Pro-cycling thread

Yo Sky didn't we agree on 4th position in TTT yields less drag on the rider than the 5th in a 5 man group.

Shot down.

Watching stages with friends depressed me, i ended up watching stuff on my own to avoid the constant doping talk & hypocritical BS "I don't like Aru, he probably dopes, i don't like Contador, he got caught doping. GO RYDER."

Might be a bit head in the sand, but i want to believe.

English speakers are okay. It's the foreigns who are the real cheaters. GO MILLAR!

and if one of our boys does dope, its because the forrins made them do it

I find the whole "Astana were collectively strong so must've been doping" argument wryly amusing.

Everyone moans when Sky mass at the front and close down a race, yet that is legitimate. Astana chose to adopt a different tactic, which probably used similar levels of effort, but it clearly indicated doping.

it's not well written at all

Possibly translated as English not first language?

I just assumed he's an Australian.

Astana have previous though, Sky are beyond reproach not having had anything to do with dirty dopers,..hold on. :(

Deeply cycnical but I like to think they're all at it. Certainly Astana, most likely Movistar a fair chunk of the Italian pro continental lot, and all the guys with the deep section wheels.

What I dont understand is the idea that its all tooo fecking fast, Astana are killing us! Yet, the breakaways are sticking, lets all attack!

Cant really be both can it.

I Guess this Secret pro had responabilities that kept him riding at Astanas pace day in day out. But that pace didnt seem so super human, that Young unknowns, With no such responsability, couldnt disappear up the early Mountains.

It's not just Astana's performance that's a bit (blood) smelly though is it? Tinkoff got slated for leaving Contador exposed towards the end of stages but they were hauling-ass every morning.

If you were cycnical you could argue that it was almost as if there are now a bunch of drugs being abused and that testing hasn't kept up.

I feel like Astana sitting at the front for 2 hours at 50kmh ave when there's a HC climb and 1st cat climb to come ahead in the stage was pretty nuts. And for them to still have Aru, Landa and couple of there other riders (Tiralongo, Rosa) in the top 30 as well should surely raise eyebrows.

Yes - it has raised eyebrows.

What can anybody do about it?

You can't ban a team for looking strong. I'm sure they're getting tested plenty but if they're doping, they're probably quite at it.

The bio-passport isn't the sort of thing that will catch people overnight. It looks at longer patterns.

Wasn't Kreuziger's alleged doping from 2009 or something?

Anyway - Bouhanni won again. Is he going to be in the mix for stage wins at the Tour?

Where is Kittel?

Bouhanni winning sprints when no other sprinters are in the race is pretty standard

He beat Modolo before he pulled out. Mezgec is there.

But I get your point.

Why? Of there 6 riders who finished in the top 25, only Landa had failed to do this before. In fact most of them were repeating their GC position from their previous GT.

People forget that the middle week of the Giro was completely lacking in any GC action, which gave them plenty of time to recover from their first week efforts.

And how come convicted doper Contador gets a pass here? Despite Astana's supposed superiority, he wiped the floor with them.

wiping the floor with them? only on Mortirolo. for the rest of the race he looked quite human.

He attacked a number of times when it was (or at least seemed to be) unnecessary. Aru and Porte put digs into him which looked futile. He dislocated his shoulder and road the longest stage of the tour without any real issues. With the exception of one day he was incredibly strong.

Hmm, no stage wins, a couple of attacks but mostly hanging on to the Astana train, 1m 53s lead over Aru in the end, mostly thanks to 2 stages; TT and Mortirolo. I'd think it would take a strong rider to win a race like this year's Giro, but 'incredible' is not a word that springs to my mind. Had he done much less, he wouldn't have won and we probably wouldn't be having this conversation.

Incredibly strong and incredible are two different things. My point is he did not look "quite human." He was clearly the strongest rider over the three weeks, and only looked "quite human" on one day. Unless I'm forgetting something.

Point taken, but I think you and I have different judgments/criteria of 'quite human' for a pro cyclist. He looked weak to me in the Finistere stage.

Word.

I'd also like to say that I'm not insinuating he was doping.

top. me neither, we'll see in a couple of years. maybe ;-)

The collective might of the Astana team rarely isolated him and couldn't use their superiority as a team to put him in real difficulty. For all his faults, Contador is a very tactically aware rider.

Collectively strong teams still struggle to isolate strong riders even if they aren't particularly tactically aware - see Froome and Movistar two years ago.

It's a lot easier to defend a lead than it is to attack, I guess. As you said, see Froome two years ago, and see Bertie in 09 vs Andy-no-I-definitely-didn't-dope-my-performance-dropoff-when-my-bro-got-busted-was-purely-coincidental-Schleck just sitting on the wheel all the time.
This Giro was kind of more exciting than that though - Bertie attacking on that stage the day after(?) Mortirolo on an innocuous looking climb and extending his lead. Maybe he anticipated losing time on Finestra? I read something that it didn't suit his climbing style, because you lose traction when out of the saddle.