what he said
i'm gonna second the shrugs of the canuckincali about the stage finish in the ToC.
shall we neutralize crosswinds? shall we extend the 3K to 20K?
smells bad, in my book.
crashing is part of bike racing. but, so is bad officiating.
- - -
anyway, back on the geezer front. Our SafewayMate Dan Martin stormed huge all over Pine not-so Flat yesterday and got us another win. It was a damn good bit of racing.
Then today, I was able to take the 35' crit in Die-Nuba after some good rolling fun with mcSassy. But, another canuck crushed us in the prosey event. WholeBerg is on pretty gawdamn good form right now, i'll say. He single-handedly kept a big BMC squad on the ropes at Martinez last week and this week he just motored all over us NorCal regulars. It was frickin' cool to watch.
anyway ... boring biker blahblah over with. irreverent stories on order for tomorrow.
have a good week, ya'll.
~m
34 comments:
here's to good friends, fun times, and bad officiating!
for those of us that don't know your cute little nicknames for all your friends, how about a clue as to who the hell your talking about? no info as to who won anything this weekend.
Benny got hosed by that lil change of the rules.
Not that we didn't have our own hosing going down in the prosey race but that was from the riders not the officials.
ms
Cute little nicknames are cool! It's the only way to protect the innocent.
But the neutralization was kind of BS since it happened so far out. Funny thing was that it happened right where we were standing. When the riders hit the barrier it knocked my Mom down. I didn't even know until she told me cause I was too busy taking video of the aftermath. What a mess! It didn't look like Nick Gates was going to be able to get back on his bike but after the ambulance showed up, it's like, "screw you, I'm an Aussie and I ain't gettin' in no wambulance!" They put him back on the bike and off he went. Tough as nails!
That’s what happens when you don’t have wall hangings and you look like you just came from the third ward of a cancer treatment center. Officials just feel bad. You just can’t put on a big race and let the little people win……..just plain bad for business.
I'd like to understand where in the rules they could come up with neutralizing the field with 6 miles of racing left. Thought it was 3K or 5K.
nice sweep this weekend
Yukko ! What's up with giving everybody who finished a minute down a free pass? BJM would most likely be the race leader if the bogus neutralization hadn't happened. This would never happen in a Euro race....at least not one where so many were watching. It sure was an exciting stage, though. Too bad for Zabriskie.....
BJM robbed of the leaders jersey.
so many dollars taken from him and his team. right there in that moment.
man, that guy needs to get a break. but, he's closer and closer.
keep driving Ben. keep frickin' driving. never give up.
BJM was robbed, ya know when its Discovery, Levi and Santa Rosa the officials were going to get a little funky.
Whats really bad though is the image it conveys to the non-hard core cycling fan public. This call is way beyond your typical bad officiating (pass interference, charge, infield fly rule). The peleton crashed going in a straight line and the officals say "no no, everyone gets the same time"...wtf?
If they didn't fix the race today, I am sure we would lose all the world class talent next year...
And the W-Berg is just riding like the world class pro he is, making sure not to miss a beat while this ToC is making a handfull super fit....
I had a hard time walking after trying to trade pulls with him for 15 laps, I emphasize trying.......
No matter what the results, nice move yesterday Hernando, you kept chuggin when we were playing stupid with each other.....
Hmmm, late thinker here... and I'm a Big Benny fan, but maybe one reason touted by the ref(s) of nearly half the peloton going down/getting dropped has some validity? Slay me now.
why does it have validity?
just because guys got caught in a crash?
again, crashing is a part of bike racing. it sucks, but it's a part of racing. if the "favorites" had all made that selection and only the bottom half of the GC had been involved in that crash ... would the decision have been made? no.
but, it was a move of politics ... to keep the names in the game. and that's a shame.
because part of the draw and drama of bike racing is that anything can happen out there to effect the race.
junkadonk~ nice result in VOS, brudda.
4th in that race ain't nothing to sneeze at.
As for the Dinuba break ... lord man, that was too easy. You boys need to watch some geezer races and learn how to do it.
cake-walk.
as for the relegation based on CVC and CalGiant "helping" their teammates? who cares.
blah, blah, blah ... bike racing.
are you going to enlighten us with your view on what happened with the 1/2 break, or should we make something up?
TOC- Did you notice not EVERYONE got the same time, even though they were in the field when the crash occured? It seems when officials have to make the hard decision, they always end up making the utterly absurd one, not the logical one...
yes please enlighten us OV
were riders lapped? I'm pretty damn sure lapped riders can help teammates as long as they don't drop back - at least that's what I remember reading after being totally confused when it happened at Pac St. crit last year - something different happen?
oh, the break in the prosey event:
Wohlberg (no teammates), Copeland (2 CalGiant teammies), Vin Owens (24 CVC teammates), and me (da'PAB uber-teammate) were in a break.
