Vuelta a España Vuelta 2025, stage 21: Alalpardo - Madrid (108 km)

[Boehmand]

For the first half of the video, I thought the message was that "Eye of the Tiger" was the Danish anthem.

Yeah, we're currently on King Rocky the 10th

 

[Boehmand]

I didn't include race walking either.. My bad

Just wait until the Freedom Flotilla hears about Sail GP

 

[Unchained]

For the first half of the video, I thought the message was that "Eye of the Tiger" was the Danish anthem.

I concluded that race fans are angry with Cofids customer service and the racing teams lack of results!
They should have signed Peter Sagan..might have changed team trajectory and all this might have been avoided.. That's what I see..

Another difference.. at the end of the TDF..some pizza franchise handed out dozens and dozens of pizzas to riders and fans, just people standing around..
I am not a sociologist but in my informal scientific research pizza calms people don't, often makes them happy. My parents used pizza successfully for years to keep my brother and I from killing each other.. And into adulthood, pizza keeps me from rioting and committing crimes.
Ice cream and cheesecake, fresh donuts also can calm an angry mob, again I have limited research data but these methods work.

 

[Boehmand]

I concluded that race fans are angry with Cofids customer service and the racing teams lack of results!
They should have signed Peter Sagan..might have changed team trajectory and all this might have been avoided.. That's what I see..

Another difference.. at the end of the TDF..some pizza franchise handed out dozens and dozens of pizzas to riders and fans, just people standing around..
I am not a sociologist but in my informal scientific research pizza calms people don't, often makes them happy. My parents used pizza successfully for years to keep my brother and I from killing each other.. And into adulthood, pizza keeps me from rioting and committing crimes.
Ice cream and cheesecake, fresh donuts also can calm an angry mob, again I have limited research data but these methods work.

Now an ice cream cannon for riot police, that is an idea I could get behind

 

[noob]

For the first half of the video, I thought the message was that "Eye of the Tiger" was the Danish anthem.

Me too 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

 

[Escarabajo]

Pidcock joins the ranks of Cobo, Mosquera, Di Luca & Rujano.

Those are very strong words!

 

[ktel]

Quite the fiasco. However the riders made the most of things and had a fun filled podium presentation.

I was at the Montreal race and the small pockets of protestors made little to no impact to proceedings fortunately.

 

[Oldman]

I concluded that race fans are angry with Cofids customer service and the racing teams lack of results!
They should have signed Peter Sagan..might have changed team trajectory and all this might have been avoided.. That's what I see..

Another difference.. at the end of the TDF..some pizza franchise handed out dozens and dozens of pizzas to riders and fans, just people standing around..
I am not a sociologist but in my informal scientific research pizza calms people don't, often makes them happy. My parents used pizza successfully for years to keep my brother and I from killing each other.. And into adulthood, pizza keeps me from rioting and committing crimes.
Ice cream and cheesecake, fresh donuts also can calm an angry mob, again I have limited research data but these methods work.

Only missing ingredient from this well researched conflict reduction diet is: tequila. IMO it works wonders except for the random solar-flare of anger, bent on personal destruction! Pizza wouldn't stop that either but I like the strategy.

 

[dr.eve]

Many Spanish races have gone on this year and last without being disrupted by protests.

Protests against IPT because of Adams/sportswashing are not unique to Spain either. In fact, I'm watching a bunch of Palestinian flags waving all over the start/finish in Montreal too.

Many of those Spanish races that have gone on this year have in fact been in those regions that saw the most protests. IPT were not at Itzulia, admittedly, but they were at Catalunya.

Again, I think the problem sports-administration-wise is that the Vuelta cannot enforce the removal of the team once the race has started, but they are forced by the UCI's current rules to extend an invite to them due to the paradoxical "mandatory wildcard", so it is only if IPT voluntarily hand back their invite that they can avoid the issue. They knew it was going to cause problems, but they were more or less powerless to prevent it without opening themselves up to the risk of being sued by Adams/IPT, or sanctioned by the UCI.

The Vuelta, however, is a major institution in the sport with 70 years' continuous running, with earlier runs making it almost a century old, and which has been one of the pre-eminent stage races in world cycling for much of that run, and at the very least the last 40-45 years since its transition to the current format - and that has ASO as a major stakeholder. IPT is a middling Johnny-come-lately team which is 11 years old at any level and less than that at the highest level (and got relegated for utter mediocrity in the last WT cycle, although it should earn its place back thanks to some much more shrewd management decisions over the past three years than during the preceding period where they overspent on legacy deals to old riders based on what they were rather than what they are) - and is losing two of its best riders in the off-season. They are neither a team that is at the absolute pinnacle such that their absence will completely change the landscape of the sport, like might be the case for UAE or Visma, nor do they have the extent of history and tradition that their absence would be strongly felt due to being part of the furniture, like Quick Step, Lotto or Movistar. They're just a middle of the road team that could easily be replaced, and replacing them on the startlist would have solved all of the issues that this Vuelta saw in a heartbeat (but would have created new off-bike ones).

