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Giro d'Italia Giro d'Italia 2024 Stage 2: San Francesco al Campo – Santuario di Oropa (Biella), 161.0 km

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So Ganna is totally the next Italian Giro winner?
I don't know if his strava data is available and I don't know his volume but he is a bigger body type currently.
All pros are slender compared to regular people, but as far as endurance athletes cyclists are configured accordingly, with smaller upper body and larger lower body muscles. Ganna would likely need to step up his volume and hours of incline and altitude training. His current status as a fast man would likely suffer if he works for better climbing results. Common complaint of sprinters and trackies that hills shed some of your speed. Guessing from dramatic cadence differences. I am a Tony Martin fan and always wished he had structure to be an all arounder earlier in his career, he was decent at the end. Ganna is definitely dealing with some physical tools, guy has power
 
The next week is so bad I'm going to Vancouver hiking and fishing.

Unlike the Tour, at least Giro usually spices the sprint races with some climbs, some close to the finish. So while sprinters might still win, they have to work for it.

Tomorrow:

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Tuesday

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.many riders who follow wheels but dont suffer the crap directed at Thomas

Also there is no clinic conversation here ...he is an Olympic and World track champion and has the pedigree

No one saying issues about clinic for some many riders with more dubious questions...

As I say he has to be admired as he uses what he can and he is Tour champion and a Giro podium man with it ...many riders with probably better climbing ability cant hack it like he can and fall off the edge

There is more to admire in cycling than natural climbing ability...there is also admiration for toughness and mental attitude which Thomas has in bags

Plus he is a very liked rider and is a sound guy...but I guess there is no talking to some people who are free to dislike whoever they want ..that is sport for you
Excellent satire
 
Even if I don't like his racing, I have respect for gerant Thomas, because he is so open and approachable with the medias, but also because for many years he has doubters about his GT goals.

He always was told that he wasting his talent trying to go for a GC when he could win many classics. I myself was saying that stuff, I remember declaring after Tirreno in 2018 that kieatowski had more chance to win a grand tour than G Thomas.

To overcome such doubts from many people takes legendary mental strength

Of course he used probably 'nutrition', and I always hated team sky, but now we live in an era where jonas Vingegard puts 3 minutes to all the GC rider in a 22km ITT, sep kuss can win a GT and Belgian pozzato has a mutation in his body that prevents the accumulation of fatigue. In contrast I never saw one individual climb or time trial of Thomas that made it impossible to suspent disbelief.

It's when you take a step back and look at the whole career that you realise he is also comical like those visma guys.

He is a wheelsuckers though. The giro of Roglic, Almida and Thomas was awful. I hope he doesn't win this giro
 
Yeah there's never been such skulduggery in the history pro cycling ever before or after 1984 haha! Come on man the history of the sport is entirely about skulduggery, cheating, twisting advantage, disadvantaging others, designing a race that suits the rider of the moment etc etc. This Giro is ideally suited and openly known to have been designed to attract Pogacar to race it when his main goal is obviously Le Tour, this is the history of the Giro and part of it.
The point is, multiple Individual Pursuit specialists have won or podiumed in Grand Tours over the decades, nothing unique about Thomas or Wiggins doing it really.
Not on the level of the 84 Giro to make sure Moser won and not Fignon. The organization showed no shame in interfering with the outcome of the race. Your haha! only demonstrates you don't know what you are talking about.

Actually, it's quite rare in the modern era, or even before, for track racers to podium in GTs, unless you are on the British Cycling program.
 
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Netserk was not saying that. They were using Ganna as an example of somebody who, like Thomas, has pedigree as a cyclist from a similar kind of background, but would nevertheless not be believable as a GT winner at the present time, at least based on current parcours trends.
Apologies, I was actually responding to armchair who brought up “the pedigree” rationale and was agreeing with what Netserk said. This is the second time where only a portion of the previous post (that I was responding to) didn’t appear in my comment. Perhaps I’m hitting the delete key while typing. But I would have been clearer if I had simply replied directly to Armchair’s comment.
 
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Not on the level of the 84 Giro to make sure Moser won and not Fignon. The organization showed now shame in interfering with the outcome of the race. Your haha! only demonstrates you don't know what you are talking about.

