Fake News in cycling

takethehighroad

Whilst watching the rerun of the 2009 Paris Roubaix, David Harmon was corrected when incorrectly asserting that Bernard Hinault rode the race once, won it, and never rode again.

In actual fact, he rode it 5 times in total, winning it on his 4th attempt, then defending his title before never riding again.

This is one of many tall tales that permeate throughout cycling history so I thought it'd be a nice thread to recount your favourite ones.

RichN95.

C+P from Wikipedia

Rene Vietto lost a toe to sepsis in 1947. Legend has it that Vietto insisted his domestique, Apo Lazarides, cut off one of his own toes to match. According to legend, Vietto's toe is in formaldehyde in a bar in Marseilles.

yorkshireraw

That there was no Tour de France from 1999 to 2005.....

More seriously:

That Greg LeMond debuted the Tri-bars only in the final TT in the '89 Tour.

In a similar vein, that Boardman turned up to Barcelona with the Lotus bike that had never been used in Competition previously.

Lanterne_Rogue

yorkshireraw said:

That there was no Tour de France from 1999 to 2005.....

Correction: there were Tours de France, but everybody lost. That's... actually pretty accurate.

rick_chasey

RichN95. said:

C+P from Wikipedia

Rene Vietto lost a toe to sepsis in 1947. Legend has it that Vietto insisted his domestique, Apo Lazarides, cut off one of his own toes to match. According to legend, Vietto's toe is in formaldehyde in a bar in Marseilles.

Yes I heard this exact one as a 10 year old from my grandfather, whilst I was watching Pantani rip it up on Les Deux Alp.

diplodicus

takethehighroad said:

Whilst watching the rerun of the 2009 Paris Roubaix, David Harmon was corrected when incorrectly asserting that Bernard Hinault rode the race once, won it, and never rode again.

In actual fact, he rode it 5 times in total, winning it on his 4th attempt, then defending his title before never riding again.

This is one of many tall tales that permeate throughout cycling history so I thought it'd be a nice thread to recount your favourite ones.

Is this linked to the "it's a race for dickheads" (mis)quote?

phreak

The famous photo of Coppi and Bartali exchanging a water bottle was in fact staged by the photographer rather than a spontaneous act of sportsmanship, as is the popular myth surrounding it.

ocdupalais

Lanterne_Rogue said:

yorkshireraw said:

That there was no Tour de France from 1999 to 2005.....

Correction: there were Tours de France, but everybody lost. That's... actually pretty accurate.

Correction correction: George Hincapie, Viatcheslav Ekimov, Trek bikes, Coca Cola, Michelle Ferrari, etc. were all winners.

MattFalle

That Sky/Ineos race/d clean

salsiccia1

yawn

RichN95.

There's this self-created fake news in a twitter profile

davidof

phreak said:

The famous photo of Coppi and Bartali exchanging a water bottle was in fact staged by the photographer rather than a spontaneous act of sportsmanship, as is the popular myth surrounding it.

and it wasn't in the Giro

just fancy that : http://pistehors.com/8LCO7XQByuHDGsGAnXHb/that-bottle

Lanterne_Rogue

One that recurs is the story that Eugène Christophe was disqualified for using child labour to pump the bellows as he welded his own forks back together, whereas the truth is that he was given a three minute penalty.

In some ways the token three minutes (when he'd already taken three hours to mend them) only highlights the absurd level of pedantry from all involved.

bm5

That was David Duffield’s favourite story so it must have been true.

RichN95.

There's a book by a Dutchman called Benjo Maso that examines the relationship between the media and cycling throughout the ages and the legends that arise called "The Sweat of the Gods".


Aside form that, there's a lot of nonsense about the 'unwritten rules', such as waiting for a star who crashed. No-one waited before Armstrong waited for Ullrich, probably to patronise him.

TheBigBean

RichN95. said:

Aside form that, there's a lot of nonsense about the 'unwritten rules', such as waiting for a star who crashed. No-one waited before Armstrong waited for Ullrich, probably to patronise him.

That's not true. I have a memory of Indurain being told it wasn't the done thing to attack when his opponent crashed/punctured.

Pross

TheBigBean said:

RichN95. said:

Aside form that, there's a lot of nonsense about the 'unwritten rules', such as waiting for a star who crashed. No-one waited before Armstrong waited for Ullrich, probably to patronise him.

That's not true. I have a memory of Indurain being told it wasn't the done thing to attack when his opponent crashed/punctured.

There's a difference between not attacking and waiting though.

rick_chasey

Maybe this is not quite in the spirit of the thread, but the idea that Lance was an absolute donkey and was turned into a race horse with drugs isn't really true.

