The Prophet crushes fools on the way to the Tre Chime in the '68 Giro
This is the most exciting thing that’s happened in Cycling since April. Yes, that’s a full two weeks with nothing exciting happening and its been killing me. I know its been killing you, too.
I love the Giro, the master alchemist of bad weather and big mountains that keeps the racing exciting from the first day through the last. You can generally count on enough climbing in the first week to see the leadership bounce around like one of those singing ping pong balls on Sesame Street. The race has its fair share of provenance as well, with many a legendary battle fought between legendary riders.
This year’s race is also remarkable for the fact that a GC rider is not only racing both the Giro and the Tour, but for Contador’s publicly stated objective of doing the Giro-Tour double, a feat not matched since Pantani crushed it back in 1998. That is an awesome goal, I just wish it was a goal set forth by a rider I could get enthusiastic about. A quick scan of the start list has me wondering who is made of the same stuff Bertie, and I’m coming up short. Uran Uran and Pozzovivo are the standouts; and I have serious doubts about Porte being able to come up with the goods, not to mention my boy Ryder who, despite having actually won the Giro, does not inspire confidence in his ability to repeat the feat. It is looking like energy bars may be Contador’s biggest rival for the title, like in last year’s Tour.
Now that I’ve given you three paragraphs of useless drivel that you’ve probably already skipped over, I feel comfortable getting down to Road Tacks. This is the Giro, people, lots of points at stake. And those points are going towards amazing prizes including a Jaeger frame and a Café Roubaix wheelset. There is plenty of time for you to Delgado the thing, too, so my advice is that you avoid doing that. Give yourself enough time to enter your picks so if something has gone amuck, you have time to hit “reload” or come back V minutes later to try again before the event closes. Remember, your procrastination in this matter will not result in the only Keeper with database skills diving into the backend to enter your picks for you. (And if you do encounter a problem, please be so kind as to take a screenshot and upload it as the descriptor “it didn’t work” doesn’t help us debug the problem.)
The scoring for the Grand Tours is a tad more involved than the one-day races, so look them over before making your prognostications. (One of the best things about the VSP is that I usually get to use the word “prognostication”, an opportunity one should always relish.)
So get your picks in before the countdown clock goes to zero, hit the go button, and good luck.
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View Comments
@dyalander
He's also the same bloke who was made to look like a bit of a knob in that same TdF when the OGE bus got stuck under the stage 1 finish gantry & he moved the finish line a couple of times without communicating it effectively...maybe he's still pissed with them.
Be kinda cool if a few k's out from the start the bunch rolls out in staggered team formation, so no team member next to each other, stops, takes out a front wheel and passes it the guy next to him and carries on.
@Barracuda
while I understand the sentiment, I think you guy's are blaming the wrong people, as the above photo show's only three, FFS three of the main culprits right there, how they are not aware of a very basic, racing related (they are professional bike riders after all) rules is unbelievable.
Fuckin' Porte, he's my guy an' everything, hope he fuckin' smashes the TT, and Sky were holding something back as they watched Astana and Tinkoff bitchslap each other, and they destroy them in week three, Love this Bloody Race.
@dyalander
As I said earlier its a shitty rule and without reading the entire rule book it would seem to me that the UCI have no choice but to retrospectively strip Wiggo of his TDF on account of his waiting for Bum Chin after he punctured from tacks on the road.
Where does it leave a rider who stops to look after a badly injured rider from another team?
@Chris
I agree it's poorly worded and should be improved - but that doesn't mean Porte should get off.
Did he clearly and unequivocally wait. I don't recall any pictures or footage of him standing by the side of road waiting then pacing Cadel back. Obviously he kept the pace low and they allowed Cadel and others - and that is also a key point, it wasn't just Cadel from memory - back but he and others, again this is also a key difference, others also 'waited', they did enough to show sportsmanship without doing enough to unequivocally get caught breaking a rule. Don't get me wrong, clearly the rule could be worded better, but they're not equivalent situations in anything more than the very broadest of senses.
Your example of someone waiting for an injured rider is a better example of why the rule is so poorly worded - clearly it's the pacing back that would be the issue and that should be explicit. But not necessarily a reason Porte should get off, just that the rule could be better in respect to a seperate type of banned assistance.
The P-R boom gate is also a clear example if inconsistency but I think that example doesn't let Porte off it just shows that they should enforce the rules to the letter more often not less often.
The more I think about it the less decided I am - would I rather there just be no rule about inter-team assistance? Part if me says yes because acts like Clarke's would be allowed, team alliances would come and go and could add interest, and riders with good relationships would be rewarded enhancing the hero and villain aspect. But I think the reality is that acts like Clarke's would be few and far between and instead you'd just get dodgy team politics escalating to a level that would do far more damage than this incident has done. So I go back to accepting thst there needs to be something stopping teams selectively offering other teams assistance even though it also discourages sportsmanship to some extent. The spanish armada was bad enough, imagine if all bets were off. I'd leave the wheel swap rule (though I'd update "tubular"), and I' d try to "clarify the "waiting" part - maybe waiting for and then pacing a rider..."
Henderson should sneak over and swap his front wheel with Aru's at the startline, take a selfie while doing it, then tweet it.
Goddamn, if we don't quit all this drama and debating we're about to devolved into some shitty NBA or NFL fans...all drama, all the time, no sporting.
Here is how I see it: Porte broke a rule and got caught. Accept the enforcement. Saying the UCI selectively enforces rules is the same as saying, "Oh well, the ref missed that penalty" or "his stepped on the line" so my team technically should have won. Refs miss calls, UCI doesn't enforce every rule, all the time. Just how it fucking goes. Way she goes, boys.
Very much related to this, where the fuck were the teammates and team car of a guy sleeping in his own goddamn motorhome? Sky and Porte fucked up. Call this the stupid tax for leaving your GC rider isolated.
@dyalander
I know Sky just ditched Veloflex tubs and started buying Contis - not team issue ones either, just the same as we can buy.
@dyalander
Haha!
Some really spectacular missing of forests for trees here.
The real point is not the rule itself, or why the Sky riders weren't next to Porte (a question I can't believe anyone who's ridden in a hard-racing peloton would think to ask).
It's the idiocy of a sport that on the one hand is so toothless as to let a team like Astana make a mockery of the entire system with barely a slap on the wrist, while on the other hand applying minutiae of arcane rules out of all proportion to the actual offence.
Read the latest Cycling Tips 'Secret Pro' column for an inside view of how Astana is viewed by the peleton, and I think they would have a pretty good idea what was going on don't you?
"The whole Astana situation is something that’s been the talk of the peloton for a fair while now. I for one haven’t got a clue what the UCI were up to when they allowed Astana to keep their licence. The team and their situation pisses so many people off; they’re a joke really."
He also says that after Henderson's tweet a lot of people congratulated him for saying out loud what everyone knew. Now he's getting sued. It's total bullshit.
I hope for some serious karmic vengeance on Astana and Aru.
I never would have said this through the whole Armstrong saga but today I am embarrassed to be a pro-cycling fan.