Originally Posted by
Maelochs
How would any of us know? How ouwld it look different?
By the way, I chat online with a lot of different people from all over (as do you no doubt) but one thing I hear a Lot about pro cycling is that the stages are too long. it is quite possible that a more fan-friendly sort of stage, half or two-thirds as long, would be what people wanted.
For one thing, riders would have to save less which means they could ride more. For another, it would mean recovery was a lot more possible Without drugs.
maybe people would be happier with shorter stages, cleaner riders ... after all, when a rider is going all out, we cannot tell the .3 mph difference between climbing on dope or not. And if the riders could feasibly recover and ride hard in every stage, Any stage could be decisive.
That's one things Sky did show if the team is disciplined and prepared a lucky break or a weird shift of wind on a flat stage might give a GC rider a solid boost on a day everyone else was coasting and watching the sprinters.
Maybe some people think that no one wants to watch clean cycling ... or no one wants to watch shorter stages. Thing is, a lot of people have said that is what they Do want.
Whatever. people are going to do what they do.
And i don't know what I might have done if I were hyper-competitive and found out that I needed to cheat to win ... or even to compete. if you are comfortable with your choices morally, good for you. I don't want to bring you down, nor assault anyone. You did what you felt you had to do to live your dream, or some form of it. Great. Most people never make the effort to even come close.
One the other hand, cheating is cheating. And as I say and have been saying, I really wish I could have seen all those guys race clean. The outcomes might have been the same, but maybe not. What we do know is that the best doping program won.
It's all history now .... but history doesn't determine the future, and people who think nothing can change usually get crushed underfoot when time marches on.
People want to watch these guys do things they can't do. Like ride three cat 1 climbs and a HC at the end at racing speed. Or do the Angliru. Or sprint with 40 guys at 40 mph.
People really complain because, especially the flat stages in a Grand Tour are all the same until a sprint finish. four of five guys go on a break to get advertisers and sponsors air time...they go for 100k or so...the peloton says enough of this, amps it up, they get caught. Why? Race Radios. Make the riders think for themselves.
If you watched a race and no one told you they took something to help them put on a show for you, you'd accept it. Wow...great race.
And at the end of the day for the riders it is a question of keeping up. Which was the issue at Postal. They didn't partake right away...it was when they realized what was going on that they went all in.
And no one can tell me that the racing was not spectacular. The battles were outstanding. The mind games were interesting. It was not until afterward that people got out of sorts. Bottom line...anyone that was remotely in any kind of contention was taking something.
Shorten the stages...someone will still mess around. They will just get there sooner.
It really does not bother me.
From my personal perspective it was a lack of talent that I began to understand and the motivation that other riders with no fall back position in life had that separated us. So I moved on.
At the end of the day, I will still say that the 2006 Tour when Floyd did his ride on Stage 19 was still the most compelling day of racing I have ever seen. Dope or no dope. Because all his competitors were doped as well.