Personally I have mixed emotions. To some degree I am a fan of Contrador because of what he has done coming back from a life threatening brain aneurysm (I have two close family member who had the same, one did very well, the other later in her life, not so). It seems pro cycling and the associated media have a different take or re admitting past dopers than we do in triathlon. It’s almost like drafting in triathlon. We don’t hold PNF or Tim DeBoom in low esteem for winning Kona the same day they had drafting penalties. To some degree, Cycling seems more like pro football or baseball. Just give us a show, and we’ll hype it all up. For the riders, it seems like it is a case of “do whatever you can to stay one unit under the thresholds for any violation” win and be a hero. Get caught, sit in the penalty box and resume like Vino did winning his Olympics in London.
Anyway, as a cycling fan, I’m at the point where I just want to see a show (like the Bears vs 49’ers game last night in the new stadium in Santa Clara…WTF…49ers playing 1 hour outside SFO just seems wrong). If Contador is the best guy at the Vuelta show and he stayed under all the thresholds (using a football analogy, he got away with holding whenever he could), then those are the rules of engagement and he was the best guy over 3 weeks. He really was pretty awesome at this Vuelta although I would have like to see a showdown with Quintana…perhaps next year at the TdF.
So what was your take on ST. Contador…comeback hero, and grand tour king…or non repenting ex doper villain ? I’m leaning towards the former because this is what the UCI letting us watch and I can’t really control which gladiators they put on the tarmac, I just want a good show.
I don’t really watch cycling anymore. It wasn’t a deliberate decision but after all the doping saga’s I’ve just sort of lost interest in it. I first watched the Tdf when I was a teenager in the Indurain years and was captivated by the race. I use to watch it as much as I could every year until the festina scandal. Then my interest started to drop a bit with every disgraced winner until the point now where I just find I have no interest in pro cycling.
I was happy with the race. I have said before that AC is the best GC talent in the sport right now. And the fact that I can’t stand Froome made it even more satisfying to see AC win the Vuelta.
Everyone juiced, and a lot have benefited from it. But watching a good race where people are challenging and attacking each other is more important to me than who did what in their past (not too mention the boring monotony of watching the Sky-era Tours was a total sleeper to follow).
shameful beyond words the way announcers go on about him being the greatest stage racer of our generation, and talk about him having trouble getting back to top form, without mentioning the reason being that he isn’t on blood bags and EPO any more (or at least not as much)
His climbing rates do suggest he at the very least isn’t doping as much as he did before his positive. Wouldn’t count on him being totally clean though either.
shameful beyond words the way announcers go on about him being the greatest stage racer of our generation, and talk about him having trouble getting back to top form, without mentioning the reason being that he isn’t on blood bags and EPO any more (or at least not as much)
His climbing rates do suggest he at the very least isn’t doping as much as he did before his positive. Wouldn’t count on him being totally clean though either.
That was basically my point about riders trying to stay 1 unit under the “threshold” for positives, just like triathlon pros staying one inch outside the legal draft zone. Different sports, different formal and informal rules of engagement. I do agree that the announcers in cycling saying, “he’s not on the same form as before” are only adding to the problem. We (speaking from a fairly affluent western perspective where cycling is a hobby for rich guys, not a ticket off the farm or ghetto or out of the Khazak army) don’t want Contador on his former form nor do we want anyone. In the end, when you are just watching them climb, the fastest guy in a group of undoped mules is just as exciting to watch as the fastest guy in a group of doped thoroughbreds. They could be climbing at 800 m per hour or 1600m per hour and it is just as exciting to watch.
i m another fan of cycling that simply cant get excited to watch those tour. They did the proper thing with amstrong to get him out for life. It s time to take ALL those with infraction and give lifetime band. only then would it become interesting to watch again. But for now, there is no reason to beleive he is playing a clean game. it s just a little harder to dope and cant use as powerful of a substance, but he is still this same person with the same mentality of cheating.
I struggle with him more than anyone. I think his riding form and strength in climbing/attacking is impressive but as a person I find him to be obnoxious. I was bummed when he dropped out of the TdF because I wanted to watch him fight in the mountains but wasn’t bummed that he couldn’t get on the podium. We’ll see over the next few.
