Zinoviev Letter said:
ciranda said:
Zinoviev Letter said:
ciranda said:
Lol at the outrage for Brajkovic. He has contacts, good for him. And he was a great cyclist once. He has as much a legitimate place in a good team as ~30 or more now wt riders. The discussion is similar to when Lotto signed Tomasz Marczynski and a number of people thought it was super strange. Shows that it's now established fact that to get a place in a WT team riders have to be a lot better if they are not from some particular countries. And if you already think like that it can seem weird that teams would take (established quality) cyclists like Brajkovic and Marczynski.
There's no outrage. I'm surprised and entertained by Brajkovic's return to the world tour after a couple of unimpressive years in the US, but if I was going to get outraged about the Bahraini hereditary dictatorship's involvement in cycling, I wouldn't focus on the hiring of a clapped out Brajkovic. I just find it bizarre that a guy who couldn't hold down a WT contract two years ago, when he actually had impressive results within recent memory, can get a WT contract after two years of anonymity. UHC is a place where multiple out of favour riders have gone to show that they still have it and then have got back to the WT. It's amusing to see a guy who went there for that reason and then showed that he didn't still have it get a contract.
Marczynski won eight races the year before Lotto hired him. Brajkovic last won anything four years ago. It's not some inexplicable bias against Slovenes to see a difference.
My point was the reaction was surprise and incredulousness also w Marczynski.
Yes and my point was that your conviction that people here are biased against riders from some countries and don't think that Poles or Slovenes can cycle is weird and delusional.
Ok if you say so but then why single out Janez Brajkovic as a hard to understand signing? I can think of many that are more difficult to explain from this year and past years. I could come up with such a list, maybe others could too.
I mean is Brajkovic likely to be as good support as Stetina who we discussed last time around? Yes.
The old discussion was about Jan Hirt and why big teams are not all over him. One of the best u23s in the last two years, Michal Schlegel, also don't have interest from big teams but he should have if you look at results.
It is boring to say but here it is again: if these guys (others too) had been from any *******-speaking nation they would have multiple offers. I agree the same goes for Belgium, Netherlands, France, Italy, Spain, Germany. Now is this a problem? Some might think no but I do because this structure means a lot of people with talent never get chances while lesser talented do. That reflects real life-life of course. In cycling it means less diversity, I think, and in addition the growth of *****centric cycling seem to contribute to make the sport more boring because it seems that 90 percent of riders from these countries represent a wait for the sprint/last mountain/time trial type cycling.
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