Will this be commonplace going forward? What can IM do to address this as in my mind it violates the spirit of the sport. Should it be addressed?
I’ve feared that for a long time and I think the reality just raised it’s head. Next year a pact with Amberger, Starky and Frodo to kill off Lange? They all swim well, and could be long gone on the way to a big gap.
It seems ok when the uber bikers get there train going in the last few years, this year the wheels fall off and everyone kicks up a fuss as the uber runner train pulls into town first!
I see it as an optics problem. Whether fair/unfair, rules were broken or not broken (I guess only Dreitz and Lange can truly answer that), it looks really bad when you have 2 guys in the same kit working/talking together. This was just “different” than 3 different non-“teammates” working together for the same cause. This was more in your face, straddling the “legality” of things.
You don’t need a domestique. You just need to suck wheel from Patrick’s domestique. Make sure to tip the domestique at the end and thank him for the service.
We’ve all been speculating that Lange had a domestique. Well Braden Currie just confirmed it.
You don’t need a domestique. You just need to suck wheel from Patrick’s domestique. Make sure to tip the domestique at the end and thank him for the service.
We’ve all been speculating that Lange had a domestique. Well Braden Currie just confirmed it.
You cant come into T2 with Lange…you actually need your teammate to pull you through Lange/Dreitz and somehow hope to hell they dont just sit on you when you attack.
I would expect someone that gives up their race to benefit someone during one leg of a race to do far worse than 13th. IMO I don’t see anything wrong with what happened yesterday.
He is a good runner but there are plenty of guys who can run low 2:40 now and will take their chance to go with Lange out of T2. If shit goes wrong they can still hang on to a top 3-5. But yeah, if you need to win win then you need to come up with some barely legal tactics of your own
You cant come into T2 with Lange…you actually need your teammate to pull you through Lange/Dreitz and somehow hope to hell they dont just sit on you when you attack.
13th is way out of the money. The guy could have gone top 10 and collect a check if he didn’t pull the group for the last 56mi… Who does that? .
I would expect someone that gives up their race to benefit someone during one leg of a race to do far worse than 13th. IMO I don’t see anything wrong with what happened yesterday.
The more likelyhood is that these athletes can’t go with any of the super bikers, and can’t “break” Lange off their wheel. So in essence the “next” move will simply be for Lange to sit in on the “counter attacks”. Which is likely far easier to do than actually breaking him off their wheel.
So then it comes back to who’s going to out run Lange? This years run was beyond boring pretty much from mile 5 to the finish.
ETA: If you think he’s a good runner and a bunch can outrun him, I’ll just say the evidence over the last 3 years shows otherwise. So no coming in with Lange in T2 really isn’t likely a good plan…It may have to be the plan because you can’t break him, but it’s not really a very settling plan for success.
Organizing a group that forms spontaneously out of the swim like what TO did this year is fine. Premeditated “alliances†like what we saw with Drietz and Lange is not. A 20m draft zone would make both irrelevant. This should remain an individual sport.
drietz was biking in front of 5 riders for a long time… spaced out… Lange was mostly far back from Drietz, as 4th or 5th rider, so if lange benefited he wasn’t the only one
It wasnt like they were riding 2 man TT style, constant catapult passing and Drietz taking longer pulls
Was there more going on than that? I don’t have iTunes account
If it is the case, I wonder how much compensation yiu would need to train and qualify only to give up a top 10 for someone else’s ambition
IIRC, when I used to officiate triathlon races, there was a rule where if you could determine two (or more) athlete’s were deliberately working together on the bike that it was the same as drafting and could be penalized. Not the same as the “peloton”… but a concerted organized effort between certain individuals.
I saw two douchebags do this at a race years ago. They were from the same small town and trained together. They swapped places every couple minutes on the bike. I was sitting about 200m back and watched this go on for about 15km.