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Tour de France, not a word


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[quote user="dwmcn"]

PaulT,

On a stage a couple back the rules were that you cannot get anything to eat from the team car within 10k of the finish. (Some stages it is 10k, some 20k.) Froom's teammate went back and got some gel for Froom because his sugar level was getting low. He ate it within the 10k limit. I know this sounds petty, but rules is rules and he broke it. He was penalised 20 seconds, which was a slap on the wrist as he was five minutes ahead of everybody. His team was also fined. Supposing he had followed the rules and not eaten the gel, would he have lost a lot of time or possibly crashed and abandoned the Tour? We will never know, because he cheated. 

David

[/quote]I agree that rules are rules. Froome was given the standard punishment for this breach of the rules which is designed to prevent accidents in a tight finish. As they were very spread out at this point there was no safety issue. It's not like he was taking drugs like Armstrong so try to keep a sense of proportion.
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Can it really be called cheating if it took place in front of thousands of people and he didn't try and hide it in anyway, plus he accepted the penalty in good grace...

Cheating is what you do when you keep your illicit activities a secret for year after year and deny it at every opportunity....
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[quote user="dwmcn"]

nana,

Froome cheated, and will win. A bit like some others have done.

David

[/quote]

Taking food or water during the final stages from a team car during the final km of a race is a minor infraction compared to the poisoned legacy to the sport left by dopers like Armstrong. Unfortunately this belief by many that everybody cheats in cycling leads to ugly incidents like that which occurred yesterday when a team Sky vehicle was in a minor traffic accident. Hope the French guy in the polka dot jersey didn't hurt too much later (not!).

http://youtu.be/bHJistBOCu8

Brian (again)

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Thanks Brianagain, for your link, I'd missed that incident, but am not surprised - there is definite animosity towards the "non-French" riders in some quarters, including from some of the French Tour commentators, even though they have to show more impartiality on the air and  be a little more sophisticated in their remarks and attitudes. But the French are not very good losers, and losers they were during this Tour... Still, there is always next year...

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I am super glad Froome won, and delighted that England have taken him to their hearts much as they have Andy Murray....despite the small matter of his tenuous Britishness. Still, lovely bloke who sends all his surplus kit back to his old cycling club in Nairobi.

Best bit for me was seeing Contador lose his podium place on the penultimate stage. A far more poetic punishment for genuine cheating than Froome's time penalty for a completely overt infraction.

Nice that arguably the first two winners of the Tour in umpteen years to do so without the help of banned substances are Brits, and congrats to Froome for keeping his cool when the press refused to stop harping on about doping.

Sad that the Manx Missile missed out on no.5.

See, woolly, I have been paying attention. And to satisfy Norman's lust for All Things French, I even watched the finale on FR2, forsaking the ITV4 coverage.
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I really don't see any ''tenuous'' Britishness at all.

He was born to a British couple who were, at the time, expats in Kenya.

My eldest daughter was equally born in Zambia where we were an expat couple living and working there - is she less than British ?
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Froome was born in Kenya, brought up in South Africa and obtained a British licence to race for Sky.

Frankly, the whole nationality thing is a bit of a nonsense these days, whether it is bike racing or cheering on your "local" soccer team. Most of our sports stars seem to have trained abroad, especially the US, and a lot of them are domiciled in tax havens such as Monaco.

All that said, and although I don't think much of people manipulating the rules, I have to admire anyone who can do what Froome and his kind do - even Armstrong. I know full well that no matter how much cheating I did, I could never emulate them. I get out of puff and saddle-sore cycling to the village shop.

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[quote user="5-element"] But the French are not very good losers, and losers they were during this Tour... Still, there is always next year...
[/quote]

How can you say that.....oh wait a minute was it not the 66 Monte when the Minis were disqualified for using the wrong candles and I think they were the same as the Citroens

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[quote user="powerdesal"]I really don't see any ''tenuous'' Britishness at all.

He was born to a British couple who were, at the time, expats in Kenya.

My eldest daughter was equally born in Zambia where we were an expat couple living and working there - is she less than British ?[/quote]

My husband was born in RSA to a British mother and a Dutch father. At the age of 16, he became South African: a fact that he and his family were oblivious to until he was 22 and tried to get a British passport. At that time he had been living in the UK since the age of 3 or 4. So he then had to take British nationality. His brother, also born in S Africa, and by some quirk of his father's situation, was discovered to have dual Dutch and SA nationality, whilst his sister had the good fortune (depending on how you see it) to be born in Wolverhampton. So there is certainly a "less than British" category. And, trust me, discovering you're S African at a time when they still had apartheid and national service isn't funny.

None of which was my point in making the original comment. I simply found it a little amusing that the forum wags were all over the Andy Murray situation (he's not "British", he's a Scot!) but it seems to matter so much less in the case of Froome, who, as has been rightly pointed out, is the holder- like Murray- of a British passport. Of course it shouldn't matter, and it doesn't matter to me, I was simply struck by the double standards,
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[quote user="dwmcn"]

Russet,

Sorry, but I find Betty to be a nasty piece of work. She uses foul language covered by *** and nothing is done to stop her.

I just copy and paste rather than quote.

Davey

[/quote]

Just because you don't like someone does not mean they are a nasty piece of work, we all have to co exist with all sorts of people in real life whether we like them or not and so it is on the forum....

If we banned everyone every time they used **** there would be very few members....

Please get this thread back on topic.
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Hmmm, well, just to have my two pennyworth, I think Bitty is a lovely chap!!

And on topic, the Tour this year was odd in that one had the sense that it was Froome against the rest at times and that, particularly, the Saxo team were almost harrassing him. Which is a pity. It was only when he left them standing on Ventoux that they began to change their attitude.

Next year's Tour begins in Yorkshire and the indomitable Harriet Harman has said that there should be a women's race alongside the men's. I was wondering what form this might take - a pram race, tricycles, egg and sperm, or straight cycling. Perhaps members might have some ideas.[6]

Actually Wiggins and Froome or Froome and Wiggins sounds like a pair of solicitors from a Le Carré novel!

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