We hovered at 10-15 seconds behind the pack for eons. We weren't riding that hard and it was totally a chess game at that point. Having seen Wohlberg's form at Martinez, i knew there was little chance at beating him, so i wanted to isolate Copeland as much as possible.
I accelerated softly out of the break after Copeland took a pull to start the matches flying. Wohlberg jumped on a counter and made the final 5 or 6 seconds gap to the pack. I was engaged in a chess match with Copeland to make him close the gap to the pack. He was doing the same with me, i think.
It was NOT hard to close the gap, we were simply playing games back there. The gap was about 2 or 3 seconds to the pack from Dirk, Vince, and myself. Wohlberg went straight to the front and rode hard (with a little help from Halloway).
I looked up and saw 5 or 6 riders coming off the back of the pack. They were slow and in the way. We were going to go straight through them, but Dirk slowed a bit and just latched on to the back of them for about a lap. We were LOSING time on the pack. These riders were made up of a few CVC riders, one CalGiant rider, and a couple of others from other teams.
they were riding SLOW. After a lap, the gap went up to about 4 or 5 seconds and Dirk finally hit the gas and our bluff game was over. He closed the gap quickly and we were on the pack.
There was NO assistance given to either Dirk or Vince by their teammates that either chose to drop off the pack, or were dropped. I don't know what they did. But, the bottom line is that they had NO impact on the race. The only thing they did was slow us down and got in the way.
That we would have lapped the pack was absolutely going to happen. We were soft pedaling the break for a good 15 laps behind the pack and could have lapped them at any time. Dirk was fresh and was, quite frankly, riding too tactically when he should have drilled it to get across to the pack. He had Hunt there to lead him out and keep it together and he had the best sprint of the break.
I wanted to lap the field because I had the best teammate and I wanted to do my best to isolate either Wohlberg or Copeland in a second break. That was really my only chance as I had already raced enough that weekend.
Vince of CVC was just an innocent bystander. This was a kid who just picked up a bike at the end of '05 and has become a big engine.
Robbing him of a nice result in his first p1/2 weekend was pretty shitty.
Me? I've already won Dinuba in the p1/2's and didn't give a damn about the relegation for something i had nothing to do with. Besides, it pushed da'PAB into 2nd ... so, Safeway benefitted.
But after the race, I did lose my cool after a couple of p1/2 racers talked shit about how the break "got assistance". There was no assistance. Those riders that dropped off the back, for whatever reasons they had, got IN THE WAY and slowed us down. But, that we would have caught the pack was NEVER in doubt. It was an easy race. The masters race was harder.
so ... there's my thoughts.
Im bummed. It didn't look like half the field crashed. It did look like have the field stopped behind the crash. Appears that some of the support crew ran into each other fixing tires.
I honestly think that hometown favor was thrown in.
Anyone see who went down first?
levi said it was some TMobile rider. who knows.
but today's stage:
"Other riders involved in that crash were Edward King (Priority Health Cycling Team) (his second for today!), Scott Zwizanski (Priority Health Cycling Team),
Chad Beyer (USA National team), and Emile Abraham (Priority Health Cycling Team) - but Leonardo Scarselli (Quick Step) was the only one to abandon."
This is not how we want BJM's team getting mentioned in press.
BUT, PH's Omar Kem is off the front in the break of the day!
those boys are throwing everything at it.
i found the picture on the web. Looks like it was Tmobiles Gerald Ciolek.
http://www.onemillionrevolutions.org/tick/black.php?img=images/gallery/20070220023920455500.jpg
yah.. today looks exciting.
i'm sorry, hit a botts dot going straight and crashed....
pro rider.
give em all same time...
whatever.
-
good thoughts to Ben.
Ok, unfair. Go BJM... sorry to see Kem flat twice in one breakaway today!
tony, where's the footage of that crash you took while your mom was on the ground?
Tmobile's Gerald Ciolek is like 21 and a neo-pro. Awesome sprinter but maybe there are no bot dots in Germany. He won the German nat'l road championship by beating Erik Zabel and the other pros when he was 19. He was my bet for the win yesterday. Too bad he tumbled and took out a bunch of guys and BJM got robbed by the hometown lack of professional officiating.
Lose your cool.....
you called me a cunt, I am still hurt'in inside.
Thanks for the props, I was just happy to make it through that race with the pelvis in one piece this year.
