For all my annoyance with the sudden bloom of races following the Tour, I find myself getting more excited for the Vuelta with each passing day.
Granted, given the continued success of Americans at Burgos, hailing from the US of A probably doesn’t hurt, but who doesn’t like to see a long-suffering World Champion come back to form as well?
But it’s not just Burgos that I find interesting—even the lowly Tour of Portugal has some excitement to it. I know the guy is 34 years old, but I want a ProTour squad to sign Candido Barbosa next season just so I get a chance to see his name on results sheets.
Races like the Volta also are the only places you get to see the ex-dopers making their comebacks on halfway house Continental squads like the Czech PSK-Whirlpool squad, and—of course—Rock Racing. After all, someone needs to fill the space left by Danilo Di Luca.
Which brings me to the World’s team selections. Because their countries have amassed so few UCI points, both the Netherlands and France will only be able to select six riders for this year’s World Championships. I’ll admit to being clueless about the inner workings of the processes, but it would seem difficult to simply extract the UCI points of dopers like Di Luca from season totals.
While I respect a rider like Cunego, who has all but stated that he used to dope but doesn’t anymore, the stance looses some ethical viability when he’ll be backed by 8 other riders instead of 5 due to performances of his less-scrupulous countrymen.
How does that World’s team count get established? It seems that it’s a case of the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Isn’t it more sporting to have all countries field a 5-man team? (or at least an equal number each)
@ al: luxemburg and norway get 9 places, france and the netherlands only 6. so the rich get richer and the poor get poorer isn’t what’s happening here.
if you look at italy, the top-5 riders (cunego, rebellin, di luca, garzelli and pellizotti) accumulated 910 points so far, putting them in second place in the world ranking.
taking away di luca and rebellin would still leave them with 528 points, enough for a 7th place in the world ranking and 9 riders at the worlds. replace them with pozzato and scarponi and the second place in the world ranking is for italy again with 821 points.
the bad thing about this ranking imo is that it just takes the total number of points by the 5 best ranked from a country. so you have norway with 2 highly placed riders (thor at 10, ebh at 35) and no other rider in the entire list (221 riders gained at least 1 point this season). but because the two best riders have gained enough points together for norway to be placed 10th, they get 9 places at the worlds.
for example: france has 30 riders in the world ranking, that’s almost 15% of the entire ranking.
if andy schleck was a country, he could bring 8 others along because he has enough points by himself to be placed 10th.
that’s just not right.
in my boredom i did some calculations to see what would happen if they only took the points of the first and fifth rider from a country for the nation ranking. only czech would benefit.
1. spain 672
2. italy 358
3. luxemburg 334
4. czech 310
5. britain 306
6. aussie 299
7. germany 274
8. belgium 237
9. russia 236
10. norway 216
11. usa 159
12. holland 151
13. france 139
I agree that the system needs to be more equitable. I’ve never understood how countries don’t get equal representation.