OT: TdF Stage 12: That was crazy
For those of us who recently had lunch and can't tolerate coverage of the SEC Media days on a full stomach, there is fortunately MGOBLOG's beloved Tour de France to carry our attention.
Despite a wind shortened course that deprived us of a summit finish on Mont Ventoux, the stage didn't disappoint. Wild crowds! Quintana Cracks! Froome under a motorcycle/riding what appears to be a childrens bicycle/running in bike shoes.
What chaos will tomorrow's ITT bring? Was the commisars decision to neutralize the stage correct? How many tours would Harbaugh have won if he had just concentrated on cycling? Will Froome carry yellow to the Champs Elysees?
Stage 7 was pretty wild too with the 1k archway having its plug pulled and collapsing right in front of hat dude. Looking forward to tomorrow's TT and the upcoming mountains. Now that Froome's still in yellow though, I can't see anyone catching him. He's been lights out so far.
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http://www.snappytv.com/tc/2331472/1185395
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They have "jambon-beurre" which is a ham and butter sandwhich. But not like watered down deli ham, like charcuterie ham.
Its the best fucking thing in the world.
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Froome in yellow was the correct one. He has proven himself the class of the field thus far and he did nothing up until the crash today to indicate otherwise. Until a couple days ago I thought tour was pretty boring this year from a GC perspective. Froome still appeared better than Quintana and Sky is certainly the best team. But Froome's performance in the past couple days has been truly great.... almost Mercxian. I'm looking forward to the rest.
Its more likely that he has a motor in his tire than that he can bike away from the rest of the field without his heart rate going up at all.
Look everyone, I found that guy!
Cycling does have a doping problem.
Nobody bothers to investigate the doping problems of Football or Basketball. Which means it's just like cycling in the 90s!
I thought they got it right in the end. Mollema probably got screwed a bit since he was also delayed slightly but didn't get any adjustment to his time. Quintana also lucked out. He was awareded the time of the group he was ultimately dropped from. It's very unlikely a few seconds either way will matter though, even by the end of tomorrow's TT. It was a shame shitty spectators marred what looked to be a pretty pivotal stage.
Mollema was definitely off his bike with Porte and Froome during the crash. He was lucky enough to not suffer any damage to his bike though, and as a result remounted and got going pretty quickly. But, he still lost some of his advantage over the riders in the groups behind as a result. So, giving Froome and Porte his time puts them right compared to Mollema, but not the riders chasing. Also, later they corrected Quintana's time to give him the time of the Yates group, even though he had actually gotten dropped by the actual finish line. All this added up to Mollema being a few seconds behind Quintana in the GC instead of probably 10-15 seconds in front had the accident not happened. There's no way to be certain what would have happened though, so I understand the way the officials decided based on the data they actually had. Still, tough break for Mollema.
Well, that was one of the most insane things I've seen in 14 years of watching cycling. I was doing some work at home and had the race on, and then suddenly there were Porte and Froome by the side of the road, stopped. And then a serious of confusing camera cuts, and then Froome running uphill. Madness.
And totally entertaining to a fan.
I'm a mildly dissatisfied with the jury decision to just give Froome and Porte Mollema's time. It neutralizes the stage without neutralizing it--everybody was affected somewhat, as the chase group (that included Quintana) was also slowed and re-routed by the chaos. And just for drama it would be nice to have some clearer GC movement from this, among the most memorable moments of cycling in the post-Lance era.
I come from a pre-disposition to want Froome to lose, since he's a multi-winner and I want variety. But to have him lose the jersey (and serious time) would have been a massive, peloton-striking injustice, and anyone with any kind of integrity would have hated it. Take Tejay's postrace insistence that the 1km times be taken (contra an earlier response, that is not at all a normal procedure for uphill finishes, only for sprints--this is basically unprecedented) even though the result is that he loses time both to other rivals and to Porte, who thus will have a bigger claim on being the BMC team leader. It's against his own interests, but in the interests of cycling.
