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Bicycle Racing Thread 2013

Bloody hell, Roche in Red after two mountain stages. In fact, he holds the leader's jersey, the King of the Mountains, the combined jersey and his team lead the team classification. He almost has a clean sweep, but unfortunately he's only second in the points competition behind Moreno. Whether he can hold onto this form or not, this week has definitely been the strongest of his career.

Pity Anton was caught. He's been almost Andy Schleckesque in his decline. But nice to see Net App-Endura get a win.
 
Nigel Irritable said:
Whether he can hold onto this form or not, this week has definitely been the strongest of his career.

But nice to see Net App-Endura get a win.
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Whether Roche can keep his form is anyone's guess, which is a lot more than can be said for Tour or Giro. A side effect of having a World's course that a lot of GC riders will have an eye on, I suppose.

Good to see Net App showing Cofidis how it's done too :). Was expecting Konig or Barta to get at least one stage between them, but was thinking from a breakaway so good to see Konig mixing it with the big boys on more than one occasion.
 
That was very impressive by Moreno, leaving Purito for dead like that, unless the latter is not feeling it.
 
Barguil finishes today's stage in 9th on same time as Gilbert and ahead of the likes of Nieve, Henao and Pozzo. French ridiculo-hype machine raised to DefCon 2.

Big losers looked to have been Majka, Pinot and Uran.
 
Sigmund Fraud said:
..and hopefully nothing to do with him switching to the most dubious team in the sport.
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I'm not sure that particular title can be reawarded until Vini Fantini disappear at the end of the year. As for dodgy methods, if Roche has hit the hot sauce he would appear to have bided his time about it because he has been a bit worse than usual rather than notably better all year up till this week. It's pro cycling, and we all know about Riis' history, mind you, so nothing can be taken for granted.

He was good again today, coming in fourth, but tomorrow should be a more significant test. I've always had the impression that he's more likely to run into trouble on multiple climb mountan stages than on single climb MTFs.
 
I'm more worried about Oleg Tinkoff than Riis. The man has privately and openly been trying to get his riders to 'be more professional' throughout his sponsorships in cycling. That is an extremely rotten back office together with Riis.
 
Sigmund Fraud said:
I'm more worried about Oleg Tinkoff than Riis. The man has privately and openly been trying to get his riders to 'be more professional' throughout his sponsorships in cycling. That is an extremely rotten back office together with Riis.
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Tinkov seems to be disgruntled that they weren't doping though (if we are assuming that's what he was getting at with the "more professional" stuff). And he definitely has fallen out with Riis. Last I heard he was abusing Contador on twitter and talking about buying Euskaltel's WT licence.
 
Actually scratch that last part. Fernando Alonso has just bought Euskaltel's licence to set up an Asturias based team, around Samuel Sanchez. Hopefully that means no Tinkoff next year.
 
The middle-aged grinning idiot not withstanding, that was a great stage. Riders getting dropped all over the place, grinding their way back etc. Roche was borderline heroic the way he kept getting gapped and clawing his way back on.

However, the Barguil-ridiculo-hype-machine status has been returned to "placid".
 
Sigmund Fraud said:
Tinkoff and Katusha are an almost perfect match. I predict a merger.
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I think that there's some bad blood between Tinkoff and Katusha though, which is why he was sponsoring Saxo in the first place (pardon the pun). Give him a couple more years and he'll be feuding with every team management in the sport.
 
Just like Chris Froome in 2011, Horner is about to run out of contract coming into this Vuelta and hasn't been offered a new one by his team. Why doesn't every team motivate their slackers like this? Apparently it can turn both has beens (Horner) and never weres (Froome) into world beaters.
 
The comparison being made here and elsewhere between Froome and Horner is moot - by virtue of the fact that Horner is almost 42 years of age!
 
That's certainly an important difference. Another important difference is that Horner hasn't always been complete dogshit through his career right up until the moment he emerged from a phone box as superman. Both are unprecedented and somewhat bizarre, but for what it's worth I'd agree that a 41 year old producing that sort of performance is even weirder. I can live with the Voigts and Eeckhouts of this world keeping going as pros into their 40s, but leading a GT at the halfway point is taking the piss.
 
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As usual, Jonathon Vaughters twitter account is pretty interesting on this sort of surprising performance. If you recall, he was almost positive that Wiggins was clean, while his comments on Froome could be summarised as "I dunno". With Horner, well, he's stopping only a little short of making an accusation.

He's not the Oracle, but he certainly has access to a lot more information in terms of power numbers, sports science and gossip than any of us do.
 
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Just had a look at the parcours for the ITT tomorrow. Not sure why I'm surprised to see a bloody great hill in there. Although they seem to have gotten confused and not put it at the end of the race.
 
Apparently Nibali has been stung by a wasp and is allergic, so his race could be in serious difficulty. I'll never forgive the wasp if this means that Horner, Valverde or Basso wins.
 
Erm, Pozzovivo third? I know he had a decent ITT at Giro, but that's a bit...odd. And Coppel, who hasn't done anything of note since about 2011 turns up in the top ten too. Bizarre.

edit: and is something the matter with Henao that he lost over 5 minutes today? He's all of 20 seconds ahead of little Kenny Elissonde in the GC which really ain't great for a rider of his stature.
 
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And the Barguil hypometer is now emitting steam.

The jury may still be out on his abilty to consistently climb with the heads of state, but he's definitely shown that he has a racing brain and real acceleration.
 
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Nigel Irritable said:
And the Barguil hypometer is now emitting steam.

The jury may still be out on his abilty to consistently climb with the heads of state, but he's definitely shown that he has a racing brain and real acceleration.
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That was the impressive thing for me today. Sat tight while the escapees were attacking each other and pinged off at exactly the right time. As soon as he went the stage was his, assuming he had the legs. And that was no soft breakaway either.
 
The Boy said:
That was the impressive thing for me today. Sat tight while the escapees were attacking each other and pinged off at exactly the right time. As soon as he went the stage was his, assuming he had the legs. And that was no soft breakaway either.
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Yes, it was very cleverly done. No messing about, no testing the water, he put everything into one well timed dig. I suspect that the likes of Mollema, Nocentini, Scarponi etc underestimated him a bit, which was silly given that he's been better than them all race.

Still odd that he's on Argos. Mind you, he's probably better off somewhere like that rather than on a French team.
 
Nigel Irritable said:
Still odd that he's on Argos. Mind you, he's probably better off somewhere like that rather than on a French team.
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Think a lot of French riders would do well to follow his lead, tbh. He's been allowed to spend his first year in the pro peloton doing his thing and gaining experience without the sort of pressure that countless promising riders have routinely been put under. Not sure how long that will remain to be the case, mind.

Plus Argos seem to be making a few signings that suggest they don't plan on being HTC Mk II with Kittel in the role of the Manx Missile so perhaps he might be worth keeping an eye on in the one week races next season.
 
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