Men's Road Cycling UCI World Tour 2022 (Giro d'Italia)

[Olympian1010 8,284]

14 minutes ago, Pifta said:

I didn't watch the stage today, but I read the results, it says 156 riders crossed the finish line at the same time, not even a second difference happened. I can't imagine this...

They were likely awarded the same time assuming there were no substantial time gaps. It’s common practice in professional road cycling.

[NearPup 4,136]

7 hours ago, Pifta said:

I didn't watch the stage today, but I read the results, it says 156 riders crossed the finish line at the same time, not even a second difference happened. I can't imagine this...

In road races they award the same finish time to anyone that is within the same group.

[Grassmarket 4,249]

It’s a safety measure. If they don’t all get the same time, then all the main contendors would be fighting to get to the front.

 

However, let’s say it takes 15 seconds for 150 riders to cross the line & there is then a 2-second gap to Rider 151.  He then gets a time 17 seconds behind the others!
 

 

[dcro 10,210]

It's just how it is for the reasons of fairness. You might as well ask - Why are there offsides in football?

[Vektor 3,326]

So I went to Stage 3 yesterday, I was at one of the turns before Lake Balaton in a village.  Thankfully the weather wasn't too bad and I managed to find a place later in Keszthely to watch the finish. It was nice to see Lake Balaton again, I haven't been there since COVID started. 

[Grassmarket 4,249]

24 minutes ago, Vektor said:

So I went to Stage 3 yesterday, I was at one of the turns before Lake Balaton in a village.  Thankfully the weather wasn't too bad and I managed to find a place later in Keszthely to watch the finish. It was nice to see Lake Balaton again, I haven't been there since COVID started. 

Were you the guy wearing the Borat mankini?  

[Vektor 3,326]

3 minutes ago, Grassmarket said:

Were you the guy wearing the Borat mankini?  

Maybe. Maybe not.

 

Spoiler

No, it wasn't me. 

 

[heywoodu 16,434]

So, Nibali and Dumoulin are not in good shape, we can say after yesterday's umpteenth Etna climb. Miguel Angel Lopez is already out, literally, after having to give up due to a fall early on.

 

Today it's a nice bit of copy-pasting by the Giro organizers, I guess they really didn't have much inspiration. After the nowadays almost obligated Etna stage in 2020, we had this stage:

 

Spoiler

 

Today, after the semi-obligated Etna stage, we have this one:

 

Spoiler

 

 

[Olympian1010 8,284]

Girmay keeps getting boxed out in the sprints. He appears to have the legs, just needs to sharpen his tactics a bit. Definitely a rider I enjoy watching from what I’ve seen this year. Reminds me of Sagan in some ways.

[heywoodu 16,434]

5 hours ago, Olympian1010 said:

Girmay keeps getting boxed out in the sprints. He appears to have the legs, just needs to sharpen his tactics a bit. Definitely a rider I enjoy watching from what I’ve seen this year. Reminds me of Sagan in some ways.

One of the main thing about non-South-African African riders in general: they often lack any sort of situational awareness in terms of riding in a peloton, we've seen that for 10+ years now, especially since the emergence of the Eritreans.

 

Which is not something they can be blamed for, by the way, since it's something you do really need to learn and you can't learn in relatively small races in Eritrea and such. It is improving, so that's good. And to be fair to Girmay: his team this Giro is just...not good, at all. They could have fairly easily made sure Demare wasn't even in the sprint yesterday, but other than going to the front for a few minutes in the long descent, they didn't do much. Then Girmay had to find his own way once again and lost way too much energy.

 

In terms of positioning, it was drama, much like Van der Poel. He didn't even really get to sprinting because he was face-first in the wind with 700m to go already. Mass sprints are not his thing, and not because of the legs.