it has no drafting effect regardless of who complains.

i can only assume you're a wheel sucker then...
enjoy your ride in PCB...you can leave your tribars at home...
what about a USCF license?

I haven't ridden in the pro pack under the new rules yet (and don't ever expect to). But, having ridden in packs on road rides for more than a few years, I would certainly expect there to be a draft benefit. The bigger the group, the more the draft, even if they're spread all over the road.

But -- pardon the blunt language -- Normann is full of shi* if he thinks that race was stolen from him. He ran 3:02 for chrissakes. Nobody wins Kona running 3:02. He's trying to say that he ran slow because he had to ride alone...? 3:02 is too slow to win at Kona, I don't care how you ride.

Every year, some German rides hard off the front, loses the race and complains about drafting. (Well, Hellriegel was robbed once by a drafting Mark Allen...)

And serving as Leder's apologist -- come on, Normann. If Leder can't ride 4:42 (as the group did), then he doesn't belong. You wanna tell me that Leder couldn't ride 4:42 because some people up the road were in a group? Didn't Leder show up with his own pair of legs? The guy that rode 4:27 in Roth couldn't stay with a group riding 4:42? Fine -- it happens. But it wasn't because of drafting; it was because of not being prepared to race.

And finally, it's pretty bad sportsmanship and disrespectful of Normann to repeatedly refer to Tim Deboom as having "bonked" from too hard a bike effort. One -- Tim passed a kidney stone, he didn't bonk. Two -- Tim has done Kona rides faster than that group and still has better run times than Normann.

to the defense of Normann, he didn't say he would have won the race with stricter rules...
he said he may have done better and said
"PNF said that he could have won with the older rule"
nothing else.

Leder didn't make any excuses for his race. he said he was tired period. Olaf Sabatschus rode the same time as the group though and alone.
Olaf is a very honest guy and when he saw the group back from Hawi he said "it looks like the Tdf"...

Eventually re. the remark about TdB, it was not intended as lack of respect. the interview was done just after the race (it's just a translation of an interview in german on 3athlon.org) and at the time noone knew what happened to TdB.
It was fair of him to assume TDB bonked...after all that's what everyone assumes when a german slows down...

Francois,

Down boy. I think he was making a joke based on a play on words. I.e. the complaining doesn't cause the drafting... no matter who is complaining.

---

____________________________________________

"which is like watching one of your buddies announce that he's quitting booze and cigarettes, switching to a Vegan diet and training for triathalons ... but he's going to keep snorting heroin." Bill Simmons, ESPN

Francois -- again, I agree that the stagger rule creates a mild draft (but not nearly so much as a real roadie group).

It just didn't create a change in the race results. The best triathlete won. The second, third and fourth best got those positions, too.

"...Tim passed a kidney stone, he didn't bonk."

Has this been corroborated? I know there was speculation that this is what happened, but I didn't think there was any way to confirm it is what happened without actually finding the stone.

And I agree with Francois. The drafting this year was subtle, but it was there. I don't know the solution to the sport's drafting problems. I've always thought ITU draft-legal racing was kind of a cop-out, but it is starting to look better and better.

Uh...unless we all figure that the ER docs in Kona haven't been to med school, I'd say it's not speculation.

I love the use of the passive voice..."there was speculation"...that way, one can write a post about what they think and pretend it was somebody else that thought it...

Mabye I don't get it, but isn't everyone out there doing the best they can and playing by the SAME rules, whatever they are?

Here's a question though, if people are riding side by side aren't they blocking? How do you get around two riders going side by side on a narrow road without crossing the center line?



Mike

"it has no drafting effect regardless of who complains."

Crap - I realise you ride a bike- but you must be on a different planet then the rest of the cycling world. Drafting effect is possible with the way that a bunch forms within the stagger rule. What is more of n effect is the whole bunch ride benefit. Athletes swapping turns, someone else to pace off etc....

If I were to ride out the front for a long period of time, and get ran down by athletes who were undeniably pack riding minutes back.... think I would feel a little cheated.

Who are the 'bad sports'? When all these athletes complain of drafting- perhaps it's because there was drafting!

Interesting though - clearly there is no incentive to break from the pack, wonder what a lot of us would do in that situation?

"Uh...unless we all figure that the ER docs in Kona haven't been to med school, I'd say it's not speculation."

So you talked to the ER doctors? The only thing I saw was from Deboom's agent and it said that Deboom's symptoms were consistent with having passed a kidney stone. That doesn't mean that is what happened. Perhaps you didn't catch the thread last week, but there were some Dr.'s who posted on the message board that kidney stones could be diagnosed BEFORE being passed, but that they are difficult to diagnose afterwards unless you find the stone in the toilet.

I'm not sure what you are getting at from the tone of your response, but I respect the hell out of Deboom. Regardless of what the exact cause of his DNF was, the guy fought as hard as he could out there.