Hi Fredal. I’m glad to hear that you hadn’t heard the slur before. I hope that you haven’t been exposed to much homophobia in your life in general. Unfortunately that’s not been the case for me or other people on this forum though.
Although you’ve suggested there wasn’t an issue you didn’t respond to the main issue I raised in my post. Where are the openly gay professional cyclists and other atheletes? Homophobia is clearly a big issue in sport and slurs are a part of that.
I’m not sure why you’re so convinced Robbie didn’t know the phrase. If I had used a phrase that I hadn’t realised had offensive connotations then you can be sure when I was apologising I’d have made it clear that I hadn’t known what it meant when I said it. It seems a pretty obvious thing to do. Indeed you and lots of others online have been quick to suggest Robbie might not have known the phrase. The fact he didn’t use this obvious line himself suggests to me that he was probably aware of it. I can see that he may not have meant to cause offence but he was right to apologise either way. Everyone makes mistakes, but if we don’t address these problems then gay people will continue to be excluded.
As it happens I had been feeling pretty chilled and had been enjoying the race thanks. I’d been hoping Hindley would do well and thought his attack was awesome. Simon Yates had looked in great shape too and I had high hopes for him before his injury. Robbie’s comment and the post I responded to were just one part of the Giro for me. I posted about it as I won’t stand for homophobia or other forms of discrimination. Will you?
Happy to see Hindley win, but kind of an average overall race. There were some good stages with MvdP and Grimay winning in some awesome finishes, but very little GC mountain battles until the last day. And sad to see all the injury/illness drop outs, but seems to be the norm.
I agree that having more days setup where a team can execute a “raid” - medium mountains with the potential for crosswinds - would make a lot of stages more interesting. Plus get rid of high mountain days that end on a downhill. Either you are encouraging very dangerous riding - having to attack on a downhill - or the leaders don’t attack because riders will come back on the downhills, so the mountains get effectively neutralized.
The other “innovation” - mentioned on one of the podcasts I listen to, but I forget which one - would be to put the hardest mountain as the 2nd to last, to encourage people to attack there, and then be able to distance rivals instead of waiting to the last couple of kilometers on the final climb to attack.
And a decent prologue, a 60k TTT and a 35-40k ITT. Spice it up with some tough summit finishes, some punchers finishes and then find out who the best rider is instead of these GT’s that are now catered to climbers that can’t do anything else except for climb well.
If someone’s 2 minutes behind after the TTT but there is a medium and then a high mountain stage in the days after where they can make up on the heavier time trialist, it might again encourage action instead of just having a group of 5 climbers look at each other all the way to the top of a climb.
You and I must like dramatically different racing. I don’t mind more TT miles than this Giro had, by any stretch, but a 60k TTT sounds awful - it would reward the higher salary teams so dramatically as to render large portions of the race irrelevant
Agreed 100%…and I am a huge fan of TTT’s. But they can have WAY too much impact on the GC if they go that long. Honestly, had they had a TTT that long this year, Carapaz would have won easily and the race would have been over on day 2 or 3.
If you want exciting racing that is closer in time, the answer is shorter stages, not longer / ridiculously hard one.
I used to love the TTT stages. Some of the absolute favourite TdF stages. Armstrong or Cancellara ripping long turns and putting minutes into whole teams.
There was a solution where they gave the teams a time bonus for the placing as opposed to real time time loss. I guess there’s just not as much interest in TT racing for the general public though, and I understand why, they don’t make great entertaining viewing if you aren’t deeply into the details.
I’d like to see a TTT back in the Tour - just a 15-20km one or so. I’d also wager JV would be happier about it than UAE. I’d rather see that than one of the week 2 snooze fests that we inevitably see.
So you’re saying right now the highest salary teams aren’t winning either? They all have domestiques that would top 10 at a GT (Kelderman, Buchmann, Bilbao, Porte, Tullett and Arensman in the near future,…) and a lot of them have a decent TT.
My favorite Giro was the one that Dumoulin one because of the different rider types that were in the mix. At this moment the JV squad would put minutes into for instance Arkea in such a TTT but on this year’s stage 20, there’s no reason an on fire Quintana would not have put back minutes into Dumoulin…
How much GC action did we really have this year? Carapaz did maybe 2 half assed attacks but wasn’t strong enough to stay away, the others mostly sat in until Carapaz cracked on the Fedaia… The individual stages were mostly entertaining but even though the top 5 in GC stayed close for long, there really wasn’t a real battle… They were just looking at eachother on every climb, which is also why so many riders won from the breakaway…
This is from 2021, but Bora just barely sneaks into the top 10 - so yeah, we had a winner from a team that isn’t close to the highest salary Tour de France team budgets 2023 | Statista
We completely agree on this point - the GC action was very limited this year. We just disagree on how to address it.
Setting aside the current form of Quintana and Dumoulin - I fundamentally disagree with your assertion here. JV or Ineos would just put so much time into the smaller teams that their best climber in the race would have an insurmountable lead. You’d not be comparing a strong TT rider with a climber
I’d actually like to see a very long - 50 or 60km - team time trial. That would force GC teams to have a big conundrum on team composition: do you bring strong riders for the TTT, but be weaker for the mountain stages? Or bleed time in the TTT that you then have to make up in the mountains?
I think it would be challenges like the above that is really needed to bring excitement to grand tours: create stages that give big opportunities to teams with very different compositions, and force teams to make bets on which stages they can make time, and which they could bleed time, to rivals.
I’d love to see a grand tour where leaders are losing or gaining minutes on stages due to team composition.
Really like your idea. Not so much the lack of TT bikes, I wanna see them thundering along at 60km/h, but definitely force teams to have more versatile riders.
I remember a story of Julian Dean, when he raced for Garmin-Chipotle, who had a big TTT focus. He was the “last” rider left, when he really wasn’t supposed to be. Lead out man, swinging on the back to make up the required four. I might be mixing stories, but I think that was his only GT stage win.
My thought on limiting riders to one bike model is to again force trade-offs that could lead to more dramatic shifts over the course of the race. Do you bet on a lighter climbing model, knowing you could pay a penalty on the TT / TTT stages? Or go for the aero bike and be at a disadvantage in the mountains?