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serious gaylord
Sep 16, 2007

what.
Giro looks like they are trying to drag Froome to it again with the 3 time trials. Looks like a more exciting race than the Tour tbf.

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HappyCamperGL
May 18, 2014

How short does the stage have to be to a prologue cause that Budapest stage looks like a prologue to me.

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.
I'm really glad the Giro are keeping the "gently caress you, 200km+ mountain stage" ethos of cycling alive, keep getting scared that everything will be 85km stages in Andorra in the future. Can't wait for May.

I feel weird being excited about cycling again but apart from the weather-affected last week of the Tour I've enjoyed all of it this year, more than any other year since the first year that Sky Bullshit started. Don't want to give the UCI credit for anything but the team reduction and (probably more relevant) Tramadol ban, and better tests for AICAR seem to have helped, it was striking how the Sky train wasn't really able to get fully established at all this year (they won, but Bernal seems like a legitimate ridiculous talent), and good lord did their previously invincible domestiques suck rear end in and out of the tour.


e) I reckon that Tom D with a stupid strong-looking Jumbo/Visma will crush the Giro, though. If he enters.

Feels Villeneuve fucked around with this message at 16:07 on Oct 28, 2019

TobinHatesYou
Aug 14, 2007

wacky cycling inflatable
tube man
Long stages just don’t do anything for TV or for sponsors. Tradition is one of the main issues with the sport’s decline. Sure, put in one or two, but we don’t need those plus a couple more plus pan-flat transfe...sprinter stages.

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.
it's probably because the sport is an impossible-to-completely-follow mess of competing rights holders, and also the residual effects of doping, and that it's a weird, notoriously beginner-unfriendly sport, not because "stages too long" (nobody is forcing you to watch the first 100k of the Ronde or the World Championships if you don't want to, you know, and it's only been recently that ASO have insisted on broadcasting every stage flag-to-flag anyway)

Smirr
Jun 28, 2012

HappyCamperGL posted:

How short does the stage have to be to a prologue cause that Budapest stage looks like a prologue to me.

quote:

2.6.006 A prologue may be included in stage races on condition that:
1. it must not exceed 8 km; for an elite or juniors women's or juniors men's race,
the prologue must be less than 4 km;
2. the prologue must be run as an individual time trial. If more than 60 riders are
involved, the interval between the start of any two riders shall not exceed one
minute;
3. it counts towards the individual general classification;
4. any rider who suffers an accident during the prologue and is unable to complete
the distance shall nevertheless be permitted to race the following day and be
credited with the time of the last ranked rider;
5. no rider may participate or be made to participate in a second race on the same
day as the prologue;
6. the prologue shall count as a race day.

Fun fact: it doesn't say explicitly anywhere in the rules that a prologue has to be the first stage. There's just two lines that go like "... the first stage (or prologue) ...", which just means that a prologue can be the first stage, not that it has to be. 21st stage prologue when??

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.
didn't one of the recent Vueltas inexplicably end with like a 8km ITT

Feels Villeneuve fucked around with this message at 22:22 on Oct 28, 2019

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.
also re: the short mountain stages= best thing, can't help but remember that the two best stages of last year's tour, Saint-Etienne and Foix Prat d'Albis were over 180k, the short Tourmalet stage was more or less raced tempo up to the last 500m, and the shortened Val Thorens stage was awful

e) poo poo, even the Vuelta this year, the last two mountain stages were both won by really cool long range attacks, and they were 177 and 190k respectively. the two 150k mountain stages in the middle of the race were comparatively dull (Santuario del Acebo was raced so easily that sprinters were still in the peloton leading up to the last climb)

Feels Villeneuve fucked around with this message at 22:30 on Oct 28, 2019

Smirr
Jun 28, 2012

Feels Villeneuve posted:

didn't one of the recent Vueltas inexplicably end with like a 8km ITT

2014, but it was 9.7 km, so not a prologue

I'm currently reading the notes on the Giro stages and it's very :discourse:

quote:

The stage follows almost the same route as the famous Nove Colli amateur sportive. Upon reaching the foot of the Apennines, after leaving Cesenatico, the route undulates continuously to clear the nine hillocks of the sportive, five of which will award KOM points. Over the last 30 km, the peloton will ride across the plains, before reaching the seafront in Cesenatico.

