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

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Definatel deserved the penalty, the drafting was blatant, should have had his team mates on the bumper and him behind them
No doubt about it. I actually thought about exactly that when it happened: Is he going to use the cars to get back to the peloton again? And that was exactly what he did. Good call to penalize him. If you want to spend time changing your bike, then you'll also have to spend energy reducing the time gap you created.
 
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.



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).
Why not a yellow card instead?
 
No doubt about it. I actually thought about exactly that when it happened: Is he going to use the cars to get back to the peloton again? And that was exactly what he did. Good call to penalize him. If you want to spend time changing your bike, then you'll also have to spend energy reducing the time gap you created.
Bora created the problem by:
1. Deciding to do the bike change
2. Doing it so close to the start of the climb when T Rex was already ramping up the pace. Wouldn’t need the draft ( and wouldn’t be as noticeable if they did) if they did the change 5-10 kms earlier when guys were still taking rolling pee breaks..
 



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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.
tact is politeness. How is this even part of the conversation here.

Also - are you the guy that wrote the Jumbo Visma statement condemning Fred Wright's dangerous riding a few years back?
 
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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.
How are you comparing this with Sticky Bottles??????

This is more like a Vincenzo Nibali 2015 Vuelta sticky bottle.
 
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It sounds like you seem to have a problem with Bora & this is just a good pretext to beat up on them with the rule book, i.e. case in point:



That's like... just your opinion man.

What has Bora got to do with the situation? I call it as I see it. It would be better if you showed more balance in your posts, instead of your blindless devotion to Roglic
 
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I just rewatched the footage and Roglic spends a full minute(!) on camera(!!) drafting behind the team car. One can only guess for how long he was doing it off camera.

In that light, he was really lucky to only get a 20 second penalty.
Not to mention the benefit gained from the gearing for the climb. It was a risk that they didn’t need to take but did, thus they were justifiably punished. Also got lucky other teams thought he had a mechanical so let off the pace, if they do that again Movistar or someone else could up the pace and make it harder for Roglic to come back.
 
You see him jamming up the hill, bike set up for ultimate few kilometers easier ratios put him at an obvious advantage, it's only a grannie gear if you are a granny..
Roglic is fun to watch almost always looks like he has a plan and is following it.. Having the spare bike at the ready, having the legs and position to jump on a new bike is crafty and confidence, competent. When you have plan A,B,C...it just shows you are ready for good and bad..
Was the time penalty part of that plan?:)
 
Why was vlasov up the road going eyeballs out?
Scarcely eyeballs out for most of the stage, as UAE did all the pulling.
Available if Roglic needed him to drop back, casting a constant uncertainty over the other GC contenders that Roglic might attack early given that he had help available, and possibility of a first GT stage win.

Worthwhile objectives, and in this sport only a small proportion of motivations yield the desired results, but they are not invalid as motivations, or we would have no real sport.