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Hansen was fav going into the omnium, IMO and just threw it away there with a stupid mistake. Cav might regret not taking fuller advantage.
 
thought I'd watch some cycling but it seems i've caught the omnium individual pursuit qualifying which has to be the most boring event because they don't pursue each other.:facepalm:
 
Petty comment from Cavendish at the start of the interview - must have had to wait cos the first thing he said was "You'd have been straight on for Brad"
 
sleaterkinney said:
He's won so much and had a great career, the track is so hyped in this country, it's not that important.
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I think there's an element of envy with Brad's exposure - depending on how you look at it, he's a genuine marvel in the sport, tho all anyone outside of the cycling world talks about is Wiggo. I guess no ones told him he's got to work on his PR if he wants that kind of adulation tbh.
 
Poor old Cav. Has to pretend he's pleased with a silver when his teammates are winning multiple golds, maybe hence the surliness. As a person, I prefer surly Cav to artificial Cockney Geezer Wiggo.
 
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S☼I said:
Petty comment from Cavendish at the start of the interview - must have had to wait cos the first thing he said was "You'd have been straight on for Brad"
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I think just before that I lip-read him saying something like "what are they saying?" :D

Not exactly famed for my lip-reading skills, mind you :oops:
 
All told, and now the dust has settled, that was a fuck up of epic proportions from Hansen in the elimination race.

Kudos to Viviani though. Is it wrong to ask the judges to test whether his nose is within UCI limits?!
 
Cavendish will be remembered by cycling fans across the world. Wiggins won't be. Cavendish is a great of the sport, perhaps a minor figure in the cycling pantheon but a member of it. Wiggins is just another Sastre or Pereiro. I'm sure at some level Cavendish has to find it annoying that the general public in his home country wrongly think that Wiggins is a bigger deal. I know I'd be pretty cranky about it if I was him.
 
Nigel Irritable said:
Cavendish will be remembered by cycling fans across the world. Wiggins won't be. Cavendish is a great of the sport, perhaps a minor figure in the cycling pantheon but a member of it. Wiggins is just another Sastre or Pereiro. I'm sure at some level Cavendish has to find it annoying that the general public in his home country wrongly think that Wiggins is a bigger deal. I know I'd be pretty cranky about it if I was him.
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Wiggins is as close to a sporting hero/inspration I can mention tbh. I actually love him :oops:
 
Ok, so as a member of the public rather than the cycling community: how come there's such the difference in perception? I suppose what I'm really asking is that obviously Wiggins...

Hang on, are they clapping along to the Italian national anthem?! That's a new one! :D

Anyway... obviously Wiggins has won the TdF and the Olympics golds, so what are the cycling community valuing above that in regards to Cavendish?
 
Cavendish has won the points classification at all the grand tours, 30 stages at the tdf, the world championship etc. People generally don't like sky because they are boring and have questionable riders so don't like Wiggins that much.

I like the fact he's a bit prickly and not a boring twat like a lot of modern sport stars.
 
Lord Camomile said:
Ok, so as a member of the public rather than the cycling community: how come there's such the difference in perception? I suppose what I'm really asking is that obviously Wiggins...

Hang on, are they clapping along to the Italian national anthem?! That's a new one! :D

Anyway... obviously Wiggins has won the TdF and the Olympics golds, so what are the cycling community valuing above that in regards to Cavendish?
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An engaging personality. And success in cycling events that make the back pages (as well as the blue riband niche ones).
 
Lord Camomile said:
Anyway... obviously Wiggins has won the TdF and the Olympics golds, so what are the cycling community valuing above that in regards to Cavendish?
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Olympic medals and in particular Olympic track medals are not particularly important in cycling. Track is fun, but a backwater that few people really care about. Road is where pretty much all of the money, talent and audience are. Britain isn't one of the countries where there has historically been a mass audience for cycling and a lot of the casual audience there has been introduced to the sport through the British Olympic medal machine. Understandably this tends to leave many with a very skewed impression of the general pecking order according to fans everywhere else in the world. Track probably ranks somewhere after mountain biking and cyclocross from a continental point of view, Chris Hoy isn't remotely famous and British cyclists important breakthroughs in recent years have been on the road.

