Giro d’Italia!

Giro in the morning, switch to California before dinner. I’ve been following the Eurosport feed, complete with GCN’s Matt Stephens in the commentary box and the warnings not to click the “update Flash” popups that periodically obstruct the video.

Unlike California, where there’s still a point (well, besides team/bike sponsor loyalty) in being a RaboBlancoBelkinLottoJumbo fan, I’ve just taken to rooting for whoever’s doing something cool—lately, someone who looks like they should have gearing restrictions rather than be on the UCI Pro Tour. I mean, Moreno Hofland almost won stage 2, but…uh…um…so, California? Robert Gesink moved up to 6th today? Sagan actually won something for a change? Yeah.

Who are the top contenders besides Contador? I haven’t followed any recent updates.

(I still think the punishment for doping should be much longer than two years. There’s a lot of residual benefit from doping, from being able to train that much harder for extended periods of time. Two years isn’t long enough. If they don’t want to ban someone permanently, then they could choose a longer time period. Four to six years? Seems harsh, but that would be a more effective deterrent. Some would still dope, but they would get hurt worse after they get caught. I know he served his time, and others are probably doping, but I still feel funny watching him win.)

If he is going all-out in the Giro, I don’t think he will be a top contender at the Tour de France, if he’s even racing it this year. I don’t think anyone can be an overall GC contender in back-to-back Grand Tours. It’s just too difficult, especially against other riders who are only racing in one. (Some cyclists serve as domestiques for one, saving themselves for the other race. That doesn’t count as racing as a GC contender in two Grand Tours.) The only way to recover quickly enough is to dope.

I see that Nairo Quintana is skipping the Giro to focus on the TdF. I think he has a good shot at improving on his 2nd place finish there in 2013.

@hozn 115707 wrote:

The worst part of the coverage is Carlton Kirby.

He is really annoying. He is likely doing the Tour and the Vuelta for Eurosport which means I will have to find another feed.

I miss David Harmon.

All that matters is the relative strength of the riders, so I don’t see any difference there compared to years past.

Either: (1) the GC contenders are racing clean now and on an even, human-level playing field, or (2) the GC contenders are all doping with stuff the anti-doping controls can’t catch. In any event, I would expect that with the amount of money invested (and at stake) and backroom relationships cultivated here that these teams are on even playing fields, doping or not.

@hozn 115720 wrote:

All that matters is the relative strength of the riders, so I don’t see any difference there compared to years past.

Strength and recovery are two different things; the question is whether the human body can take abuse at that level, recover, and then do it again shortly thereafter. The last guy who managed to win back to back tours is a known doper, and the two before him are suspect. You probably have to go back 30 years to find someone who could win the tour and the giro without modern pharmaceuticals. Can someone do that today, with the levels of peak performance unlocked with current training methods and without the juice? And if someone does juice enough to push to that level of performance, will their body fall apart? As a practical matter, I suppose it’s possible someone might achieve the feat, only to have it stripped in a few years when they develop a new test.

@Powerful Pete 115760 wrote:

Well that didn’t take long for the entire conversation to get back to doping

Well, that’s the reality of professional cycling for at least the next 40 years. If they clean up today, by then only the old guys will remember this fiasco.

I don’t like bringing up doping because almost every other major pro sports also has serious doping issues. It’s just that they aren’t publicized or for some reason, those sports aren’t as criticized for it. But when the leader in the current races has a very recent doping history, it’s really hard not to mention.

Same thing with baseball. While Yankees fans might be willing to overlook Alex Rodriguez’s numerous doping issues just because he is hitting well this year, fans of other teams aren’t as willing to overlook it. I hope they are raining down boos on him. Will that hurt his feelings? I guess so. But he has made out like a bandit, winning a 9-figure contract with the help of all that past doping. He was caught and admitted to doping. But then he went back to doping again and tried to interfere with the investigation into that doping. He was suspended last season, but he’s back again and still making millions of dollars, for fraudulent behavior. Baseball players and cyclists will continue to dope if they calculate that it’s worth it in the end. (Football players dope too, only their league doesn’t even test for HGH and that’s reportedly one of their commonly used substances. Compare players from today with stars from the 1970s. It’s almost as if they aren’t even from the same species, because of the size and speed differences. You also have to wonder about all the domestic violence, assault and murder cases with football players. That’s something that we don’t see in cycling on a large scale.) If they are obtaining all that money because of fraud, then why shouldn’t they get punished for it? You can go to jail and lose money for committing certain types of fraud in non-sports contracts. Why not with a sports contract too?

On other sports sites, I do try to bring up the hypocrisy of people who attack cycling for doping when they overlook or excuse the rampant doping in baseball and football. I don’t normally talk about baseball or football doping here because this is a cycling website.

If it weren’t Contador in contention for the Giro, I wouldn’t bring this up. As far as I know, Froome and Quintana are clean, so I won’t be talking about doping as much during the TdF.

I don’t normally like to watch video on smaller computer screens, so I don’t watch much, if any, of the Giro coverage. I’ll check up on the progress occasionally throughout the 3 weeks. But I’ll admit that I don’t follow it nearly as closely as I follow the Tour de France. I guess I have my own limits. It actually gets mentally tiring to follow the TdF for three weeks, trying to find ways to catch some of the broadcasts, either in the mornings or in the evenings or the repeat coverage late at night. I mentioned that it’s tough for a modern rider to compete at a top level in both the Giro and TdF. Likewise, I find it very difficult to follow both the Giro and TdF closely on a daily basis. I think I actually get burned out by the TdF each year. So much so, that I barely have the mental stamina to look at the Vuelta standings in the late summer. I need a better spectator training program…

As for coverage, British Eurosport has the best — Rob Hatch and Matt Stephens are head and shoulders above their normal Eurosport compatriots over on BeIN. Plus the insights of Juan Antonio Flecha are awesome, though I could do without Ashley House.

Awesome things like: https://eurosport.yahoo.com/video/giro-extra-flecha-rides-giro-133117053.html out of Flecha.