Ben6899

rick_chasey said:

Maybe this is not quite in the spirit of the thread, but the idea that Lance was an absolute donkey and was turned into a race horse with drugs isn't really true.

I agree. He was a phenomenal athlete, anyway. And he knew how to win (not like that).

TheBigBean

Pross said:

TheBigBean said:

RichN95. said:

Aside form that, there's a lot of nonsense about the 'unwritten rules', such as waiting for a star who crashed. No-one waited before Armstrong waited for Ullrich, probably to patronise him.

That's not true. I have a memory of Indurain being told it wasn't the done thing to attack when his opponent crashed/punctured.

There's a difference between not attacking and waiting though.

Same unwritten rule that clearly had been around a while.

RichN95.

Pross said:

TheBigBean said:

RichN95. said:

Aside form that, there's a lot of nonsense about the 'unwritten rules', such as waiting for a star who crashed. No-one waited before Armstrong waited for Ullrich, probably to patronise him.

That's not true. I have a memory of Indurain being told it wasn't the done thing to attack when his opponent crashed/punctured.

There's a difference between not attacking and waiting though.

Indeed. It got to its worst when Dumoulin stopped for his poo and they waited for ages for him to catch up before deciding enough was enough.

yorkshireraw

rick_chasey said:

Maybe this is not quite in the spirit of the thread, but the idea that Lance was an absolute donkey and was turned into a race horse with drugs isn't really true.

Agree to an extent- he was clearly a very good athlete as a kid - the issue with all those guys is they were using some type of stuff from very early on - do we think he was clean as a whistle when he won the 93 worlds?
Same with all the Pantani love 'greatest ever climber' and all that - he was juiced as a junior in all likelihood.

Equally, the idea that if no one had been using EPO Lance would still have still won the tour, isn't true either. His natural HCT was around 38-40, so he could boost it by up to 25% and still be inside the UCI 'health' limit. If you have a HCT of near 50 naturally, without Armstrong's other physical elements, you're losing out.

yorkshireraw

RichN95. said:

Pross said:

TheBigBean said:

RichN95. said:

Aside form that, there's a lot of nonsense about the 'unwritten rules', such as waiting for a star who crashed. No-one waited before Armstrong waited for Ullrich, probably to patronise him.

That's not true. I have a memory of Indurain being told it wasn't the done thing to attack when his opponent crashed/punctured.

There's a difference between not attacking and waiting though.

Indeed. It got to its worst when Dumoulin stopped for his poo and they waited for ages for him to catch up before deciding enough was enough.

I don't think they should have waited for TD on that occasion - managing your
physical state and food / fluid intake is part of racing, esp in a GT.

It's different if there's a general agreement among the leaders that it's pee stop time and then one or two jump the rest.

yorkshireraw

Back to Fake News -

Sky, or sometimes USPS, invented mountain trains / controlling the race for their leader.

RichN95.

yorkshireraw said:

Back to Fake News -

Sky, or sometimes USPS, invented mountain trains / controlling the race for their leader.

Or that they (and BC) invented 'Marginal gains'. They may have invented the phrase, but not the concept.

pblakeney

yorkshireraw said:

Back to Fake News -

Sky, or sometimes USPS, invented mountain trains / controlling the race for their leader.

I can almost hear Hinault saying "Où penses-tu aller?"

RichN95.

Another bit of fake news is the idea that Bernard Hinault, when winning the Tour, was an attacking rider. The results suggest that he was actually a dominant TTer who minimised his loses (usually to Zoetemelk) in the mountains. When he came up against a decent TTer (Fignon/LeMond) he lost

TheBigBean

RichN95. said:

yorkshireraw said:

Back to Fake News -

Sky, or sometimes USPS, invented mountain trains / controlling the race for their leader.

Or that they (and BC) invented 'Marginal gains'. They may have invented the phrase, but not the concept.

I was going to post the same. A lot of things supposedly invented by Sky could be posted in this thread.

I might give them credit for the sprint train that delivers a team's GC rider to the 3km flag though.

50x11

TheBigBean said:

RichN95. said:

yorkshireraw said:

Back to Fake News -

Sky, or sometimes USPS, invented mountain trains / controlling the race for their leader.

Or that they (and BC) invented 'Marginal gains'. They may have invented the phrase, but not the concept.

I was going to post the same. A lot of things supposedly invented by Sky could be posted in this thread.

I might give them credit for the sprint train that delivers a team's GC rider to the 3km flag though.

They didn't invent them, but they did them better than everyone else, and every team is now following their lead.

rick_chasey

USP did it better....

yorkshireraw

rick_chasey said:

USP did it better....

It was literally their USP.....