Love to undulate continuously to clear nine hillocks

quote:

A colossal Alpine stage with 5,000 m vertical altitude gain, crossing over to France. The riders will pass Colle dell'Agnello, Col d'Izoard and Monginevro, before the final climb up to Sestriere. According to many, this is a modern reinterpretation of the legendary Cuneo-Pinerolo.

Many people are saying this!

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.
That's just a teaser for the weird prose on the RCS graphics where they try to explain which each town the race passes is famous for

TobinHatesYou
Aug 14, 2007

wacky cycling inflatable
tube man

Feels Villeneuve posted:

it's probably because the sport is an impossible-to-completely-follow mess of competing rights holders, and also the residual effects of doping, and that it's a weird, notoriously beginner-unfriendly sport, not because "stages too long" (nobody is forcing you to watch the first 100k of the Ronde or the World Championships if you don't want to, you know, and it's only been recently that ASO have insisted on broadcasting every stage flag-to-flag anyway)


So what’s the point of having a whole bunch of long boring stages that nobody wants to watch again? Like I said, put in one or two...leave the rest out. Hell, that may even leave the riders fresh enough to consistently make those key stages a show.

TobinHatesYou fucked around with this message at 16:58 on Oct 29, 2019

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.
You need roleur stages so a team can't just stack their squad full of fresh climbing superdomestiques, ie Sky

For the same reason I don't think keeping everyone fresh is necessarily a good thing, the best climbing stages in the Vuelta this year were 18\20

TobinHatesYou
Aug 14, 2007

wacky cycling inflatable
tube man

Feels Villeneuve posted:

You need roleur stages so a team can't just stack their squad full of fresh climbing superdomestiques, ie Sky

For the same reason I don't think keeping everyone fresh is necessarily a good thing, the best climbing stages in the Vuelta this year were 18\20

???

Rouleurs like Kwiato and G ARE superdomestiques.

ImplicitAssembler
Jan 24, 2013

This should be interesting:
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/oct/29/former-team-sky-doctor-richard-freeman-to-admit-he-told-a-lot-of-lies

Guess the Sky payments dried up :)

kimbo305
Jun 9, 2007

actually, yeah, I am a little mad
> However O’Rourke denied the General Medical Council’s charge that Freeman’s “motive was to obtain testosterone to give to an athlete to improve an athlete’s performance”. Instead she claimed Freeman had got the testosterone at the request of Shane Sutton, who at the time was the head coach of Team Sky and British Cycling

For completely non performance enhancing reasons, of course.

goatface
Dec 5, 2007

I had a video of that when I was about 6.

I remember it being shit.


Grimey Drawer
It wasn't to improve anybody's performance, he just wanted it to compensate for the side effects of all the steroids.

TobinHatesYou
Aug 14, 2007

wacky cycling inflatable
tube man
More proof that road cycling as a spectator sport is broken.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amgen-tour-california-cycling-road-210000445.html

wooger
Apr 16, 2005

YOU RESENT?

Weak. You’d have thought they’d find sponsors easily, and the budget for the whole shebang would be in easy reach of any random tech mogul in SF.

tylertfb
Mar 3, 2004

Time.Space.Transmat.

wooger posted:

Weak. You’d have thought they’d find sponsors easily, and the budget for the whole shebang would be in easy reach of any random tech mogul in SF.

I bet the per-kilometer cost for a pro race in the USA (road closure, EMT / Cops / etc) is at least 20 times what it is in Euroland. And compared to that cost (FREE) in the oil dictatorship companies....

TobinHatesYou
Aug 14, 2007

wacky cycling inflatable
tube man

tylertfb posted:

I bet the per-kilometer cost for a pro race in the USA (road closure, EMT / Cops / etc) is at least 20 times what it is in Euroland. And compared to that cost (FREE) in the oil dictatorship companies....

I was on a group ride with the DS for Tibvo-SVB today and she was going on and on about road cycling being a dying sport, that's it not good for TV and that sponsors aren't really getting their money's worth. The fields are shrinking at every level...road cycling isn't dead, but it's been going downhill for years. Car culture and inflexibility / sticking to tradition are killing the sport.

