Enrico Gasparotto - Giro whiner

[jcmuellner]

Seems some gravel was too much for Enrico Gasparotto on Stage 16 of the Giro...

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news.php?id=news/2008/may08/may27news2

I'm sure it was hard, but whining about 5.3km out of 3423.8 seems a little overblown.

[rustychisel]

I read this story yesterday, but something made me click on the link... then I followed it to the story on Major Taylor. What a wonderful example he really was - and is. Quite a contrast between characters... anyway, thanks. Indirectly you lead me to a few minutes of very pleasurable reading.

[shinomaster]

Seems some gravel was too much for Enrico Gasparotto on Stage 16 of the Giro...

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news.php?id=news/2008/may08/may27news2

I'm sure it was hard, but whining about 5.3km out of 3423.8 seems a little overblown.


Maybe you just had to be there?

[frenk]

That stage was spectacular and awesome to watch, from my comfy couch.
But even if I have no simpathy for whiners I agree it was a bit of a circus: you don't need climbs like that to test riders. Come on, the Giro always had a winner without 24% gravel sections.
IMHO it's a bit of an hypocrisis to fight doping and then force riders to do three stages like that in a row.

[3chordwonder]

Hmmm... very easy to call somebody a 'whiner' from the comfort of a padded chair in front of a keyboard... hard and somewhat risky to ride a roadbike on gravel with hundreds of km of racing already done.

Do professional road racers really need to cross into offroad? As a pro he's earned his right to air an opinion on it imho.

[BumbleBeeDave]

After all, he DID do the stage, so he has a right to critique. It was a circus put on for the fans, not a serious road race. What other purpose was there than to line up along the ropes or watch on TV and watch these guys suffer? I cannot imagine what all of these guys must go through over three or four days after this much of the Giro and having to do stages in the mountains like that and then go up this dirt road at 24%. And people wonder why they resort to doping?

BBD

[Fixed]

bro think about the cats at the beginning of the t d f and when they put the first mountains stages in now they had it hard imho
cheers

[dauwhe]

Heck, I've ridden up 24% grades on dirt, and I wasn't even paid to do it.

Props to the Giro for mixing things up. The "Strada Bianca" section in 2005 was magnificent.

Dave

[paczki]

The dirt road is cool. I think the context of the complaint is too many mountain stages stacked one after the other, bad transfers, and lots of other B.S.

[jcmuellner]

What struck me was the complaint about the gravel, which in comparison to what was ridden in the early stage races seems not so bad...

I do agree that having so many hard stages in a row was a challenge beyond most and the transfers do seem to have burned out many. Stage 19 should be exciting!

We've been mixing in dirt and gravel sections on a number of our more mountainous brevets over the past few years and it's proved to be pretty popular as those roads don't get near the traffic and tend to be quiet and gorgeous.