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Honestly with only 80 athletes and 4 riders max par nation, it will look so little like a regular road race that they could get rid of it without bothers me much. It will turn it into a brute force contest with the stronger rider of the days winning it almost every time.

 

One of the saving grace for the road races though, it is one the very few olympic events people can attend for free.

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10 minutes ago, heywoodu said:

Philipsen is literally trying to block attackers with 80k to go, because he doesn't want another attacker. Like, going in front of the attacker, pulling the brakes, trying to push him out of the road, etc. The umpteenth dick move by Philipsen.

 

Probably he'll get away with 200 CHF fine or so, but he should easily get 100 points docked for the green jersey or so. Won't make a difference, but still it means a bit more than a tiny monetary fine.


I would go with a disqualification myself. Just once, it would be enough to calm down everyone for the next ten years.

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A little bit of TV audiences in France. More than 12M telespectors watched some of the yesterday's stage (and Eurosport would add a bit to that figure)

 

TV audiences are the best in almost 20 years. This new mutant's league of cycling is doing wonders for the popularity of the sport...

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14 minutes ago, heywoodu said:

Yes, teams most likely have way better training methods and professional dealings - FDJ is known to have basically nothing with diets, which is as amateuristic as it can get, whereas other teams have a full team for it. But that doesn't exclude the option that they also go over the edges of what's legal. It's not necessarily one or the other.

 

That's factually wrong... They do have a team about that (and a medical one, and a research one, and a high performance one, etc.). Granted I don't how big they are or how efficient they are.

 

That's the thing, we don't know how much the storyline of how much professional a team is or is not is true.

 

There is something UCI could relatively easely do and that will help with the credibility of cycling is to ask for and publish every year the accounts of every pro cycling teams. By itself, it should help to reduce the grey/illegal area and it would also allow the public to know what are the real differences in research/performance/material/whatever between teams and how much of this storyline is true.

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4 minutes ago, heywoodu said:

Oh well, in the Netherlands every foreign team doing what Jumbo does would be insanely suspected but Jumbo is supposed to do it all on some good bread with peanut butter, because it's a Dutch team and thus innocent :p (not saying this or that team is for sure suspicious, but surely one knows where to put some question marks?)

 

TV wouldn't show anything but Dafne Schippers in the 2016 Olympics basically, super hero of all time. Which all goes to say I think most countries have quite a dose of chauvinism in them, and not one country is specifically above the others in that regard.

 

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But Belgium is trying hard.

 

Actually, I was reading a bit of the wielerforum in the last couple of days for curiosity sake and there is a couple of guys who don't buy the Team JV hyper domination, orange or not. In Belgium, one would be immediately stripped of his nationality if he was questioning the real TDF winner.  :rolleyes:

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