Froome - physically or mentally broken?

adr82

kleinstroker wrote:

adr82 wrote:

RichN95 wrote:

Froome got taken out by an erratic movement by two riders in front of him on stage 4 near the front of the bunch. Nothing to do with risk management - just dumb luck. Sky knew at the start of stage 5 that he was unlikely to finish it, they'd already switched their focus to Porte.

I think you're wasting your time here Rich, as far as some people are concerned Froome is just terrible at bike handling and positioning and luck had nothing to do with any of it.

So Skys tactics had nothing to do with it either? I find that hard to take. Riding as if there wasnt a problem was not the most sensible plan.

What started all of this was the crash on stage 4, which as has been pointed out multiple times was down to bad luck, not bad positioning or bike handling. At the start of stage 5, again as has been pointed out already, Sky were sufficiently concerned to dedicate two of their best cobbles riders (Thomas and Eisel) to work for Porte from the start of the stage. They adjusted their tactics, and considering where Porte ended up that seems to have worked out OK for them.

oldwelshman

OnYourRight wrote:

I think Froome’s self-belief and drive to win are second to none. His body, though, is a finely honed thing (literally) and not well-suited to being soaked, frozen, and repeatedly banged on the ground. Combined with his dubious bike-handling skills this does hurt his chances of being able to express his talent in a three-week race.

In fact, since Froome’s physical abilities are so strong – dominant, really – I am surprised Froome and Brailsford haven’t done a better job of reducing his other risks, even if doing so blunts his core strengths. People ascribe many crashes to luck, but isn’t it odd that people like Sagan have consistently good luck and people like Froome so often have bad luck?

Bike-handling can be trained to a large extent, and avoiding crashes has genuinely become a key way to win races – even though nobody yet gives that the recognition it deserves. More drastic action needs to be done to avoid them. And that’s not to mention the obvious stuff, like staying well away from inexperienced riders in the first few nervous kilometres of a stage – easily done with a strong team like Sky.

I am no Froome fan, but have you actually rode with him to justify your quote of his poor handling skills?
Oh and how come Sagan crashed just now in stage 6, he is one of the best handlers of a bike but he crashed.
I would like to do one of the training courses to avoid crashes, hilarious.

kleinstroker

adr82 wrote:

What started all of this was the crash on stage 4, which as has been pointed out multiple times was down to bad luck, not bad positioning or bike handling. At the start of stage 5, again as has been pointed out already, Sky were sufficiently concerned to dedicate two of their best cobbles riders (Thomas and Eisel) to work for Porte from the start of the stage. They adjusted their tactics, and considering where Porte ended up that seems to have worked out OK for them.

I agree with all that, you are right. What I think though is that Sky and Froome just pushed too hard, when they could have taken a safer decision and gone for a safer ride.

Anonymous

I think if this had been any other race he wouldn't have started yesterday. I think he fell 3 times, the first on camera he already had rips on this right side, and the replay showed he didn't go down that way. I said to my flat mate at this point he would withdraw before the stage was over. He couldn't get the bottle out of one bike and put it in the other.

cornerblock

sjmclean wrote:

He couldn't get the bottle out of one bike and put it in the other.

Once you have no bottle it's over.

DeVlaeminck

ManOfKent wrote:

Salsiccia1 wrote:

This thread = absolute bollocks.

OP is trolling, and really poorly too.

Not trolling at all. Others, including Froome's own teammate last year, have ridden the Tour with broken bones. His injuries appeared not to be that serious and he had the added incentive of trying to win the thing. By his criticism of Wiggins he opened himself to greater scrutiny of his own mental strength and attitude.

I don't know how much pain the pros should be expected to endure for the sake of a Tour win, and plainly the majority of posters here think the answer is "less than Froome was in". Some have pointed out things I wasn't aware of when I asked the question in the first place, such as his team's approach to the stage hinting at injuries more severe than they'd let on. It's a persuasive argument and certainly better thought through than your response.

I think the truth is it's possible there was a psychological element to his withdrawal. Even Greg Lemond talked about the shock of falling off for the second time in a day and how he thought Froome could be not only physically broken but psychologically broken too.

