But seriously, this race has been incredibly hard, too hard in fact. I remember riding this race back in 2005 and people where here training for the Worlds and there would be nine or ten sprint stages up for grabs. Maybe one or two guys would go up the road and you’d catch them before the finish. Now everyone wants to be in the break and the starts are uphill. Things are going in the wrong direction.
http://www.cyclingnews.com/blogs/heinrich-haussler/vuelta-hardest-grand-tour-ive-ever-done
Seriously GHH?? Wrong direction??? That sure seems like the right direction for the sport and race. Gonna have to take the G off HH soon
9 months ago
Phil H.
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So the problem is that it's not a big sprint fest for everyone training for worlds?
Seriously? This is one weak effort by the formerly Glorious HH.
That's what I'm picking up as well
I wonder if he’s feeling the effects of not having done a GT in a few years (looks like last one was TdF 2009) – fitness isn’t what he’s used to = race is hurting him more than he’s expecting it to?
Taylor Phinney also commented on his blog about the uphills right from the start.
About Stage 13 he says
Like many other stages here, as soon as the flag dropped, we started to climb.
Yes
Anytime a professional cyclist shows signs of weakness and says these GT’s are just getting harder and more ridiculous, let’s scoff at them and their panziness… and of course, throw more mountains in the way.
"It's a lovely thing, feeling that momentum. If you're lucky, it's also about grace." Tim Winton
I wasn't scoffing at H for claiming this.
I was scoffing at him for making a terrible argument. He may well be right, but many of the reasons he gave weren’t convincing or to the point.
Seriously,
wasn’t this an interview right after a stage or something, not exactly a well thought out argument he was intending to put out. And a sorry from me, but I’ve had my fill of negative critics.
"It's a lovely thing, feeling that momentum. If you're lucky, it's also about grace." Tim Winton
Blog.
So no. This is HH ‘telling it like it is.’ The problem with the piece, in my mind, is that most of his examples boil down to ‘people aren’t riding this like a training race for the worlds’ and ‘there aren’t many stages for sprinters any more.’ I think there’s a decent argument to be made that the race is very difficult and that GTs generally have been pushing the line. HH doesn’t come close to making that argument successfully.
Most of the time I do,
put out comments or argumnets and agree to disaqgree. I happen to agree with HH. The Giro and the Vuelta are going in the wrong direction. There’s too much fucking climbing. The teams are dwindling too rapidly into climbers and domestiques.
"It's a lovely thing, feeling that momentum. If you're lucky, it's also about grace." Tim Winton
I agree the "arms race" towards über-crazy climbing parcours is negative
but really, when HH laments trend away from half the stages being piano-stages with opportunities for sprinters you have to chuckle a little at that.
I think chuckling's appropriate...no more.
"How strange it was to see men doing something beautiful. Something pointless and elegant." Tim Winton, 'Breath'
Agreed
And HH will win everyone back with his performances next year.
"It's a lovely thing, feeling that momentum. If you're lucky, it's also about grace." Tim Winton
That comment
sounds like a quote from last year
Badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger...
by TheFigurehead on Sep 3, 2011 2:32 PM EDT up reply actions
heh
well, I’m not sure he’s pining for those dull days exactly. But there is a fundamental divergence in his interests and ours when it comes to grand tour course design. We can agree to disagree there.
Any dumb f#*k who looked at Garmin’s roster could figure that out, it wasn’t exactly rocket-science. Hell, it wasn’t even lutefisk-science.
by Chris Fontecchio on Sep 6, 2011 8:18 PM EDT up reply actions
Course or openness of the Race?
I think a lot of this is the fact that the race is wide open in people’s minds. So the racers are pressing. No one is letting people go, so the whole peloton is pushing. The teams and riders do make the race. I remember the old Giro’s where the company of riders would be stopping for pastries. Some of those routes were pretty hard also, but they weren’t ridden hard. They were paced and by consensus the riders decided where the real race was. Perhaps now there will always be a team that will try to take advantage, since there is no dominating small set of teams to control things. Plus directors won’t riders take a break like that anymore I don’t think.
