Disppointing Vuelta

Quoted message said:

I was really disappointed to see such a uneventful Vuelta this year. I
think pro cycling is still in shock over recent drug scandals. I would
like to see the sponsors or someone sue Landis and other riders for the
financial damage they have caused cycling.

What is it about "drug scandals" that makes for an uneventful race? Are
riders holding back their best efforts, so they don't draw suspicion? Or do
drugs make for a better race and you have a problem with those who get
caught, ruining it for everyone else?

--Mike-- Chain Reaction Bicycles
www.ChainReactionBicycles.com

Mike Jacoubowsky said:

What is it about "drug scandals" that makes for an uneventful race? Are
riders holding back their best efforts, so they don't draw suspicion?

They're playing musical chairs trying to stay behind the Millar line.

in message <[email hidden]>,

(') said:

I was really disappointed to see such a uneventful Vuelta this year. I
think pro cycling is still in shock over recent drug scandals. I would
like to see the sponsors or someone sue Landis and other riders for the
financial damage they have caused cycling.

You are this: mad.

This was a very exciting Vuelta from where I was sitting, with Valverde
putting in a great performance but fading at the end in the face of the
Khazak charge. Astana have shown themselves to be next year's team to
beat, and Disco has been shown to be seriously lacking in talent (with one
of their best remaining riders defecting to Astana, to rub salt into the
wounds).

Vino on the Champs Elisees next year?.

--
[email hidden] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

;; 99% of browsers can't run ActiveX controls. Unfortunately
;; 99% of users are using the 1% of browsers that can...
[seen on /. 08:04:02]

Simon Brooke said:

in message <[email hidden]>,

(') said:

I was really disappointed to see such a uneventful Vuelta this year. I
think pro cycling is still in shock over recent drug scandals. I would
like to see the sponsors or someone sue Landis and other riders for the
financial damage they have caused cycling.

You are this: mad.

This was a very exciting Vuelta from where I was sitting, with Valverde
putting in a great performance but fading at the end in the face of the
Khazak charge. Astana have shown themselves to be next year's team to
beat, and Disco has been shown to be seriously lacking in talent (with one
of their best remaining riders defecting to Astana, to rub salt into the
wounds).

I'll second that. There was a lot of eventful racing. Great tactics.
Good attacks. Great country to look at too..
All the best
Dan Gregory

I was only able to catch the various cycling news sites... I thought it
was an outstanding final week as the attacking Vino stole it from
Valverde.
Where there are rules, there will always be cheats. Whether it's
pushing off the team car while taking handups or the illegal injection,
many racers being so desperate for the win will find themselves
compromising their values to be in the limelight.
Hopefully, Vino rode clean & we can all admire his tenacity in closing
the time gap over the final days. Anger is a great motivater after
missing the Tour, along w/the nature of the attacking Kazaks' way of
putting it all on the line every time he's out there.
alien out.

Dan Gregory said:

Simon Brooke said:

in message <[email hidden]>,

(') said:

I was really disappointed to see such a uneventful Vuelta this year. I
think pro cycling is still in shock over recent drug scandals. I would
like to see the sponsors or someone sue Landis and other riders for the
financial damage they have caused cycling.

You are this: mad.

This was a very exciting Vuelta from where I was sitting, with Valverde
putting in a great performance but fading at the end in the face of the
Khazak charge. Astana have shown themselves to be next year's team to
beat, and Disco has been shown to be seriously lacking in talent (with one
of their best remaining riders defecting to Astana, to rub salt into the
wounds).

I'll second that. There was a lot of eventful racing. Great tactics.
Good attacks. Great country to look at too..
All the best
Dan Gregory

Quoted message said:

I was really disappointed to see such a uneventful Vuelta this year. I
think pro cycling is still in shock over recent drug scandals. I would
like to see the sponsors or someone sue Landis and other riders for the
financial damage they have caused cycling.