Skarsnik
Oct 21, 2008

I...AM...RUUUDE!




New subscribers only but a eurosport sub is cheap at the moment to cover the whole of the next year

https://promo-gb.eurosportplayer.com/promo/all-sports/black-friday-2019

Of course it only takes a different email address to be a new sub I guess

Rojkir
Jun 26, 2007

WARNING:I AM A FASCIST PIECE OF SHIT.
Police beatings get me hard
Is that with or without commercial breaks?

Skarsnik
Oct 21, 2008

I...AM...RUUUDE!




As far as the regular channel streams go its the same as the satellite or cable channel would be, but you do every now and again get the raw feed as a separate channel for the tours

colonel tom
Mar 1, 2012

:hmmrona:
SUNNY sunny sunny sunny sunny

cgfreak
Jan 2, 2013
A Very Good Boi decided to participate in the Druivencross.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=r5sKQPaTG70

:3:

serious gaylord
Sep 16, 2007

what.

cgfreak posted:

A Very Good Boi decided to participate in the Druivencross.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=r5sKQPaTG70

:3:

Thats the same breed as my dog and he has a similar love of chasing bicycles.

In Grand Tour news the Vuelta is going up the Tourmalet and the Angliru is back.

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.
The Vuelta route seems bad. I don't mind them trying to attract top sprinters with quite a few flat stages (given the Olympics being more or less a GC rider's competition and how hard the Tour is), but Tourmalet in yet another mini stage, after the really boring one in the Tour? One of the best stages for a long range attack coming right before the Angrilu stage? The longest mountain stage being 175km?

Feels Villeneuve fucked around with this message at 18:38 on Dec 19, 2019

colonel tom
Mar 1, 2012

:hmmrona:
Not much CX chat itt but Namur was an absolute classic. The course was muddy, the weather was terrible, Iserbyt seems to have gotten hypothermia, just brutal conditions. Riders crashing left and right. Both the men’s and women’s races were entertaining but the men’s in particular was one of the best I can remember. Definitely check it out if you have access.

rngd in the womb
Oct 13, 2009

Yam Slacker
apparently this race is canada only on flobikes, so...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTGMCHGPanE

this poo poo was pretty transfixing. gotta feel bad for toon aerts though

colonel tom
Mar 1, 2012

:hmmrona:

rngd in the womb posted:

apparently this race is canada only on flobikes, so...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTGMCHGPanE

this poo poo was pretty transfixing. gotta feel bad for toon aerts though

You do. I saw this morning that he broke a rib so that sucks. He didn’t look too bad on the podium so hopefully he can continue, especially now that he’s the cup leader.

TobinHatesYou
Aug 14, 2007

wacky cycling inflatable
tube man
Did Trek give Ellen Noble an old eTap 11spd Emonda instead of the new-new?

https://www.instagram.com/p/B6gUyYil3bq/

serious gaylord
Sep 16, 2007

what.
Tour Down Under wont have last years king of the mountains winner after he had his arm broken for not paying an entry fee to a national park.

https://twitter.com/larrymontana/status/1210523363090862081

This is the response to someone not paying a 3 quid entry fee.

goatface
Dec 5, 2007

I had a video of that when I was about 6.

I remember it being shit.


Grimey Drawer
His poor fragile bird bones.

Skarsnik
Oct 21, 2008

I...AM...RUUUDE!




goatface posted:

His poor fragile bird bones.

This was my first thought too, they were rough but arm breaking rough?

Thufir
May 19, 2004

"The fucking Mayans were right."
bone density is valuable grams

colonel tom
Mar 1, 2012

:hmmrona:
There have been some medical studies showing a relationship between elite cyclists and low bone density, so it’s not out of the question.

serious gaylord
Sep 16, 2007

what.
Van der Poel won 46 of the 69 races he competed in this year.

https://twitter.com/laflammerouge16/status/1211379030773116928

bicievino
Feb 5, 2015

Nice

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.
Worlds though...

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rngd in the womb
Oct 13, 2009

Yam Slacker
I’m still thinking about the Amstel Gold win over here.

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