I like Todd Gogulski—really. Cycling commentary needs more ex-pros and fewer NCAA place kickers (in case you’d been wondering where VeloCenter’s Scott Kaplan came from) hurling fairly obvious questions at them.
But after a surprising finish at the Vuelta today, GoGo really missed the move on sorting things out. The audio is a follows is from Universal Sports’ efforts at “breaking down” the Stage 2 finish—and unless they were making an untoward implication about Hutarovich’s mother, it’s “Minsk”, not “minx”.
So according to Gogulski, Hutarovich won because:
- he’s a very good sprinter
- he’s good in the early season
- he has five wins so far this season
- he’s in front of Petacchi
- he’s always been fast
- he’s never won against these guys at this time of the year.
While many of those statements are indeed true, other than “he’s always been fast”, I don’t think any do much for describing how Hutarovich got across the line first today. Here are my reasons for the surprise win, a few even illustrated with stills from Eurosport:
- While the bunch did come in together, with a start and finish near sea-level and a high point of 1,100 meters, it wasn’t your typical sprinters’ day.
- Cavendish has a history of coming into Grand Tours in less-than-perfect shape. (see ’09 Giro, this year’s TdF)
- Farrar was beaten in a near-identical fashion at Plouay last weekend and may be out of gas after racing at top level since the spring.
- Hutarovich likes technical sprints, this finish was curving and narrow.
- Hutarovich is in good form, having won a stage at the recent Tour of Poland.
- Julian Dean crashed yesterday was not there to help Farrar.
- Bernhard Eisel cramped up and was not there to help Cav.
- The finish was very disorganized:
- Farrar (readily admitting I can’t see more than Jawbones in this screenshot) might have eaten a significant amount of wind at 5km to go to get into position:
- And for me, the smoking gun. HTC’s leadout (visible at right of image—Velits?) was so much slower than Hondo that Cav was forced to jump across onto Farrar’s wheel. Aside from having to burn some serious wattage making the move, the Brit also handed Hutarovich the golden ticket by slotting in ahead of him:
Coming around Cavendish is no mean feat, regardless of the situation leading up to it, so don’t take this as a knock on Hutarovich. After all, Petacchi was set up pretty nicely and the Belarusian dusted him as easily as anyone else in the field.
As for GoGo—well, I wish he’d tighten it up because I’m pretty sure he can do better. I’d wager it didn’t take me any longer to write this post than it did for Universal to piece together that post-race voiceover.
You pretty much did a full autopsy of the “coverage” that is the Vuelta on US. Impressive and spot on: It’s a cluster-cuss, IMHO.
I’m preventing some extra visits to the massage therapist by watching US but listening to EuroSport.
Still begs the perennial and infuriating question: Why can’t the USA broadcast cycling right . . . or build cars people want to buy?
2nd-4th attempt to leave comment, have access rules changed?
Recently i commented that the Vuelta will have some surprises ! Wasn’t expecting yesterday to start ball rolling, but an even bigger surprise to me was seeing “Cav” behave like “Robbie and hop onto another wheel ! Had suggested that he would need to learn from Robbie’s example to achieve a result at the Worlds .
Eurosport(De) is all i have and probably all that commentators have but since they are paid for their reactions it might be a good idea to sharpen up their act ! I don’t understand rapid german but my eyes can do the work and the replays confirm first reactions, waiting now for the morning replay since it is snow down to 1500m here, so onto the tacx for a few hours ! Roll on wednesday when i head to spain.
Wonder what would have happened if Robbie had been in the mix ?
looks like my 20bit/sec access may be the problem!
Snap
Then why the heck are you still listening? If you are gods gift to cycling broadcasting, hit the mute button and make up your own. Or better submit your stuff to Universal Sports. A cat 3 who’s never been in a real bunch sprint is hardly an expert in my book, and I really doubt you didn’t spend a few hours (that could have been used to do something constructive…like train) on that over analysis. Simply put, YH was in the right place, ballsy enough to stay in the front, and jumped at the right time. There’s little thinking involved in a REAL bunch kick (the best bunch sprinters aren’t engineers), and all those excuses you made for Cav and Farrar are laughable. “The finish was very disorganized,” what, like a cat 3 sprint? I see a line of 4 lampre guys on the front, much better than the cluster@#$%s the first week of the TdF. You need to tighten up.
Go back to your well done (for a 3, had to take another dig) “how the race was won” clips and stop hating on the very small amount of US cycling coverage there is. Not long ago there was next to nothing and I could go to a race and the cat 4/5 45+ line was empty, and there was still water left at the end of my 75-100 mile P12 race.
@TomNovikoff WOW!! You actually raced in a P12 race before??? . I’m impressed.
I mean who does he think he is breaking down a bunch sprint when he’s only a cat 3 racer. Your opinion means so much more than his. I could say you don’t know what your talking about and you sound like a crotchety old man. I looked up some of your results, pretty mediocre like your post. A lot of DNP and top 50s. You sound as though you know your way around ”a REAL bunch kick”. When it comes down to it, I would rather read what a cat 3 has to say over you any day!
@Tom: thanks for the reasoned opinion. But saying someone is in the right place, ballsy enough to stay in front, and jumps at the right time applies to essentially every group sprint.
Obviously the sprinters aren’t carefully weighing their decisions coming into the line, but the consequences of their snap decisions still matter. I think it’s fun to look at what happened in the run-up to the line, but if you’re ok with GoGo saying a guy won because he has five wins so far this season, looks like you’re in luck as far as coverage in the US goes.
And, for the record, I have indeed been getting the miles in this summer. I did think about doing a HTRWW for this stage, but that takes a several hours; this post only took about 45 minutes.
Tom Novikoff’s post is so rich with irony and contradiction it’s impossible to determine which angle to criticize his post from. Cosmo’s race analyses serve to increase our interest in cycling as a spectator sport, not necessarily as racers (I am not one). Tom goes on to pander the predictable argument that we’re lucky to have any race coverage at all (i.e., cycling as a spectator sport in the U.S. is limited). Then he supports his argument by attacking our intrepid blogger for his raciing acumen (which has nothing to do with cycling’s spectator appeal). Yet all other spectator sports are commentated on (and even scouted for talent) by people with no real competitive experience in that particular sport.
So either Tom is angry that one spectator analyst has criticized another by doing one better (in my opinion Cosmo’s analysis is far superior to Gogo’s, even if Tyler one the other day), or on the flipside, Tom is angry because a (gasp) Cat3 would have the audacity to have any input into cycling as a spectator sport. If the first case is true, and Tom prefers Gogo’s analysis based on the fact that he works for Universal Sports and we’re lucky to have him at all, it’s clear that Cosmo has proven we can do better. If the second case is true, then Tom really doesn’t care about cycling as a spectator sport, he instead cares about pumping his bullshit Northern Cal bike racer ego for the masses. The fact that someone would be so ignorant AND use their real name on the web AND tell us where they’re from AND turn out to be no better suited at analyzing cycle races than anyone else based on his own flimsy criteria is mind-boggling.
PS, Tom, those races form the days of yore before Universal Sports increased the Cat4/5 registration numbers with their hard-hitting analysis, maybe you should have ridden a little harder and actually won something unstead of bragging about how much water you had left while finishing in the middle of the pack.
Todd Gogulski is the worst comentator in bicycling history. He might make a mediocre pro wrestling commentator/hype man. It angers me to have to mute him every time he talks because his commentary is so inane.
i presonal agree this “Coming around Cavendish is no mean feat, regardless of the situation leading up to it, so don’t take this as a knock on Hutarovich.”