On the road, the Tour de France is the most important race you can win. But there's a TdeF every year plus two other Grand Tours and six very important one day races and various other races of some note. Winning a single Tour de France is a great accomplishment and life changing for a cyclist. But quite a lot of guys win one Grand Tour and not a huge amount else of importance - Sastre and Pereiro, the two guys I mentioned above, both won the TdeF once and now, not all that much later, are almost forgotten. Cavendish, on the other hand, has won and won and won. He has won the World Championship Road Race, Milan San-Remo, 30 Tour de France stages (more than everyone in history bar Eddie Merckx), Giro and Vuelta stages and countless smaller races. He's been the best sprinter in the sport for a decade. When he had a couple of "bad years" he was still winning fifteen races a year and the issue being debated was whether he was still the very best or just one of the three best. This year there's no argument again, he's the best. He has years to go and he's already generally regarded as the best sprint specialist who ever lived. He's part of the pantheon of the sport. In thirty years time, the question cycling fans will be asking about the top sprinter of the day is "but is he as good as Cavendish"?

You have to have at least a little background knowledge of pro cycling to understand that Cavendish is a great. While the less you know about pro cycling the more impressive Wiggins career sounds, particularly if you come from a country where winning a heap of track medals makes him "our greatest ever Olympian" rather than anywhere else where that's about as relevant as his prowess on a BMX. That's not to say that Wiggins hasn't had an excellent career. He has had. He's a very good cyclist and he won the Tour de France, the biggest race there is. But he's not a great of the sport, unlike Cavendish.
 
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Ted Striker said:
Wiggins is as close to a sporting hero/inspration I can mention tbh. I actually love him :oops:
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That's fair enough. He's had an excellent career, has achieved things that most people thought he couldn't achieve, and he has a personality, which is more than you can say about a lot of high level athletes. He doesn't rank near Cavendish in terms of his place in cycling history, but few people do.
 
Nigel Irritable said:
Olympic medals and in particular Olympic track medals are not particularly important in cycling. Track is fun, but a backwater that few people really cares about. Road is where pretty much all of the money, talent and audience are. Britain isn't one of the countries where there has historically been a mass audience for cycling and a lot of the casual audience there has been introduced to the sport through the British Olympic medal machine. Understandably this tends to leave many with a very skewed impression of the general pecking order according to fans everywhere else in the world. Track probably ranks somewhere after mountain biking and cyclocross from a continental point of view, Chris Hoy isn't remotely famous and British cyclists important breakthroughs in recent years have been on the road.

On the road, the Tour de France is the most important race you can win. But there's a TdeF every year plus two other Grand Tours and six very important one day races and various other races of some note. Winning a single Tour de France is a great accomplishment and life changing for a cyclist. But quite a lot of guys win one Grand Tour and not a huge amount else of importance - Sastre and Pereiro, the two guys I mentioned above, both won the TdeF once and now, not all that much later, are almost forgotten. Cavendish, on the other hand, has won and won and won. He has won the World Championship Road Race, Milan San-Remo, 30 Tour de France stages (more than everyone in history bar Eddie Merckx), Giro and Vuelta stages and countless smaller races. He's been the best sprinter in the sport for a decade. When he had a couple of "bad years" he was still winning fifteen races a year and the issue being debated was whether he was still the very best or just one of the three best. This year there's no argument again, he's the best. He has years to go and he's already generally regarded as the best sprint specialist who ever lived. He's part of the pantheon of the sport. In thirty years time, the question cycling fans will be asking about the top sprinter of the day is "but is he as good as Cavendish"?

You have to have at least a little background knowledge of pro cycling to understand that Cavendish is a great. While the less you know about pro cycling the more impressive Wiggins career sounds, particularly if you come from a country where winning a heap of track medals makes him "our greatest ever Olympian" rather than anywhere else where that's about as relevant as his prowess on a BMX. That's not to say that Wiggins hasn't had an excellent career. He has had. But he's not a great of the sport, unlike Cavendish.
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Agree with all of that and found it quite enlightening.:cool:

The problem is, that Road cycling is a tough watch for fairweather fans (we've all got mates that pester us on every stage as to why the guys currently winning the race by 10 minutes (the breakaway) have "no chance", right?!), an sprints - especially the benign drag races Cave excels in - are a real niche interest. I've only just got into them and love the feverish build up of speed and spot the lead outs form etc (though my 2 favourites are the elbow flick from the yellow jersey on the champs, and that Romandie stage :p:D). But for most people it's not worth the investment of anything other than hoping to tune in for the last 5k, or else they're happy to read about them on cyclingnews and look forward to some proper entertainment when the mountains return.

Wiggins has a better story for your average sporting fan that deals in fairytales.
 
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