Thanks WP - hopefully get a few more takers on here next time round.
Thanks WP - hopefully get a few more takers on here next time round.
what specifically sickened you?Originally Posted by Marco
Richard Taylor
"William Tell could take an apple off your head. Taylor could take out a processed pea."
Sid Waddell
We were rubbish weren't we.Thanks for taking the time to organise WP.
Looking forward to the next one, when hopefully one or two of the Forums cycling experts will join in, and I'll make sure that my thinking cap is on the right way around!
Any worse and the broom wagon would have got us
At least Pete had some respectability.
Richard Taylor
"William Tell could take an apple off your head. Taylor could take out a processed pea."
Sid Waddell
Where do you want me to start?
Should I start with the 1-2-3 from a team on a road stage, something that I've never seen before in a grand tour? Or should I mention the second 1-2-3 from the same team a few days later?
Maybe I should mention the first 1-2-3 overall by a team in a grand tour since the 1928 Tour de France (I'm discounting the dodgy 1966 Vuelta, where only the Spanish Kas squad finished a full team amongst the 55 finishers, and put six riders in the top seven. [General Franco was still running a dictatorship at this time.]) Even Armstrong's Trek squad, who were doped up to their eyeballs, couldn't do a team 1-2-3.
It was probably the way three of their team waltzed off the front at will, making Evenepoel and Thomas (both grand tour winners), plus Ayuso, Landa, Mas and Vlasov, look like rubbish. Again and again.
They say it takes about two months to recover from a grand tour, so it is rare that a rider rides all three as the accumulated fatigue is so great. Kuss, however, rode all three and finished 14th, 12th and then 1st. Again, you can add that to the 'never seen before' list.
And then there is consistency. In clean racing riders have bad days, and in 2023 we've seen bad days from Pogačar, Evenepoel and Thomas (all grand tour winners). But one team doesn't seem to get bad days anymore
All in all, we have been seeing superhuman feats from the yellow and black team for two years. Not just one rider, but four with van Aert. And then you start to cast your mind to the last time you saw superhuman feats on a bike, and how that ended ...
Last edited by Marco; 19-09-2023 at 06:37 PM.
You make a very good argument Marco, and there is nothing I would disagree with.
Whenever I watch many elite sports nowadays I often wonder if what I am seeing is really clean.
I am enjoying the Rugby World Cup but have you seen the size of the biceps on some of the players. I don't think they are the result of press ups and necking a few pints of raw eggs!
Visibility good except in Hill Fog
When my wife got her UK citizenship, one of the other people at the same citizenship ceremony at Leicestershire County Hall was a bloke from Samoa, called Manu Tualagi. He had also brought along a few of his mates from Leicester Tigers. I had never been that close to such enormous chunks of meat; I was left wondering what Mrs Tualagi had been feeding her children.
Wyn “sausage” Jones (wales and British lion) lives just down the road from here, he judged the sheep section at the village show over bank holiday - he’s big next to me!
Well there's a first time for everything!We were rubbish weren't we.
Any worse and the broom wagon would have got us
At least Pete had some respectability.
Aren't you are over-reacting?
Vingegaard and Roglic are 2 of the top 3 (with Pog) of what are a very good crop of Grand Tour riders with Kuss the best super-domestique currently in world cycling. Evanpoel might not be far behind, but he is behind on experience, form and age when it comes to a Grand Tour.
There's no surprise at their perfomance. Had they been 1-2 in GC or on any stages, no one would have raised an eyebrow.
On velogames, despite being in the same team (a red flag usually) Roglic and Vingegaard was the most popular GC pairing selection selected by 1,000s of armchair punters.
The Vuelta "surprise" was Kuss on the GC which came let's be clear came from his Stage 6 breakaway and an effort in the TT which he wouldn't normally push so hard on.
Has anyone heard why Evanpoel performed so poorly on Stage 13? That would be the big question mark for me. It turned the GC in to that 3 horse race between LJ riders.
On the day and following day no one offered an explanation and his management underlined it wasn't illness.
As for the rest, Landa is passed his best and his best was never good enough. Mas, Almeida and Thomas were the only other ones with the pedigree to suggest a potential podium if they put in a solid 3 weeks, but not one of them seemed in great form.
I have to say it's disappointing. I expected a great event, and whilst I enjoyed many of the stages, the overall was a done deal post Tourmalet.
Richard Taylor
"William Tell could take an apple off your head. Taylor could take out a processed pea."
Sid Waddell
No, I'm not over-reacting.
What we've been seeing for the last two years are superhuman 'performances' from riders almost entirely from one team. For those who've been watching pro cycling for decades, it's like 1999 all over again.
Whilst you're entitled to believe whatever you want, here's the front cover from L'Equipe the day after Jonas Vingegaard had put a massive time gap into Tadej Pogačar, despite him convincingly beating the rest of the field in the time-trial. The headline is the same as L'Equipe used for Lance Armstrong in 1999, which makes it pretty clear as to what they think
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