It looked to me like he might have at least got back on his bike and had a go at continuing. None of us know - we can't take Brailsford's word for it because of course he will tell us that the injury was so bad there was no hope he could continue just as the night before he was telling us it was no a big problem. Riding with an injured wrist in the wet on cobbles having crashed the day before it wouldn't be surprising if he scared starting the stage, crashing twice more could easily have cracked him mentally.

DeVlaeminck

oldwelshman wrote:

I am no Froome fan, but have you actually rode with him to justify your quote of his poor handling skills?
Oh and how come Sagan crashed just now in stage 6, he is one of the best handlers of a bike but he crashed.
I would like to do one of the training courses to avoid crashes, hilarious.

I reckon he crashed as many times in two days as Armstrong did for his seven tour "wins". Obviously poor bike handler is a relative term - no doubt his skills compare favourably to most amateurs but anyone that thinks his bike handling isn't below par for a tour contender doesn't watch a lot of cycling.

adr82

DeVlaeminck wrote:

oldwelshman wrote:

I am no Froome fan, but have you actually rode with him to justify your quote of his poor handling skills?
Oh and how come Sagan crashed just now in stage 6, he is one of the best handlers of a bike but he crashed.
I would like to do one of the training courses to avoid crashes, hilarious.

I reckon he crashed as many times in two days as Armstrong did for his seven tour "wins". Obviously poor bike handler is a relative term - no doubt his skills compare favourably to most amateurs but anyone that thinks his bike handling isn't below par for a tour contender doesn't watch a lot of cycling.

I watched him in 2012 and 2013, and as I remember the only time he actually "crashed" was a mass pileup in the last 3k of an early stage in 2012, plus the little incident with Contador last year where he actually did pretty well to stay upright. I'd be interested to know exactly how you qualify as a bad bike handler because it seems totally arbitrary. Sagan has crashed for the last 2 stages in a row, is he now similarly bad? I think Froome's problem is bad luck more than anything else this year, it's hard to imagine the crash on stage 4 didn't play some role in what happened yesterday, and that could have happened to any of the GC contenders.

OnYourRight wrote:

Obviously bike-handling skills do not proof you against crashing. But Froome crashes too often to make the best use of his talents and too often for someone with such a strong team built around him.

Care to define "too often"?

Are there any stats around that show how often riders crash? Number of race days divided by number of crashes or something similar? I don't think you can make judgements on riders based on a few days of the year, but if you took a few years worth of data and it showed a significantly higher rate of crashes than the average for the whole peloton then you might have a point.

DeVlaeminck

Someone referenced an interview with Alex Dowsett the other day where he mentioned Froome's reputation for crashing. If you look at the farce of the 2013 World Champs in the wet where he pretty much gave up because he didn't fancy it or the times Nibali or Contador have distanced him on descents.

mm1

DeVlaeminck wrote:

Someone referenced an interview with Alex Dowsett the other day where he mentioned Froome's reputation for crashing. If you look at the farce of the 2013 World Champs in the wet where he pretty much gave up because he didn't fancy it or the times Nibali or Contador have distanced him on descents.

Alex's comment was about Froome's riding at the Tour d'l Avenir, before he had much experience riding in big bunches at that level (in effect saying that Froome was always good, but it wasn't obvious from his results unless you were riding with him). Froome looked fine on the decent towards the finish in Sheffield and better than most on tha tricky decent in the TT at the Dauphine. Looking at his riding before the 2nd (or was it 3rd) crash yesterday, he didn't look comfortable. I saw him back down a few times and let others take the wheel he was on whereas he might not have in normal circumstances.

Finally, have you ever fallen and hurt you wrist? I have painful memories of losing both wheels on diesel 30 odd years ago - after this accident I couldn't hold my cutlery to eat a meal, let alone ride my bike. When Froome says he physically couldn't control his bike, I'd be inclined to believe him.

Macaloon

Froome should go to the same school that cured Geraint Thomas of his crashing habit. (Grips wood)

Interesting idea on riding specifically to minimise crashes. What are you having in mind?

RichN95.

Macaloon wrote:

Interesting idea on riding specifically to minimise crashes. What are you having in mind?

Either ride right at the front or right out the back. Cheng hasn't crashed once.

mm1

Ride the track, ride cross, become a coureur complet.