The race has been a complete mess, but if IPT aren't there, there are no problems. It's not like 2023 where you had the disastrous opening TTT and the overreactions to the weather resulting in the complete messes of timing and racing on stages 2 and 9 where the GC men were riding in like cyclotourists on perfectly safe roads with their times already having been set based on an arbitrary line drawn on soaking wet roads. That was a farce of the organisers' making. The only reason anything happened in 2025 was the organisers being forced to invite IPT.

This reasoning I disagree with completely. @ moderators I am not sure what to say regarding these issues so this far I have always kept away from it. But since moderators leave the above message standing somehow I think we may also reply to it.

Your reply is the equivalent of saying: "she should have put on less revealing clothes..."

It is not IPT who broke the rules, it is the protesters, their reason for doing so does not matter one bit.

 

[RedheadDane]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1967329099590025620

View: https://x.com/BenjiNaesen/status/1967329099590025620

Okay, but why does Madrid need both a mayor, and a president?
Or is that considered political?

 

[SHAD0W93]

Okay, but why does Madrid need both a mayor, and a president?
Or is that considered political?

This is what AI says:
the President of Madrid governs the entire autonomous Community of Madrid, while the Mayor of Madrid is responsible for the central city.

So sounds like if LA county had a president then the city of LA had a mayor.

 

[ice&fire]

This is what AI says:
the President of Madrid governs the entire autonomous Community of Madrid, while the Mayor of Madrid is responsible for the central city.

So sounds like if LA county had a president then the city of LA had a mayor.

Almost there but not quite. The homologous of the President of the Community of Madrid would be the Governor of the State of California.

 

[Netserk]

Almost there but not quite. The homologous of the President of the Community of Madrid would be the Governor of the State of California.

As Spain is a unitary state, the Guvernor of California is analogous to the president/prime minister of Spain.

 

[ice&fire]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1965794240291848254

I predict a flurry of activity in the UCI loller thread

 

[aruipksni]

 

[Roku]

As Spain is a unitary state, the Guvernor of California is analogous to the president/prime minister of Spain.

Maybe it's not the most accurate comparison, but it was good one indeed. Spain is divided into 17 Autonomous Communities, each one with its own competencies in terms of Education, Health, Security, and so on, with Madrid being one of them. It would be like this. State - Autonomous Community (17) - Towns / Villages.

Madrid is an Autonomous Community and also a Town. The Autonomous Community of Madrid, led by Ayuso, also comprehends smaller towns / villages with their own local mayors (which includes the city of Madrid, the city of Getafe, the city of Leganés, the city of Alcorcón... -you might know these cities thanks to their football teams

To sum up: We have the president (Sanchez), then the presidents of 17 Autonomous Communities (with Madrid -Ayuso- being one of them) and finally the mayors of each town / village, with Almeida being the Mayor of Madrid.

Maybe other countries like Italy and Germany are even better comparisons (I think Berlin is also a Lander as well as a city, so that might be the best example), but for clarification purposes the ice&fire example was a good one.

 

[ice&fire]

As Spain is a unitary state, the Guvernor of California is analogous to the president/prime minister of Spain.

Spain is a highly decentralised regional state often described as federal in all but name. So none of our analogies is fully accurate, but mine is closer for the layman

 

[Netserk]

Spain is a highly decentralised regional state often described as federal in all but name. So none of our analogies is fully accurate, but mine is closer for the layman

UK is also a unitary state and perhaps a better comparison with Spain?

 

[Barkintheeye]

This reasoning I disagree with completely. @ moderators I am not sure what to say regarding these issues so this far I have always kept away from it. But since moderators leave the above message standing somehow I think we may also reply to it.

Your reply is the equivalent of saying: "she should have put on less revealing clothes..."

It is not IPT who broke the rules, it is the protesters, their reason for doing so does not matter one bit.

Agree. Very dangerous precedent when not putting a stop to these things. What if a team is perceived negative by another group for some other reason or a single rider gets it wrong in an interview?

 

[ice&fire]

UK is also a unitary state and perhaps a better comparison with Spain?

Yes, but the analogy I was trying to amend was set with LA, so I chose not to change places for those familiar with that setting.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

This reasoning I disagree with completely. @ moderators I am not sure what to say regarding these issues so this far I have always kept away from it. But since moderators leave the above message standing somehow I think we may also reply to it.

