La Course 2018 **SPOILERS**

above_the_cows

underlayunderlay wrote:

Worth pointing out that before massive investment in rider recruitment, sport science, support etc the mens races saw massive time gaps as standard too. Funnily enough this is now seen as a golden time in the sport's history.

It cracks me up a bit that people attack the men's racing for not having attacking, then use the degree of attack and counter-attack in women's racing as a stick with which to beat it. So gaps open up? So what?

Women can never win, whatever they do is wrong. It's a standard that's applied in so many walks of life.

davidof

Above The Cows wrote:

Ongelofelijk is a Dutch word, meaning unbelievable. We had a lot of ongelofelijks from José Been at the manner of finish.

Dutch, German's bastard unloved child. Unglaublich aber treu!

thegibdog

Superb finish.

above_the_cows

davidof wrote:

Above The Cows wrote:

Ongelofelijk is a Dutch word, meaning unbelievable. We had a lot of ongelofelijks from José Been at the manner of finish.

Dutch, German's bastard unloved child. Unglaublich aber treu!

Get out

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larkim

Was discussing this last night, and whilst I find women's tennis, women's football, women's cricket and women's rugby boring to watch because I'm used to watching the pace at which the men's equivalent versions are played at, I don't find the same is true of some other sports and cycling fits the bill. I'm not sure many can tell that a woman pedalling at 90-100rpm for 4 hours looks greatly different to a man doing the same, so even if one is averaging 45kmh and the other 40kmh there isn't a great deal of difference in the spectacle so long as the depth of the field is comparable.

No good reason why women's cycling shouldn't be as TV friendly as men's to watch.

Whether women's racing needs to mirror exactly the way men's is set up is another question, but that should be driven by having an opportunity to do something different / better not constrained by the hand of history rather than dumbing down the women's events. OTOH, running a TdF on the same parcours perhaps 1 week in advance or after the men's race would be good to see, or establishing an equivalent series of 3 x 3 week GTs in three different countries might also fit the bill (e.g. Germany, Canada, UK?).

davidof

larkim wrote:

Was discussing this last night, and whilst I find women's tennis, women's football, women's cricket and women's rugby boring to watch because I'm used to watching the pace at which the men's equivalent versions are played at

Men's tennis, with 5 sets of men acing serves, is extremely tedious. Give me the grace of the women's game any day.

larkim

Each to their own, I personally find the men's tennis game thrilling (mostly) and the women's tedious (mostly), but I don't disagree that some 5 set slog fests in the men's games can be dull. Give me a top 10 vs top 10 men's match against a top 10 vs top 10 women's match any day of the week though.

Vino'sGhost

i think its good to encourage them.

blazing_saddles

Watching today's stage, the answer is simple.
Don't increase Le Course to three weeks, decrease Le Tour to one day......

rick_chasey

davidof wrote:

Above The Cows wrote:

Ongelofelijk is a Dutch word, meaning unbelievable. We had a lot of ongelofelijks from José Been at the manner of finish.

Dutch, German's bastard unloved child. Unglaublich aber treu!

Get out.

rick_chasey

larkim wrote:

Each to their own, I personally find the men's tennis game thrilling (mostly) and the women's tedious (mostly), but I don't disagree that some 5 set slog fests in the men's games can be dull. Give me a top 10 vs top 10 men's match against a top 10 vs top 10 women's match any day of the week though.

I promise you back in the mid-late‘90s women’s was infinitely more interesting than the men’s.

Men’s tennis was going through its power phase.

Women’s tennis went through theirs in the ‘00s around the time Federer and later Nadal raised the excellence bar to ridiculous heights.

Those two are responsible for an awful lot.

I feel women’s tennis will eventually get there too, but they need a couple players who can tame the power game right at the highest level.

hypster

larkim wrote:

Was discussing this last night, and whilst I find women's tennis, women's football, women's cricket and women's rugby boring to watch because I'm used to watching the pace at which the men's equivalent versions are played at, I don't find the same is true of some other sports and cycling fits the bill. I'm not sure many can tell that a woman pedalling at 90-100rpm for 4 hours looks greatly different to a man doing the same, so even if one is averaging 45kmh and the other 40kmh there isn't a great deal of difference in the spectacle so long as the depth of the field is comparable.

No good reason why women's cycling shouldn't be as TV friendly as men's to watch.

Oh come on! All those women looked like they were cycling through treacle most of the time. And they only did 112.5km and the last two categorised climbs. I think Anna van der Breggen got beaten because she just got bored with pedalling her bike for so long.

awavey

Above The Cows wrote:

underlayunderlay wrote:

Worth pointing out that before massive investment in rider recruitment, sport science, support etc the mens races saw massive time gaps as standard too. Funnily enough this is now seen as a golden time in the sport's history.

