Pro-cycling thread

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  • Well it all depends on your personal morals and opinions.

  • Good to see Wiggins stepping up to some casual racism. Guess his speaking tour isn’t selling too well.

    Brad on Cav: “He wears a £300k watch and rides for a team that donates 10 bicycles a day to Africa. I said to him ‘Why don’t you just sell your watch? Then you could buy Africa”

    https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/cycling/bradley-wiggins-dave-brailsford-chris-froome-mark-cavendish-a8633586.html

  • Fair point, but pretty badly made

  • to say the least

  • Some really awful quotes in the article. Might as well copy and paste the whole thing, but here are some highlights:

    On Cavendish - “He’s got very little hands, like Jeremy Beadle [the TV presenter who had Poland syndrome]. Can you imagine changing partners in the madison with Jeremy Beadle?”

    He also hit out at the media, telling any journalists lurking in the audience to “f*** off”

    Does this cunt not realise how selling your shit book works?

  • See this as well: https://www.cyclist.co.uk/reviews/5551/review-an-evening-with-bradley-wiggins

    Dear me, he really is a complete and utter twat, isn't he?

    Referring to his short-lived rowing career, he shrugged his shoulders and said: 'You won’t see a rower with a sleeve tattoo. You’ve got to have been to the right schools. I don’t have a silver spoon up my arse.'

    Nice attitude there, Wiggo. I'm sure your bitterness has nothing to do with the fact that you went into rowing with an overconfident, entitled attitude and allowed the whole thing to get way overhyped, only to fail spectacularly while also looking like a complete tool. With a result, by the way, that I was personally able to beat.

    There are tons of efforts out there to make rowing as accessible as possible, but if people keep telling everybody that it is supposed to be incredibly elitist and that "you had to have been to the right schools", that is not helpful. My interpretation of this is that he was not very popular with some of the actual GB trialists out there - not because he went to the wrong school, but because he's just, well, quite a big twat.

  • Fairly sure that the UK's most successful Olympian rower Steve Redgrave didn't go to Eton. He seemed to do OK.

  • Yeah I mean I'd agree that accessibility is an issue. Investment in rowing equipment and infrastructure is not cheap, to say the least - one could even say it's really bloody expensive. But as I said, there are attempt to change things and perceptions. And I mean, track or road cycling isn't something dominated by poor kids from the estates either, is it? On top of that, he seems to suggest that this elitism he believes to have detected had something to do with him personally not doing well.

    This is so bloody aggravating. He could have just said that he overestimated the speed of his improvement in training, or the extent to which rowing differs from cycling, or whatever. He's been so successful in cycling, why the need to shit-talk a sport in which he wasn't able to compete at a national level after just a year??

  • I’m inclined to agree, rowing IS dominated by kids from privileged backgrounds and that needs to change but that isn’t why he failed.

    By and large I’ve felt pretty positive towards Wiggins for most of his career but the rowing idea was doomed from the beginning. I don’t care how good his engine is or was, but I never believed he’d be able to pick up the “feel” you need to row in a good crew in sufficient time. Plus I don’t know what incentive GB rowing would have had to support him? His erg would have had to have been insane (comfortably sub6) before they even considered disrupting the progression of an established crew while he flapped around rocking the boat and sucking up the rhythm.

    Wiggo’s comments just sound like sour grapes.

  • Yeah exactly. To be fair, I did think that he'd be able to get a much better 2k time, considering his background, but... apparently not. And yeah, the technique would have been a massive hurdle even after getting to a sub-6 fitness level.

  • If you just view pro cycling as a kind of soap opera - and Wiggins as a Mike Baldwin/Fred Elliott character - it's much more enjoyable.

  • Is Valverde Nick Cotton?

  • On reflection, Dirty Den would seem to be a better fit.

  • The more I reflected on my metaphor, the less stable it seemed.

    Sagan is Graeme Proctor. Niche one for the Corrie heads there.

  • That’s Vino

  • In other news, Simon Gerrans signs for EC1 Collective Goldman Sachs.

    http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/gerrans-to-work-for-goldman-sachs-following-retirement/

    Obviously.

  • That’s really cool. Good for him.

  • It’s going to be a big change from being a professional cyclist to working in banking and financial services but it’s a transition that I’m really excited about.

    Wut

  • ££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££

  • "Goldman Sachs launched their ‘London sports internship programme’ in the securities division in November 2016. The six-month programme is open to anyone who has ‘achieved success’ in a sporting career. In 2012, they ran a similar month-long programme for six athletes, in conjunction with recruitment agency Add-victor."

    That's definitely so they can get them to lead rides for/coach the executive MAMILs

  • Rick Delaney has confirmed he's paying Conor Dunne's salary next season;

    https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/racing/aqua-blue-sport-boss-pay-conor-dunnes-israel-cycling-academy-salary-2019-season-401038

    Let's hope he's true to his word for once.

  • Has he now paid the team for this year?

  • Every team has to lodge a guarantee, which covers three months wages, with the UCI. As I understand it, Delaney has told the UCI to use this to pay wages for September, October and November but there has been a delay as someone, and it’s not clear who, hasn’t actioned it correctly.

    Who knows what happens with the December wages, presumably Delaney will pay them out of his own pocket.

  • So he's not actually paid them like he said he would, he's let the UCI pay them.

  • No, he said they’d get their Sept-Nov wages from the bank guarantee, which is his money that he’s paid the UCI as part of his contractual obligations. For reasons which are unclear, there has been a delay in that money being paid out by the UCI. We don’t know if that is due to the UCI or Aqua Blue/Delaney, but the money is there to pay them.

    It’s quite common that when a team closes they request the UCI to pay the last three months wages from the guarantee.

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Pro-cycling thread

Posted by Avatar for dancing james @dancing james

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