Don’t get me wrong, because I’m a big Macca fan, but does his story of a broken cable hold water? Why couldn’t he just put the chain in the big ring and ride back from Hawi? If the cable was broken wouldn’t he be able to manually put his chain on either ring he wanted?
I was wondering the same thing. But I’m not about to cut my shifter cable to find out 
YEAH! Lets take him out back and beat the shit out of him!
I think this exact subject was done to death last week, so you may not get much action here…
So what did everyone conclude?
when a front derailer cable is broken it wont shift into the large ring
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Trust me Macca wanted to race just think how much time he had to give up even before he stopped for Tec support. He was sitting up just spinning a small gear as everyone was flying by him and by the time support got there he was already way down, then he stops talks to support they tell him 15-20 minutes to fix I’m sure the last thing he’s thinking is manually putting his chain in the big ring. It’s easy to come up with ideas what we could have done and what we should have done after a race but during the race it’s a different story.
Yes–and you can move back down to the small ring as well. I had to do it for 100 miles at IMCAN this year…
Simple answer to the problem.
By hand position the front derailleur over the big chain ring and move chain up on to big ring.Now you see the space between the parallelogram arms, look on the ground for a small stick or rock and wedge it between the arms and ride on it works I have done it.
That makes sense. Wouldn’t you exhaust every possiblity when going for the World Championship? I just think there’s more to the story than what we’re hearing. It’s kind of like Normann last year - I don’t believe for a minute that he was too sick to race.
So you think Normann puking all over his bike last year was what, CGI?
I believe that Macca believes in order for him to win the race, it must unfold in a certain way. Get out of the water with the leaders, bike with the group, and run to win–by a couple of minutes. Once something like a broken cable occurs, from Macca’s perspective (especially when he’s told it will take 15 minutes to fix) the race becomes impossible to win. At that moment he reevaluates and can either completely change his goals and just try to finish, or he can pull out and live to fight another day.
Try to get your your chain on the big ring without the front derailleur cable, and you can actually just disconnect it to check it. 
I was sent a a photo of the cable and from what I can gather it was a pretty bad deal. I would guess that he could have put it in the big ring and ridden, BUT (And this is a big but) I don’t think we know of exactly what happened.
Personally I think the failure of the cable was related to something else that did not allow movement of the chain to the big ring or somehow impeded the use of the crank. I can dig further, but it’s pretty much a moot point now.
Bob
While I agree with everything you said…and I don’t really care what his reasoning was for DNFing. If people were flying past him, it’s because he wasn’t pedalling!
With a 39 x 11 @ 90 rpm, you’re going 25mph.
I’m a conflict theorist, so I think there’s more the story that we don’t know.
how fast do u think the pros were going coming back down from Hawi?
I’ll give u a hint it was faster then 25mph
You obviously were not watching the live coverage.Lieto was clocked at 40MPH by the moto next to him.They panned down to the motos speedo for proof.
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And where to do think Macca pulled out?
I’ll give you a hint…or not.
He wasn’t getting passed at that point due to runout.
And that’s a reply to a totally different issue…
See above.
I still don’t know why Macca would just “quit” if all of these options were at his disposal. Do you think he’s as fragile as Normann?
I don’t think either of them are fragile,quite the opposite.I think Norman just lost the plot completely and as for Macca who knows what was going through his head?I don’t think he disrespected Ironman like some people have said,sure he could have finished but why?What for?He is one of the few people in the world who can go sub 8hrs and maybe he will focus on that in West Oz.I’m not going to second guess one of the best triathletes in the world.How he races is his business.
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