He was certainly better in the mountains than Henao, who strangely had a pretty awful race. Very odd as you can't imagine he'd have been selected if he wasn't in decent form, but he was hopeless.
Cycling thread
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He was certainly better in the mountains than Henao, who strangely had a pretty awful race. Very odd as you can't imagine he'd have been selected if he wasn't in decent form, but he was hopeless.
Black Belt Jones
Player Valuation: £25m
Yeah that is surprising - you can see how a GC contender might bomb out due to one bad day, un jour sans as they say. But for a mountain domestique to not have the legs all tour seems strange.
sky are killing the sport
tsubaki
Player Valuation: £90m
If they are to be challenged then someone has to put the money in. AG2R's budget is still half of Sky's, which is baffling given that France isn't exactly a poor country, given the importance of the race and that there probably isn't something that could cheer them all up more than one of them winning it.
Armel
Player Valuation: £15m
I think it's easier to just put a cap on the budget. Cycling is a difficult sport to find money for; every year it's the same, even the big teams struggle to find sponsors. A gigantic company like Sky with unlimited funds is just quasi impossible to compete with; unless the others do the same but no need for cycling to go the way of football.
It would help though if they would just stop doing stupid things like his helmet; what the hell is that monstrosity.
Wat Tyler
Player Valuation: £70m
Sky's budget is always overrated. It's not that much more than a lot of other teams:
http://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/racing/tour-de-france/tour-de-france-team-largest-budget-262275
It's the biggest, but it's not Man City/Tranmere differences
http://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/racing/tour-de-france/tour-de-france-team-largest-budget-262275
It's the biggest, but it's not Man City/Tranmere differences
That brailsford interview, 'this has been the most positive tour', well when you make it impossible for anyone to question your team with a dictator like attitude, I suppose it would be, he is increasingly appearing to be quite a sociopathic individual, and I actually feel a little sorry for Froome, by association with someone, who has done good work in the past, but appears to have gotten lost in his own success, Froome with always struggle to get credit for his efforts as Brailsford is such an odious character
He's odious because he doesn't want to be insulted and accused of cheating? A good example was the 'fuss' about the skinsuits they used in the prologue, despite the suits having been used many times prior to the Tour AND other teams using them as well (again for some time). It's beyond boring for the average cycling fan, and I can only imagine how you'd feel if your job is to make these improvements only for some half wit to accuse you of cheating every time.
Oh for Koeman to achieve half as much with us as Brailsford has with British cycling.
Oh for Koeman to achieve half as much with us as Brailsford has with British cycling.
Armel
Player Valuation: £15m
I felt sorry for Froome when they hung him out to dry and left him to give that weak speech. You'd really think somebody at Sky would help him a bit. He's hugely unpopular and they leave him to give a speech like that.
The booing he shouldn't really mind; the French boo everyone after a while; even their own. Anquetil got booed loads of times. Anquetil was an odd character though.
But why does he deserve special treatment in your opinion. What sets him out as the golden child compared to all that went before him and got similar treatment?
Also I think you're confusing Sky supporters with 'the average cycling fan'; the two certainly don't match most of the time - I don't mean this in a bad way btw. You can go over all the papers in France, Belgium, Holland, Spain (haven't checked Italy so don't know about that ;the traditional cycling countries) and you won't find much support for your point of view - a bit of scepticism in cycling if a healthy attitude after all we've been through. Scepticism doesn't mean you can't enjoy it btw. It's been there since the nineties (or even sooner but we're talking en masse), and it isn't going away. In 80's, doping offered a 3-5 percent advantage (according to Roche) - surmountable if you have talent, in the nineties doping suddenly offered a +- 30 percent advantage (I am not slating the riders of that age btw; loads of them are amongst my personal favourites). Riders that could previously win races like the Ronde van Vlaanderen suddenly were worth nought; look at van Hooydonck, he realized what was happening and instead of taking doping he quit. But somehow now scepticism isn't allowed and we should all bow before Sky. There are also stories about others btw; everybody gets a piece. Loads of Colombian stories surfacing now.
Your own arrogance of argument parallels that of brailsford, and is in fact the perfect argument against him, I need say no more
For me, you give someone the benefit of the doubt until they give you reason not to. I'd apply that to anyone to be honest, whether team or rider. Now this may be the British (or English speaking at least) point of view, but there is a sense that the traditional cycling nations don't like Sky because they challenge their mindset, that riding and training in the old fashioned way is just fine, and you can only improve on it by using drugs. It underpins the sneering approach to 'marginal gains', despite most of the things they've done since entering the sport having been subsequently copied by the other teams.
To a large extent that applies to their style of racing as well. If you look at the hour record, you won't have riders 'attacking', it'll be a constant (very high) pace. With Wiggins as GC leader, that's what Sky tried to boil a mountain down to - an hour time trial at a constant pace, hence the train. Wiggins wasn't a great climber by any means, but he could time trial well.
Now of course, that style of racing was quite robotic, hence why they never did well in the classics, or in less controllable GTs such as the Giro, but their style has been copied by other teams.
It isn't exciting. It isn't emotional or charismatic, and as someone that got into cycling via Pantani, it's about as far from his style of racing as you can imagine, but it is effective, and I can appreciate teams/riders that wring everything out of themselves, even if it isn't exciting to watch, and I'm not sure it's an approach that warrants the constant stream of accusations with very little substance to them. In Britain at least, our media have a long history of building up heroes only to try and knock them down. Nothing changes in the 'hero', but rather in us. Sky/British Cycling have reached that point now, and they're attracting gossip mongers who have their own agendas to push, and with very little interest in cycling. The sport will be around long after these parasites have latched onto something else to get their pound of flesh.
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