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Wiggins/ Froome - is it just a grudge?

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Aug 3, 2009
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Maybe I am overly Machiavellian in my outlook but I wonder if some of you here aren't missing the bigger picture regarding sponsorship, media exposure and the value of controversy to selling newspapers/airtime? Sky is 49% owned by News International. News International is is wholly owned by News Corp. News Corp is the most influential, manipulative and corrupt media organisation that has ever existed it the English speaking world (and it's tendrils extend far beyond).

Certainly there was at least one and possibly two stages last year where Froome could have been allowed to go for the stage win without having any noticeable effect on the GC and probably should have been given his head to do so. This caused Michelle Cound to whip up a twitter storm and suddenly the News Corp. controversy magnet is in full force.

Given that Team Sky was largely started as a vanity project for James Murdoch and by the 2012 TdF he was heavily embattled by the Leverson Inquiry (his own sister, Elisabeth, describing him as having ruined the family business), he saw a sliver of light. Whip up the controversy, create interest in the sport, sell more papers & airtime and above all save some reputation within the family that Tom Watson MP described as mafia-like.

I don't think Wiggins will ride the Tour this year (unless he crashes out of the Giro very early) and I don't think it has ever been the intention of anyone at Team Sky, BSkyB, News International or News Corp. that he should. I do think however there has been a brilliant artificial controversy created for media consumption that has superbly served the purpose of giving the Sky brand name massive exposure, both in and beyond it's key target markets.

I suspect Wiggins will go from the Giro to the Vuelta and the World TT champs, having announced sometime in June that he is too fatigued to help Froome at the Tour.

Of course I might be wrong. I might be very wide of the mark. As I say, Machiavellian.
 
Waterloo Sunrise said:
TT wattage calculations are even more stupid than mountain ones - do the clinic freaks have access to Wiggin's CDA in any given wind condition, or do they take off the shelf assumptions which clearly won't reflect an autistically perfected position. I've seen silly 7W/Kilo numbers from this sort of rubbish - if that was the case Froome wouldn't even be arguing back about Wiggin's Tour leadership.
Whether or not these calculations take into account the on bike position is irrelevant to this discussion about whether Wiggins can beat top form Martin in a tt because even if they do not then the numbers remain good reflections of how strong the overall tt performance was on the day.
 
Winterfold said:
Sorry I just don't buy that - that's a big gap and there is no basis for it on what we saw in their performances

The group of F. Schleck / Evans / TJVG ended up ~1'30" behind the group of Nibali / Pinot group in that stage. That was the group that Wiggins and Froome were with before Froome dragged Wiggins up to Nibali's group. As we have seen, the effort of following Froome's wheel burnt Wiggins out, so Wiggins could not have made the bridge on his own. So if Froome had bridged the gap on his own and left Wiggins behind, Wiggins would have came in together with the Evans group. And that's not taking into account the time Froome would have put into the Nibali's group being free to attack them.
 
The Hitch said:
Whether or not these calculations take into account the on bike position is irrelevant to this discussion about whether Wiggins can beat top form Martin in a tt because even if they do not then the numbers remain good reflections of how strong the overall tt performance was on the day.

Err no, the different CDA of the two riders is very clearly vital to whether one can beat the other. If you start from the assumption they're both pushing the same amount of air when Martin is clearly pushing more, then it's no surprise when the calculations then show Wiggins with a much higher (and laughable in general) wattage figure.
 
May 26, 2009
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movingtarget said:
On the steep stuff yes, not on the false flats and gentler gradients.

Ever noticed that even when walking you have advantage of draft?

Yes, the slower it goes, the less advanatgeous it becomes, but it's still important. Consider the differences between the top are somtimes just a few % and you realize that drafting is incredibly important in the mountains, even at the 20% passages.
 
May 26, 2009
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Waterloo Sunrise said:
Err no, the different CDA of the two riders is very clearly vital to whether one can beat the other. If you start from the assumption they're both pushing the same amount of air when Martin is clearly pushing more, then it's no surprise when the calculations then show Wiggins with a much higher (and laughable in general) wattage figure.