I thought it was a great race and it was fantastic to see Vino win,
especially after he and his team were not allowed to start the TdF.
That guy (Vino) has heart.
--
Marty

Marty said:

Quoted message said:

I was really disappointed to see such a uneventful Vuelta this year. I
think pro cycling is still in shock over recent drug scandals. I would
like to see the sponsors or someone sue Landis and other riders for the
financial damage they have caused cycling.

I thought it was a great race and it was fantastic to see Vino win,
especially after he and his team were not allowed to start the TdF.
That guy (Vino) has heart.
--
Marty

I thought it was the best in years. Most of the last few have been
pretty good and certainly the best since the move from the Spring
calendar spot. It will always be the least of the 3 GTs. It can't hope
to out-do the TDF, and any race after the TDF in the calendar is going
to be a consolation prize, and a race for the younger blokes still
learning how to race GTs. The young climbers like to debut at the
Vuelta and the others prefer Italy. It used to be that the aptly named
"Tour of the Future" was the only cat 1 stage race after the Tour. It
was also the biggest pro-am stage race on the calendar. IIRC, there
were also some short stage races in developing countries (cycling wise)
which served the same purpose. The big guns (who may have specialized
in their focus of how well they expected to do but most of the stars
aspired to do all of the big races, Tours and single day events
(skipping either the Giro or the Vuelta, but not both). Well,
anyway...this is just babble about how f'ed up the calendar is after 20
years of Heinz Verbruggen screwing the sport up as much as humanly
possible. Given that, the Vuelta has done a great job working with what
they have. The Protour being only the most recent problem where they
UCI is trying to centralize influence in a sport that never was
structured that way. Now he acts like there is no other way to run a
sport. Most of the problems with the sport (including the insanity with
the way doping is handled, and I mean every aspect of the doping
doctrine as constructed by the UCI) are either a direct or indirect
result of poor policy and execution from the UCI. The Vuelta has had
some wacky ideas recently but none of the really silly ideas were
executed (the worst idea has to be the one to start with 2 separate
groups racing to keep from being eliminated for the second phase of the
race, where a select subset from each of the 2 groups is combined to go
for the final GC).. anyway...all that aside I have to say that they
have done a great job.

I am really happy that Vino asserted his strong will to bring the form
needed to redeem his reputation. I love the way he reacted to the
"door" affair by bringing in the new sponsor and taking the knocks in
stride. He spent too many years in the shadows of the German stars at
Telekom. That Telekom team is something else! They manage to
consistently squeeze 80% of the potential from each of their top pros.
Look at the palmares of any pro who spent time there and you are
assured to see that the team does not know how to leverage the talent
they sign. Vino was a debutante with Casino, which was a team that did
manage to get the most of their up-and-comers they had signed and then
they typically were poached. They managed to keep the talent coming in
for a while to balance out the poaching. Vino had a great season with
Casino and then with Telekom in 2000, the most notable race was the
Olympics, where Vino worked for the team leader of his trade team
rather than working as if on a competitive team. It was a long time
coming and I am really glad to see him deliver the result that was
expected since he impressed everyone at the 1999 Dauphine. IIRC, I
think USPS tried to hire him when Telekom was able to [censored] him from
Casino.

I just wish the whole matched-shorts-with-jersey trend started by Cipo
and reinforced by Armstrong would just go away. The Golden bike was
cool but...anyway...

To the OP, don't let all of the doping hype get you down. The
expectations that are placed on the riders and the sport are not
reasonable and the reactions are not appropriate to the findings. Some
doping positives should require an investigation before sanctioning the
athlete. It is up to the national federations, but with the UCI and
WADA constantly floating their expectations in the press before the
cases are processed is bad conduct IMO and pure politics. The public
does not seem to be able to discern between doping results that may be
explainable from clear abuse. I think that the political pressure to
hang as many as possible is driven by the perception that the majority
of athletes have to be doping on the basis that many of the drugs do
not have a reliable way to detect infractions and the cases that are
exposed due to law enforcement catching guys that passed the routine
doping tests.

