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Vuelta a España Vuelta a España 2024, stage 15: Infiesto - Cuitu Negru, 142.9k

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Every Grand Tour has a nice surprise reserved and in this year's Vuelta that rider is Pablo Castrillo. Today he beat two riders with a much more impressive palmares and he is the unlike Spanish hero in their home race.

Regarding the GC fight it ended up being a bit of a let down. These stages with super steep finishes often result in this sadly.

Mas return to his usual Vuelta level and Roglič suffered a bit, I think that Lipowitz pace was so high that it ended up hurting his leader. O'Connor defended himself better but still lost some valuable seconds, Carapaz did really well too unlike Landa who was kind of disappointing after putting his team to work during most of the stage. Skjelmose finishes this week in a very high note, probably benefitting from having ridden no Grand Tour this season and I think he finish in the top5 overall.
 
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Dictionary amendment No 24, 374

Tact: Complicity with rule-breaking

If the rules says you cant do a specific thing, it should be completely irrelevant How the race situation is. it’s the action that is relevant, not how a penalty potentially intervene with the results.

I'll play ball for a second but tact refers to context. If Rog had been caught in a split & drafted to get back on, then fine, yes. But that's not what happened. It's not the first time this season there's been an overly zealous decision by the commissaires either. Josh Tarling's own misadventure in Paris-Roubaix springs to mind.

I mean look, everyone can hide behind the almighty 'rule book' as much as they want but we all know it's enforced (at best) inconsistently & mostly not at all.

So yeah, great job 'commissaires' *clap clap here's your applause*... although I'd hazard a guess on Tuesday everything will be back to business as usual & no one will get punished for the usual 'transgressions' which occur at every point of a normal road race stage in cycling.
 
So is it your contention that rules should never be applied at all, or that they should only be applied when they will have no consequence?

They should be applied consistently across the board or not at all. Especially for something so trivial which didn't violate the fairness of proceedings.

But don't mess with GC one week from Madrid on a technicality. Not when (as I've said a billion times already) sticky bottles, irregular behavior in the bunch and all that cr*p goes completely unpunished everywhere.

Absolutely no one applauding this decision this evening can say with a straight face the rules are enforced equally every day in this Grand Tour no matter the rider or the infringement. It just doesn't happen.
 
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I'll play ball for a second but tact refers to context. If Rog had been caught in a split & drafted to get back on, then fine, yes. But that's not what happened. It's not the first time this season there's been an overly zealous decision by the commissaires either. Josh Tarling's own misadventure in Paris-Roubaix springs to mind.

I mean look, everyone can hide behind the almighty 'rule book' as much as they want but we all know it's enforced (at best) inconsistently & mostly not at all.

So yeah, great job 'commissaires' *clap clap here's your applause*... although I'd hazard a guess on Tuesday everything will be back to business as usual & no one will get punished for the usual 'transgressions' which occur at every point of a normal road race stage in cycling.

The context is that Roglic made a strategic CHOICE to switch bikes so he could have an advantage later on. The downside of a bikechange is that you need to get back to the peloton, he drafted back behind his own team car, negating that downside. So that's the context. What's next? A TT where some riders change bikes on purpose and they just take the lost time back while drafting?

Also the UCI has been giving out 20s penalty's for drafting pretty often this year, this was so blatant that you just knew he was gonna gat one.
 
Especially for something so trivial which didn't violate the fairness of proceedings.
So it is fair to travel in the shelter of a car? Will you be asking the UCI to re-instate Eekhoff's 2019 U23 World title?

You still haven't addressed the question of why he would take a draft from the car if he didn't think it would give him any advantage...


Absolutely no one applauding this decision this evening can say with a straight face the rules are enforced equally every day in this Grand Tour no matter the rider or the infringement. It just doesn't happen.
Indeed, inconsistency is a problem. But when rule breaking is clearly happening, and no mitigating circumstances are present, there is more onus on officials to explain why they did not apply the rules than on why they did.

Can you cite any occasions when you have been similarly incensed about rules being applied to other riders, or this about being offended on behalf of a preferred rider?
 
The context is that Roglic made a strategic CHOICE to switch bikes so he could have an advantage later on. The downside of a bikechange is that you need to get back to the peloton, he drafted back behind his own team car, negating that downside. So that's the context. What's next? A TT where some riders change bikes on purpose and they just take the lost time back while drafting?

Also the UCI has been giving out 20s penalty's for drafting pretty often this year, this was so blatant that you just knew he was gonna gat one.
He deserved the penalty, but I wish that the race judges were more consistent with drafting penalties.
 
So it is fair to travel in the shelter of a car? Will you be asking the UCI to re-instate Eekhoff's 2019 U23 World title?

You still haven't addressed the question of why he would take a draft from the car if he didn't think it would give him any advantage...



Indeed, inconsistency is a problem. But when rule breaking is clearly happening, and no mitigating circumstances are present, there is more onus on officials to explain why they did not apply the rules than on why they did.

Can you cite any occasions when you have been similarly incensed about rules being applied to other riders, or this about being offended on behalf of a preferred rider?

This is a fan forum, not the UN. I don't have to answer such questions regarding bias versus non bias. Of course I'm a Rog fan. I mean hello? Meanwhile can you guarentee everyone happy right now with the commissaire decision is an impartial bystander who only cares about "ze rules"? I don't think so.

Bias cuts both way.

The context is that Roglic made a strategic CHOICE to switch bikes so he could have an advantage later on. The downside of a bikechange is that you need to get back to the peloton, he drafted back behind his own team car, negating that downside. So that's the context. What's next? A TT where some riders change bikes on purpose and they just take the lost time back while drafting?

They were coming back into the peloton with or without the car draft. That's the context. He swapped bikes immediately after a nature break.

At most they made a mistake using the car to help him back in, especially considering the punishment for their 'crime'.

But let's not pretend the car draft was decisive. It wasn't. Without the car he was still getting right back into his spot in the bunch without sticking his nose in the wind on the wheels of his teammates (aka teammates who dropped as soon as the climb got serious anyway so they were of no further use in the stage & did not influence anything).