Actually, it's quite rare in the modern era, or even before, for track racers to podium in GTs, unless you are on the British Cycling program.

To be fair, the level of profesionalism now in Track and Road means I'd agree with that. Even Thomas says he wouldn't be able to reach the level needed for an Olympic Team Pursuit even in his Team GB peak. At his track weight and peak he was doing 3:56 TPs, when he ended Track they were doing 3:51. Today Ganna is doing 3:42 so ~10 seconds less for 4km is huge difference, it's so much more specialist today.
 
Bardet must be sick. He's past his prime, but not this bad.
Bardet is indeed sick. He talked about it this morning to some other TV network I was close to.
Yesterday at the bottom of Maddalena he had a bad stomach (unclear whether he had to throw up as reported by RAI reporter Giada Borgato). Then felt a little better and finished the stage. Clearly not at 100% yet.
 
As someone who got into watching cycling at the start of the Armstrong years, this is quite a natural inclination for me. A GT can be great entertainment even with a dominant rider. It's not all about who wins it.
Agreed. That was also true in many of the Indurain Tour wins, Ulle’s 1997 demolition of opponents, Froome’s peak years, etc.
perhaps what a little different here (and unlike the above) is that the 3 other best GC riders aren’t competing here.
 
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they did madison and points race. also, lighter riders compared to Thomas. Thomas specific training and goals focused on the track until the London Olympics 2012. then the focus changed
Which are the traditional endurance disciplines and more relating to pack racing and so the ones you would usually anticipate to be the most immediately transferable to mass start road stages.

Didn't Wiggins also do these alongside the IP/TP before his commitment to the road?
 
Didn't see the stage but my thoughts are:
  • Pogacar didn't win by as much as I expected. He is holding back or is he no stronger than 2023? Looked like a fast climb, much was big chaining, maybe this is why?
  • Lipowiz and Bora very good.
  • Uijtdebroeks did a good job
  • Ineos were strong. Yes, that includes Thomas.
  • Disappointed with Ben O'Conner, hopefully he doesn't make the same mistakes again.
On a side point, I also check the banter here before I comment. Its been polluted with back and forth with one particular poster. Why don't posters use the ignore feature on people that annoy you?
 
Which are the traditional endurance disciplines and more relating to pack racing and so the ones you would usually anticipate to be the most immediately transferable to mass start road stages.

Didn't Wiggins also do these alongside the IP/TP before his commitment to the road?
Like Thomas, Wiggins supplemented his low domestic Pursuit income between Olympic Track 4 year cycles by riding as a domestique on the road to pay the mortgage and signed in the contract to be released for Olympic commitments. As far as I've read, Wiggins wasn't initially the plan to win Le Tour, it was only when they compared the TrainingPeaks data they realised the training load Wiggins was able to maintain leading into an Olympic games was comparable to a GT winner they were trying to sign and comparing TrainingPeaks data between them, the penny dropped that the only difference was the 7-8kg upper body weight needed to launch the Pursuit. Wiggins Pursuit Training load equalled/surpassed the load/fatigue racing a 3 weeks Tour basically and they already knew exactly how his lactate and recovery worked, they had all the data needed.

Wiggins did do some madison racing, but if you can team pursuit at Olympic level while racing road, you're clearly not gonna have any issue in a madison so long as you have the track craft and skills.
 
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Like Thomas, Wiggins supplemented his low domestic income between Olympic Track 4 year cycles by riding as a domestique on the road to pay the mortgage and signed in the contract to be released for Olympic commitments. As far as I've read, Wiggins wasn't initially the plan to win Le Tour, it was only when they compared the TrainingPeaks data they realised the training load Wiggins was able to maintain leading into an Olympic games was comparable to a GT winner they were trying to sign and comparing TrainingPeaks data between them, the penny dropped that the only difference was the 7-8kg upper body weight needed to launch the Pursuit. Wiggins Pursuit Training load equalled/surpassed the load/fatigue racing a 3 weeks Tour basically.
But did he also ride the madison and points race? I seem to recall some beef with Cavendish back in the latter's early career to do with the madison.
 