I am losing interest at the moment, but I know who to blame. It is not
the riders. The sport has grown to the point where political influences
are hurting it more than anything else.

Simon Brooke said:

in message <[email hidden]>,

(') said:

I was really disappointed to see such a uneventful Vuelta this year. I
think pro cycling is still in shock over recent drug scandals. I would
like to see the sponsors or someone sue Landis and other riders for the
financial damage they have caused cycling.

You are this: mad.

This was a very exciting Vuelta from where I was sitting, with Valverde
putting in a great performance but fading at the end in the face of the
Khazak charge. Astana have shown themselves to be next year's team to
beat, and Disco has been shown to be seriously lacking in talent (with one
of their best remaining riders defecting to Astana, to rub salt into the
wounds).

Vino on the Champs Elisees next year?.

Disco lacking talent? You must be kidding. Beltran, Devolder,
Danielson, etc. Just because they didn't end in first place doesn't
nean they rode bad.

Andre

Simon Brooke said:

in message <[email hidden]>,

(') said:

I was really disappointed to see such a uneventful Vuelta this year. I
think pro cycling is still in shock over recent drug scandals. I would
like to see the sponsors or someone sue Landis and other riders for the
financial damage they have caused cycling.

You are this: mad.

This was a very exciting Vuelta from where I was sitting, with Valverde
putting in a great performance but fading at the end in the face of the
Khazak charge. Astana have shown themselves to be next year's team to
beat, and Disco has been shown to be seriously lacking in talent (with one
of their best remaining riders defecting to Astana, to rub salt into the
wounds).

Vino on the Champs Elisees next year?.

You left out that the reason the Vuelta was so exciting this year is
because it was so CLEAN, CLEAN, CLEAN! Yep, now that all the dopers
(Armstrong) have been busted it makes for a good, competitive race.
There are no more robots left. And that's a good thing. It's also a
good thing that cycling is now clean and pristine. Not like when
Armstrong used to win the Vuelta every year, doped to the gills, and he
got away with it. But he didn't fool me, I was onto Armstrong all
along, I was. And I read french, so that's another reason I'm smarter
than you are. Armstrong. And he's a lousy father too. And Armstrong
keeps dating women who look like his mother, which is kind of sick,
don't you think? Armstrong, Armstrong, Armstrong. He's friends with GW
and [censored] Cheney. I think he's corrupted them. That whole 9/11 thing?
Armstrong.

Etc., etc., etc...

P.S. I realize that I've missed the mark with this. I can't quite pull
off the correctly condescending air this requires. I've got the
obsessive nutcase thing down, I'd say, but I'm not a obsessive
condescending nutcase. From this I've learned that the act is harder
than it looks. It's DAMN hard work being as crazy as Brian.

Chris M said:

Marty said:

Quoted message said:

I was really disappointed to see such a uneventful Vuelta this year. I
think pro cycling is still in shock over recent drug scandals. I would
like to see the sponsors or someone sue Landis and other riders for the
financial damage they have caused cycling.

I thought it was a great race and it was fantastic to see Vino win,
especially after he and his team were not allowed to start the TdF.
That guy (Vino) has heart.
--
Marty

I thought it was the best in years. Most of the last few have been
pretty good and certainly the best since the move from the Spring
calendar spot. It will always be the least of the 3 GTs. It can't hope
to out-do the TDF, and any race after the TDF in the calendar is going
to be a consolation prize, and a race for the younger blokes still
learning how to race GTs. The young climbers like to debut at the
Vuelta and the others prefer Italy. It used to be that the aptly named
"Tour of the Future" was the only cat 1 stage race after the Tour. It
was also the biggest pro-am stage race on the calendar. IIRC, there
were also some short stage races in developing countries (cycling wise)
which served the same purpose. The big guns (who may have specialized
in their focus of how well they expected to do but most of the stars
aspired to do all of the big races, Tours and single day events
(skipping either the Giro or the Vuelta, but not both). Well,
anyway...this is just babble about how f'ed up the calendar is after 20
years of Heinz Verbruggen screwing the sport up as much as humanly
possible. Given that, the Vuelta has done a great job working with what
they have. The Protour being only the most recent problem where they
UCI is trying to centralize influence in a sport that never was
structured that way. Now he acts like there is no other way to run a
sport. Most of the problems with the sport (including the insanity with
the way doping is handled, and I mean every aspect of the doping
doctrine as constructed by the UCI) are either a direct or indirect
result of poor policy and execution from the UCI. The Vuelta has had
some wacky ideas recently but none of the really silly ideas were
executed (the worst idea has to be the one to start with 2 separate
groups racing to keep from being eliminated for the second phase of the
race, where a select subset from each of the 2 groups is combined to go
for the final GC).. anyway...all that aside I have to say that they
have done a great job.