As 25 year competitive rider and devoted fan… that should be quite scary for pro cycling.
And that just about sums it up for me…I have been a die hard cycling fan longer than I haven’t, and I just don’t care as much anymore. I once could cite stage winners from almost every GT, classics winners and placings, etc. Now I’ll check the results, watch an occasional race if my schedule allows and move on with my life.
To those who didn’t watch this vuelta, it became really interesting, to me, because we saw an Off-form froome for the first 10 days or so, and so we got some insight into his character, or maybe the team director’s character.
But the end result was a really saavy, clever, sneaky Froome that would NOT give up and snatched seconds in intermediate sprint time bonuses, and through careful energy expenditure while others attacked each other.
I was happy with the race. I have said before that AC is the best GC talent in the sport right now. And the fact that I can’t stand Froome made it even more satisfying to see AC win the Vuelta.
Everyone juiced, and a lot have benefited from it. But watching a good race where people are challenging and attacking each other is more important to me than who did what in their past (not too mention the boring monotony of watching the Sky-era Tours was a total sleeper to follow).
There really was only one “Sky-era Tour” though, and that was when Wiggins won on a course that was tailor-made for him. 2013 wasn’t boring because of anything Sky did, it was boring because there was nobody there who was even close to challenging Froome. Not dissimilar to this year’s Tour after Contador and Froome crashed out, GC ended up being a procession but you can’t blame Nibali for that. Froome himself isn’t a boring rider at all - he’s a tactically naive hothead with a ridiculously big engine, which I find quite an entertaining combo. He was good value as a winner in 2013, chasing down breaks and going for stage wins even when he didn’t need to. And he was good value in this Vuelta, going for time bonuses at sprints, attacking Contador on the mountains, and then being pretty gracious in defeat. Can’t wait for next year’s Tour, really hope we get to see Froome, Contador, Quintana and Nibali all duking it out in top form and with no early retirements, could be one of the best ever.
As to Contador, he’s certainly one of the most GT talented riders there’s been and I love his racing brain, but for me the doping is still a big black mark against him. I realise that cycling is never going to be completely clean, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep it as clean as it can be so that at the very least a clean rider has a chance of winning. I hate that Contador has never come clean about his past and that it seems to be getting conveniently forgotten, and I hate that the likes of Vino and Riis are still so involved and influential in the sport without ever really showing any remorse or desire to change things. While I’m no Lance fan, I also find it hypocritical that he’s completely persona non grata while Vino and Riis are allowed to run teams.
Quite apart from the moral/ethical/health reasons for wanting a clean sport, I also think clean cycling is much more fun to watch. Riders having more bad days, paying the price the next day if they dig too deep, etc.
To those who didn’t watch this vuelta, it became really interesting, to me, because we saw an Off-form froome for the first 10 days or so, and so we got some insight into his character, or maybe the team director’s character.
But the end result was a really saavy, clever, sneaky Froome that would NOT give up and snatched seconds in intermediate sprint time bonuses, and through careful energy expenditure while others attacked each other.
was pretty fun to see it play out.
Yeah, I was kinda disappointed I missed some stages because they sounded good, but life got in the way…IMWI, for one.
But, like I said, it really didn’t matter much to me.
To those who didn’t watch this vuelta, it became really interesting, to me, because we saw an Off-form froome for the first 10 days or so, and so we got some insight into his character, or maybe the team director’s character.
But the end result was a really saavy, clever, sneaky Froome that would NOT give up and snatched seconds in intermediate sprint time bonuses, and through careful energy expenditure while others attacked each other.
was pretty fun to see it play out.
Couldn’t agree more! It made this years vuelta like last years, more exciting than the tour. The only thing more exciting was Paris-Nice of this year, some very very entertaining cycling. Just wish Quintana was around to make the GC a little more competitive.
and as a bit of trivia, Froome’s performance on the Alpe in 2013 is about equivalent to the mid 1980s times once you take into account equipment changes since then.