Omer Kem has some secret diet from his blog, I would pay money for some of those organic secrets....
you should have attacked that field, not set tempo wit woolie.
borrrring.
That was my way of pouting since I missed the break. Hunt and CVC took us to like 13mph and I paid $30 for a workout.....
Somehow I won a prime early on and made some $$ back, I never heard a bell though.....
All you cry babies shut the f__k up!
If Ben was caught behind the crash, you would be loving the fact that the officials gave everyone same time and Ben would then still be living the dream. Because then he would not be in his spot on the podium.
The bad bot dots caused Cioleck, who is a under 23 world champ, to lose it, so this was a fair decision. The course jumped up and bit him and so it was decided that everyone should get same time at that moment instead of a bot dot creating the winning move in the Amgen tour.
I think that was fare, and if Ben was behind the crash all of you would think it was a fare move too.
You can say that a pro should be able to handle a bot dot, but this was a huge bot that was basically a bot mountain. I was there and actually walked out and looked at the bot dot in question after the crash. 3 USAC oficials were with me and they were appauled that this huge chunk of flourecent reflector road marking hell was not taken out before the stage. I saw the thing and it was this one bot dot that was 4 times the size of all the others. If anything blame Santa Rosa for not making the course safe, and blame yourself for making un educated opinions about a official ruling when you aparently never saw the monster bot dot yourself. This thing was huge and one official said if Santa Rosa wants another stage finish they must clear the roads of the bot dots and why in the world they had a bot dot on steriods right in the middle of the road!
I even talked to Ben himself and he agreed with the decision.
So stop crying about the officials decision and enjoy the race.
Yours truly,
USA Cycling
#283764
Rider Rep.
J.H.
anony JH ... you're full of shit.
If BJM, or any other local rider that we happen to love rooting for got caught behind that crash ... we'd have said ...
"oh fuck, that sucks.
... but that's bike racing."
- - -
Bike racing.
- - -
Crashing is part of it. As are flats, and bonking, and getting dropped.
and surviving.
surviving.
J.H., thanks for the info--given what we have to peruse from the online sites, yes, we have been making a lot of wind from very little info. We're fans, fans are good at making wind. But, so far, that little bit of info is all that Joe CyclingFan has. If perhaps Velonews or cyclingnews could be convinced to do a little bit of "investigative reporting" to get a picture of Botts Mountain (perhaps as part of a feature on botts' dots for the rest of the world?), that would go a long ways to establishing better public credibility of the officials' decision--anything to get your more informed points out. That public credibility is very important if the ToC organizers want to keep up an image of a fair race of international caliber.
On the other hand, officials shouldn't have to justify every decision made under duress...wow, I can have a never-ending argument with myself...best go to bed now...
"You can say that a pro should be able to handle a bot dot, but this was a huge bot that was basically a bot mountain. I was there and actually walked out and looked at the bot dot in question after the crash. 3 USAC oficials were with me and they were appauled that this huge chunk of flourecent reflector road marking hell was not taken out before the stage. I saw the thing and it was this one bot dot that was 4 times the size of all the others. If anything blame Santa Rosa for not making the course safe, and blame yourself for making un educated opinions about a official ruling when you aparently never saw the monster bot dot yourself. This thing was huge and one official said if Santa Rosa wants another stage finish they must clear the roads of the bot dots and why in the world they had a bot dot on steriods right in the middle of the road!
I even talked to Ben himself and he agreed with the decision.
So stop crying about the officials decision and enjoy the race."
Yours truly,
USA Cycling
#283764
Rider Rep.
J.H.
If I understand you correctly, it was a bot dot. Right?
A big bot dot.
Really big.
Huge. Huge bot dot.
Just asking. You were kinda vague...
Thanks for your take on the Dinoobuh crit. My question is what the hell was Holloway aiding Wholberg for? I know that kid is dumb as a brick, but WTF?
"My question is what the hell was Holloway aiding Wholberg for?"
... well, he really only took one decent pull, then blew himself out of the race. We were already on when he came off the front and I saw him drift back and wondered for a moment if he would continue on.
but, he just pulled out and sat and watched the rest of the race.
why do it?
dunno. guess there's always things to do with one's time. it was a pretty boring crit.
that crit needed some bot dots
btw- I've seen these mutant bot dots that they are referring to. They exist, and they are comical. Bigger than a dinner plate, easily. These dots deserve their own gendarme waving an orange flag. I wouldn't want to hit one in a car, let alone on a bike.
Well, I talked to Ben after the race, too. And although he was agreeable to the press he wasn't so agreeable in private. He was angry.
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