2020 Tour de France

[TNT1]

I mean, that was the last time someone one a grand tour with such a day. 

Just last year when Bernal attacked on the Iseran to take yellow?

[TNT1]

Much like Impey

Like I said, make peace with the fact that "preparation" is a part of modern sport. makes life easier.

 

I know I brought it up, but I was just making a joke with the asthma comment. I didn't intend a waffle around doping.

Edited September 21, 2020 by TNT1

[Pure Savage]

Just last year when Bernal attacked on the Iseran to take yellow?

Not really, the stage was cut short. Thats like looking at the break away sitting at 3 minutes with 15km to go and saying, well there you go. 

[TNT1]

Not really, the stage was cut short. Thats like looking at the break away sitting at 3 minutes with 15km to go and saying, well there you go. 

Everyone mentions the stage being cut short like Alaphilliippee would have somehow gotten back. 

 

The same could equally be said that cutting the stage short prevented Bernal from gaining an even bigger advantage.

The fact is, not knowing the stage would be shortened, Bernal made a Tour winning effort on the Iseran. Stopping the stage short simply stifled his gains.

[Gen]

I thought I would miss nothing this weekend and went camping on Friday with no cell reception.

 

Almost parked the car on the N2 on Sunday when they said Pokemon had won and not the ski jumper!

 

Great to see another Froome like performance!!

Minus the power meter [emoji6]

[Pure Savage]

Everyone mentions the stage being cut short like Alaphilliippee would have somehow gotten back. 

 

The same could equally be said that cutting the stage short prevented Bernal from gaining an even bigger advantage.

The fact is, not knowing the stage would be shortened, Bernal made a Tour winning effort on the Iseran. Stopping the stage short simply stifled his gains.

Agreed.

[matthieup]

That bothers me as well, but we need to ask and understand why. I don't think its because of racism, there are perhaps a multitude of factors, all of which could probably be addressed constructively, but its a medium - long term project.

 

One thing I can say with certainty its not because black kids don't like riding bikes.

 

I'd like to hear from Doug Rhyder on this, especially from the MTN Qhubeka days ...  what happened to all those riders he brought to the party?

 

I'm getting quite tired to see that sort of comments in every sports. I don't see anyone commenting about the lack of Chinese or Indians. These 2 countries population match the population of the entire African continent (each)… It is just a cultural thing. Why is there not more black in skiing, ice hockey etc.. ??? In a lot of places cycling is a mean to go to work, not a recreational or competitive sport, that's all.

[DieselnDust]

Of course Froome did go on to actually fail an anti-doping control. I know the case was dropped by UCI/wada, but of course it makes one question the performances.

 

 

well not really...

That's like blaming a computer programmer for hacking because they got caught drinking a little too much coffee to stay awake later at night.

we all know the salbutamol story was more about frustration with Sky's continued dominance rather there being smoke from an actual fire. More like a gas braai to warm the meat

[DieselnDust]

I'm getting quite tired to see that sort of comments in every sports. I don't see anyone commenting about the lack of Chinese or Indians. These 2 countries population match the population of the entire African continent (each)… It is just a cultural thing. Why is there not more black in skiing, ice hockey etc.. ??? In a lot of places cycling is a mean to go to work, not a recreational or competitive sport, that's all.

 

 

actually they do. The whole anti-racsim thing in sport isn't only focussed on racism against the "black" global community. The media and some vocal movements (like BLM) have a political mandate to skew the picture in one direction.

 

Also we can't take the two largest populations on the planet and claim that globally it's not racism when in at least one of those countries we know its an economic issue and to a certain extent cultural problem. India has a very large disparity between poor and middle class and rich. Bigger than SA and across a bigger population. 

 

Is there an easy way to normalise the cycling interested population? Might be hard without a survey but I reckon from an interest perspective the demographic is still heavily skewed toward "white" Caucasian (Indians are Caucasians too as are the Arabic [peoples except not according to the USA definition])

 

Had a discussion with a pal in 2017 about the America's Cup. "Why is there no Polynesian representation in ETNZ?" Polynesians are a sea farin culture and its alive and wellin the South Pacific. So why now world class sailors? Why does Malawi not have a sailing team in the summer olympics.

 

By and large the reasons distill down to economic factors and access to the opportunity.

Edited September 21, 2020 by DieselnDust

[Ozzie NL]

Dougs challenge is that sponsors want results within three years, maybe even two. Dougs dream is a risky one in that its a 10 year roadmap with an uncertain outcome and during that time he has to keep the team alive.

That means finding a balance between earning UCI points and providing enough of a platform for his young African riders to build their potential. A few have already fallen out of the plan and that is normal. What is worrying is that there doesn't appear to be a pipeline coming in anylonger...