Macaloon

Shoulder pad and wrist-band/mitts airbags.

tailwindhome

Macaloon wrote:

(Grips wood)

*chuckle*

tailwindhome

Interestingly, according to Cyclocosm he was only 1min30 down on T Martin that day in spite of this crash.

DeadCalm

Salsiccia1 wrote:

Apologies if I misread your post. It was just the 'Or am I being too harsh on someone who labelled his former team leader "mentally weak"?' came across as a thinly veiled dig. Again, apologies if I got that wrong. There's been lots of Wiggins fans on here who've shown an unpleasant schadenfreude at Froome getting injured and having to drop out, and I thought this was more of the same.

A more thoughtful response from me:
I think Froome is pretty tough, and was probably more injured than he and the team let on. His damaged wrist probably stopped him from being able to handle his bike, which is why he crashed twice. My feeling is that if yesterday's stage had been run in the dry and without the cobbles (to come after he pulled out, I know) he might still be in the race.

I've seen one. Certainly not lots.

adr82

OnYourRight wrote:

adr82 wrote:

Sagan has crashed for the last 2 stages in a row, is he now similarly bad?

He didn’t crash yesterday. That was misreported.

Presumably he crashed at some point before that then - he already had a dressing on his arm in the photos of stage 5.

OnYourRight wrote:

But Sagan could crash a hundred times and it wouldn’t change the fact that avoiding crashes is a percentage game. You have to have everything on your side to minimise the risk. I never said knowing how to handle a bike would guarantee you didn’t crash. But over a long enough timespan it will guarantee you crash less often.

I'm not talking about that in relation to Sagan, I'm asking if his recent crashes automatically mark him out as a bad bike handler?

OnYourRight wrote:

You (and others) keep saying that, but why? Any number of things could have been done to avoid being four rows deep, squeezed over to the side (but not actually on the side with some room to manoeuvre), behind and too close to inexperienced riders from another team, in the first few kilometres of a nervous stage.

I keep saying it because normally he would have been fine in a position like that, and it was a case of bad luck more than anything else. There are always riders in these positions in a big peloton. There are not always riders touching wheels and falling off there, or you'd never get a peloton to stay together beyond 20-30 riders. If it was a near certainty that being in such a position for a matter of seconds would result in a crash, you'd have a stronger point. Unless Contador was on the front behind a single teammate 100% of the time, he wasn't always in the right position either, and the same goes for any of the other GC contenders. I do agree TS seem to be making more of an effort in that respect than Sky so far, but like almost everything else it's a trade-off - do you risk tiring out your domestiques in an effort to stay on/near the front (which after all just makes you less likely to crash, not immune to crashing) or do you stay a couple of rows back and accept the slightly higher risk in favour of expending less energy? On any other day Froome would have gotten away with it and we wouln't be having this discussion at all. There is nowhere in the peloton that is totally safe after all, even right at the front.

OnYourRight wrote:

How about this: it’s too often when a rider more often crashes out than loses due to lack of fitness or physical ability generally. In Froome’s case he almost never loses due to lack of speed when it counts. Therefore, rationally speaking, he should spend more energy in order to keep safe. And Team Sky should spend more energy and be more disciplined in keeping him safe.

OK, that's pretty good! The problem is that it'd be very hard to actually do that in a grand tour, because there are so many things you can't control. The obvious question is exactly how much time you can afford to lose, even assuming Froome is so dominant? Then you have to decide where you're going to make up the time you've lost, and hope the race cooperates with your plans. You have to worry about unexpected losses as well as "planned" losses. I doubt Sky could have managed it last year given the state they were in, and this year they're already down Froome + Xandio, so Porte has fewer people to work for him than normal. Does it still make sense to expend the extra energy when you're 2 men short? I get where you're coming from with minimising risk, but there has to be a point where you can't go much further without destroying your chances of actually winning the race.

Pross

Can someone remind me on the rules of how often you need to crash to get the tag of being a bad bike handler and people questioning your mental state?

Froome crashed in the Dauphine and then again on Stage 4 of the Tour. He says himself, and it makes sense to me, that the injury picked up in that crash made it impossible to control his bike. Braking and steering on soaking roads with a damaged wrist must be a nightmare and the nerves of the pain a crash will cause plus knowing your race is on the line just make it worse.

