Olympic RR - Women (spoilers etc)

[tigger]

But the problem with that plan is it is the easiest to spoil. Most of the competitors know they have almost no chance of a medal, but are sufficiently competitive ego-wise not to do anything to help the favourite win.

I'm not disagreeing with the problem presented of controlling this race for a sprinter, but if this was so cleary a bad plan why wasn't everyone shouting from rooftops before the race?

In hindsight... maybe GB should have reacted sooner to pull the break back after Box Hill, or the Germans may feel they should have committed more resource earlier, or the Aussies too etc etc etc. With hindsight many things could have changed the outcome of the race, but with an hour to go the GB masterplan wasn't looking too hopeless was it?

 

[ColinJ]

... with an hour to go the GB masterplan wasn't looking too hopeless was it?

Actually, I thought it was!

Looking at the quality of the riders in that breakaway (and realising how tired the GB squad must have been by then), I was thinking that they hardly stood a chance of dragging them back unless the Germans fully committed to helping them straight away. It soon became clear that the Germans wouldn't (or couldn't) help and I never thought that Cav would get his chance.

I think the only thing that GB could have done differently (if they didn't actually do it) would have been to have had a private meeting with the German team management beforehand and arranged to cooperate until (say) the last 10 km to try and engineer a sprint finish where Greipel and Cav could fight it out for gold and silver.

It was pretty obvious that the teams from the rest of the world would try and do what they did to GB and Germany, and cooperating from the start was about the only way of fighting back.

 

[GrumpyGregry]

but with an hour to go the GB masterplan wasn't looking too hopeless was it?

I was there an hour to go telling everyone to keep the faith with plan A and everyone around me, literally and virtually, was telling me not to be a knobber.

 

[raindog]

I think the only thing that GB could have done differently (if they didn't actually do it) would have been to have had a private meeting with the German team management beforehand and arranged to cooperate until (say) the last 10 km to try and engineer a sprint finish where Greipel and Cav could fight it out for gold and silver.
.

Why was a meeting needed? Germany knew very well that their chance of a medal was with Greipel and they needed to work with us to get him and Cav to the line for a sprint. They would've got a medal, maybe even gold, but for some reason - some sort of spite? I don't know - they wouldn't do it.
It was bizarre.

 

[Kirstie]

Back to the women's race, there was a split second where Armistead might have won it. Vos looked over her right shoulder and she could have got the jump on her blindside. Easy to say from my armchair, though...

 

[ColinJ]

Why was a meeting needed? Germany knew very well that their chance of a medal was with Greipel and they needed to work with us to get him and Cav to the line for a sprint. They would've got a medal, maybe even gold, but for some reason - some sort of spite? I don't know - they wouldn't do it.
It was bizarre.

All I'm saying is that there were two ways of succeeding:

1. Trust the Germans to do the right thing for themselves and us, and fight for the medal at the end. That plan clearly didn't work!
2. Be absolutely blunt with the Germans behind the scenes - "If you work with us, we fight for gold and silver. If you don't, neither team gets a medal!"

 

[ColinJ]

Back to the women's race, there was a split second where Armistead might have won it. Vos looked over her right shoulder and she could have got the jump on her blindside. Easy to say from my armchair, though...

Oops - sorry about that - I hadn't even noticed that we were in the women's RR thread rather than the original one!

I got caught out by the BBC changing channels mid-race again*** and missed the selection over the top of Box Hill. I'll be taking a look at the recorded coverage to watch what I missed. I also missed Vos looking trhe wrong way, so I'll see if I can spot that this time.

I certainly spotted Uran looking the wrong way in the other race and Vinokourov rightly pounced on his mistake.

*** Why do they do that - aaaargh! I was timeshifting the race because someone knocked on my door during the last climb of the hill. When I got back to the TV, I discovered that the coverage had gone back to BBC1 and I'd missed the action.

 

[Smokin Joe]

The problem with GB's plan was that everyone knew exactly what it was, so they reached an unspoken agreement to just let the Brits just get on with it on their own.

 

[thom]

I think the only thing that GB could have done differently (if they didn't actually do it) would have been to have had a private meeting with the German team management beforehand and arranged to cooperate until (say) the last 10 km to try and engineer a sprint finish where Greipel and Cav could fight it out for gold and silver.

I heard David Millar talking about the race a while back, likely during the TdF, explaining that as the road captain that approaching the other teams fell on his shoulders and he would be doing it in the days before the race. I think if you see his interview after the race he says the Aussies were never going to ride, which I take to show he spoke to them before and they declined to help. He would also have gone to the Germans.

In a different direction, I'm sickened by reports that Jan Moir in the Daily Mail described Marianne Vos as "some bitch from Holland".
Does anyone here buy that newspaper ? Flipping outrageous - how can you be so stupid and ignorant and still get to write for a national newspaper ?

 

[raindog]

In a different direction, I'm sickened by reports that Jan Moir in the Daily Mail described Marianne Vos as "some bitch from Holland".

That's disgusting - what a rag. Can't something be done about that? Isn't there a complaints board for dodgy journalism?

I think Millar might've been refering to the fact that O'Grady was in the break?

 

[thom]

I think Millar might've been refering to the fact that O'Grady was in the break?

Well I think he knew before they'd have tactics to put someone in the break.

 

[Tenorman]

I heard David Millar talking about the race a while back, likely during the TdF, explaining that as the road captain that approaching the other teams fell on his shoulders and he would be doing it in the days before the race. I think if you see his interview after the race he says the Aussies were never going to ride, which I take to show he spoke to them before and they declined to help. He would also have gone to the Germans.

In a different direction, I'm sickened by reports that Jan Moir in the Daily Mail described Marianne Vos as "some bitch from Holland".
Does anyone here buy that newspaper ? Flipping outrageous - how can you be so stupid and ignorant and still get to write for a national newspaper ?

I just read your link to the Daily Shame, and honestly thought they were making it up that time - and that of course the Daily (hate) Mail would not publish those exact words (Daily Shame here saying that of course they would edit it before too long). So, went to this link http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ppened-Sharron-Davies-face-Asks-Jan-Moir.html and bugger me if it isn't exactly what Jan Moir wrote, and doesn't seem to have retracted yet. Comments seem to pretty much condemn her for it.

 

[thom]

(Daily Shame here saying that of course they would edit it before too long).

So the DM also made derogatory/racist remarks about the ethnic composition of the family used in the opening ceremony. That article did get edited online.