🇪🇸 Eusebio Unzué, Movistar team manager 🗣️ "Why not allow substitutes when a rider is forced to abandon a Grand Tour during the first week? All teams prepare 10-12 riders for a Grand Tour, so you still got 2 or 3 of them at home." (L'Équipe)
"Why not allow substitutes when a rider is forced to abandon a Grand Tour during the first week?" - Movistar boss calls for drastic changes
CyclingWednesday, 07 February 2024 at 00:44
Eusebio Unzué, the boss of Movistar Team, speaking to L'Equipe just before the start of a Tour Colombia, spoke at length about the future of the sport, his plans for change and why a potential 'Super League' is an appealing proposition.
"We are thinking about the future of the sport, and we are among those holding meetings. Cycling is the most immobile sport at the moment, we continue to do things as we did forty years ago, when I arrived. We have to humanize the rules. Stop being so crude, so excessively inhuman," says Unzue. "All the teams prepare with ten or eleven riders, we leave two or three at home at the last moment, and if a rider falls, he has no right to any solution...", the Movistar Team director continued to argue.
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Unzué doesn't understand that when a rider falls in a race he is not immediately attended to. "Nowadays, for a rider who falls to be able to go out again the next day, sometimes he has to ride 60 or 80 kilometres with a broken wrist, because they can only go to be examined when they have already arrived, after having suffered like an animal," he explains. "Can't we really humanize this? If a rider falls, isn't that reason enough for him to go to an ambulance and see if he has something broken, in which case he can go out again the next day without having to finish the stage? We are not going to ask, as in football, to stop everything while the cyclists recover. But we have to protect their health. Even if that means reclassifying the cyclists in question in the time of the last one, so that no one benefits from a fall, but to prevent them from suffering unnecessarily."
"Why not allow substitutes when a rider is forced to abandon a Grand Tour during the first week?" Unzue questions in conclusion, a topic experienced recently by Movistar Team as Enric Mas crashed out of the Tour de France on stage 1. "All teams prepare 10-12 riders for a Grand Tour, so you still got 2 or 3 of them at home."
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- Thanks Dadmobk22-12-2024
- Hard to believe with the advancment of modern medicine he can not find a cause for this.frieders321-12-2024
- You continue to platform these two cheats. With that in mind I can no longer use your site. I know my leaving means little, but, sometimes you have to take a stand. See ya!DJ21-12-2024
- Look at what Froome’s won since his last TdF, stop denying there is still more than possible one outcome to the future.Mistermaumau21-12-2024
- Bruyneel understands nothing about clean competition.Sweep21-12-2024
- Exactly. Remco won 3 WT races/stages last year compared to Pogocar's 19. Remco's single stage win in last years TdF earned him a meager 12 seconds over Pogocar who shellac'd him by 9 minutes in GC.Sweep21-12-2024
- Fortunately and as you point out, more than one strategy is possible and worth trying and I’m sure all concerned riders are well informed and counselled on this subject and don’t need such basic personal advice through media from an outsider.Mistermaumau21-12-2024
- The main SPOTY award is "decided" by public vote but the BBC "expert panel" decide who you can choose from, that choice has an equal split of genders and is focussed on the sports BBC show and a disabled athlete. Oh yea the ubiquitous "Pub Games" candidate there too, Darts and Snooker are not sports. The other awards are decided by the "Expert Panel" again it's about the sports BBC show, cycling has had it. Cav got his for his years and achievements in the sport, not just that 35th TDF win. Unless the BBC get access to Pro Cycling it will never feature "adequately" on SPOTYslappers6621-12-2024
- Ahhh..... you have to understand the "strange" diversity concepts of the BBCslappers6621-12-2024
- Avoiding him is a good strategy, you get more wins and then you can compete in the TDF relatively relaxed. Pit yourself against Pogi and not only there will be no wins, it will be considerable mental setbackabstractengineer21-12-2024