Anyway, this Tour is turning into a massive face turn for Chris Froome. The Sky train has bored people out of their minds, and of course there are always doping suspicions, but Froome has made stunning and smart attacks to gain seconds, sprinted for a stage win, and now been reduced to running uphill and riding a gimpy bike to try to preserve his position. People who don't like him are kinda rooting him on now.
And FWIW Harbaugh's power-to-weight ratio wouldn't allow him to climb well enough to win the Tour. However, the best rider in the world is all-around killer Peter Sagan, who won the World Championship last fall (thus the rainbow jersey) and has followed that up with multiple race wins, including a brilliant win in the Ronde Van Vlaanderen, and now two stages and a Green jersey in France. Harbaugh would totally have done that if he had been a cyclist.
I understand the decision to not penalize Froome/Porte, but I was hoping they wouldn't do it. There are always weird, unforseen things that come up in a three-week stage race. A collision with a camera car is bad luck, but so is a mechanical problem. I'd be in favor of letting almost all of it go.
A mechanical problem is bad luck, but it is also a part of the normal course of cycling, the way a bad bounce or a gust of wind or bad weather affects various other sports. The camera moto came to a dead stop due to avoidable errors on the part of the race organizers (failure to erect sufficient crowd barriers in the area of highest crowd volume upon changing the finish location of the stage). The moto was focused on Porte, Froome, and Mollema because they were leading the other contenders, and the impact was unfair.
Since it was not something that occurred in the normal course of racing, they had to do something. To have Froome lose the race due to organizer failure (not a sure thing, but it's a real possibility that Quintana gains time in the Alps, there might not be enough room to claw that back in the TTs) would be massively unjust. And would basically punish him for being aggressive and attacking, exactly the sort of behavior that organizers want to encourage.
His bike was unusable due to the failure of organizers; due to that same failure, he was not reachable by either the Mavic neutral support car (which provided the bike that was nearly as bad) nor his team car, which was stuck behind the same chaos.
He panicked a bit, but to punish him for running a few dozen meters in cycling shoes while the contenders he had dropped were charging on ahead, specifically benefitting from the fact that he was ahead of them, would be unjust.
And, again, I'm rooting for someone (Quintana?) to beat him, but that's just unfair. I could live with the results being totally neutralized, and from a competition standpoint would have preferred it, but for him to lose time in this situation would be horrible.
You can run with a broken bike, guys have done it before and it isn't a penalty. Running without the bike is a penalty.
with it or if you want, run with the freaking bike cyclocross style. I have been following the TdF since 85, strangest thing I have seen.
No favoritism, he should have carried his bike over his shoulder if he wanted to run up.
Also, generally speaking in a situation where the rules are "bent" like this the guideline will be whether or not an unfair advantage was gained. It's safe to say that in Froome's case no such advantage occurred. See Armstrong's "shortcut" when Joseba Beloki famously crashed on the downhill to Gap in 2003. Armstrong went around him, rode on the grass, cut the corner, but rejoined the peloton without gaining time, and properly wasn't penalized.
by placing his bike right in the middle of the road to mount in order to slow down the riders comiing around the bend. Man Beloki got jacked in that fall, he was never the same.
. I loved the Armstrong's competitiveness and since everyone was on dope I still consider the victories his.
He was injured pretty seriously.
Ironically, Beloki is the only rider to share a TdF podium with Armstrong not connected to doping by legal investigations, one of the things that helped me conclude that Armstrong was dirty before the dirt really started to fly. But Beloki rode for ONCE, which was of course as dirty as everyone else.
Armstrong obviously systematically doped, and so did all of his competitors. There is no good way to evaluate that era. After all, Armstrong was preceded by Pantani and Ulrich and "Mr. Sixty Percent" Bjarne Riis. And Miguel Indurain, who won in an era where Greg Lemond mysteriously went from Tour winner to hopeless also-ran and EPO flowed rampant through the peloton.
