Goodbye then .. Chris Froome

[Cyril Haearn]

Schadenfreude is the French for Schadenfreude according to wiki, it is used in Italian and Polish too

Another useful German word is "verschlimmbessern", to make something simultaneously worse and better

Many more useful words in German
Parkhaus = multistorycarpark zum Beispiel, for example

[Vorpal]

Parkhaus = multistorycarpark zum Beispiel, for example

Parkhus in Norwegian. There are too many.

[thirdcrank]

Some detailed analysis here of Froome's nutrition during part of the Giro.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cycling/44694122

We are going to have some otherwise normal riders getting complicated about avoiding hunger knock.
======================================================================================
From the BBC:
Tour de France: Chris Froome should compete without threat of violence - UCI president
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cycling/44709138
The UCI doesn't seem to have a media release about this, but there's a vid of an interview with David Lappartient here:
http://www.uci.ch/videos/entretien-avec ... is-froome/
It's in French so not eveybody will understand it in the original but it seems like an articulate and forceful explanation of the UCI's decision and a statement that all the athletes in the TdeF should be respected including Chris Froome. And as it's in French it should be understood - if not adhered to - by the majority of roadside spectators. Possibly an unexpected benefit of the change of UCI president. It wouldn't have had the same credibility coming from a Brit.

[mig]

i'd like to see sky appoint geraint thomas as sole team leader for the GC this time and have froome ride for him.

as for froome's guilt, innocence or otherwise i'm mostly beyond caring now about the whole sky team thing. team doctor this and jiffy bag the other. 35 years ago i avidly followed anything i could about the tour - hurrying back to catch the C4 highlights, reading any newspaper clip i could about the past few day's stages. this year i don't even know where the first day's stage is being held. i doubt i'll even watch very much either. shame.

[reohn2]

i'd like to see sky appoint geraint thomas as sole team leader for the GC this time and have froome ride for him.......

Much as I'd like him to be,I don't think G is a grand tour winner,top ten yes,but IMO he's more of a one day classics,Paris/Nice(which he has won) winner.
PS,I hope to be proved wrong

[mig]

he is i agree but give him a proper go before he is too old. not sure that there are many more in the race to beat him. i know that they won't but it would be a good thing.

[Tangled Metal]

He's simply not good enough. Why give him a try when it's evident he's not a GT team leader. You'd probably not get the team behind that idea neither.

IMHO it seems that you are completely jaded about GT racing. I can understand that but taking it out on a team that has not been found guilty of any wrong doing seems excessive. They're only guilty of not doing twice at much at every other team to prove they're clean. I don't believe other teams publish data on their team leader like sky.

There are other teams with sufficiently deep pockets to do what sky does but they don't. They aren't the complete package when it comes to approach. It seems to me that GT cycling is way behind the curve compared to Olympic sports like athletics or track cycling. Sky is really just applying the sports science in a complete way. You could compare it to Australian academy of sports approach decade or more ago. Or British sports for 2012 Olympics. BC track cycling, British swimming, etc. They've become truly professional and clinical in their scientific approach.

Sky is leading the way and with the talent of Froome they're getting results. Talent is probably the wrong word. It's the work ethic, the physical capability he was born with that got developed.

Of course if you are someone who cannot accept he's clean or sky are clean then perhaps GT cycling is really not your sport. Go to football (where they don't test fit PEDs much) or tennis (where top players complain when they get 4 tests in one year). Or some other sport that does not test their highest performing athletes 21 days straight, one every day of the Vuelta.

I think Froome had more than 60 tests in a couple of months. I can't remember if that was after the Vuelta or included the 21 days of the Vuelta and the month or two after. Think that was over 3 months.

It was this level of testing that cleared him with the AAF. He requested information from UCI and WADA then went back something like a month or so ago requesting more specific information. I am guessing that was the results from the period of testing either side of the AAF test day. What better evidence than the Vuelta's own testing regime?

Of course it's sky's money that scared UCI & WADA into dropping the case. Of course he's a serial doper but we've just not caught him out yet. Despite all the testing done on him. If he's racing he'll be tested. He's one of those cyclists at the top of their form and top of the peloton so if course he's going to get tested. I bet other team leaders and GC riders will be in a similar position regarding testing.

Despite all this I say to anyone feeling as jaded about the sport as Mig, stop following it. Don't try to come up with ideas to stop sky winning such as promoting a lesser talent to team leader.

Tbh you could argue that Bradley Wiggins was the lesser rider when sky team leader in the tour he won. Froome did the support role then and got a second place on the GC. If he was in another team as team leader, he'd probably have won that tour too and be about to race for his 6th tour not his 5th.

[Cyril Haearn]

GT: grand tour
GT: Geraint Thomas
Cymru am byth!

[Tangled Metal]

GT: grand tour
GT: Geraint Thomas
Cymru am byth!

I double checked my post and I think I used GT only for grand tour. I think I'd use Thomas for the cyclist's name because I use surnames for all the other cyclist's. Whilst Thomas isn't at natural to use for Geraint Thomas I still think uniformity in naming means we should use his surname too.

BTW as a Welsh man Cyril Haearn, can you tell me how many generations back I am allowed to go before I can no longer claim empathy with my Welsh ancestry? I think it's my great grandparents or two great grandparents were Welsh born and bred from the valleys. Is that too far back?

If I knew a Swedish poster I'd ask them a similar question. Which could become more relevant after Saturday.

[Cyril Haearn]

GT: grand tour
GT: Geraint Thomas
Cymru am byth!

I double checked my post and I think I used GT only for grand tour. I think I'd use Thomas for the cyclist's name because I use surnames for all the other cyclist's. Whilst Thomas isn't at natural to use for Geraint Thomas I still think uniformity in naming means we should use his surname too.

