Rackham, I never get how an intelligent person like you can be so extremely biased. For you Roglic is the center of the world and you look through the lense of this on everything. In part I can understand you, it must suck immensely, Roglic is such a strong rider and yet he can't show that in the Tour. But you are losing all perspective. For example Roglic himself crashed on the cobbles. He simply crashes quite a lot. It wasn't Wout's mistake or the Jumbos'. Yes, I was also astonished how they left him behind on the cobbles, but in the end he simply hasn't shown that he can win a Tour and I guess Vingegaard's numbers in training are equally good.
In the end it is tough to support a rider who crashes that much unconditionally, if you have other options, too. Time will tell more about how smart Jumbo's decisions were.
But at least a lot of it is understandable, don't look born out of ill will, but simply the result of assessment of chances - and Roglic's own crashes.
Thanks for the
polite post so I'll give you a condensed polite response which summarizes my own position: Any perceived increased bias on my behalf is quite likely simply a biproduct of Roglic's situation in this TdF since the start & a pushback against the tide which is against him now & was even against him in the weeks before the TdF started (the Dauphiné really set off the "Roglic is finished" narrative). It's like the Ozymandias king of kings poem, i.e. "look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
In the poem the quote is an ironic take on a former great king whose empire has crumbled. Well, look at Roglic: 64 career wins, 3 Grand Tours, Olympic Gold medal & lots other other glories. And guess what? It's all for nothing in this TdF. Wout van Aert is Jumbo's designated Netflix superstar (ironically he has the same number of monument wins as Roglic & no Grand Tours, obviously) whilst Jonas Vingegaard is presented as the GT star... when he's won nothing of note.
Roglic got shafted on his own terrain (a GT) & in his dream objective by a team which was nowhere a few years ago before he started compiling victories for fun. He'd earned the right to be GT leader in the TdF & focus of the team on the road, where it matters. For example if Jumbo is riding Flanders & they leave WvA to rot whilst supporting Laporte, there would be a Belgian stampede all the way to Jumbo's headquarters. Well, right now I'm a one man stampede for Rogla. I'll probably calm down in a few days (especially if he DNF's) & forget this ridiculous TdF ever happened. Like the last one & one before. Oh & the one before that as well.
In the end, it's just sport & it's just cycling. As for the 'crashes', well that's another topic altogether but Rog has only had one major crash in recent times which was his own fault (the no risk no glory slide in the Vuelta last year). Everything else has been through bad team support or disgusting misfortune to a tragicomic level.
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