"Fignon rings alarm bells" about the state of french cycling..................



[email protected] wrote:
> "Fignon rings alarm bells" about the state of french
> cycling..................
> (http://www.cyclingnews.com/news.php?id=news/2005/aug05/aug06news )
>
> The French need to restablish the use pro farming teams. When the
> French cycling had a farm team system they were very successful and had
> a lot of victores.


RAGT Semences isn't doing so well. I say we send all the French
cyclists back to the farms, pull some of those big Norman mooks away
from their sheep, and train them for Paris-Roubaix.
 
The French do still have a very firm and established farm team system.
Albi Velo Sport for AG2R, AVC Aix for Cofidis, Castelsarasin for
Bouygues, Vendee U for Bouygues, and that's to name just a few, there
are lots.

Fignon might well have put his fingure on it when he raised the issue
of DSs... He's not the fist the think it, but it is about time someone
said it. Lets stop blaming the riders and look at the cause.. races,
race formats, DSs etc...
 
I'm not convinced that the problem simply isn't that today's Frenchman
simply doesn't want to suffer the way it takes to succeed. Not that I
blame them, mind you, but soccer certainly pays more and you suffer a
great deal less.
 
Good point... I think the french don't race abroad as amateurs
enough.. meaning they only really get one type of racing... once they
come across a different style of racing they have no riders able to
adapt to that format. It's all about attacking. The attitude in
France is also "wrong"... so long as you attack and show yourself,
that's better than finishing 5th; everyone says you raced well, and the
commentators make a big thing of you.. of course at the end of the day
you've come in last, or not even finished... c'est la vie...

They Spanish and French also need to realize that although they have a
great cycling history, things have changed, they are now new more
scientific methods of training/approaches to cycling. Few people in
France use or know anything about Wattage, wind tunnels etc, the more
scientific "new cycling" countries that are the USA, Australia, South
Africa etc are proving to progress faster as nations in the cycling
world than the established countries.. in my mind mainly due to open
mindedness and willingness to adopt new methods.
 
Well, surely newer scientific methods of training make a lot of
improvement. But that implies that you have French riders that will
apply themselves.

I'm told that in Britany there are still a lot of riders but that the
rest of France doesn't pay them any attention. Do you know if that's
so?
 
This is cyclic phenomena, there has been a long series with some belgian
champions, then some french, then italians, we just end up with a long serie
with one american champion, then we will seen in the future another serie,
maybe australian champions ... or maybe also in the future again some good
belgian racers, nobody knows what the future will be.

What I can see is that many australian are always in the top ten of every
race.

This is simply cyclic, technology is the same for everybody at different
levels but this is not enough to explain success, there must be a huge
amount of work and an exceptional team around one true leader.


"DepartFictif" <[email protected]> a écrit dans le message de news:
[email protected]...
> Good point... I think the french don't race abroad as amateurs
> enough.. meaning they only really get one type of racing... once they
> come across a different style of racing they have no riders able to
> adapt to that format. It's all about attacking. The attitude in
> France is also "wrong"... so long as you attack and show yourself,
> that's better than finishing 5th; everyone says you raced well, and the
> commentators make a big thing of you.. of course at the end of the day
> you've come in last, or not even finished... c'est la vie...
>
> They Spanish and French also need to realize that although they have a
> great cycling history, things have changed, they are now new more
> scientific methods of training/approaches to cycling. Few people in
> France use or know anything about Wattage, wind tunnels etc, the more
> scientific "new cycling" countries that are the USA, Australia, South
> Africa etc are proving to progress faster as nations in the cycling
> world than the established countries.. in my mind mainly due to open
> mindedness and willingness to adopt new methods.
>
 
I haven't experienced that. True the Breton do tend to keep to
themselves and have a lot of races up there, so they rarely go to other
parts of France let alone other countries for races, but the rest does
notice them.. especilly if it is flat and windy...

Mateyboy b.vl might actually be right.. maybe that's just how things go
and it really isn't much more complicated than that... sometimes we try
and read too much into things.