It cracks me up a bit that people attack the men's racing for not having attacking, then use the degree of attack and counter-attack in women's racing as a stick with which to beat it. So gaps open up? So what?

Women can never win, whatever they do is wrong. It's a standard that's applied in so many walks of life.

this totally ^^ sadly

I thought it was a good race, Id like to see more stages obviously, Id picked Van Vleuten to win based on her Giro form so I was quite happy with that


the thing with people talking about the strength in depth, the point is currently the womens pro tour cant support strength in depth because theres not enough money to pay all the riders & all the teams to go and be full time.

so it is what it is at the moment, but more events like these hopefully that will change.

shirley_basso

Will it change tomorrow? No

Will it change in time? Yes.

That's the point and men have the fortune of being funded when they became more professional.

If that were a classic stage, watching Sagan being pipped by diller at PR for example - who woudda thought?

above_the_cows

hypster wrote:

larkim wrote:

Was discussing this last night, and whilst I find women's tennis, women's football, women's cricket and women's rugby boring to watch because I'm used to watching the pace at which the men's equivalent versions are played at, I don't find the same is true of some other sports and cycling fits the bill. I'm not sure many can tell that a woman pedalling at 90-100rpm for 4 hours looks greatly different to a man doing the same, so even if one is averaging 45kmh and the other 40kmh there isn't a great deal of difference in the spectacle so long as the depth of the field is comparable.

No good reason why women's cycling shouldn't be as TV friendly as men's to watch.

Oh come on! All those women looked like they were cycling through treacle most of the time. And they only did 112.5km and the last two categorised climbs. I think Anna van der Breggen got beaten because she just got bored with pedalling her bike for so long.

You can find it boring, but insulting the commitment and professionalism of the Olympic champion is just pathetic misogyny.

shirley_basso

What they said. Thats a pretty pathetic viewpoint.

And of the males who were ever pipped to the line after a long chace?

Vino'sGhost

LOLOL its good to see the great and the good of bike radar pontificating and yet look how many actually watched the womens tour of britain or the tdy.

its todays must do

shirley_basso

It takes time. If you want instant gratification you know what to do.

larkim

Watched the brief highlights on ITV4 - la course was much more interesting than the tour today, but underserved by the highlights package. Boulting got that completely wrong!!

blazing_saddles

larkim wrote:

Watched the brief highlights on ITV4 - la course was much more interesting than the tour today, but underserved by the highlights package. Boulting got that completely wrong!!

It should be. It was a one day race, not a three week slog.

Lanterne_Rogue

larkim wrote:

Watched the brief highlights on ITV4 - la course was much more interesting than the tour today, but underserved by the highlights package. Boulting got that completely wrong!!

I think the thing that Boulting and GIlmour should take huge credit for is the way they both started laughing as they realised they'd stitched themselves up. I also enjoyed the immediate aftermath as you could hear him working out what had just happened and whether he'd got things wrong - nothing summed it up better than his baffled "Well that seemed almost impossible. In fact, with 200m to go it WAS impossible." - he'd called it absolutely right but the race had gone horribly wrong.

And yeah, it needed more of the descent to really give the finish context. I think the reason everyone enjoyed it so much at the time was because we'd seen the gap shrinking and growing by mere seconds for 14km beforehand.

Vino'sGhost

Shirley Basso wrote:

It takes time. If you want instant gratification you know what to do.

ok when are you coming over?

supermurph09

I watched it live on the TV, what happened was simply incredible. As above, Boulting and Gilmoore called the race as anyone would have, Van Vleuten looked dead and buried 4-5 times in the last 2-3k, I still can't believe she caught her!

I think what made it even more special were the interviews afterwards, the emotion of the riders was there for all to see, it just added to what was an epic story.

larkim

Via the excellent LR thread just learned that in 15th place yesterday on La Course was 51 year old Edwige Pitel.

Blimey o'reilly!! You can make comments all you like about the depth of the women's field, but she was just over 5 minutes down on some of the best in the world, she must be insanely exceeding any projection of how age catches up with elite athletes.

I wonder what the oldest age a male cyclist has finished in the top 15 in a similar event at elite level? I'd be surprised if it was into his 40s.

RichN95.

larkim wrote:

I wonder what the oldest age a male cyclist has finished in the top 15 in a similar event at elite level? I'd be surprised if it was into his 40s.