I was not so much focusing on the mountains part
but more the every day a group getting in a break and racing hard being somehow worse than an unmotivated bunch riding a GT like it’s a SSR. A GT should be raced like this, I always hated the notion of using one of the 3 biggest stage races in the world as a training race for half the peloton. I’m thrilled the Vuelta seems to be getting some more deserved love for what it is. How this is a bad trend is what confuses me. Also I think he is being short sighted. Surely one can look up tougher GT routes, starting at this year’s Giro for one.
I do however agree it is still very entertaining racing.
But it’s a dangerous route to take heading the way the Giro went this year.
"It's a lovely thing, feeling that momentum. If you're lucky, it's also about grace." Tim Winton
Maybe . . . It's definitely a different route
combined with the “no needles” policies and stronger anti-doping enforcement, it these trends continue you get what we’re seeing with the Vuelta: racing with different consequences than we’re used to for a while—and way more abandons and much more complaining.
As for Haussler, I don’t know what to think. I’ve never been as excited about him as some folks around this site. He’s had a grand total of one year of good performances, right? And even then he was more of a nearly-man than a winner (leaving aside that totally awesome Tour stage-win, which was enough to earn Haussler A LOT of cred.
So, I don’t know how serious his injury was, or how difficult the rehab—but I do know that he wasn’t ready to go THIS season and basically phoned the spring in. Whose fault his lack of form and motivation was I don’t know—but it seemed like a return to his “I don’t really give a F” Gerolsteiner ways.
I like the idea of more fighting to finish, and more abandons.
The GT’s are not supposed to be a cakewalk with occasional sprints. We have short tours and one day races for the sprintiest sprinters. Sprints in GT’s, at least ones in later stages, are for sprinters who are also all-arounders—those who can climb enough to stay in the race. It means that a season rewards more different types of cyclists, and that’s a good thing.
"BECAUSE THERE’S NO F*CKING SPRINTS." -Cavendish (asterisk added)
This is where I think there's a real point.
I think that the races have to take rider safety into account. That doesn’t mean don’t challenge riders or make it so that you can’t reasonably expect to win multiple GTs a year. But where the issue really becomes one of safety, as it clearly was in the Giro, then I’m absolutely in agreement.
The thing is, HH doesn’t make that argument. He argues that the Vuelta is hard now, and that’s sucky. Given that it looks a lot more like dude is riding his first GT in two years and doesn’t have the form yet, this comes off as complaining that the race is more challenging than he’s prepared to be competitive in at the moment. And yeah, that’s weak.
It's weak sauce for sure
I just find it odd abandoning the guy to wimp-dom when we know he’s a fighter with some talent. Some fans are rough and have no compassion for these bastards, they just want them out there entertaining us, riding themselves into the ground and getting back up dusting themselves off saying “I’ll get ’em next time”. I just want to tell those same fans to go watch their John Wayne movies for that stuff.
"It's a lovely thing, feeling that momentum. If you're lucky, it's also about grace." Tim Winton
Dissing one comment isn't necessarily abandoning the guy though
I frequently diss Thor for instance for saying what I think are moronic things but it doesn’t change what I think of his fundamental qualities as a rider.
Speaking of Thor
Where is he? Bet he wouldn’t be complaining. And he would have outlasted Farrarrarrarar.
"It's a lovely thing, feeling that momentum. If you're lucky, it's also about grace." Tim Winton
you mean the injured tyler farrar, with the contusion on the lung? that farrar?
"Wizard's first rule. People are stupid. They will believe anything they want to be true or fear to be true." -- Terry Goodkind
Sorry
I will now follow riders I like with blind passion and never criticize anything they do. Sminer loves fans like those especially.