Nibali probably crashes more than many and yet is hailed as some bike handling, descending genius. Wiggins fell off once and was labelled a crap bike handler (people who ride an international level Madison cannot be bad bike handlers and anyone who saw him 2 weeks ago in the rain on a TT bike know for a fact he isn't).

mm1

There are always crashes all the time, its just that we don't see them all - the on the bike footage is starting to show that isn't it? Luca Paolini fell right in front of me at the start in Cambridge, pretty banal and harmless, but it really does happen all the time to pretty much everyone.

RichN95.

Pross wrote:

Can someone remind me on the rules of how often you need to crash to get the tag of being a bad bike handler and people questioning your mental state?

Froome crashed in the Dauphine and then again on Stage 4 of the Tour. He says himself, and it makes sense to me, that the injury picked up in that crash made it impossible to control his bike. Braking and steering on soaking roads with a damaged wrist must be a nightmare and the nerves of the pain a crash will cause plus knowing your race is on the line just make it worse.

Nibali probably crashes more than many and yet is hailed as some bike handling, descending genius. Wiggins fell off once and was labelled a crap bike handler (people who ride an international level Madison cannot be bad bike handlers and anyone who saw him 2 weeks ago in the rain on a TT bike know for a fact he isn't).

I think it comes down to how many wheelies you do.

PuttyKnees

I've not seen anything to suggest Froome is a bad bike handler. The only questionable thing about his riding on his first crash on stage 4 was that it looks like he was half-wheeling a nervous rider, but difficult to tell from the angle/depth of field. I think my mental state would be a bit broken though if I'd landed on a broken wrist.

smithy21

It helps to be a former mountain biker. In commentator land that equals genius bike handler.

adamfo

A while back I went over the handlebars of my motocross bike and landed on my hands. My wrist bend backwards enough to strain the ligaments. I picked the bike up OK but the following day was agony and I couldn't move my fingers. No way could I ride the bike again.
The doctor on stage 5 treated 41 riders for falls. That's crazy, if it rains I would prefer the stage to be rerouted to safer roads.

iainf72

Man who witnessed crash comments

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/horner- ... -de-france

mfin

Pross wrote:

Can someone remind me on the rules of how often you need to crash to get the tag of being a bad bike handler and people questioning your mental state?

Froome crashed in the Dauphine and then again on Stage 4 of the Tour. He says himself, and it makes sense to me, that the injury picked up in that crash made it impossible to control his bike. Braking and steering on soaking roads with a damaged wrist must be a nightmare and the nerves of the pain a crash will cause plus knowing your race is on the line just make it worse.

Nibali probably crashes more than many and yet is hailed as some bike handling, descending genius. Wiggins fell off once and was labelled a crap bike handler (people who ride an international level Madison cannot be bad bike handlers and anyone who saw him 2 weeks ago in the rain on a TT bike know for a fact he isn't).

+100 ...people are daft when labelling peoples bike handling skills

rick_chasey

smithy21 wrote:

It helps to be a former mountain biker. In commentator land that equals genius bike handler.

Fuglsang (ex mtb) & Boom (ex cyclocross) were the strongest two yesterday.


FYI

PuttyKnees

Being world champion at xc/cx is a world of difference to trundling around the Kenyan highlands with your mate though.

rick_chasey

Look last season I said the most likely thing to happen to Froome was he'd fall off. Got it a year wrong.

He's not particularly well rated as a bike handler - that's a given.

Not sure why that elicits so much hatred - presumably because he won last year.

mroli

Remember last year when Contador crashed in front of Froome on that descent (Froome stayed upright). No-one slags off Contador's handling skills...

Also Cycloscosm has done some analysis that Froome wasn't near cycling near the back intentionally on any of the sections - he was pushing close to the front in his second crash and on his first crash, he lost places being less aggressive going into one of those sharp left hand 90degree corners.

Think that things are getting a little blown out of proportion here tbh - Froome probably isn't the best bike handler in the peloton, but he's not rubbish. He's not got the best placement in the group, but not the worst. Sometimes defecation just happens.