Pro Cycling Thread

[Craig]

Anybody want to make Giro tips?

Will Gilberto Simoni who will have Iban Mayo as domestique de lux and young gun Riccardo Ricco get his 3rd Giro or will Damiano Cunego embrass Simoni for the 2nd time (they were team-mates in 2004 when Cunego won) or will there be an upset in the making?

Like the quality of sprinters and the field in general here, although they all would have abandoned by the time the race hits the Zonoclan (or they will abandon on it) and your know Thor Hushovd is serious when he has one of his top lead out men in Julian Dean with him.

 

[Magrat Garlick]

Like the quality of sprinters and the field in general here, although they all would have abandoned by the time the race hits the Zonoclan (or they will abandon on it) and your know Thor Hushovd is serious when he has one of his top lead out men in Julian Dean with him.

I actually think Hushovd might finish - or at least make a fist of it if he gets a good start with a stage win or so. He won the fish jersey in the Vuelta last year, needs to climb over a lot of mountains to get there. Plus the time limit isn't as killing as in the Tour.

Having Dean there is good...for three days until one of them hits the asphalt.

No idea about the overall. Simoni will have to make the podium with that team, assuming he's not caught.

 

[Matteh]

I'm going for Popovych myself.

 

[Craig]

Mark Cavendish gets pro win number 2 by beating Gert Steegmans and Roger Hammond (actually he gave a gun lead out) at the Four Days of Dunkirk.

 

[Craig]

Mark Cavendish gets pro win number 2 by beating Gert Steegmans and Roger Hammond (actually he gave a gun lead out) at the Four Days of Dunkirk.

Make that stage win number 2 of this race.

 

[Craig]

Cavendish is really is having a gun year. Got two stage wins in the Tour of Cataluyna to give his tally to five this year. I'll say he will ride the Vuelta this year and could make an upset or two.

 

[Matteh]

Pro Cycling is in a massive hole atm i'd say. Only plus is the fact that the Telekom riders are at least being honest, Riijs being the huge one.

 

[Matteh]

Eurosport sends live (and legal) at mms://event-1-com.eurosport.com/reflector:36105 or http://www.eurosport.com/cycling/mcplayervideo_vid37601.shtml if anyone wants to watch top-class cobble cycling.

Watching stage 15 of the Giro on the first link aws.

 

[Neil Pickup]

Just watched the end of that stage... ouch.

 

[Magrat Garlick]

Watching stage 15 of the Giro on the first link aws.

Wise choice.

As for pro cycling: it dug a hole 40 years ago and has never got out. (but those who think drug use isn't as endemic in other major professional sports is ignorant. Cycling's finally faced up to it because of the dangers it's putting its own riders in.)

 

[Matteh]

Thing is though, i've got more respect for Riijs than i'll ever have for Landis purely because he actually owned up about it.

 

[Craig]

Wise choice.

As for pro cycling: it dug a hole 40 years ago and has never got out. (but those who think drug use isn't as endemic in other major professional sports is ignorant. Cycling's finally faced up to it because of the dangers it's putting its own riders in.)

True.

No way would Shoaib or Asif would have gotten away as easy as they did, and if some of the anti-doping measures put in place by some of the teams applied to cricket, hell would break loose in CC (like a cricket body testing it's Test/ODI team the similar amount of times CSC does, which is between 800-1300 combined tests of all of their squad IIRC) or giving them a mandatory two year ban from all cricket, and then a further two years from all internationals (including Twenty20 ).

 

[Craig]

South African and British registed team Barloword will make their TdF debut after being given a wildcard.

Full list of teams:

AG2r Prévoyance
Agritubel
Astana
Barloworld
Bouygues Telecom
Caisse d'Epargne
Cofidis
Crédit Agricole
CSC
Discovery Channel
Euskaltel
Française des Jeux
Gerolsteiner
Lampre-Fondital
Liquigas
Milram
Predictor-Lotto
Quick Step
Rabobank
Saunier Duval
T-Mobile

BTW Simoni won the Zonoclan, while Danilo Di Luca is set to win the Giro and Frank Schlek's younger brother Andy has moved up to second spot overall. Cunego's 2004 Giro win is looking like a fluke for mine at this stage, although he is only 25 and has plenty of time.

 

[Matteh]

I won the Giro on Cycling Manager 3 with Vinokourov by 1 second from Tyler Hamilton.

 

[Craig]

I won the Giro on Cycling Manager 3 with Vinokourov by 1 second from Tyler Hamilton.

Hahaha how did you manage that? Go down to a time trial?

Thinking about doing that and trying to win it with Valverde or Mayo. My game is weird though, Georg Totsching leading the race just towards the end of the Pyrennes, with only the stage into Pau to go (haha that rhymes), with Ivan Basso and Roberto Heras in 2nd and 3rd place respectively while Ullrich, Evans, Vino, Kloden, Valverde, Mancebo are well down on overall time and Iban Mayo was a long time leader of the race. I thought once Heras left US Postal he became a pie eater, except for the Vuelta where he drugged up there

 

[Matteh]

I was about 49 seconds ahead going into the time trial on the last stage. Hamilton has amazing TT skills, certainly about 8 points more than Vino, and pegged it back to only a second. Also had Cadel Evans finish third and he also won the points jersey, Guerini won the mountains jersey and T-Mobile won the team comp by over an hour.

 

[Craig]

And Mayo finally does something, by winning stage 19 in the Giro.

Funniest thing happened on PCM, in the stage into Revel (239km), I had 3 guys in the break and with 30km to go we had around 32 minutes on the main bunch. Quite clearly they forgot about us.

 

[Magrat Garlick]

And Mayo finally does something, by winning stage 19 in the Giro.

Funniest thing happened on PCM, in the stage into Revel (239km), I had 3 guys in the break and with 30km to go we had around 32 minutes on the main bunch. Quite clearly they forgot about us.

Pereiro.

 

[Matteh]

That was so stupid though really, because Landis didn't give a flying fish about the breakaway Pereiro was in, he had to take drugs in order to win a race he was about to lose because of his own tactics.

 

[Craig]

I can understand CSC no chasing because of Voigt being in the break, but T-Mobile and Rabobank should have gone up the front. IMO T-Mobile should have won even after losing Ullrich and Sevilla. If not they should have capped it at 15 minutes though. Shows the difference with and without Lance Armstrong, as obviously the move would have been chased down straight away, or least get so far (remember what happened in 2001 when they let a break get too much time?)

And I see Zabel has paid his team back with two stage wins in the Bayern Rundfarht (Which translates to Tour of Bayern/Bavaria right?),