No, the fans I especially love
follow riders for what they say in a blog or in an interview and criticise them out of context. He did take blame for feeling the way he did and called himself out on it.
After ten days of racing, followed by a day off your body just shuts down and that’s what happened to me. I broke that rhythm and I paid for it with two very tough days.
It’s my own fault though. On the rest day we just went 20 minutes up the road, sat in a café for two and a half hours and then cycled back.
"It's a lovely thing, feeling that momentum. If you're lucky, it's also about grace." Tim Winton
How is that out of context? I questioned his statement about the Vuelta going in the wrong direction
if anyone’s blame is out of context it’s yours.
by Phil H. on Sep 4, 2011 12:06 AM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
Maybe you should just stop assuming to know how people feel
because you are, at least in this case, dead wrong
I'd say he contradicts himself a little...
…precisely because while he acknowledges this, he’s also claiming to have a clear sense of how hard the race is (which I’m skeptical of, given how he’s likely feeling) and arguing that it should be more like it was when it was pure worlds prep.
So is the problem a) HH isn’t entirely in shape and handled the rest day badly; b) that the race is too hard for anyone to handle (how would HH really be in a position to say that?); or c) that the race is harder than people who wanted 2-3 weeks of racing in prep for the worlds, but weren’t really taking it seriously as a GT want it to be (to which, I think, we all say: tough shit)?
Taking account of everything he says, the end result is that he seems to make all three of those claims at different times, and that doesn’t really hang together or amount to a ‘mea culpa’ of the sort you’re praising him for.
I'm not praising him
I’m pissed at his underperforming ass because I spent good VDS money on him. I think it’s my fault for directing too much attention towards HH with my first comment, but it was because I thought it was going to be an ‘attack HH for what he said thread’.
"It's a lovely thing, feeling that momentum. If you're lucky, it's also about grace." Tim Winton
Same old problem
criticism of the words is, at worst, criticism of the rider’s frame of mind at one instant. Esp. in a blog. And should not be turned into, NOR read as, blanket criticism of the rider. Anyone can have a whiney day, or write a post that does not come across so well.
Furthermore, people are not required to know the full context to criticize words. Words exist on their own, and can be criticized as such. I fully sympathize with a not-very-climby sprinter that it sucks to be in a massively climby race. Gotta suck. Completely normal for him to wish the race is flatter. I can divorce that sympathy from my interests as a fan, those being to see a wider range of racers doing well over the season….and for that, having most of all of the GT’s be full of climbs and TT’s and TTT’s and other such bells and whistles is a GOOD THING.
"BECAUSE THERE’S NO F*CKING SPRINTS." -Cavendish (asterisk added)
That's fine.
My critique has been of the argument all along. I like Haussler and wish him the best, including a return to where he was a couple of years ago, when he was a very fun and exciting rider. And you’ve seen me pretty bluntly rebuke folks for the attitude you’re criticizing, so I think you know I also largely agree on that score.
As for HH, if he’s gonna write a blog in an international cycling publication, he’s either gotta make better arguments that this one or be criticized when he fails to.
I kinda see both sides.
I agree Haussler does come off a bit whiny, and I hate it when sprinters come to the Vuelta as Worlds training. But it’s definitely a tough course, especially when you factor in the horrible heat on some of the early stages. And when you see how much climbing is still to come! There is going to be some serious attrition, and not just of sprinters.
Start fast, finish fast, and hope you're fast enough-- Cadel Evans
If the race is too tough for him
he can stay home and watch it on television. SOMEBODY will ride in it, though, and somebody will win it, and that rider will be celebrated for the accomplishment while those that weren’t capable of rising to the occasion will be forgotten.
Hey, it's just the sprinter's lament...no need to stay home...not that that was probably an option.