Not disagreeing with you here, but Hitch is a inaccurate in describing the anlysis. What was demonstarted was that even if the wattages were off, the drop of between two TT's is still valid.

What was found out is that Sky riders had a very small wattage drop between Prologue and flat TT (2-3%), whereas everyone else had 10%.

Now let's consider that the CDA is wrong, the drop of would still be visible as that is pretty much constant as the analysis was comparing rider A in the prologue with rider A in the flat TT. Any inaccuracy in CDA would pretty much not make any difference.
 
Franklin said:
Not disagreeing with you here, but Hitch is a inaccurate in describing the anlysis. What was demonstarted was that even if the wattages were off, the drop of between two TT's is still valid.

What was found out is that Sky riders had a very small wattage drop between Prologue and flat TT (2-3%), whereas everyone else had 10%.

Now let's consider that the CDA is wrong, the drop of would still be visible as that is pretty much constant as the analysis was comparing rider A in the prologue with rider A in the flat TT. Any inaccuracy in CDA would pretty much not make any difference.

I think taking the comparison of prologue is inaccurate due to significant anaerobic power in play:)
 
Waterloo Sunrise said:
Err no, the different CDA of the two riders is very clearly vital to whether one can beat the other. If you start from the assumption they're both pushing the same amount of air when Martin is clearly pushing more, then it's no surprise when the calculations then show Wiggins with a much higher (and laughable in general) wattage figure.
If it's not being taken into account then there is no assumption. The values can just be taken to represent how fast the riders went in their respective time trials.and if both were on form performances then it's likely to be as fast as they will go next time.
 
The Hitch said:
If it's not being taken into account then there is no assumption. The values can just be taken to represent how fast the riders went in their respective time trials.and if both were on form performances then it's likely to be as fast as they will go next time.

Sorry Hitch but you've gone way off the deep end here.

Unless someone in the clinic has hacked Sky and OPQS's computers, it is impossible to get a wattage figure without making a CDA assumption.

Your statement is like saying that climbing wattage calculations take no account of the gradient, so we can just compare different riders on different climbs.

Franklin's point seems valid, although you could validly interpret the opposite conclusion from the same data(i'm taking a wild guess at the clinic conclusion here) if you wished.
 
Franklin said:
Not disagreeing with you here, but Hitch is a inaccurate in describing the anlysis. What was demonstarted was that even if the wattages were off, the drop of between two TT's is still valid.

What was found out is that Sky riders had a very small wattage drop between Prologue and flat TT (2-3%), whereas everyone else had 10%.

Now let's consider that the CDA is wrong, the drop of would still be visible as that is pretty much constant as the analysis was comparing rider A in the prologue with rider A in the flat TT. Any inaccuracy in CDA would pretty much not make any difference.

There is a huge assumption here as well that makes it meaningless. Stick to VAM, at least potential energy doesn't lie.
 
Jul 30, 2009
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Extrapolating prologue performances onto a 50+ km TT show the usual total absence of understanding of bike racing that colours Clinic thinking these days.

To the guy who thinks Wiggins would have lost 1'30" - there is just no arguing with that kind of thinking so feel free to carry on thinking it :rolleyes:
 
Winterfold said:
Extrapolating prologue performances onto a 50+ km TT show the usual total absence of understanding of bike racing that colours Clinic thinking these days.

To the guy who thinks Wiggins would have lost 1'30" - there is just no arguing with that kind of thinking so feel free to carry on thinking it :rolleyes:

You obviously don't read much of the clinic, so I'll cut you some slack. Lots of folks that post there know quite a bit, so I am guessing your post is a tiny bit trollish :p

All time trial like performances fit on a curve.

No one knows what Piggo would have lost. 5 seconds? Perhaps. 1'30"? Perhaps.
 
