Recent content by Mondrian

His achilles heel seems to be his climbing which is why they did not take him to Giro last year. He also lacks the experience in positioning himself in strong fields but all that will come with experience at the top level.

It wasn't the Giro but one of the smaller early season tours, come to think of it must have been 2010 as it came on the back of his 2010 Langkawi win.

Yes that was a nice breakaway and won all the intermediate sprints in stage 3 of Qatar. After Qatar he won a silver at the Asian championships in Malaysia and got the second best time in the Prologue for Lotto - Stage 1 at 3DAAGE was his first racing day in europe so overall i think he has done...

That's Rujano for you, he always goes early and it usually works but not with a quality field - I remember it was the same last year in Italy when he initially dropped contador & co only to blow up in the latter part of the climb. As for stage vs tour discussion of Nino vs Serpa - the unwritten...

I am surprised that so many are banking on Boonen - lets face it he has not won much in past couple of years so along with levi we can say that their best years are behind them. Personally I think Chavanel will have a better chance for wins than Boonen, he had a fantastic year in 2011 and if it...

I must have missed something as I didn't see anyone write off the world champion on here - the topic was sprint trains & which sprinter can count on the best service from their team mates.

Can you see Wiggins repeat that at Tdf? With Olympics, Wiggins & Cav on the 2012 menu life will not be so easy for Sky!

A good sprint train is more than just having the Watts, you need experience + confidence + watts and then some as the guys need to gel together on & off the bike to work in harmony. Looking at the race yesterday obviously Lotto has the edge so it will be interesting to see how GreenEdge...

I quite like the look of Lotto too, Greipel will for sure do better than last year as he has a better sprint train while he doesn't have to work for Gilbert like he did last year - on the other hand Cavendish has lost a bit of power in his train so sprints at tours will atleast be a bit more...

I think some teams have managed to get a bit of a following through the combination of results, location, staying power, team kit etc - Moviestar, Garmin, lotto, quick-step are some that pop up but UCI could make the system a bit more sponsor friendly by awarding 50% of the points gained to the...

I dont think Cofidis are seeking protour and are aiming for for pro continental status. Geox seems to have failed with securing a sponsor so that leaves Ag2r, FDJ, EE, Europcar & IT4I gunning for the 3 remaining spots as none seem to have enough points to break into the required top 15 for...

I actually think some teams went out for points and others took the riskier strategy of going for the big wins. I would say FDJ wisely went for the points whereas cofidis went for the wins - if you ask me both deserve a spot in the protour as does eurocar as they really animated Tdf.

Sorry if my post steered the discussion towards doping as that was not my intention, I was merely looking at it from a team managers point of view - so hope luckyboy is ok with this post. For the record I was questioning the wisdom (or probability) of Riis signing Cobo given the post Vuelta...

Cobo punched way above his ability at Vuelta so for me he is a walking time bomb ala Rico! As for BMC - they are a heavy team, perhaps too heavy! Reminds me of Chelsea football team of a few years ago.

True but I would have expected some of them to have jumped ship already - rumours had already started about Geox not sponsoring the team when they failed to provide funds for 1st deadline back in September so the wise ones would have tried to get into one of the teams that had registered as...