"Sometimes you've got to have the balls to race...": Remco Evenepoel lashes out at Jonas Vingegaard's Tour de France antics; Newly elected Labour MP (+ his bike) head to Parliament; Giro fills Tour rest day void; Weekend round-up + more on the live blog

Not long!

I have driven behind a couple of cyclists for maybe getting on for a mile despite them waving to me to pass, simply because this was one of those country roads where I couldn't see far enough ahead for a safe pass.  How many miles of tailbacks this caused I couldn't say.  But in fact nobody seemed very happy with this...

Hirsute wrote:

What's the longest distance you reckon you have held anyone up for ?

The length of a decent pistol shot.

I've spent my whole life in rural countryside - the sort of places that are always crawling with recreational cyclists. I can count on one hand the number of times (in 17 years of driving) that I've been stuck behind a cyclist for more than about 30 seconds.

At the start of last year, I spent 12 hours in traffic trying to get from Cheltenham to Carmarthen (on roads cyclists aren't allowed on!). In the space one journey, drivers have "held me up" more than a lifetime of cyclists - by an order of magnitude.

There you go again applying some common sense to the cycling vs driving debate. Somewhat unsurprisingly I have found the same to be true. In fact I will go a step further. Cyclists hold me up for about 1/100th of the time that other drivers do when I am driving. When I am cycling anywhere remotely built up I am again, massively held up by cars and thats ignoring the fact they behave like utter twats and put my life in danger with their lack of attention.

You can always bet on drivers to overestimate the time they spend behind cyclists and underestimate the time they spend as part of the traffic. I think partly because it royally fucks them off that we don't sit there like lemons when its busy. 

mctrials23 wrote:

Cyclists hold me up for about 1/100th of the time that other drivers do when I am driving. When I am cycling anywhere remotely built up I am again, massively held up by cars and thats ignoring the fact they behave like utter twats and put my life in danger with their lack of attention.

Totally agree.

Motorists know that their vehicles are nearly the width of a lane and just take it as read that they can't pass the car in front if there is oncoming traffic (well, unless they are trying to overtake a cyclist, when they seem to imagine that their car is three feet wide or something…). 

They forget that if their cars were not nearly the width of a lane then the cyclists they hate so much would be able to easily get past and get out of their way 

Probably 250.

* According to a driver

Well here is my example

https://road.cc/content/news/near-miss-day-786-293709

And lets not forget this genius:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7enDsD5bpc&pp=ygUOdGhlbWl0c2t5IHNhMDU%3D

Whether it is agreeable or not, it is undeniably true that Jonas's choice not to ride exhibited zero panache. Negative racing is never nice.

eniaessem wrote:

Whether it is agreeable or not, it is undeniably true that Jonas's choice not to ride exhibited zero panache. Negative racing is never nice.

If my supposition above is correct and Jonas felt that going hard on the wrong bike was going to take more out of him then if he had his own machine, so if he did work with the other two they would possibly take time out of him towards the end, what was he supposed to do? Give up a substantial amount of time just so people wouldn't call him boring? As I said, I don't find him terribly exciting to watch but in the specific circumstances of yesterday I think his behaviour was perfectly understandable.

Really?

Read somewhere else this spoof conversation:

Pog: We can set the podium here so ride with us.

Remco: Yeah, come on, it'll be fun and you can show you have balls.

Vinny: OK, no problem. Umm, can we just stop first so I can get on my bike?

Pog and Remco: No! We need to put time into Rog.

Vinny. Err, he's not the threat here - you two are so I'll stay like this ta very much.

That's not negative. It's pragmatic. It's tactics. Just like Pog and Remco wanting to push. 

Rendel Harris wrote:

Jonas was riding Tratnik's bike; Tratnik is 2 cm shorter than Jonas and about 8 kg heavier, so although he was Jonas's nominated spare bike provider there must've been a fairly considerable difference in reach (they were saying on commentary that the stems were certainly different lengths), tyre pressure, saddle angle et cetera

Riding a bike that isn't set up to your preference can certainly make you feel like you don't have any balls.

It can make you feel a lot of things, but that's one one I don't think I've ever experienced.

quiff wrote:

Riding a bike that isn't set up to your preference can certainly make you feel like you don't have any balls.

I think it might actually make you painfully aware of the fact that you have them!

If you push on through the pain you can get to comfortably numb.

'People love Pogacar'.

He is quite self-satisfied and smug, which makes him hard to like.

I can't say I've ever seen that. He always seems to be the first to congratulate stage winners, even if it comes at his expense. He just loves to race hard, and that's great to watch.

It is fairly evident the vast majority of people do really like him. It is totally ok not to, but you are in a rather small minority.

Pog doesn't make racing exciting with his dominance. He makes achievements exciting - his predictable beating of everyone* is dull.

* Except Vinny in the Tour recently, where he's been smashed. 

Just to add I don't dislike any of the top 4 GC riders at this Tour.

I find the strong man racing intelligently for GC much more exciting than the boy who's trying to get some stage wins (and who is failing to talk his stronger competitor into a tactical blunder...)