Rich Gibson 

Three crashes this Giro were caused by outside influences. I was watching the finish with Contador. A cameraman with a Canon DSLR and long 500mm lens had it stuck over the barrier shooting. These type telephoto lenses are very heavy. (I've owned this type lens) The poor guy who broke his arm (they had a shot of him lying on his side propped up on his elbow but the forearm was pointing backwards) was clobbered by the lens going, what, 60 km/hr.

Earlier in another incident a fan attempted to ride along with the pelaton and caused another crash taking out another good cyclist. There was a third but I don't know the details.

Rich

Jakedatc

Lance had a few close calls himself.. when that lady's purse caught his bars and i think when Jan waited for him? He could have eaten it right after Beloki if he didn't go on his offroad adventure. he did eventually break his collarbone in one of the last races he did Tour down under?

WCroadie

People are idiots and want to get up close and personal no matter who they put at risk. Then saw how dangerous the race was/blame the race organizers when they get hurt.

Rich Gibson 

The last and most serious crash was partly caused by poor barrier design permitting the crowd members to extend their arms (and cameras!) into the path of the riders. Last fall there was a horrible one in which the sprint was through barriers which were vertical and had right angle legs sticking out from one foot high above the bottom, out another foot and then down. One of the riders hit it and went head over heels in the air and received serious face and mouth injuries sending bicycles flying through the air bouncing off the contestants. Some races use angled barriers which go to the ground and angle backwards, away from the riders the triangle the footing on the viewer side of the barrier. This places the top of the barrier at least a foot away from the edge of the sprint path. it very likely might have prevented this last accident.

The better ones I was describing can be seen at the finish of the Tour of California time trials today.

Rich

jyl

Kind of a rest or truce stage today, which is nice, but tomorrow I expect the punching resumes. Can Contador hang on to pink?. Does he even want to?. Tinkov have been working very hard and they look weaker than Astana. Maybe better to let Astana work in pink for a week. Sky won't work since Porte won't take the jersey, if at all, until the TT. In the third week, a really worn down Astana, a rather worn down Tinkov, and a relatively unworked Sky will be about equal in team strength. So sayeth my crystal ball which only cost me $0.02.

jyl

In other news, Carlos "Porkchop" Bentancur says he would have finished higher than 23rd today, except that the finish was too flat.

"I felt good. I feel better and better on the bike and I really had a great team around me today. The finale was a bit too flat for me. This is encouraging for the next few days, the form is getting better,"

Scanning the results, I'm happy to see there are actually three Asian riders in the Giro. Cheng Ji (Giant), Manabu Ishibashi (Nippo) and Gang Xu (Lampre). Cool!

Leinster

Are we allowed be suspicious of this Astana team yet?

Stage win today, and Tiralongo made it look comfortable, while behind Aru and Landa were able to ditch all but Contador and Porte on the way to the line. Big lead in the team competition, all of them on the front every time the road points upwards. All from the squad with a bit of a <ahem> reputation from last year.

jyl

Boy, of the trio of GC leaders, Aru looks the least strained. Contador has successfully defended his jersey again, Porte followed the wheels, Uran keeps sliding backwards, but Aru looked like he had energy to spare. Aru's domestiques Landa and Cataldo are also GC threats (#4 and #5 on GC, I think?) which sets Astana up for some interesting options.

Now a rest day and then four consecutive sprint-ish stages (#10, 12, 13 and maybe #11 for a Matthews type), followed by the 59 km TT. stage #14 . 20 seconds down and supposedly the strongest time trials of the trio, Porte is probably where he wants to be at this stage of the race. If he can take ~2 minutes from Aru and Contador in the TT, he might be able to defend that lead to the end, forcing Aru and Contador to work together. Uran took 2:40 on Quintana and 2:55 on Aru in the 42 km TT in last year's Giro, so maybe he can pull even with some of the trio on stage #14 , but he's been outclassed on the climbs so far, and there are plenty of those in the last week.

jyl

Yes, too bad there isn't night-time testing (yet). Interestingly, Astana's positives in the past year have all come from the "natives" (the Kazashtan riders), they brought only one of those to the Giro. Another point, did Astana send their "A" team of domestiques to the Giro, or is this the "B" team with an even stronger "A" slotted in for July? Or, more likely I guess, will most of this squad be pressed into duty in France too?

Leinster

You have to reckon Boom (for the cobble stages), Fuglsang and Taramae will line up in the Tour with Nibali, so I'd say for a lot of this Giro Astana squad, this is their GT for the year. Maybe Bozic, Scarponi and Guardini are being held back too?