Your reply is the equivalent of saying: "she should have put on less revealing clothes..."

It is not IPT who broke the rules, it is the protesters, their reason for doing so does not matter one bit.

People have a right to protest, and they exercised that right. Javier Guillén made it clear that he knew that there would be protests, but that he could not exclude IPT, which would have resolved the immediate problem of the protests at the race - but as I acknowledged, while that may have solved the immediate problems of the 2025 Vuelta, it would have created new and significant other problems in the longer term. Unipublic made their own problems for themselves with an organisational shambles in 2023, but this shambles was not their fault.

I did not say that it was right or fair, just that I think this was a problem created by the UCI's mandatory wildcard rule and that the UCI need to carry some of the can for not giving any kind of guidance or a solution until after the fact rather than hanging Unipublic out to dry, and I was countering the point being made that this was somehow a problem unique to Spanish races or Spanish race organisers precisely because of that mandatory wildcard rule.

However I also sense a very large amount of the opinions being shared to be, effectively "your right to protest should be invalidated because it inconveniences me."

I also do not appreciate being called a rape apologist for pointing out that the protests were against a specific team and not against the Vuelta itself. For one thing, the right to protest is enshrined in Spanish law. The right to commit sexual assault is not.

 

[Red Rick]

People have a right to protest, and they exercised that right. Javier Guillén made it clear that he knew that there would be protests, but that he could not exclude IPT, which would have resolved the immediate problem of the protests at the race - but as I acknowledged, while that may have solved the immediate problems of the 2025 Vuelta, it would have created new and significant other problems in the longer term. Unipublic made their own problems for themselves with an organisational shambles in 2023, but this shambles was not their fault.

I did not say that it was right or fair, just that I think this was a problem created by the UCI's mandatory wildcard rule and that the UCI need to carry some of the can for not giving any kind of guidance or a solution until after the fact rather than hanging Unipublic out to dry, and I was countering the point being made that this was somehow a problem unique to Spanish races or Spanish race organisers precisely because of that mandatory wildcard rule.

However I also sense a very large amount of the opinions being shared to be, effectively "your right to protest should be invalidated because it inconveniences me."

I also do not appreciate being called a rape apologist for pointing out that the protests were against a specific team and not against the Vuelta itself. For one thing, the right to protest is enshrined in Spanish law. The right to commit sexual assault is not.

A right to protest isn't invalidated because it's an inconvenience. It simply doesn't include rights to specific acts, such as vandalism and destruction of property just because it's a protest.

The problem isn't the people who just wish to wave a flag around and shout slogans. The problem is there's people there out to break ***.

If football hooligans pull the same *** nobody is arguing they have a right to do this

 

[Wyndbrook]

Those are very strong words!

Would be good for op to elaborate, I call it unneeded and unwelcome.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Would be good for op to elaborate, I call it unneeded and unwelcome.

While it looks like a rogue's gallery that draws extremely negative implications, if we take the reference to di Luca as meaning the 2009 Giro podium that he later lost, it is on the other hand just a list of recent Grand Tour podiums from wildcard teams (Rujano's are the only results of the four that have stood unchallenged as di Luca's and Cobo's have been annulled by later DQs, Mosquera's were originally removed but have since been reinstated).

At the moment we don't have enough to go on to know if this is going to be an anomaly or not, there's too much that has been unusual about this Vuelta, with three (although stage 21 wouldn't likely have had any impact) stages being stopped, one stage being shortened and a whole host of other stages being Unipuerto which has minimised the impact of his prior inconsistency that has fallen in his favour - the TT being shortened obviously helped but it should definitely be noted in the retelling that stage 11's early neutralisation probably harmed Pidcock as he was on fire that day.

Realistically this could be a breakout to become a genuine threat going forward, but when it's a first breakout and in such anomalous and unusual circumstances around the whole race, it's hard to know if he could be becoming a major all-round threat, or if this is a result which will be viewed in retrospect akin to Peter Velits or Jack Haig's similar results, as total outliers in their careers. We'll only know in a few years' time.

 

[CyclistAbi]

Congratulation to the overall winner Vingegaard, was more of a suck this time still proved that "team and Danish aligned" approach tends to work better in therms of GC racing, compared to the alternatives. Almeida with a great performance and UAE winning half of the stages, still, overall win is the ultimate goal and they failed to secure it this time. Was it only due to Almeida being less capable taking the overall then Vingegaard, or was there more to it. This is something for the team to figure out. Pidcock is the one that suprised me the most, he managed to hang on to the podium and if still riding for Ineos i don't feel that would be the case. Ayuso vindicated and off to new adventures. Protesters in the end with some achievements too.

Overall a good edition.