Racer Ex 

Race the equivalent of a Euro-pro field in 1981 for five days, drive 12 hours home the next, then stare lifelessly at the TV all the following day. Get up to go to bed. Go to turn off the TV and realize it was.

Off.

Enjoy my Gila.

BTW, found a nearly seized crank bearing when I got home. That was the noise I heard in stage one.

Eeeesh.

queerpunk

You mean, not even for the sake of others' profit and entertainment?

Goddamn, and me thinking we lived in a civilized democracy!

El Diablo Rojo

You need a better mechanic

wabbit

it really cheeses me off that with all the tv channels and networks, and all the races, that cycling coverage is so scarce on this continent..in fact, some of the networks have DECREASED their coverage as cycling has gotten more popular! CBC used to sometimes show mountain biking, world cup and track...now it's completely vanished. It's so freaking pathetic that i have to resort to the internet!!

MadCity Cyclist

Well, stage 9 may have been a letdown, but stage 10 should be epic. Over 160 miles and 11,000 ft of climbing.

NomadVW 

Yeah... cause none of us have raced with a centerline rule, where cones would be a luxury in on-coming traffic.

Whatever. They did what they thought they needed to do, but it ain't like these routes haven't been on the plate for over 6 months or anything. Funny, but we get the same option they get. Don't like the race, don't go. Word on the street is that there were other teams that would have been happy to go race but weren't invited.

IMO - crock o' primadonnas, but really we all knew that already. On the other hand, I'll be glued to the coverage the rest of the race.

Racer Ex 

I've done the pro thing motorcycle racing, without having raced pro, you don't get the difference. Unlike us, for them just walking has huge ramifications. This is their living. There's simply no excuse when hundreds of thousands of euros are passing hands not to have at least a minimum of safety. Get a few friends killed or maimed and watch them try to live off NOTHING back from their former employers and you might get it.

I have.

Would you be a little more circumspect if the military told you to pound sand if you got your leg blown off?

Calling guys with GIANT sack who hang their arse out at 60MPH on mountain descents primadonnas when they see something that even makes THEM go "Hey, this is F'd up" is inane. And that's as NICE as I can put it. You've lost any respect I had for you.

I heard the same kind of carp when we went to see if we could get some haybales in front of a concrete wall 12 feet off a 105 MPH corner at one racetrack. HTFU? I got one friend paralyzed from the waist down, another with no spleen and half a liver. Another didn't make it. I broke a vertabrae, and ripped most of the muscles out of my back in that same spot.

Yeah, you're some tough guy because you race with a center line rule and they are all just girlie men.

Right.

geneman

Oh SNAP!!

patentcad

Spare us tough guy. Until you've raced in some of these conditions in Europe, you have no grounds to criticize these pros, who do this for a living, and who don't have any realistic 'choice' about not participating if they value their jobs. I watch the same races as you, and I'm just astonished at the stupid, dangerous, needlessly dicey courses that I regularly see foised on the pro peloton. Some tricky courses are inevitable, but a 90º corner that's 4 bikes wide 300 meters from the end of a flat stage in the Tour of Whatever with 190 guys desperately trying to be at the point of the spear @ 35+ mph? Yeah, OK. YOU ride in that race and get back to us about how reasonable you think that is when there was a perfectly sane alternative two blocks away.

I NEVER hear pros complaining about these courses, and the fact that the entire peloton felt it was worthy of a protest should tell you something. But only if you're listening. And of course you're not.

Carry on soldier.

bac

You da man.

/yawn

Frunkin

I would consider that highly sketchy.
And having oncoming traffic is ridiculous at this level of the sport. Especially in a circuit race. I totally understand the riders protests.

redtires

To slightly hi-jack your post.....pcad...now I know that Phil Ligget will NEVER die! I love that line. End hi-jack.

arexjay

+1

Oncoming traffic in the other lane during the road race and TT, train tracks on the crit course, a 2-3 mile section of cobble-like chopped up asphalt each lap of the road race.

RockyMtnMerlin

And I feel guilty that we can't cover the two cattle guards in our little stage race (state won't let us). Those tracks looks really scary - especially on the corner!