From what I understand NTT is not keen on signing for another year...Doug has been on the funding merry-go-round for a long time now......Gotta admire his perseverance as I would have been nauseous by now and jumped off 

[Patchelicious]

From what I understand NTT is not keen on signing for another year...Doug has been on the funding merry-go-round for a long time now......Gotta admire his perseverance as I would have been nauseous by now and jumped off

It’s a challenge that most teams have, not just Doug.

[Wayne pudding Mol]

It’s a challenge that most teams have, not just Doug.

Doug's perhaps made tougher buy not having results and perhaps poor rider acquisition

[matthieup]

actually they do. The whole anti-racsim thing in sport isn't only focussed on racism against the "black" global community. The media and some vocal movements (like BLM) have a political mandate to skew the picture in one direction.

 

Also we can't take the two largest populations on the planet and claim that globally it's not racism when in at least one of those countries we know its an economic issue and to a certain extent cultural problem. India has a very large disparity between poor and middle class and rich. Bigger than SA and across a bigger population. 

 

Is there an easy way to normalise the cycling interested population? Might be hard without a survey but I reckon from an interest perspective the demographic is still heavily skewed toward "white" Caucasian (Indians are Caucasians too as are the Arabic [peoples except not according to the USA definition])

 

Had a discussion with a pal in 2017 about the America's Cup. "Why is there no Polynesian representation in ETNZ?" Polynesians are a sea farin culture and its alive and wellin the South Pacific. So why now world class sailors? Why does Malawi not have a sailing team in the summer olympics.

 

By and large the reasons distill down to economic factors and access to the opportunity.

 

I do not disagree at all with that but my view is that it is not about racism but about opportunities. I know these 2 have been linked in some ways for a long time but it is wrong to look at the Tour de France lack of representation  and complain. It is all about the base. At the top you have the bests. Even a racist owner would be happy to have a LeBron James in his team... That's the same reason I've always been against quotas. The bottom line (I grew up in France) is that cycling even though popular as a hobby/recreational sport is still a minority sport. I don't even think there was a local club or structure where I was, but we had a Football club, Rugby club, Tennis club, Basketball club, etc etc... I'd like to have the numbers of Pro Cyclists worldwide vs other Sports, then we can compare numbers

[Ozzie NL]

It’s a challenge that most teams have, not just Doug.

True but being effectively state sponsored (think Astana / UAE / Bahrein) seems to be a more stable funding solution.

[Patchelicious]

True but being effectively state sponsored (think Astana / UAE / Bahrein) seems to be a more stable funding solution.

Absolutely.

 

Thing with Doug is he rode the wave of charitable novelty, project Africa2020 etc.... novelty wears off, now people want results.

[DieselnDust]

From what I understand NTT is not keen on signing for another year...Doug has been on the funding merry-go-round for a long time now......Gotta admire his perseverance as I would have been nauseous by now and jumped off 

 

Yes the further down the points log you are the harder it is to get backers. The Quebeka model only takes you so far. Its probably even easier for a large European corporate to make direct donations to Quebeka when the cycling team isn't doing well. So Dougs model still has to work within the framework of the UCI pro tour. If not it serves no purpose. So I don't consider the lack of success as racism, just due to a difficult business model.

 

Lets look the Click Tressame` debacle.

Clicks bears the brunt of the negative publicity. Is the entity fundamentally racist? If we take a deeper look it's actually one of the most progressive of SA's corporates. What went wrong?

People, an ad agency staffed y people living in a bubble and to simplify online sales vendors can upload their ads directly. Clicks senior management don't have the time to check every ad that gets uploaded (just consider how many  products they handle through their stores...) . They have a team of people to do this, and responsibility assigned to individuals to deal with a vendor or group of vendors. So the chain of failure is actually confined to one stream, .......yet the whole corporate gets blamed and labelled and the senior managers are in deep trouble. and stores get burned down.

 

Some anti racism movements are the same. They don't deal with the real issues and target the real people instead they blanket target communities. In the Clicks saga the Ad agency that uploaded the ad is lying low whistling on the sidewalk kicking stones into drains slapping each other on the back "shjoe boytjie   that was a close call hey bru...! Shjoe". Next week they will peddle similar drivel to another company..    oooops sidetracked

 

Dougie first has to get the business model working before he can fulfill the goals he set himself. right now first order of business is survive and if that means parking the original objective till the economics improves then that is unfortunately what has to happen.

The real danger is that the objective gets side tracked completely and then we may get red burrets burning bicycles instead of fixing the economics.