2012 Vuelta a España - Tour of Spain

greenedge win!?!

sick racing today. good work

i wish a few more celebrities had to hurt as much as these guys on their pushbikes
might make them think twice about foisting their shit singing voices / persona's upon us

Valverde got payback from his & Movistar's actions in Paris-Nice, wanted a word with the Sky team ;-)

Just watching ITV+1 now - Movistar sending their team car to the front of the peleton to beg for mercy is hilarious. Would've been better if they were waving bundles of cash out the window.

We do it because we're all a little odd. They get paid.

Totally this. I'd love to have their job (or their ability to do their job). I want to see them at the limits of human endurance/determination and what the best riders can do given their training and support. I don't see them queuing up to support me when I'm having a tough day at work and this is their payday so if the winner of each stage hasn't had to wring it all out then I think the watching fans have been cheated.

"They didn’t have the balls to stop, they chose an unsporting way, Sky formed an echelon and they’re perfectly within their rights to do that. I’m not cross that I lost the lead because of this, but because there was no respect.”

Says unrepentant drugs cheat Valverde.

It takes a certain type to believe they are always right and continually being wronged.

A cunt

Couldn't happen to a nicer bloke.

Froomedog got a mention on Radio 1 in their 'News and Sports Summary'. Apparently he's continued his fantastic form from the Tour and the Olympic TT and has moved into second overall at the Tour of Spain. Incisive stuff.

Little sympathy for Valverde: you can't stop for every crash, particularly when you've just started to put the hammer down and there's a breakaway 3 minutes down the road. I don't know the time differences for the breakaway but I'm guessing if Martin or Clarke had got 3 or more minutes they might have been in red? I think Movistar's objections come from thinking Sky caused the crash then took advantage of it, a murky accusation at best. I wonder who the peloton will react, Movistar will certainly give them no quarter and they might get a hard time from the crowd too.

Oh and an Aussie actually won: where's Hippy doing a lap of honour?

time to scrub the unwritten rules and move on to each man for himself
racing is racing
on the commentary after the highlights last night they said there were no leaders in the peleton ones who would lay down the law and say we should wait / ride on
gone are the armstrongs the delgado's
now it's froome and contador not quite the heavy weights of tours / vuelta's gone by

It's not a disregard or deviation from convention. It's not every man for himself and there are still leaders.

Sky attacked as they turned across the wind and before the crash.

the crash happened about 10m behind froome
as they were just getting wound up for the attack
he says he wasn't aware of the crash
one of the people in the team car came out and said he made sure froome was aware of the crash within 2km of it happening ( said person on car was a friend of the maillot rouge )
did froome order his team to continue racing

#cheatingbrits# ?

I didn't really believe him when he said he wasn't aware of the crash until much later.

^^
I think you're missing the point.

There is no issue (unless you're Valverde and sour) if a crash occurs whilst a move is in play. The attack had to happen at that section of road, and you can clearly see Sky on the front and pushing in replays of the crash.

Had they attacked after the crash then they would have questions to answer, and quite possibly riders would have objected (on the road and afterwards).

So are there any online resources with good coverage of the vuelta? I liked saddles eurosport blog for the tour fee France but they're seems to be not too much coverage of vuelta

The Spanish are going to gang up on froome once he's isolated in the mountains anyway. Just getting first dig in. Racing is racing.
Saxo-tinkof and Katusha were both pulling turns, so no love lost.

^^
I think you're missing the point.

There is no issue (unless you're Valverde and sour) if a crash occurs whilst a move is in play. The attack had to happen at that section of road, and you can clearly see Sky on the front and pushing in replays of the crash.

Had they attacked after the crash then they would have questions to answer, and quite possibly riders would have objected (on the road and afterwards).

It was a pretty fine, line the attacks had literally just started as one of the Sky rider moved it took out a front wheel bringing Valverde and team mates down ... valverde's team manager said it was intentional by sky thats an accusation of the highest order !

You could see how the peleton got ripped apart by that side wind the view from the helicopter showed 3-4 eschelons down the road, it was an obvious place for the attack

Perhaps the general consensus within Sky is that he's a cheating doping cunt and like fuck we are going to slow down.

^^

The attack was not a gradual acceleration or a series of bursts - they did it right and hammered it, that's crucial to cause splits. Once that's on things behind don't matter.

I pretty sure that if Contador and Froome had crashed it would have played out the same.

I like that Sky hammered it rather than waiting. I find it annoying when riders bitch and moan when the custom of waiting for leaders / contenders isn't observed. Be thankful if people do slow for you, but don't expect that as your right.

By the same token, Sky have made themselves fair game for the remainder of the Vuelta. No quarter asked for and none given should make the rest of the racing pretty spicy.

Vuelta is shaping up to be far more exciting than the objectively dull procession at the Tour.

Everyone are villans except for sqeaky clean sky who can do no wrong... ever...