warren said:
In article said:The point of my post was that riders do what their DS tells them to do if they want to keep
their jobs. And no DS is going to tell a rider that it is OK to reward someone who is a poor
sprinter. And no DS is going to hand a gift to someone just out of the goodness of their hearts.
You might do that as a favor that you might expect to call in later. But certainly not for any
stupid reason like the other guy did all the work.
It's a little slap in the face that isn't forgotten.
It depends. If someone wants to pull someone else to the line, whose fault is that? I mean, the
whole idea of killing a break (for *your* team's tactical reasons) is to sit someone on it till the
"workers" finally decide it tactically doesn't make sense for them and their teams because they will
get beaten in the end. To put some sort of "that isn't nice to beat me like that" defeats the
essence of the "sit on it to kill it" tactic. The very real threat of dusting them at the end is why
the tactic is used in the first place. If the worker bee is too stupid to figure that out, I suggest
you get on their wheel till they do figure it out.
Say I'm sort of average, like domestique quality, by my team has a great sprinter. It would be my
job to get in breaks, work them a bit, then either kill them for my sprinter teamate or *win*. If
I'm average, I can only win by forcing the strong dudes to grind themselves to dust. That's bike
racing. It is one reason why I
'em; I will contribute only to the extent I think it helps me or my team. It is a hard lesson to
learn to not be coaxed into always "pulling through" out of some sense of duty, but it is a lesson
that must be learned if one hopes to ever graduate from Cat3dom.
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:Since you're so certain this sort of thing is out of line, why don't you give us all an example
where someone declined to take a win after sitting on because it just wasn't right.
All you have to do is look at the cases where riders sat on but didn't contest the sprint, and
there was no sprint. They simply let the lead rider continue to lead over the line. Happens all
the time.
That's for a reason though. I guarantee you that two teams that had no contenders in any of the
tours "categories," would insist that each their riders try to win the stage. On the other hand, it
would be bad form for a Postie that had been sitting on a break all day (for tactical reasons) to
sprint past the others that had made the break a success.
"Cheating" the others out of a "minor" win when you've got a great shot at the grand prize is a good
way to make enemies and leads perhaps to justifiable "negative racing" (payback). We are all under
unwritten social constraints all the time, this is another of them. But these are the complexities
of multi-day tour/stage racing, not really one-days. The only exception there is probably a possible
agreement with a "futures contract."