I am really happy that Vino asserted his strong will to bring the form
needed to redeem his reputation. I love the way he reacted to the
"door" affair by bringing in the new sponsor and taking the knocks in
stride. He spent too many years in the shadows of the German stars at
Telekom. That Telekom team is something else! They manage to
consistently squeeze 80% of the potential from each of their top pros.
Look at the palmares of any pro who spent time there and you are
assured to see that the team does not know how to leverage the talent
they sign. Vino was a debutante with Casino, which was a team that did
manage to get the most of their up-and-comers they had signed and then
they typically were poached. They managed to keep the talent coming in
for a while to balance out the poaching. Vino had a great season with
Casino and then with Telekom in 2000, the most notable race was the
Olympics, where Vino worked for the team leader of his trade team
rather than working as if on a competitive team. It was a long time
coming and I am really glad to see him deliver the result that was
expected since he impressed everyone at the 1999 Dauphine. IIRC, I
think USPS tried to hire him when Telekom was able to [censored] him from
Casino.

I just wish the whole matched-shorts-with-jersey trend started by Cipo
and reinforced by Armstrong would just go away. The Golden bike was
cool but...anyway...

To the OP, don't let all of the doping hype get you down. The
expectations that are placed on the riders and the sport are not
reasonable and the reactions are not appropriate to the findings. Some
doping positives should require an investigation before sanctioning the
athlete. It is up to the national federations, but with the UCI and
WADA constantly floating their expectations in the press before the
cases are processed is bad conduct IMO and pure politics. The public
does not seem to be able to discern between doping results that may be
explainable from clear abuse. I think that the political pressure to
hang as many as possible is driven by the perception that the majority
of athletes have to be doping on the basis that many of the drugs do
not have a reliable way to detect infractions and the cases that are
exposed due to law enforcement catching guys that passed the routine
doping tests.

I am losing interest at the moment, but I know who to blame. It is not
the riders. The sport has grown to the point where political influences
are hurting it more than anything else.

Good babble..

RVD

[email hidden said:

"]I was really disappointed to see such a uneventful Vuelta this year. I
think pro cycling is still in shock over recent drug scandals. I would
like to see the sponsors or someone sue Landis and other riders for the
financial damage they have caused cycling.

I thought the Vuelta was great, so who do I sue. I've got to sue somebody.

yds

On Mon, 18 Sep 2006 11:28:00 +0100, Simon Brooke <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

in message <[email hidden]>,

(') said:

I was really disappointed to see such a uneventful Vuelta this year. I
think pro cycling is still in shock over recent drug scandals. I would
like to see the sponsors or someone sue Landis and other riders for the
financial damage they have caused cycling.

You are this: mad.

This was a very exciting Vuelta from where I was sitting, with Valverde
putting in a great performance but fading at the end in the face of the
Khazak charge. Astana have shown themselves to be next year's team to
beat, and Disco has been shown to be seriously lacking in talent (with one
of their best remaining riders defecting to Astana, to rub salt into the
wounds).

Vino on the Champs Elisees next year?.

For sure.

Looking back, do you have any favorite stages this time?

Obviously the various mountain stages (5, 7, 9, 16, 17, 18).

Any others?