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Fantasy Cycling

Lazy Journalism from the BBC

by TERatcliffe26
Sat, Mar 10, 2012 21:16
10

This sums up how little they actually know about cycling

"Meanwhile, Wiggins's Team Sky team-mate Mark Cavendish struggled in the fourth stage of the Tirreno-Adriatico coast to coast race in Italy on Saturday.
The Isle of Man rider, outshone by Sky team-mate Edvald Boasson Hagen on Friday, came home in 146th place, leaving him 138th in the overall standings. The fourth stage, from Amelia to Chieti, was won by Slovakian Peter Sagan."

If they knew anything they should have known it was not a 'Sprinters stage' or they just expect Cavendish to be a world beater no matter what

either way i find it quite poor and also somewhat disrespectful to Cavendish by making out he struggled, and inferring that he should be high up in the overall.

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10 comments

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Stumps | 12 years ago
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I sometimes think people expect to much from Cav. As a world champion and British they expect win after win which, anyone who rides a bike can tell you, is just a load of rubbish.

Its the same with all sports in this country though - look at Jessica Ennis, she still managed to get a fab silver medal but the country expected gold so she failed in a lot of their eyes - pathetic 14 .

Anyway i digress, Cav will be fine, perhaps it is a bit of pressure getting to him though 39

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Gkam84 | 12 years ago
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As much as i'd like to rant about the press, they are slowly getting better, remember, until the last couple of years, we've had feck all to scream about in road cycling, since maybe Boardman did the TdF back in the days when i was young 3

Track cycling gets decent coverage in the media thanks to our efforts in Beijing. Now we have the world champ, riding on a British team and he has shown in the past he can win some big races and stages, the media will only get better in my view.

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livestrongnick | 12 years ago
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The british media in general don't give a Shit about Cycling! Flick through the sports Pages tomorrow and you'll be lucky if you find more than 2 Paragraphs! The Telegraph being one of the Worst offenders, 20 page sport pull out and 10 lines at the back pages!!!

Even the Tour gets pour coverage for such a large world event!

14 102 47

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Simon_MacMichael | 12 years ago
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After yesterday's stage, Team Sky's report on their website said that he wasn't feeling too good towards the end of yesterday's stage, which is why Eddie BH got the nod with around 6km to go - so it was Plan B, rather than Cav being "outshone."

No word there of whether Cav was still feeling below par today, he didn't tweet specifically about that, just about the toughness of the stage, as pointed out in some of the comments above.

I imagine Cav has to be feeling really ropey not to want to go for a sprint (and remember on Friday he had an opportunity to get close to the race lead and had taken the intermediate sprint) - if you recall, when he won KBK a couple of weeks back, he was throwing up during the race 31

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TERatcliffe26 | 12 years ago
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I guess its all about interpretation and i guess we shall see, if he does drop out it wont be good for next saturday

Although i believe in general there cycling coverage is pretty poor, and think they know more than they do

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Gkam84 | 12 years ago
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I think they got it spot on to be honest, yes he was always going to be out the back on this stage, but he looked like he was physically struggling today, not just his normal roll home last, It will be interesting to see if he races tomorrow

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TERatcliffe26 | 12 years ago
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Yes i watched the coverage and Yeh i understand what you are saying, but what the bbc mean by struggling, and the way it reads (to me anyway) isnt the same as what you mean as Cav would never have been near the front on that sort of stage

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Gkam84 | 12 years ago
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I assume here you watched the coverage??

I did look to me that Cav WAS struggling, he came home in the last group on the road +17:35 down which is normal for Cav on a hilly stage, but he looks really done in, i also noticed that Bernie wasn't hanging about to get him through the stage.

Also, you might have noticed, Sky didn't even mention Cav's name once in this sum up today??

http://www.teamsky.com/article/0,27290,24870_7585133,00.html

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obutterwick | 12 years ago
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Yes, brilliant ride. Was a great pm of coverage on Eurosport. BBC could learn a lot.

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chrisdstripes | 12 years ago
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Yeah its rubbish. The Beeb make out they are behind cycling, and then let people who know nothing about it write their articles, and pass up perfect opportunities to describe in a simple manner some of its complexities. I love the BBC, for so many reasons, but they do make themselves look so unnecessarily bloody stupid sometimes.

Great ride from Sagan though! A contender for the Ardennes maybe?

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