But did he also ride the madison and points race? I seem to recall some beef with Cavendish back in the latter's early career to do with the madison.
Edited above, yes.
But Wiggins & Thomas were racing on the road too anyway which is obviously related to Madison if you're looking at it as km instead of aerobic performance.
It's important to realise 'endurance' track events like Pursuit or Madison are named that because it's not a Sprint event involving purely/mostly anaerobic glycolysis (lactic acid) system for upto 30-90s. Pursuit is pure endurance discipline, you've gone deeply aerobic in a 3 or 4km pursuit effort too the same as maximal effort into the start of a mountain and then maintaining threshold up it.
 
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Bardet is indeed sick. He talked about it this morning to some other TV network I was close to.
Yesterday at the bottom of Maddalena he had a bad stomach (unclear whether he had to throw up as reported by RAI reporter Giada Borgato). Then felt a little better and finished the stage. Clearly not at 100% yet.

This happened last year or was it the year before and he crashed out of GT last year? Every year some mishap but stomach issues happen alot

He is too thin ...If he ate a bowl of pasta beyond his usual diet I'd say he'd get sick
 
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Edited above, yes.
But Wiggins & Thomas were racing on the road too anyway which is obviously related to Madison if you're looking at it as km instead of aerobic performance.
It's important to realise 'endurance' track events like Pursuit or Madison are named that because it's not a Sprint event involving purely/mostly anaerobic glycolysis (lactic acid) system for upto 30-90s. Pursuit is pure endurance discipline, you've gone deeply aerobic in a 3 or 4km pursuit effort too the same as maximal effort into the start of a mountain and then maintaining threshold up it.
Tactically, though, the mass start events are more immediately transferable to road, with the need to respond to moves, keep an eye on the riders around you, place yourself relative to rivals, and go from riding at less than 100% to full gas in the blink of an eye, plus the occasional pursuit-like effort to gain a lap.

While the aerobics of max effort IP might have some transferability, the time at threshold in the IP is minimal compared to the kind of climbs we're talking here. Four minutes of threshold might explain why Thomas could muscle his way up the Alto do Malhão, but that's very different from, say, Rettenbachferner.

It's like comparing the XC sprint to the 30/50. While they are both very much events within an endurance sport, one is about maintaining threshold for a short period of time, the other is about timed threshold bursts within a much longer event. Most road events are long distances with short threshold bursts which is why more roadies who also do track tend to do points, scratch, madison, and those who do IP/TP tend to be more rouleurs and time triallists in the first instance, and current parcours trends are marginalising that type in terms of major stage racing potential (which is something you don't bring into account when you run through the prior elite riders with track experience, notwithstanding that all of them were road racers in parallel with track rather than track specialists and during the Cold War era when the landscape was very different and the field much shallower). Obviously track sprinters seldom convert to the road because the body type required for keirin and match sprinting is counterintuitive to the needs of road cycling, and the one obvious transfer to point to - Theo Bos - was somebody who could be the fastest if he made it to the finish, but just making it to the finish to contest the sprint was a challenge for him most of the time.
 
Congratulations to Tadej Pogačar for winning the stage and taking the leaders jersey.

This is what Pogi and UAE came to do and did it. Although yesterday it didn't pan out and today UAE didn't make as big selection on the ultimate climb as one might expect. Pogi on the other hand managed to finish it off. Is the race over, for overall and will Pogi now get to rest and prepare for the Tour? This is cycling and hence we know the answer to that one. Bora impressive plus Thomas and Uijtdebroeks all main candidates for the podium. Likely GC guys now switching in surviving mode, for a couple of stages, and other aspects of this Giro edition to dominate. From last years Giro, that was a beautiful edition, we can only hope for the plot to thicken and to get some suspension to the very end. If not for the first place then hopefully at least when it comes to the the runner up competition.
 
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But did he also ride the madison and points race? I seem to recall some beef with Cavendish back in the latter's early career to do with the madison.
Beijing 2008 Olympics.
Wiggins was doing individual & team pursuit, and the madison with Cav.
They didn't do well, which Cav felt was because management had prioritised a world record in the TP over keeping Wiggins fresher/less knackered for the madison