Lance Armstrong blasts SD Worx: "To see a yellow jersey riding alone is totally unacceptable"
CyclingFriday, 16 August 2024 at 09:45
Lance Armstrong analyzed, as every day, in his podcast The Move the last stage of the Women's Tour de France in which the leader, big favorite and defending champion Demi Vollering suffered a fall that made her lose the overall lead as well as a considerable amount of time.
The Dutch rider fell in the leading group with less than 10 kilometers to go, but none of the 2 teammates riding with her at the time, Blanka Kata Vas and Lorena Wiebes, stopped, and she ended up riding alone to the finish line, losing a minute and a half and the lead of the race to Poland's Katarzyna Niewiadoma.
Her Team SD Worx - Protime teammate Vas ended up winning the stage while Wiebes was looking for her chances to sprint in the peloton behind Vas. Armstrong didn't go as far as to call this behaviour unacceptable:
"When you have the team leader wearing the yellow jersey and she's on the ground you don't let anyone ride at the front. It was a bipolar day for SD Worx. The big favorite for this Tour de France loses more than a minute and yet wins the stage. Blanka Vas. They only have 2 riders with her, Blanka Vas and Lorena Wiebes. They come back immediately. I don't care how much someone wants to win a stage, I don't care how important it is, everyone comes back and they didn't. To see a yellow jersey riding alone is totally unacceptable."
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- I think the other side has said plenty, given comments about her reputation like what Renz said above. Perhaps this is her chance to speak up against that reputation? I have no idea but her comments seem pretty human, even if each person has their own version of the story.RidesHills24-11-2024
- Give her a team built around her with no competing leaders, like Pogacar has at UAE or Vingegaard has at Visma (seeing how Roglic left), and I wonder how Vollering would do. She’s already so good, and a team dedicated to her could make her even better.RidesHills24-11-2024
- Those injuries, an ability to manage pain and push himself, probably a load of TUEs to help him get back from an awful moment, and competing that hard without the long exercise base that was the norm - no wonder he was exhausted. We’ve now had two consecutive seasons of the second place rider having an injury that interrupts training, and it shows to what level their bodies are tuned for the insane task of winning the Tour. I certainly hope both (and their teams!) are healthy next year. It would be a first, after 4 years.RidesHills24-11-2024
- Winners seem to be like this. Win or lose, it is always on to the next thing. They don’t celebrate the big win, they don’t worry about the painful loss. They move on. It’s an amazing skill. But to be able to ride (and win) while not being able to walk? That’s a level of pain management that boggles my mind. Of course they have it, given what they put their bodies through, but it’s just crazy.RidesHills24-11-2024
- Poor Demi. But she behaves the same way when riding for the national team. Bring me my tiny violin.Renz24-11-2024
- good pointsmij24-11-2024
- Yes, please tell us based on your superior expertise about why JVs training and race schedule is wrong 🧐Crashjames24-11-2024
- I'd like to hear what the other side has to say.mij24-11-2024
- Rules are very different from country to country and evolve with time. At one point I couldn’t even give my son my nationality because being unmarried, you’d have to register at least 3 months before the birth, a time when many people know neither the name or sex, and actually, no-one even knows if the birth will take place. In England there is now a kid with the wrong sex on his birth certificate as mistakes (even if by an administration) can no longer be corrected. I just had a 3rd child, we discovered a bump on his head at 2 weeks that wasn’t there 24h before, we ended up at the police accused of child abuse and about to have him taken from us due to staff incompetence and inexperience. Luckily a pediatric neurosurgeon has now confirmed this is not so uncommon after natural childbirth without instruments but most medical employees aren’t informed of it so automatically accuse parents of negligence/lying whatever. We discovered an association that already helped over 1000 wrongly accused couples (just those who found the association in just one country). I almost got arrested in one country for forgery after trying to convert my driver’s license as they thought I must have tampered the dates to get it aged 17 which isn’t possible for them. I can’t access half official services because the online forms are not set up to accept foreign phone number as data but a number is obligatory. That’s just a quick start, anyone who’s ever had to move internationally will confirm, there’s very little that’s not done differently elsewhere than “at home” The world is full of bureaucratic shit destroying society.Mistermaumau23-11-2024
- Bruyneel is not a person you take honesty or moral advice from.Sweep23-11-2024