Eldron said:
I think you have it all wrong...
Cipo oozed style from every pore in his body - he was so superior to everyone else that he didn't need to talk about it. He would never has reduced himself to actually telling anybody how superior he was.
You missed out Erik Zabel - a 200+ palmerer who's dog has more class than Cav (his yoghurt probably has more culture too).
The difference between all the great sprinters and Cav is that Cav is 50% sprinter / 50% football hooligan.
Dissing the competition, telling everybody who'll listen how great you are, dissing your team mates - these are traits of a spoilt little **** who managed to use his angst to make talent.
A truly great sprinter talks with his legs not his mouth.
I think Cav is going to be crashing a lot this season, finding himself boxed in, getting seperated from his train etc. The peleton has it's own methods of enforcing discipline.
Cav can't be a football hooligan, being that he's from the Isle of Man. Maybe being an honorary Scouser is enough...
Cav won't be crashing alot. Him and Renshaw will dismantle the other lead out trains pretty much the same way they did last year. They were so much better than everyone else it got a little silly. You watch that vid that I just posted and notice how they just leaned on the the couple from Garmin mid corner and just shut them down. No fear, just "this is ours, we junked your
cr@p leadout 1km ago and we'll do it again. Watch how it's done, kiddies"
When your "supposed" team mate goes running his mouth when he's yet to win against the big boys in the big sprints then it's open season. Sure Gripe has won a couple of stages in Aus and in Turkey. The sprinters classic Scheldeprijs was a disaster for Gripe - being dumped on by all and couldn't hold the wheel of his lead out man for the race, Renshaw. Big sprinters race and no result. Shocker. Do you blame Cav for speaking out against him? I don't. When Greipel gets a few big wins under his belt then he'll have a leg to stand on, until then he can't really say that he's the best sprinter. When Cav gets asked during the Tour "are you the fastest sprinter?" he can't really answer anything other than "yes" when you take six stages can he? But people think he's being a cocky cnut, when infact he's just being plain truthful. In all of his stage wins in last years Tour, the closest anyone came was getting level with his back wheel.
I didn't put Zabel up there 'cause as you said, he wasn't a cnut per se but he was a doping cnut - a fine product of East Germany. He was a silly cnut too - 2004 Milan San Remo anyone? Of course Zabel is now Cav's sprint 'boss' and Cav credits his MSR win to riding parts of the course with Zabel.
Then again, it took Zabel almost a decade to win 12 Tour stages. It's taken Cav 2 years to win 10. It'll take Griepel 10 years to win 2.