SportingNonsense wrote:
Im not quite sure why there is such a big issue of the help Cervelo gave to Hushovd.
Yes, Cervelo didnt even try to take on the Columbia sprint train head to head but I get the feeling that Hushovd himself reckoned his best chance was to take Cav's wheel and hope to beat him that way
I think some people view the only teamwork a sprinter can have being setting up a train.
I could be wrong, but I generally remember seeing a cervelo team member (or 2) keeping Thor out of the wind during the stages. I imagine he didn't get his own water bottles. And I remember at least once where he was led to the front by his team (where he then grabbed Cav's wheel and his teammates backed off).
He was riding behind a teammate (Roulston) when he made the break in stage 3 as well.
No, Hushovd didn't have a train. He had enough teammates to set up a 3 man leadout... but with Columbia taking control so early that would never work. But he wasn't abandoned either.
I'm afraid I don't get your point. Of course Hushovd had guys to help him. Of course some other riders fetched him the water. So what? Should we expect him to do all that stuff? It makes no sense to try to compare that help to Columbia's help to Cavendish.
The point is people are saying Hushovd was "on his own" against Cav.
He wasn't. He had 3-4 helpers in the sprint stages.
He was led to the front on most stages. He was protected. He got everything a sprinter could want if not getting a train. While his team didn't pull back breaks... that was because everyone was forcing Columbia to... not because he didn't have guys to do it.
The reason he lost wasn't the team. It was that Cav was the better sprinter.
The funniest thing about this whole thread is I actually won a bet on Thor to win the green jersey. After watching the tour though... I just don't think he really deserved it with how it happened... even if I predicted it before hand.
Again, we were talking about the green jersey here and not stage wins. No?
Thor might have had helpers assigned to him, but they did not help him sufficiently in the most important part, i.e. the actual sprints.
They got him on Cav's wheel in almost every sprint, and got him in the front side of the split on stage 3. If you aren't going to set up your own train... where else would you like to be? And frankly, it was a better place then any of the other teams got where they did set up sprint trains.
KurtinSC wrote:
They got him on Cav's wheel in almost every sprint, and got him in the front side of the split on stage 3.
He got himself in the split, if not, more than 1 teammate would have been there with him. As I said earlier, he often had to work alone against Bennati, Freire and Ciolek for Cavs wheel. Meanwhile Haussler sat on the other side of the road, just as close to the front...
