road.cc live blog: Alex Dowsett tweets must-read post about swerving to avoid being hit head-on by overtaking driver + much more
“it’s the closest I’ve ever been to a career or life ending crash and it’s scared the living daylights out of me,” says multiple GB time trial chanp
Mon, Dec 18, 2017 16:00
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Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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Latest Comments
mdavidford 58 minutes ago
It's not a 'statement' though - it's road.cc's words, based on l'Equipe's interpretation. The actual statement issued on it said that the judge authorised it "guaranteeing strict proportionality between the infringements on the rights of the athlete and the stakes of the fight against doping in terms of fair competition and protection of his health."
Rendel Harris 1 hour ago
Trust me Callum, if you'd grown up watching the Tour in the 1980s, as I did, you would not be hankering after those long flat stages that weren't even as exciting as watching paint dry, it was more like listening to paint dry. As for the supposed benefits of those long TTs, what did they give us? Indurain winning five Tours in a row without winning a single road stage in any of them. As McT says below, you simply can't Pogacar-proof a course and we just have to accept, and enjoy, the fact that we are watching the greatest GT cyclist of all time. Anyway I think it has been a great Tour so far, yes no enormous drama about the inevitable winner (though of course Vinegaard and now Lipowitz have shown us that anything can happen) but just about every day has had a fascinating plot and multiple subplots. Some time in the future there will be another Indurain-style winner, playing it cautious, following moves, making incremental gains and winning without ever lighting up the race and we'll be saying I wish the old days of Pogacar making those spectacular solo breaks were back.
Gravel1-2 1 hour ago
The main issue is the layout of the stages with the bigger climb first then a shallow finish climb. It means pogacar can get a gap at the top of the big climb and then stretch 10-15 seconds to a minute plus at the finish over smaller riders like Vingegaard. A summit finish on the hardest climb might not lead to the most exciting racing but equally would keep the gaps closer. I totally agree with the TT kms though, they should have 60+km tts in the grand tours.
mctrials23 1 hour ago
@MaxiMinimalist I mean, that statement makes it sound like they had reason to think those two are doping. Either they didn't follow procedure and are making shit up to cover themselves up or something is going on.
Mr Blackbird 2 hours ago
Quite possibly. But the changeover time loss would be a bit more significant if it was done on the flat just after the downhill when the riders are travelling faster, the deceleration, changeover and acceleration loss could easily be around 30 seconds, which is quite a lot of a 34 minute effort.
mitsky 2 hours ago
So Skoda have taken a leaf out of Dung-Old Karen Taco Trump's book and are re-naming something when they have no authority to do so?
Rendel Harris 3 hours ago
@Mr Blackbird Fair points, though I was wondering if doing the climb and descent on a standard bike and swapping to TT for the flat section would have been worth it? Certainly quite a few riders seemed to be having handling difficulties maintaining the best line on the descent with their TT machines.
Mr Blackbird 3 hours ago
No. The climb wasn't severely steep and allowed a reasonable speed to be maintained on a TT bike, his bike handling skills on road or TT bike are outstanding for the descent and on a road bike he would have lost a lot of time on the flat last 9k section. Terrific performance by him though!
KW 10 hours ago
I have been stopped on my velomobile and reprimanded for not having a number plate. The police desisted after I showed them that there was no motor at all, and were surprised as they'd followed me for a mile or two on the flat and hadn't realised that cyclists could go that fast - velomobiles are devastatingly quick on the flat, and slow heavy bikes uphill. I'm fairly sure that I would have found myself in a lot of trouble had I had any motor at all - even a legal one that would be very useful on the Welsh hills. It's very much put me off installing one.
Pub bike 12 hours ago
Would he have performed better on his normal bike?
1 thought on “road.cc live blog: Alex Dowsett tweets must-read post about swerving to avoid being hit head-on by overtaking driver + much more”
I had a tipper truck
I had a tipper truck accelerate hard on the bypass dual lane road to make a turn before me here https://goo.gl/maps/tmdtcABxLqT2 I was going straight on and didn’t know it was a tipper until it’s back axle came within a couple of inches of my bars, fuck knows how it missed me. I knew it was a bigger vehicle as I heard that large diesel engine working real hard, that’s the closest I’ve come to a real life threatening situation, he barely made the turn and had to slam on to avoid going completely on the other side of the road.
And yet people like THINK can come up with their fucktarded victim blaming crap and think it’s ok.