La Vuelta 2016 **SPOILERS**

[Crackle]

The rules are the rules and the commissaires are there to interpret them. Adherence of fools, guidance of wise men etc......

 

[Aravis]

The 2011 Tour - Stage 18.....nearly 90 riders missed the cut (including Cav who was in the green jersey) but were reinstated and docked 20 points. Cav went on to win the jersey in Paris.

So there clearly is a precedent.

I remember that well. In fact I think Cavendish was let back in twice that year. As the points jersey competition had effectively been rigged to let Cavendish win I suppose they had little choice.

However, without spending a lot of time listing out all the riders to see what would have happened to the teams of the GC contenders had the elimination been applied, I don't know whether we'd have had disappearing teams as we would have had this time. I'm going to have to do it now...

 

[mjr]

And yet there are counter examples of heroic struggles to the finished being given merciful reward and not being eliminated.]

Paul Sherwen 1985 riding six hours solo after a first-kilometre crash and missing the limit by 20-odd minutes, to give one well-documented example.

I better not, I might crash into a molehill or something.....

It's the river bridges you have to watch for, particularly the last arch bridge at 94 miles...

Really though they said that on Eurosport

That nobber Carlton Kirby's from hill country, isn't he?

They got battered by attacking riding, not the difficulty of the stage

Well, yes, but if I was awake and hearing correctly, Koen de Kort on http://thecyclingpodcast.com/podcast/vuelta-stage-16 argued that once such a climber-heavy break had gone so early, the amount of climbing (about 47km, including 33.3km categorised, in a 118.5km stage) made it pretty much a theoretical impossibility for the sprinters to finish within the time limit, so those teams who'd really missed out agreed to sit up and try to keep the groupetto too big to exclude, almost as a sort of protest and solidarity with their teammates.

I'm quite surprised no-one's agreeing with Sky's DS that it was a bit dodgy of Tinkoff and Movistar using Tosh van der Sande's crash to make that early split permanent!

 

[smutchin]

But it has also happened that individual riders have been cut very harshly. I remember an American guy (name escapes me - not a star rider) in the Tour a few years ago who missed the cut by seconds, having ridden some of the stage with a serious injury (shoulder or elbow or something) and yet still got booted off. And yet there are counter examples of heroic struggles to the finished being given merciful reward and not being eliminated.

Edit: Done a bit of googling. The American guy I was thinking of was Ted King of Cannondale. He was actually eliminated at the end of a TTT, a slightly different situation. http://velonews.competitor.com/2013...mination-from-tour-sends-wrong-message_293232

There was also the case of Taylor Phinney in the Tirreno-Adriatico in 2013. It was already a tough stage, but then the weather turned nasty. Even when the rest of the gruppetto abandoned, Phinney ploughed on alone for four hours in the most appalling conditions, eventually finishing 35 minutes behind the stage winner. If ever there were a case of a rider deserving leniency as a reward for his sterling efforts, it was him.

The bastards eliminated him, of course.

http://velonews.competitor.com/2013...tional-four-hour-solo-quest-at-tirreno_277623

 

[Dogtrousers]

An INRNG on the subject. http://inrng.com/2014/07/tour-de-france-time-cut-calculation/

 

[Aravis]

Having revisited the records for the 2011 Tour, I'm reminded that an important difference, compared with the current race, is that when those mass reinstatements took place there wasn't much left for the teams to do. The GC race was largely unaffected.

 

[mjr]

Well, yes, but if I was awake and hearing correctly, Koen de Kort on http://thecyclingpodcast.com/podcast/vuelta-stage-16 argued that once such a climber-heavy break had gone so early, the amount of climbing (about 47km, including 33.3km categorised, in a 118.5km stage) made it pretty much a theoretical impossibility for the sprinters to finish within the time limit, so those teams who'd really missed out agreed to sit up and try to keep the groupetto too big to exclude, almost as a sort of protest and solidarity with their teammates.

"After a 7 hour mountain stage, it was really really tough the next day to have a little 3km, 4km climb right from kilometre zero and just there, the best climbers in the world decide to attack each other. The bunch basically split with two groups of great riders chasing each other and the group behind, we knew that we had no chance. ... It was basic maths. We were not gonna make it. We knew it straight away. We saw that the time cut was only gonna be about half an hour and we would lose, in that group, fifteen minutes on the last climb and by the time we would start riding and, you know, keep pace, we knew that we were not gonna make it.

What we decided to do was all stick together, safety in numbers, knowing that they weren't going to take us all out, looking after each other and making sure we would all stay together. We can all race full gas and we have a group that misses the time cut by five minutes and a group by ten minutes and a group by twenty minutes and I think we ride our own teammates and our own colleagues home, for the sole purpose of riding them home, not for making time cut because we weren't gonna make it anyway."

 

[brommers]

almost as a sort of protest

Protest against what - the race being too hard?

 

[brommers]

made it pretty much a theoretical impossibility for the sprinters to finish within the time limit

There isn't any sprinters

 

[deptfordmarmoset]

There isn't any sprinters

True enough, but eliminating so many riders would mean any GT future for la Vuelta would be severely compromised, if not over. Protests at disqualifications, irate sponsors, future vetos, the world class sprinters don't even bother any more, etc, etc. A mountain goat slug fest is not going to be a Grand Tour. More importantly, it's not even going to remain a big public interest. A very big hill climb is what it risked becoming.

 

[mjr]

Protest against what - the race being too hard?

Basically, yes, against a combination of stage length and climbing setting a time limit half the field won't make. OK, it's not as memorable as the protests led by Lapize or Hinault, but it's still a protest.

 

[smutchin]

Tour de France 2006, stage 17, St Jean de Maurienne to Morzine, 201km. If the time limit had been strictly applied that day, around 100 riders would have been eliminated from the race.

And we all know who crossed the line first, don't we? A certain hearing aid salesman from Pennsylvania, hmmm?

 

[Pro Tour Punditry]

Tour de France 2006, stage 17, St Jean de Maurienne to Morzine, 201km. If the time limit had been strictly applied that day, around 100 riders would have been eliminated from the race.

And we all know who crossed the line first, don't we? A certain hearing aid salesman from Pennsylvania, hmmm?

Yes, I was at that stage. The autobus were so far behind that day people were starting to think they'd all got off! When they eventually arrived (on final small climb before descent into Morzine) people had started milling about the road and they narrowly escaped ploughing into several people (myself and daughter included) as there were no outriders ahead of them.

 

[iLB]

Tour de France 2006, stage 17, St Jean de Maurienne to Morzine, 201km. If the time limit had been strictly applied that day, around 100 riders would have been eliminated from the race.

And we all know who crossed the line first, don't we? A certain hearing aid salesman from Pennsylvania, hmmm?

He sells Marijuana now right ?

 

[suzeworld]

He sells Marijuana now right ?

Medicincal use only.