NomadVW 

Yeah, cause I haven't worked a "professional" job where lives are put on the line every day my opinion is obviously crap and I must just not get what it's like to be put in an "unsafe" situation in my job. Yep... that's certainly a comparison we want to start making.

Yeah, my guys aren't getting legs blown off without the decency of even respect from a good portion of the people whose money puts food in my mouth every day. Never mind those are the same people I may have to ask my Marine to put their life on the line for the next time I'm in some God-forsaken piece of land.

Let's talk about a life where one of my Marines was walking to the ****ter, and THAT could mean the difference between life and death. Or maybe today it's just having chosen to live in one tent versus the other tent, only to find out the other one got blown up while you were at chow. Yeah, there's decisions that don't carry ramifications. I guess whether or not to walk down the stairs or take the elevator makes those decisions look rather silly in the mind of a pro bike racer.

Yeah, and my Marines have never been called primadonnas by people who obviously have no understanding of what it takes to do the job that we do. I mean.. hell, I've never asked them to go downhill on a bike @ 60mph in the rain, so our level of manliness must be at least sub-par to a pro bike racer.

I guess you're right. I just don't get it, cause I don't race bikes for my living. But, that's why I do like the rest of us when we don't like the conditions of a race: I don't sign up.

But signing up, showing up, and THEN complaining about the conditions is screwed up. You're right - a lot of money changes hand in this business. A hell of a lot more than I'll ever lay hands on. If it wasn't important enough to check out before they got there, then I'm sorry - it sure as heck makes them look like a bunch of primadonnas when they figure it out the day of.

botto 

checkmate.

Ih8lucky13

They complain every year in the Tour.

NomadVW 

[QUOTE=Racer Ex;8936076
Would you be a little more circumspect if the military told you to pound sand if you got your leg blown off?
[/QUOTE]

On the drive to work this morning at my current cushy location, this statement kept ringing in my ear. I rolled it over and over in my head trying to understand the point you're trying to make.

But all I can come up with - even the hint that we should compare the obligations of a professional sports team to its employees to those of ANY nation's government to its professional sailors, soldiers, airmen - and Marines... that truly shows who "gets it."

patentcad

If you're a professional athlete on a contract to race for a team, how could you possibly know about the atrocious course conditions in the Tour of Italy or France 6 months or a year hence? Or any future race for that matter. I think you find out about them as your sphincter puckers @ 30-70 mph. And comparisons to the military here are preposterous. Not relevant. But your observations do meet the strict BF Standards with which we are all so painfully familiar.

NomadVW 

You're kidding, right?

Oh.. and keep up. I didn't bring my job into this. RacerEx did.

But we agree on one thing - comparing the military to bike racing is preposterous.

Anyway, at least there's something to talk about on the rest day.

patentcad

I'm very confident that a pro racer is often in no position to know how stupid the race courses he will have to navigate are until he is on them in the race. Perhaps you possess some classified psychic abilities you could share with them.

This reminds me of auto racing in the immediate post WW II period in places like Italy. Insane open road races @ 150 mph. The death rates were very high. When journalists asked the drivers about the risk involved, they laughed. 'No one is shooting at us today' they would answer.

Perhaps that is the twisted perspective you offer. That's helpful.

Hocam

His point was there are unnecessary risks that do nothing to help the spectators, sponsors, whoever enjoy the sport. The organizers could have been on top of the pedestrian crossings, parked and moving cars, and covered the trolley tracks, but they weren't, so the circuit was unsafe and the riders protested.

I think a better analogy for Racer Ex would have been to compare the lack of organization on that circuit to sending you and your marines into combat without any body armor because they forgot/didn't care to get some.

Yeah there are inherent risks in bicycle racing and much more so in war, and they're both voluntary, but why add more risks on top of those from sheer laziness?

botto 

enough analogies to the military, please.

roadwarrior

Correct. And the riders have been trying to get a change. To no avail. So they did what they needed to. They sent a message.

BTW...having spent two years in Europe racing a while back, they are not a crock of primadonnas.

The reason why the other teams were not invited is that this is a Grand Tour and they suck.

Hocam

This ain't soccer.