They don't have a team at the ToC or at the Bayer Rundfahrt, and I'm not sure what other races are even on at the moment, so I don't know where their other riders could actually be right now. The Dauphine and Suisse don't start until June.

jyl

Stage 10 looks like a flat snoozer, the kind where you tune in for the last 10 km. Think so?. Or should one make an effort to watch from the get go?

hueyhoolihan

i've never been a conspiracy buff, or a suspicious type. i'm pretty trusting, but it did cross my mind. they seem to be a little... super-human. it's not like they haven't been bad boys in the past or anything.

Leinster

Most of it's coastal. How windy does it get on the Adriatic? Could get a bit echelony...

jyl

What the heck happened to Porte? Lost significant time to a mechanical? I didn't have a chance to watch.

Leinster

Richie Porte?s Giro d?Italia hopes deflated by late puncture | Sport | The Guardian

Puncture with 5km to go. OGE helped out the Aussie, Simon Clarke gave him his front wheel and Michael Matthews helped Sky out pacing him back, but he couldn't make it on. 47 seconds isn't huge time, he's still only 1.09 off the lead with a long TT (which should favour him) to come.

Apparently Juan Antonio Flecha on Eurosport thought some of the cars in the caravan weren't as quick as usual at getting out of the way to let the Sky guys through while chasing back on. Might be nothing in it.

Leinster

Ah this is stupid. Porte given 2 MINUTE penalty for accepting unsanctioned assistance from a rider on another team.

Richie Porte given two-minute penalty and fine for accepting help at the Giro d'Italia - Cycling Weekly

Now he's 3.07 down in 12th overall. No way he claws all that back.

patrickgm60

My quick reading of the UCI regs indicates the penalties are mandatory, whereas the linked articles says the UCI "may" impose fines and penalties. Sloppy/lazy journalism?

Lesson: Don't accept help from a rival, no matter how innocent the help appears to be. : )

cthenn

I'm torn. I'm openly anti-Sky and admit I'm glad he lost time, but part of me does want him to be beaten fair and square, not by a pretty lame rule. Him coming in late was as much of a penalty as he deserved for that mechanical.

patrickgm60

Yes, tough break - GC contender mechanical on flat stage only ~5 km from the finish.

Is this an obscure rule, that no one on Team Sky knew about? They could have given RP their wheel or bike. I also wonder how far back the team car or wheel moto was.

Leinster

I'm not a Porte fan either, by any means, but there's no way the punishment fits the crime in this case. It sounds like it's a UCI ruling, and the race organisers are distancing themselves from the decision (rightly so, it's reduced their 3-horse race down to 2 for the sake of a flat tire).

Porte himself was tweeting pictures of the wheel change minutes after the stage, they clearly had no idea he'd done anything wrong.

79pmooney

I don't care for the rule either (and I don't like Sky) BUT these guys are professionals. Isn't knowing the rules as they apply on the ground at a bike race part of their job? And isn't it in the interests of their employers and managers to see to it that their employees do that homework? It seems to me like it would be easy for the rider's union to make up a cheat sheet of all the applicable rules in wording that uneducated riders understand and pass these out to the teams.

Now, with all the rules in print and openly read and discussed by the riders, some of the unpopular ones might change. But if no one is reading them, this will continue to happen. And if UCE wants to to be taken seriously, it has little choice but enforce them. Especially when riders make a mockery of them with social media.

Ben

Leinster

Dunno how obscure it is, but I'd never heard of it before.

Here's Clarke tightening up Porte's QR. You can see the shoulder of a Sky rider coming back to help. I'm sure if Porte had known there was a 2' penalty, he would've taken the Sky riders wheel instead. And I'm sure if Clarke had known, he would've paced Porte back (which isn't against the rules) instead of handing over the wheel.



Agree with Mooney, though. It's very un-Sky to not have the attention to detail to say "don't accept wheels from other teams." Brailsford made the media use hand sanitiser before visiting Porte's campervan on the rest day, then this happens the day after. And why is the OGE rider the first to Porte with a wheel? Shouldn't Konig or Nieve have been detailed to never leave Richie's side all day on a stage like this?

thedoc46

Hi, where is the best place to watch the Giro? Is it televised in the US ? or is it PPV only

Thanks

C9H13N 

2015 Giro d'Italia Live Video, Preview, Startlist, Results, Photos, TV

WCroadie

Yeah I'm with most of you guys, not a fan of Porte or Sky, but the rule is kinda stupid. If Clarke wants to give a competitor his wheel, why punish the recipient? I'd prefer to see Porte beaten fair and square. It's another dumb UCI rule.