It is a telling sign of the state of our sport that picking the Anit-V moment of the year was a more difficult task than picking the V Ride of the Year. Best ride of the year? Clean, unanimous vote among The Keepers on that one. Low point of the year? Dissention in the ranks as email traffic filled our inboxes to overflowing.
Veino in Liege. Piti continuing to rack up wins even as his suspension was imminent. The defiance of the Spanish Cycling Federation. The UCI’s thinly veiled “fight” against doping, as long as I’m naming governing bodies. The Landis Allegations. The Cavendish/Haussler crash in the Tour de Suisse. The neutralization of Stage 2 of the Tour. The threat of the rider protest prior Stage 3. FedEx’s expulsion for irregular sprinting. Bjarne Riis’ constant complaining about the mass exodus from his team. The Motorcus Myth. Alberto Contador’s positive test for Clenbuterol.
Which brings me to my nomination of the lowest moment of the season: Chaingate. The incident was more than a moment of poor sportsmanship, but marked a new phase in Cycling’s steady departure from the great traditions of our sport. Not to mention that the Grimplette’s chain needs a stern talking to. There is no higher honor for a chain than to get jammed onto the big ring while carrying the Maillot Jaune away from the bunch on its way up some fabled climb in the Tour de France. The fact that it cocked it up is inexcusable. Into the trash heap with you, Chain. But I digress.
There was a time when the sport was headed by great personalities who recognized they were but a chapter of a great epic that spanned generations. They understood that one of the things that distinguish cycling from other sports is the rich history and time-honored traditions; Cycling’s icons – the Great Races, the Cobbles, the Mountains, the Jerseys – are made up of much more than any one athlete and are to be respected as such. Their actions are the mortar between the stones of our sport and form a foundation for later generations. Coppi, Bobet, Merckx, de Vlaeminck, Zoetemelk, Hinault, Fignon – these were riders with personality and strength of character, who understood their place.
Like small fluffy dogs chasing a passing car, Chaingate marked the moment when the top riders of our sport forgot their place in the misguided notion that the time gained at the finish is the stick by which we measure their greatness when in fact it is how they get there: with no one else in the picture.
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Yes, nice mobile site!
I now have no excuse to refrain from constantly refreshing velominati.com when at home or on the road.
@mister_fisher
@sgt
@Geoffrey Grosenbach
As frank would say, that's called a "soft launch". But since we try to avoid the word soft of this site, we'll call it something else. frank's a genius.
It's interesting how conversations slip away from the topic. I'm biased towards Grimplette since he's my boy and I think Bertie's a douche, but rereading the article today, there's, there's no reference made to who was right or wrong; it just asserts that it was the moment in the year with most Anti-V. From there, we all read into it what we wanted. After being gone a few days, it's fascinating. Re-reading the thread.
What's also fascinating is that I could have sworn that someone else brought up the war analogy before I did, but I can't seem to locate it anymore. Maybe I made it up. Who knows.
In any case, I was really curious to see what @Buck Rogers' response would be to the Geneva Convention, knowing you'd been involved in the fighting in the Middle East.
Now knowing that you were with the Special Forces, I would have maybe held my tongue a bit more. I probably have a red dot floating around on my forehead as I type this. Oh, and thanks, by the way, for being willing to sacrifice what you did for the rest of us. Whereas I have strong opinions that I spew from behind a computer screen, you were willing to risk your life for your beliefs and I have tremendous respect for that. Thanks.
Back to the analogy, though, my understanding (by "understanding", I mean "gleaned without doing any actual "research") is that the Geneva Convention dictated not a way to fight a war - that's what grand strategy, strategy, and tactics are for - but for how to treat soldiers and prisoners (don't shoot unarmed prisoners, etc). People don't always follow it, but it defines a code of conduct. I was simply trying to if soldiers can do it, I would think sportsman - whose stakes are considerably lower than the soldier's - can, which goes back to the fluffy dogs and cars thing. But it goes without saying that I don't understand what I'm talking about here. (BTW, what happened with the case Rumsfeld made to state the Geneva Convention didn't apply to Al Qaeda because they are terrorists and not soldiers?)
@Roberto Marques
It's a total misconception that he dropped his chain; he had a case of chain suck, where the chain got stuck to the chainring and pulled up and jammed in between the chainstay and the chainring.
I didn't know he was using a 38T small ring, but that goes a long ways towards explaining what happened. From the videos and analysis, what happened was a combination of factors. He was crossing (or close to crossing) his chain, so there was very little tension in his chain; he shifted up to the big ring right as he hit a bump in the road and all hell broke loose. The only "fault" that could be applied there is that we all know it's bad to cross in general and especially small-to-small because the chain tension gets reduced too much. That said, it normally doesn't cause chain suck and that's really only explainable through the notion that it's a fluke mechanical caused by a combination of factors. Bummer for him, I guess.
This seems pretty unequivocal in assigning wrong to me:
The whole article is hinged on the premise that AC displayed poor sportsmanship, and my argument is that he didn't.
@Oli Brooke-White
That's precisely what's interesting. The article says nothing of blame, just acknowledges there was poor sportsmanship, but not by whom. The rest is all conjecture, presumably based on how well we're all getting to know each other, which is really cool, I think. (I even thought I'd made a direct accusation - an earlier edit probably did - so I was surprised when I reread and there was no mention of it. Your and other's assumption of my bias is correct, but it was an assumption - the article says nothing of it. Interesting.)
@Oli Brooke-White
And totally rad avatar, dude.
The Gipsy, one of the best!
@frank
Sorry to butt in, but I gotta call Bravo Sierra here:
I refer to the final paragraph:
"Chaingate marked the moment when the top riders of our sport forgot their place in the misguided notion that the time gained at the finish is the stick by which we measure their greatness when in fact it is how they get there: "
To me, that's a pretty clear inference that you thought AC was in the wrong, if not a direct mention. And hey, that's a valid pojnt, and can be argued successfully.
I also think that Oli and those of us that think Andy screwed the pooch and paid the price have a valid point as well.
Both positions can be supported by precedent, rule and tradition.
For me, and as I tried to say above, what makes Chaingate the Anti-V Moment isn't what AC or AS did or didn't do... it's how the event came to epitomize the whole Tour, and how the mealy mouthed, group hug, go-along-to-get-along aftermath detracted from the very soul of Rule V.
In a Rule V-compliant world, Andy would've stayed mad, Clentador would've stayed clean, and today we'd know who the stronger man truly was.
@sgt
A-Merckx to that!