point. missed. again.

of course cav wins the stage where no one is racing ;)

That's a big, make that huge, assumption. Contador is riding a string of 3 straight GT victories. I'm sure he has respect for LA and his accomplishments but I can't see AC willingly giving up team leadership in July.*

The possibility for team-wide drama is certainly pretty high.

*Assuming there is a team of course.


:beer:

As you like you say, incorrect. You are such a pretentious ass. One of the organizers themselves disagreed with the peloton's decision. Nice try.

the best man didn't win last year?? then who won?? he wouldn't have come out of retirement if some other person he has beaten before were racing the tour, wth did you find this logic... if ullrich were at the tour this year he would've said "oh crap i can't beat him like i did before, i better just stay at home in texas"

:thumb:

you mean one of the people who organize the Giro d'Italia has publicly disagreed with the peloton's decision not to race?

shock. horror. :eek:

try again. fail again. fail better.

latwitt

latwitt

missed point completely
if you can't comprehend what I wrote I can't help further your understanding.

you have no idea what you're talking about daytonian, your entire post was pure garbage, as if your only knowledge of bike racing comes from reading one issue of Bicycling Magazine. why are you even mentioning bernard kohl, wtf! and valverde has never even had a remote chance of winning the tour! :eek:
how did the best man not win last year, you can't explain yourself? you just think you know who should've won.. if the race happened to magically unfold in the way you believe it should have.

his broken collarbone is not a "good reason." it's a fact of life that is causing him to be out of shape at the giro, and everyone knows he has ample time to get in shape for july, cadel and sastre won't be surprised.

and do you really think contador will ride for lance? contador has a good chance of beating the socks off lance.

you are saying last years best tdf riders lack talent?? :twitchy:

I'm gonna go on a limb and guess reading comprehension wasn't a strong point for you. Missed point. Fail.

well....I'll admit I'm glad no one posted something about how everyone "all of a sudden decided to race again!" I agree that the riders need to be able to say "hey look, this isn't right", you know. If I was there, I would have stayed...but watching it in my living room was a little too boring...I shut it off with 60k to go and got on with other stuff. It seems that Pedro Horrillo is apparently doing better though..which is good news.

"oh no someone is calling me out on not knowing a damn thing, oh i got it, tell them they can't even comprehend my genius!"

^

enough of the pissing contest. this is the 33, not the 41.

Okay I'm going to assume you mean the best guy didn't win last year because Astana and Alberto were excluded. Sastra could only race those who were there, so yes the best man did win the race.

Daytonian I love ya man but if you really think that LA rolled to the start of the Giro with the idea that he would sandbag and delude his rivals into thinking he's lost his edge your nuts. He had the opportunity to get the Maglia Rosa for first time in his career but couldn't hang. His excuse? His stem was loose. Now this is the same guy who dropped the best riders on the planet after picking himself off the ground and mounting a bike with a broken chainstay. However a loose bolt kept him from contesting a stage that would have made him the leader of the Giro d Italia, the second most prestigious stage race in the world. Yes Lance and Johan have developed a brilliant ruse.

He won the Dauphine twice, which ends two weeks before the TDF starts. That's not exactly downplaying your form.

I don't. He'll have 30 days from the end of the Giro to recover and build while everybody else is doing the same. You'd expect him to at least be able to match form with Sastre, Menchov, and the other TDF contenders. Otherwise you have to have faith that a 38 year old guy who's been out of competition can leapfrog these guys and become the oldest TDF winner ever.

That's a big leap.

can you imagine racing a crit with parked cars and train tracks on the road? No way would I do that. Forget it.

F the organizers. You must be joking. The aholes who run Euro races have shown such a staggering lack of regard for rider safety with their course layouts in some of these events that it's utterly astonishing there hasn't been a throw down over this before. The biggest idiot of all is the Giro director, who sits in a friggin car or office and doesn't have to race a bike and risk his LIFE at 30-70 mph on some of these courses. There is plenty of inherent risk in bicycle racing without these friggin yoyos subjecting 200 of the best athletes in the world to a course that could easily be changed or completely ruled out due to dangers that are obvious to anyone who actually RACES or RIDES a bicycle.

Baseball pros, footballers, pro golfers, etc. don't have to deal with such incredible stupidity. But pro cyclists have to? Why? Because most cyclists are total idiots? Whatever. That should not extend to the highest professional levels or our sport, but apparently, true to the nature of all things velo, the friggin stupidity elevates to a higher and more unattainable (for most of us) level when you hit the UCI or the Grand Tours.

And of course the supporters of this Tour de Moronic Force are always represented on BF. I wouldn't expect anything else.

Funny how they managed several laps at 50+kph when they decided to do so. Nobody died.

Did they really have train tracks/tram lines running the same direction as the racers?? without covering them up with plastic guards or something? that's just unbelievable to me... racing the giro sounds like a sketch fest.

this has probably been said, but I dont believe that today's "protest" was all about today, but rather the dangerous finishes that have been cooked up for this race over the past few days + todays being not only dangerous, but one that had a big urban audience in Milan, which is the traditional finish of the giro. i.e. it was a good "stage" for a message to be sent.

honestly, some of this giro route looks like it was planned on googlemaps and not by someone who'd ever seen the roads until race day. it seems to me that in professional athletics that this should have been resolved between team management representation and giro route organizers long before today, not like the route was announced yesterday or last month, but I guess that's a big difference between pro cycling and other professional sports.

Have you ever turned a pedal in anger in your entire life? Have you ever felt threatened by course conditions? Just because 'nobody died' doesn't mean a course doesn't present needless hazards to the racers. I've experienced this a couple of times in amateur racing, but the conditions the pros tolerate are mind boggling to me at times, and disturbingly frequent in Euro racing. It's about time they stood up to it. The pay in the sport already blows, they shouldn't have to put up with racing conditions that are life threatening.

The arrogance such disregard for the well being of these athletes demonstrates is truly staggering. And unfathomable.

Multiple articles linked in twitter feeds today that I saw about the race conditions. A couple were retweets from people who were not riders, but photographers and spectators. As pcad said above me and others said, it wasn't necessarily about today, but the past few days the riders have been questioning the safety of the finishes. Especially after Horrillo's terrible crash yesterday, which was only 70km into the stage.

Here's one from Danielson:

You'll never win the Madera Stage Race.

quite possible :)

Fixed. For me.

You can win the races, I will live vicariously through you.