Evening, all (Cyc, Jongleur, Dan, Odddog, Zenyatta - long time gone, how are you all ?)
Just looked in to record my view that various types of hubris have been quite properly punished. Specifically:
1) Why do the BBC assume that their history entitles them to give the public the take-it-or-leave-it presentation we got in the road race today ? I understand, and sympathise with, the fact that they weren't getting the time-splits between the leaders, the poursuivants and the peloton. But they should have made their own arrangements for that - they knew it wasn't going to be like the TDF where the team cars and the media have on-the-road priority over pretty much everything. And their choosing two 'experts' instead of one expert and a professional presenter simply reinforced the feeling of what'sgoingon inside the final 20 km. Listening to Porter and Boardman telling each other they didn't have enough information simply insults the viewers. A Coleman, an O'Sullevan or a Benaud would have blagged it through seamlessly.
2) And this is a championship, not a team race. I'd been quietly appalled for some days by the way Team GB were saying they'd get Wiggins, Froome and Stannard to set Cavendish up for the sprint as if it were some divine home-team right. At least when the Kenyans orchestrate a long-distance track race, they make the last 400m a genuine race between themselves. And did anyone else detect a certain amount of whimpering afterwards, to the effect that the other countries 'wouldn't ride', as if not falling in with the GB masterplan was somehow unsporting.
I'm not anti-Brit, and I'd hoped that one of ours would get gold. And I'm not particularly anti-BBC either, but this was the day when some of the triumphalism came and bit us on the backside.
Finally, I've never ridden a road-bike in anger, but I do know something whereof I speak. I stood on the Izoard in 1954 and watched Anquetil rip through the opposition (some of whom got out of his way suspiciously promptly imo) and I was at the press conference when Geminiani asked a journo who was dropping hints about stimulants if he (the journo) really thought the boys rode the TDF on sugar cubes. Truthfully, I don't regard Vino's 'history' as anything particularly shameful, and I'm glad he won it. What's the equivalent of a knighthood in Kazakhstan ?
Won't be posting often, so it's been nice looking in on you all, and I send you my rich and continuous blessings.
Just looked in to record my view that various types of hubris have been quite properly punished. Specifically:
1) Why do the BBC assume that their history entitles them to give the public the take-it-or-leave-it presentation we got in the road race today ? I understand, and sympathise with, the fact that they weren't getting the time-splits between the leaders, the poursuivants and the peloton. But they should have made their own arrangements for that - they knew it wasn't going to be like the TDF where the team cars and the media have on-the-road priority over pretty much everything. And their choosing two 'experts' instead of one expert and a professional presenter simply reinforced the feeling of what'sgoingon inside the final 20 km. Listening to Porter and Boardman telling each other they didn't have enough information simply insults the viewers. A Coleman, an O'Sullevan or a Benaud would have blagged it through seamlessly.
2) And this is a championship, not a team race. I'd been quietly appalled for some days by the way Team GB were saying they'd get Wiggins, Froome and Stannard to set Cavendish up for the sprint as if it were some divine home-team right. At least when the Kenyans orchestrate a long-distance track race, they make the last 400m a genuine race between themselves. And did anyone else detect a certain amount of whimpering afterwards, to the effect that the other countries 'wouldn't ride', as if not falling in with the GB masterplan was somehow unsporting.
I'm not anti-Brit, and I'd hoped that one of ours would get gold. And I'm not particularly anti-BBC either, but this was the day when some of the triumphalism came and bit us on the backside.
Finally, I've never ridden a road-bike in anger, but I do know something whereof I speak. I stood on the Izoard in 1954 and watched Anquetil rip through the opposition (some of whom got out of his way suspiciously promptly imo) and I was at the press conference when Geminiani asked a journo who was dropping hints about stimulants if he (the journo) really thought the boys rode the TDF on sugar cubes. Truthfully, I don't regard Vino's 'history' as anything particularly shameful, and I'm glad he won it. What's the equivalent of a knighthood in Kazakhstan ?
Won't be posting often, so it's been nice looking in on you all, and I send you my rich and continuous blessings.
Rainer hope you are very well. 
