.

*** Tour go Rogla!

 

[Broccolidwarf]

oh you know,it just doesnt fit the agenda

You are the one claiming there is an agenda in the first place dude.

Basically you are making up an agenda - to confirm a made up intent of an action - to confirm a made up intent of a gesture.

It's a circular argument devoid of actual facts.

It's how mountains are made out of molehills.

 

[yaco]

I love when posters who have not watched a minute of the stage can provide informed opinions - It adds nothing to the discussion.

 

[Broccolidwarf]

I love when posters who have not watched a minute of the stage can provide informed opinions - It adds nothing to the discussion.

Who didn't watch?

 

[gregrowlerson]

I don't want to imagine Ala's swerving balls. Stop that picture.

And then he celebrates with something else going up