"How strange it was to see men doing something beautiful. Something pointless and elegant." Tim Winton, 'Breath'
Sorry, I forgot :(
"How strange it was to see men doing something beautiful. Something pointless and elegant." Tim Winton, 'Breath'
i think this year's vuelta has been an improvement
It’s hard but not dangerous the way the giro was. And I think it’s becoming a race riders want to win in it’s own right rather than just prep for the World Champs – the sad state of the race in recent years.
There are also other races that could become better worlds prep than the Vuelta – the Tour of Britain looks perfectly placed for this and the terrain is suitable for many WC courses being lumpy rather than big mountains. It’s even got a TT this year.
Excellent response to HH's blog and this post.
Not the organizers fault really I guess, but when you combine the heat and the pitches of these climbs, sounds dangerous to me. But I’m not 135lbs.
"It's a lovely thing, feeling that momentum. If you're lucky, it's also about grace." Tim Winton
You want to train for the words?
No race fits your training profile? Have a chat with your DS, take your bike, hit the road.
"BECAUSE THERE’S NO F*CKING SPRINTS." -Cavendish (asterisk added)
Well, let’s keep some perspective, you can’t train for a race by not racing.
I'm feverished, or the way you want to spell it
by plinytheelder on Sep 4, 2011 2:17 PM EDT up reply actions
not sure what all the fuss is about?
Haussler just says what a bunch of other people are saying: the GTs have gotten too hard. Organizers love it because of all the mountaintop finishes. But it’s definitely a shift, and it can be argued (has been argued) that it actually takes away from the racing — just turns it into an exhaustion-fest.
Of course there are other points of view, what I’m saying is that Haussler isn’t saying anything so provocative here, many others have said the same, what’s the big deal?
The article could have been written a bit better? People . . . he’s in the middle of the bloody Tour of Spain! He’s got like a million km in his legs and is utterly exhausted! He does a far better job than I could do, my brain would be mush.
I'm feverished, or the way you want to spell it
That's all I was asking for
Give the guy some slack. It’s a good post to argue about wether some of the GT’s have gotten too hard, rather than making it about HH and telling the whiny wanker to go home.
"It's a lovely thing, feeling that momentum. If you're lucky, it's also about grace." Tim Winton
ok, but at the same time
it’s our effin job as DDIFP to criticize comments like this. I mean if we stopped, what would be left? Chris would be here all on his lonesome, all sad and everything. Is that what you want? Do you wanna make Chris cry? Bunch of cancer loving pony killers.
I happen to agree with GHH
This GT is trying to hard to be crazy difficult.
I’m all for some killer stages, like Angry Lou tossed in, but when that becomes the pervading theme of the race it really reduces the competition to just a few riders.
Interestingly, the TDF was quite the opposite this year with many stages totally open to all sorts of options.
In fact, that is why I thought this years TDF was probably the best since I don’t even remember.
This is also why it was so much more captivating to see just how long Tommy V. could hold on.
I really think that’s what GHH was trying to articulate, and not just complaining that there should be a more pointless flat stages across the Spain as was the norm a few years back.
What would Deming do? (+8:00 GMT)
yeah I was thinking about this year's TdF
What I loved about it was all these crazy stages where main contenders break away with 100km left to go, like they used to do it! That gets harder and harder when the whole GT becomes an exercise in survival.
I'm feverished, or the way you want to spell it
by plinytheelder on Sep 5, 2011 2:42 AM EDT up reply actions
Where's The Badger when we need him?
“There will be no attacks today because tomorrow’s stage will be difficult.” Bernard Hinault
Ice
"This is my Indian summer ... I'm far more dangerous now, because I don't care at all."
Someone named Stuart
Nearly in madrid. Man theres a lotta guys looking forward to it. Been one o the hardest GT’s ive done. Few aussie flags out there! Thanks
Vuelta used to be a nice little training camp pre-worlds,now theyve made it a 3week survival camp.this is becoming too tuff for pre-worlds
So more and more riders will start using these cool, well organised, races in USA,Canada and Britain. Anyways. Thats my input for the day!
Badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger...
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