The good thing about current anti-doping measures is that while they are not perfect, they do level the playing field a bit more. It's not perfect, though, and the continued success of riders like Alejandro Valverde is not encouraging.
Not saying that means he's clean though
All the times are basically the race officials' best guess at what would have happened if there had been no accident at all. It wouldn't really make sense to adjust times due to the accident but also assess penalties for actions caused by the accident. It'd be like penalizing a defender jumping offsides after the play was blown dead for a false start.
I don't disagree with any of that. Frankly, I just thought Froome losing the jersey would add a little extra spice to the next week.
There was a stage where the rider lost it in front of Armstrong, who then swerves off the road, and rides down a hill to get back to the road. He then had to jump off the bike, carry over the ditch and jumps back on in time to get in with the peloton.
I also was wondering why Froome chose to start running. I'm guessing he wanted to get out of the way or maybe clear himself to find the guys with the spare bikes, but continuing running was just weird. One question, would he have avoided a penalty or issue if he had carried the busted bike with him?
Also in the 2003 Tour: Armstrong getting his handlebar snagged by a fan's bag, causing both him and Iban Mayo to crash on the climb to the summit finish at Luz Ardiden. Tyler Hamilton neutralized the leaders, allowing a badly scraped and bloodied Armstrong to rejoin, and then he promptly attacked and dropped Ullrich to gain the crucial seconds he would need to hold Ullrich off in the final time trial.
That whole Tour was bananas from start to finish. Riveting. The back-and-forth between him and Ullrich was dramatic virtually every day.
The Armstrong/Ullrich battles were absolutely captivating. I still watch the Tour on the weekends and DVR the occasional mountain stage.
Or sporting event if you will because I would for example not be interested in any US or North American bike race but the tour, the giro, the one day classics. The tour though is a perfect second sport passion to Michigan football because itt's in a slow month for anything Michigan football related so you can take your mind away to beautiful France (not so beautiful today but that's another story for another day). I drove around many of the tour routes a few years ago and it was incredible to see them after having watched them on tv all these years. Another year I got to see one of Armstrongs wins in Paris.
agree with that sentiment. I still try to understand that within myself though. Is it because of the tour, or is it because it is July and there is simply nothing exciting about the middle of baseball season in an otherwise low-point of the sporting seasons. Probably equal parts for me. I would love to ride some of those routes someday, but probably in a motorcar!
My experience has been that I am legitimately a fan of some lesser, niche-type sports, but the intensity of that fandom fades and hibernates as football season begins. Football is simply too intense. I have actually watched portions of, say the World Championships and Il Lombardia after football season has kicked off, but it's not the same.
Same with soccer, auto racing, and any of the other sports I've given some mindspace to. Hockey isn't the same either--even the most fanatic of Michigan Hockey fans checks the schedule for conflicts and is constantly checking football scores when they're at one of those November home games against Mercyhurst.
If Froome had crashed I would've been fine with waiting for him but he was still in the group and fine Movistar et al should've pressed
Which reminds me to put in my annual plug to follow @inrng and @cyclocosm (and in particular their blog and their HTRWW video series respectively) for some of the best insight into a sport that you can find anywhere in any sport. @cyclocosm made a point of highlighting (I believe by tweeting someone else's article) the Sky train fall.
And, frankly, I'm inclined to agree with authors I've read that suggest that it was unecessary for the peloton to slow, because Stannard was not a GC contender. It's one thing if Froome had gone down, but this was just a teammate. Let Froome win with one fewer.
The peloton's pretty good about extending professional courtesy to guys that crash like that. A lot of other guys decided to take a piss at that point too, seemingly independent of Froome. IIRC, they weren't really full gas at that point since it looled like the split was about to make the catch before the base of Ventoux anyway.
Well, more recent news has taken over the mind, and appropriately so. But this happened considerably before, so don't trash people for talking about it. To be on a sports forum is to deliberately distract oneself from awfulness for a few minutes on an evening of this nature.