Next time you see a footballer "injured"...

[TransferForum]

Can’t compare an individual sport where if you don’t get up you don’t win to a team sport where if you don’t get treatment you might lose

[Keep the Faith]

2 hours ago, GrahamC said:

You honestly believe that cycling is clean now, do you?

I wanted to believe that after being there to see Wiggins win the Olympic gold & Froome win the TDF & to think that Brailsford was simply a managerial genius, but I know how that all turned out.

There were some interesting views from French cyclist Thibaut Pinot recently on Rafael Nadal and how he manages his injuries through regular injections to numb pain, a treatment which is banned in cycling because of the potential performance enhancement. Lots of people saying Nadal is a hero for playing through the pain but effectively he is taking injections to enhance performance.

Everyone knows the issues cycling has had with drugs and it is almost certainly not clean now but more so than it used to be. It is definitely a physically brutal sport and they can certainly suffer more than most!

 

[Frenchay Red]

1 hour ago, TransferForum said:

Can’t compare an individual sport where if you don’t get up you don’t win to a team sport where if you don’t get treatment you might lose

Cycling is very much a team sport, certainly in the major races. In the Tour there aren't 198 riders all racing each other

[SecretSam]

10 hours ago, GrahamC said:

You honestly believe that cycling is clean now, do you?

I wanted to believe that after being there to see Wiggins win the Olympic gold & Froome win the TDF & to think that Brailsford was simply a managerial genius, but I know how that all turned out.

Did I say it was "clean"? Absolutely not, no sport is. There are still plenty of riders being caught, beyond the headline issues splashed across the mainstream press (which is understandably most people's only point of reference). Compared to the '90s and early '00s, the EPO years, the sport is much better now.

The level of doping in cycling (typically focused on performance) still doesn't stop a dislocated shoulder being an astonishingly painful injury. Nor does it mean that footballer's histrionics is any less pathetic.

Incidentally, the drugs taken by Sky were legal under their TUEs. Dodgy AF, but still technically allowed. And the Froome Ventolin scandal was comprehensively proven to offer no performance benefit. 

[SecretSam]

8 hours ago, Frenchay Red said:

Cycling is very much a team sport, certainly in the major races. In the Tour there aren't 198 riders all racing each other

I think it's 176 in the men's Tour (8 man teams), but hey.

And let's not get into the labyrinthine complexity of Grand Tour races and tactics...truly worse than cricket!

[Frenchay Red]

14 minutes ago, SecretSam said:

I think it's 176 in the men's Tour (8 man teams), but hey.

And let's not get into the labyrinthine complexity of Grand Tour races and tactics...truly worse than cricket!

Thanks, my mistake. Always used to be 22 x 9 teams (that's my excuse)

[Bristol Oil Services]

18 hours ago, SecretSam said:

Or Geraint Thomas, riding most of the Tour de France with a fractured pelvis.

Well, he's not going to walk home, is he?

[MarcusX]

On 07/07/2022 at 09:33, 42nite said:

I watched the ladies football last night, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

They were all professionals...some semi maybe on the Austrian side??? representing their countries, and none of them seemed to feel the need to shout, scream and roll about in pathetic agony in order to gain any sort of advantage.

It was a breath of fresh air...the way the game should be played!

 

Lovely dive in the England game tonight to win a pen

[Bar BS3]

What sort of muppet, when good enough to be competing in the tour de France, has a crash on their push bike..?! 

F'ing cyclists..!