Sep 5, 2011
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Why is Wiggins riding the Giro this year? I don't understand... British rider on a British team wins the Tour... very surprising he would lower his chances of a second straight TDF win by riding the Giro.
 
BrentonOfTheNorth said:
Why is Wiggins riding the Giro this year? I don't understand... British rider on a British team wins the Tour... very surprising he would lower his chances of a second straight TDF win by riding the Giro.

Because this year's Tour has real mountains and Biggo has pretty much zero chance. Match that with his team mate Froome who is a climber.
 
May 26, 2009
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Waterloo Sunrise said:
Sorry Hitch but you've gone way off the deep end here.

Unless someone in the clinic has hacked Sky and OPQS's computers, it is impossible to get a wattage figure without making a CDA assumption.

Your statement is like saying that climbing wattage calculations take no account of the gradient, so we can just compare different riders on different climbs.

Franklin's point seems valid, although you could validly interpret the opposite conclusion from the same data(i'm taking a wild guess at the clinic conclusion here) if you wished.

Read the post before slamming it.

And IndianCyclist, now that's the amazing part. everyone had a drop of of 10% except the Sky riders who stuck with 2-3% drop of. And again, this was measured against themselves, so errors in CDA would be compensated. The difference is factor 5 and consistently over 1 team, which makes it a tad odd to be dismissed due to inaccuracies.

And no, I'm not saying this shows foul play, it's just a rather interesting view of how much better Sky seems to be (or how much they could improve on short stuff^^).
 
Jelantik said:
Lol. I like his metaphor. Froome's sand castle... pretty accurate. In his head, Froome thinks he is the outright leader. But not according to wiggin + sky's management. Go figure.

I'm pretty sure that leadership at the tour was part of contract negotiations with Froome. They have said he was to be the leader and if he isn't there will be trouble and he well leave at the end of the year
 
Ripper said:
Because this year's Tour has real mountains and Biggo has pretty much zero chance. Match that with his team mate Froome who is a climber.

People are seriously overplaying how hard this year's Tour is, probably as a reaction to last year's mountain stages. Even Froome said when the route was announced that he was surprised there weren't more serious mountain stages. Take the Ventoux stage for instance. That actually suits Wiggins very well. He's very good when only one big climbing effort is required and the preceding 220km of flat will take more out of the others than him. It's the big multi-climb stages that he struggles with because the climbing takes more out of him than it does for the pure climbers. The Alpe d'Huez stage would be hard for him of course but apart from that, and with no time bonuses available, I really don't think a fresh Wiggins, without a Giro in his legs and in last year's form, would lose much time in this year's mountain stages. Then you take into account the 65km of ITT, the 25km of TTT and I really don't think he'd be very far off the top of the podium.
 
JRanton said:
People are seriously overplaying how hard this year's Tour is, probably as a reaction to last year's mountain stages. Even Froome said when the route was announced that he was surprised there weren't more serious mountain stages. Take the Ventoux stage for instance. That actually suits Wiggins very well. He's very good when only one big climbing effort is required and the preceding 220km of flat will take more out of the others than him. It's the big multi-climb stages that he struggles with because the climbing takes more out of him than it does for the pure climbers. The Alpe d'Huez stage would be hard for him of course but apart from that, and with no time bonuses available, I really don't think a fresh Wiggins, without a Giro in his legs and in last year's form, would lose much time in this year's mountain stages. Then you take into account the 65km of ITT, the 25km of TTT and I really don't think he'd be very far off the top of the podium.

Even Evans said this year's Tour is much more of a mix of stages and suits an allrounder. Less TT kms but still pretty good for Wiggins but the last week of the Giro is not easy at all. That will probably play a role in Wiggins performance in the Tour.
 
BrentonOfTheNorth said:
Why is Wiggins riding the Giro this year? I don't understand... British rider on a British team wins the Tour... very surprising he would lower his chances of a second straight TDF win by riding the Giro.

He was avoiding Contador... but did not expect him to lose form this year...
 

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