Chris Horner won the Vuelta aged 41. Rebellin is still winning races on the Asian Tour. He's 47 in a few weeks time. He came 21st in Milan-San Remo, aged 44 and 14th in the HC Tour of Abu Dhabi aged 45.

tgotb

Gilmore's commentating doesn't seem to have improved since last year. I get that they want to have a woman commentating on a women's race, but why can't they find someone who can actually commentate? Why the belief that you have to be a bike racer to commentate, even if you can only talk in a monotone? Clare Balding seems to do a very good job of commentating on horse racing despite not being a horse; I'm sure she could do just as well with a bike race.

And why put La Course up against one of the more interesting men's stages? If it's just going to be one day, run it in the Alps when the men's race is on some boring transition stage in the middle of nowhere...

RichN95.

TGOTB wrote:

Clare Balding seems to do a very good job of commentating on horse racing despite not being a horse;

However, she was a successful amateur jockey and comes from a family of trainers (father won the Derby, uncle won the National, brother won the Oaks). And she's a presenter not a commentator.

Gilmore works in the women's side of the sport on a daily basis. She knows the riders back to front. Boulting probably doesn't

No_Ta_Doctor

RichN95 wrote:

TGOTB wrote:

Clare Balding seems to do a very good job of commentating on horse racing despite not being a horse;

However, she was a successful amateur jockey and comes from a family of trainers (father won the Derby, uncle won the National, brother won the Oaks). And she's a presenter not a commentator.

Gilmore works in the women's side of the sport on a daily basis. She knows the riders back to front. Boulting probably doesn't

Cylcing commentary is really, really difficult. For a start, you've got hours and hours to fill. Then you've got the same issues as everyone else following the race on TV - if the motos don't show you someone dropped or an attack then you won't know (yes, they also listen to the race radio), unreliable time-gaps, trying to recognise riders from a brief glimpse etc. On top of this you should be able to add a layer of tactics and strategy for your viewers. You need to know the riders, their strengths and weaknesses and current form, their goals for the race, their team set-up. That's bloody hard for anyone that isn't involved in cycling on a day to day basis.

On a side note, this is part of the reason a good race spoiler thread works so well - observations are crowd sourced, other people remember that rider X was actually junior TT champion and got a top ten at the worlds in 2013 etc.

tgotb

No tA Doctor wrote:

RichN95 wrote:

TGOTB wrote:

Clare Balding seems to do a very good job of commentating on horse racing despite not being a horse;

However, she was a successful amateur jockey and comes from a family of trainers (father won the Derby, uncle won the National, brother won the Oaks). And she's a presenter not a commentator.

Gilmore works in the women's side of the sport on a daily basis. She knows the riders back to front. Boulting probably doesn't

Cylcing commentary is really, really difficult. For a start, you've got hours and hours to fill. Then you've got the same issues as everyone else following the race on TV - if the motos don't show you someone dropped or an attack then you won't know (yes, they also listen to the race radio), unreliable time-gaps, trying to recognise riders from a brief glimpse etc. On top of this you should be able to add a layer of tactics and strategy for your viewers. You need to know the riders, their strengths and weaknesses and current form, their goals for the race, their team set-up. That's bloody hard for anyone that isn't involved in cycling on a day to day basis.

Fair point. In that case, I wish they'd find a way of teaching her how to sound a bit more animated...

ShutupJens

TGOTB wrote:

No tA Doctor wrote:

RichN95 wrote:

TGOTB wrote:

Clare Balding seems to do a very good job of commentating on horse racing despite not being a horse;

However, she was a successful amateur jockey and comes from a family of trainers (father won the Derby, uncle won the National, brother won the Oaks). And she's a presenter not a commentator.

Gilmore works in the women's side of the sport on a daily basis. She knows the riders back to front. Boulting probably doesn't

Cylcing commentary is really, really difficult. For a start, you've got hours and hours to fill. Then you've got the same issues as everyone else following the race on TV - if the motos don't show you someone dropped or an attack then you won't know (yes, they also listen to the race radio), unreliable time-gaps, trying to recognise riders from a brief glimpse etc. On top of this you should be able to add a layer of tactics and strategy for your viewers. You need to know the riders, their strengths and weaknesses and current form, their goals for the race, their team set-up. That's bloody hard for anyone that isn't involved in cycling on a day to day basis.

Fair point. In that case, I wish they'd find a way of teaching her how to sound a bit more animated...

Literally the last thing you want is someone trying to inject fake enthusiasm into commentary. You end up with someone trying to hype things up so much that they don't actually concentrate on what's happening and irritate any sort of cycling fan who knows that nothing that exciting is actually happening.

Luckily we're not subjected to anyone that useless..