Should Mark Cavendish swallow his pride and retire?
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Surprised he's planning to become a DS or team manager - thought he'd be looking at something that didn't involve being away from home quite so much.
[Castle Donington Ladies FC - going up in '22]0 -
Get him on board as the DS for a new UK based pro team?
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I saw Harry Tanfield's effort to register a new team has sadly not worked :-(
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The British establishment's attitudes to the golden generation four:
Cavendish: Knighthood, Sport's personality, Sport's personality lifetime award
Wiggins: Knighthood, Sport's personality
Thomas: Sport's personality, Velodrome named after him
Froome: Who the hell are you? Piss off back to Africa, Kenyan
Twitter: @RichN951 -
Tbf, Froome chose to not live in the UK.
The above may be fact, or fiction, I may be serious, I may be jesting.
I am not sure. You have no chance.Veronese68 wrote:PB is the most sensible person on here.0 -
In fairness, despite zero attempt to appeal to the home crowd and obviously having no relatability at all , he does have an OBE.
2020/2021/2022 Metric Century Challenge Winner0 -
Admittedly he was never interested in being a celebrity. I don't think there's necessarily a lack of relatability - there's a big load of young British talent at IPT at the moment, I guess he's a factor. He won the Velo d'or three times. Only Wiggins one that once. He's won seven grand tours - the rest of British men have only won four. In 2016 he wasn't even one of 16 nominees for SPOTY. His season was better than Thomas's season when he won.
It is what it is. But if you are looking for Britain's most undervalued sports person, I'd say he's a leading candidate.
Having said all that - Rui Costa (the cyclist, not the footballer) has won the Portuguese award three times. Cristiano Ronaldo never has.
Twitter: @RichN951 -
Froome never did anything on the track is my own working hypothesis. It's the only language the BBC understands.
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i agree he’s been massively overlooked , he’s just invisible to the public. Two bronze Olympic medals just doesn’t cut it these days!
2020/2021/2022 Metric Century Challenge Winner0 -
Mrs Froome probably isn't helping the cause either!
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BBC glossed over Pogi's achievements this year, with a bland he won the Tour, oh and the giro, and then the rainbows, failing to comment that he is only the third rider ever to do so, and was utterly dominant throughout the year.
They focus so much on the sports they still cover, which are of course dwindling
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I’m not sure SPOTY counts as the British establishment. OK, the BBC get a shortlist together but winning just comes down to a popularity contest with the public. In addition to not having the Olympic track stuff the fact that Froome hasn’t lived in the UK and doesn’t have a British accent will have undoubtedly gone against him in the popularity contest. If Rusedski had come along after Henman became successful I suspect he would have been in a similar position.
None of that explains the relative lack of recognition by the honours system though.
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"OK, the BBC get a shortlist together but winning just comes down to a popularity contest with the public."
This. SPOTY is not an award for achievement, it is nothing more than a popularity contest.
The above may be fact, or fiction, I may be serious, I may be jesting.
I am not sure. You have no chance.Veronese68 wrote:PB is the most sensible person on here.0 -
Agreed. Some sort of achievement is necessary to get nominated, albeit there is a lot of subjectivity involved during the selection process. Once on the list it is a popularity contest.
Bellingham (*) Root (**) and Littler over Pidcock doesn't pass the achievement threshold for me but the latter two came 2nd and 3rd so are obviously popular.
(*) How can coming second in the Balon d'Or, winning a regional club competition and being runner up in a regional national competition (whilst not really doing very much individually) compare with successfully defending your Olympic title?
(**) I'm a huge fan of Root but his achievements this year are more lifetime achievement awards than anything particularly special in the year concerned. (Unlike Botham in '81 and Flintoff in '05 whose achievements in the year concerned helped win the Ashes.)
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From a sporting achievement it would be hard to surpass Jasmin Paris. I didn't watch but did she get mentioned at all?
Also, who won the international award? Sifan Hassan's treble at the Olympics was truly incredible. I can't think of any sporting achievment that comes close.
Edit - just checked and Duplantis won. He's a fantastic athlete but I real struggle to see how dominating one event trumps winning 3 Olympic medals at the three longest running events in the space of a week. Maybe the bronzes are considered as failures.
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I don't think the honours system is unexpectedly out of step with what you'd expect. Hoy was THE figurehead of British Olympic cycling, Wiggins kicked the door open at the TdF (and had the Olympic stuff in his pocket too), and if there were a Pantheon of cycling Cavendish would be amongst the first names on the list. I mean, we know Cipo would also be there reclining on a long sofa and being fed peeled grapes by scantily dressed women - he was born to it - but Cavendish was the better sprinter.
Plus all three are charismatic, worked within the system, and know how to press establishment flesh. They're exactly the sorts you'd expect to get knighthoods. I'm increasingly fond of Froome, but it's hard to imagine him ever being inside the establishment unless he gets seriously charitable after his career.
On which point, Chris Boardman is the real outlier here, surely?
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If you want a real outlier then go for Obree.
More that he was outside everything. Boardman was very much the establishment.
The above may be fact, or fiction, I may be serious, I may be jesting.
I am not sure. You have no chance.Veronese68 wrote:PB is the most sensible person on here.1 -
Re Boardman, there's a big difference between how achievements pre and post Lottery funding are perceived. Weirdly, OBEs etc. are much more likely after Olympic medals nowadays than in the days when folk combined training with working to fund it.
The Thatcher government was very uninterested in sport, presumably as Thatcher herself was, but Blair wised up to the benefits of being seen in the media to associate with successful sporty types, so gongs are much more freely given out these days.
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I took that to mean that him not having a knighthood makes him an outlier based on his achievements (especially with all his campaigning work outside of the sporting element of cycling).
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I got that, which is why I added the second sentence. I was adding context to the achievement v popularity contest.
The above may be fact, or fiction, I may be serious, I may be jesting.
I am not sure. You have no chance.Veronese68 wrote:PB is the most sensible person on here.0 -
Root is the current number one test batsman in the world, and was at time of nomination. Did he just have one week off the top spot?
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He's number 2.
"Unfortunately these days a lot of people don’t understand the real quality of a bike" Ernesto Colnago0 -
He's number 1.
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Obree was outside everything, frequently including the orbit of cycling itself.
My point though was given Boardman's sporting achievements, establishment position and post-racing career, it seems kind of strange that he's "only" a CBE
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True, but the benefits only started to show re sport in the Sydney Olympics on Blair's watch.
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Didn't take long
"Unfortunately these days a lot of people don’t understand the real quality of a bike" Ernesto Colnago0 -
Going back to Mark Cavendish.
Did anyone hear his interview on R4 this morning?
Asked what he was going to do when retired, his answer went along the lines of:
It won't be too far from cycling. But obviously not, you know, anything in the media or talking to people.
Anyway IOM are issuing another batch of Cavendish postage stamps
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