Nibali considering legal action over Brammeier’s ‘selfish moron’ tweet

I think that Brammier, in a rather clumsy way, is trying to point out that Mr Nibbles comments are disingenuous. 

It takes a lot of time and effort to plan the routes for each stage of these races. Sometimes it requires the roads to be brought up to standard and repair work to be done, all of which is to ensure fair racing and rider/spectator safety. All of which takes time, effort and money. Therefore cancelling a stage is a last resort and will only be done if there is a risk to competitor/spectator safety.

When there is bad weather forecast or even actually present somewhere on the route before the finish it may require a stage to be cancelled. We don't know if there was particularly bad weather before the summit finish which prevented them getting there. So showing a picture of a summit finish with no snow and criticising the fact that the stage was cancelled is pretty poor in my opinion when he does not have to take into account all the factors.

And to all those master planners who say just change the route - yeah dead easy, lets organise road closures at the drop of a hat, no problem. No one remember the chaos caused by the Orica Green eadge bus crashing in to the finish line gantry at the TdF 1st stage on Corsica. They tried thinkingh on their feet there with finish lines moving whilst the stage was on following the pre planned route and nobody knew what was going on.

I think a bit more respect is due for the race organisers than shown by Nibali.

What annoys me [I don't mean 'annoys' really but I have a crap night's kip] is that his team is blatantly using Nibali as a stick to beat the Giro with.

We all know that Nibali is the big draw and Astana overtly threatening to remove him unless any decision is agreed with by them stinks.

Maybe it's not so surprising that it wasn't snowing atop the cancelled mountain. After Brammeier's Utah crash last summer he's probably been working on an Awesome Weather Protocol.

A nice big studded tyre so all the strongmen of the peloton get a chance in the hills. I'd imagine the extra rolling resistance would cancel out weedy climbers chances. Like pushing through treacle, uphill, in the snow.

rather than cancel the stage, can't they just switch to fatbikes?

I don't see the problem with them racing up hill in nasty conditions in fact it adds to the excitement of the stage with little risk.  the problem is the downhills that are often in mountain stages between climbs and the risks taken, or on sprint stages at sprint points and the finishes.

Snow on the road is an obvious limit, but up to that there should be a way to manage it.

The obvious thing for a mountain stage is to bypass climbs and change the route, finishing up hill (provided riders aren't expected to cruise back down like they often are). the problem is the chaos this will cause in race organisation.

Yes something should be done about the number of crashes, but I don't think we are facing a motor racing style problem here. yes there have been occasional tradgedies, but statistically you are less likely to die racing than just riding to an office job. I just don't think we should over react.  Cycling is dangerous, but not that dangerous.

Racing skinny tyred roadbikes on snow is daft, but he's essentially complaining that the stage was cancelled when the road was clear. I think he's right.  We don't know what info the organisers had, perhaps forecast snow didn't arrive, but in that case I would argue the decision to cancel was taken too early.  If we eliminate risk due to weather in cycling then those riders that are better technically loose a chance to shine.  Riders can take the risk they want most of the time.

In terms of unnecessary injuries the first thing that needs fixing is the support vehicles taking out riders.

I'm pretty sure you can't sue someone for calling you a moron. It's a matter of opinion, not a libel. Unless Italy has a very strange legal system.

Nibali seems to get hung up on tiny details like team car door handles

All hot air news

I'd be dubious about dragging someone into court for calling me a moron in case they proved it was true.

Brammeier sounds like the tempremental moron here. 

Pathetic

Lance, is that you?!