BTW as a Welsh man Cyril Haearn, can you tell me how many generations back I am allowed to go before I can no longer claim empathy with my Welsh ancestry? I think it's my great grandparents or two great grandparents were Welsh born and bred from the valleys. Is that too far back?

If I knew a Swedish poster I'd ask them a similar question. Which could become more relevant after Saturday.

We are all Welsh, if one goes far enough back, I am more by choice than anything else
What has Sweden got to do with the price of fish (pysgod*)?

* free Welsh vocab: "fish"

[Vorpal]

I double checked my post and I think I used GT only for grand tour. I think I'd use Thomas for the cyclist's name because I use surnames for all the other cyclist's. Whilst Thomas isn't at natural to use for Geraint Thomas I still think uniformity in naming means we should use his surname too.

BTW as a Welsh man Cyril Haearn, can you tell me how many generations back I am allowed to go before I can no longer claim empathy with my Welsh ancestry? I think it's my great grandparents or two great grandparents were Welsh born and bred from the valleys. Is that too far back?

If I knew a Swedish poster I'd ask them a similar question. Which could become more relevant after Saturday.

US Americans tend to claim affiliation for generations after their ancestry. They do tend to pick and choose a bit.

My family is a hodge-podge, but I have a great grandparent that was Welsh and a great grandparent that was Scottish. The Scottish part of the family originally came from Fance in 13th or 14th century. So one of my great aunts (who was already elderly when I was a child) felt the Scots were a bit crude and primitive; whenever one of my generation would say that we were part Scottish, she would get all uppity and say loudly that the family was actually from France, and we were French, not Scottish. I won't deny that some of my cousins took delight in winding her up.

US Americans I know who follow the World Cup tend to support North American teams, but now that Mexico is out, they have reverted to supporting Sweden because they have Swedish ancestry. US Americans I know who follow cycling tend to support US American cyclists, independent of their teams.

[Vorpal]

What has Sweden got to do with the price of fish (pysgod*)?

Football

[Tangled Metal]

My ancestry is also Swedish at about the same generation as my Welsh ancestry. So whichever side wins on Saturday I've still got options in the WC2018.

From an ardent Welsh language fan, native speaker and student of the history of Brythonic languages I once got told the origin of modern Welsh is from what is now Cheshire, Lancashire, Cumbria and Northumbria. IIRC it comes ultimately from the Omric celtic traditions when they hit supplanted from their traditional lands and moved into Wales, later passing through a lot of Wales taking language and culture with them.

Whatever the situation you can be proud to be British. Since even the Welsh are descended from Britons in some proportion.

[Tangled Metal]

My Swedish ancestry came via America and they're integration with English American stock dating back to early Georgetown stock. There's even a bit of German in the mix somehow allegedly.

My British mix is welsh and English. Allegedly there's a hint of Spanish too. There's a hint of French too if you go by my unusual surname. It is supposed to have its origins in Norman France and came across with the invasion but obviously there's no proof about that. Domesday book has the name on apparently but I've not seen it.

Either way we're all a hybrid mix of nations and origins, but I guess it depends on the nation concerned just how far you can go back into the past.

[mig]

He's simply not good enough. Why give him a try when it's evident he's not a GT team leader. You'd probably not get the team behind that idea neither.

IMHO it seems that you are completely jaded about GT racing. I can understand that but taking it out on a team that has not been found guilty of any wrong doing seems excessive. They're only guilty of not doing twice at much at every other team to prove they're clean. I don't believe other teams publish data on their team leader like sky.

There are other teams with sufficiently deep pockets to do what sky does but they don't. They aren't the complete package when it comes to approach. It seems to me that GT cycling is way behind the curve compared to Olympic sports like athletics or track cycling. Sky is really just applying the sports science in a complete way. You could compare it to Australian academy of sports approach decade or more ago. Or British sports for 2012 Olympics. BC track cycling, British swimming, etc. They've become truly professional and clinical in their scientific approach.

Sky is leading the way and with the talent of Froome they're getting results. Talent is probably the wrong word. It's the work ethic, the physical capability he was born with that got developed.

Of course if you are someone who cannot accept he's clean or sky are clean then perhaps GT cycling is really not your sport. Go to football (where they don't test fit PEDs much) or tennis (where top players complain when they get 4 tests in one year). Or some other sport that does not test their highest performing athletes 21 days straight, one every day of the Vuelta.

I think Froome had more than 60 tests in a couple of months. I can't remember if that was after the Vuelta or included the 21 days of the Vuelta and the month or two after. Think that was over 3 months.

It was this level of testing that cleared him with the AAF. He requested information from UCI and WADA then went back something like a month or so ago requesting more specific information. I am guessing that was the results from the period of testing either side of the AAF test day. What better evidence than the Vuelta's own testing regime?

Of course it's sky's money that scared UCI & WADA into dropping the case. Of course he's a serial doper but we've just not caught him out yet. Despite all the testing done on him. If he's racing he'll be tested. He's one of those cyclists at the top of their form and top of the peloton so if course he's going to get tested. I bet other team leaders and GC riders will be in a similar position regarding testing.

Despite all this I say to anyone feeling as jaded about the sport as Mig, stop following it. Don't try to come up with ideas to stop sky winning such as promoting a lesser talent to team leader.

Tbh you could argue that Bradley Wiggins was the lesser rider when sky team leader in the tour he won. Froome did the support role then and got a second place on the GC. If he was in another team as team leader, he'd probably have won that tour too and be about to race for his 6th tour not his 5th.

no i'm not taking anything out on sky specifically. i think of them as the same as all the others when they began with a promise not to be.