Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Today's incident

This Tour de France is getting better and better by the day. Today was a day of controversy due to the incident on the last climb of the day, when a group containing second, third and fourth GC guys let the guy in the yellow jersey on his own after he had a mechanical.
A lot has been written and said in many forums worldwide. The focus being the decision by Contador to attack Schleck was off the bike. Schleck was obviously pissed after the finish and Contador was booed at the podium. He later put a video on youtube where he kind of apologizes.

On another situation I think he may have waited, but there was pressure from the other two guys and they just kept going. The really stupid thing was not to wait. All riders have radios and it would have been really easy for them to roll for 2 minutes until he catched up. It would have been one of those times where the sportmanship and camaraderie are shown to a wider audience and says something good about the people involved, and also about all of the professional sportspeople. If this happened 2km to the finish I would have a different view. But the fact that there was over 30 minutes of racing for them to make good a decision that was obviously very controversial is what for me makes it a silly thing. This does not take anything from their sporting achievements. But makes me want to see their butts kicked by Schleck in the Tourmalet.

Many triathletes point out that nobody waits for you when you have a flat in a race. And this is true. But triathlon and bike racing and different sports. I've never waited for anyone when racing, but I've lended multitools, tyres, gels to fellow athletes, it just feels the right thing.

The other itchy questions are: who decides what's the right thing and the wrong thing to do? did putting time on Armstrong on that crazy cobbles stage play a part in deciding this tour? was Contador taking a payback from the day he had a flat and no one waited?

I'm going to bed now, and I'll wake up to the unknown,

Date 20 July
Sport Cycling/Running
Time 60min/15min
Dist n-a / 3km
Comment: I have to keep running in the flat, the leg gets better.

3 comments:

  1. loving watching the tour this year...
    -D

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  2. I just don't like Contador. Arrogance doesn't suit him. Cavendish, yeah he gets away with it. Not Contador. I went to my bike shop today (which is a Specialized concept store) with the express purpose of complaining about Contador. Thankfully Schleck rides Specialized too.

    ReplyDelete
  3. how do I contact you direct? I'm 17281posse (at) gmail.com

    ReplyDelete