2010 Unsung Hero?

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Who was the Unsung Hero of 2010 in Pro peloton?

Bert Grabsch? Team player for sure. Always on the front pulling, chasing breakaways yet no major result this year.

Unsung Hero: a person who makes a substantive yet unrecognized contribution; a person whose bravery is unknown or unacknowledged
 
When I first say your Thread Title, the first rider to come to mind was THOMAS RABOU

However some might debate that Team Type 1 was not "pro Peloton" last season
 
The first one that comes to mind is Daniel Navarro though that depends on what we mean by unrecognized. He was certainly noticed for the help he gave to Contador but he didn't get any formal accolades for that. He did have a win in Dauphine though.
 
I would have thought that the first person that comes to mind for a lot of people is Szmyd. I agree with Navarro though. Would also nominate Popo and co for steering Lance around for half a year,😱 even when he came 10 minutes down. Kreuziger did well in the Vuelta though unlike Szmyd who made the Giro interesting by putting on the pain, Kreuziger made the vuelta less interesting by stopping attacking riding.

Oh and Cancellara for his heroic effort in keeping Andy in the Tour on the Ardennes stage 🙄
 
Popo is a good choice and I like the criteria you use but if it is a shack rider I go with Horner.

Hitch. don't you know that it is not cool to talk about shack riders on here? 😱
 
Renshaw - had glandular fever at the start of the year but came good in time for the Tour. Selfless worker.
 
I don't know if Szmyd is "unsong". I think he generally gets a lot of credit for his work.

Grabsch is definately a good suggestion.
 
Besides those already mentioned, I think: Volodymir Gustov (helped Sastre a lot), Valerio Agnolli (one of the unsung Liquigas's Giro heroes) and Vasil Kiryienka (just a great guy, who always sacrifices his own chances, working for the team).
 
Boeing said:
Popo is a good choice and I like the criteria you use but if it is a shack rider I go with Horner.

Hitch. don't you know that it is not cool to talk about shack riders on here? 😱
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Not if they merit such an award, but to my mind, they don't.

Big difference in the work the likes of Bert Grabsch undertakes, driving on the front of the peloton for hour after hour, chasing down breaks for Cav.
Popo and Horner spent much of their domestique duty at the other end of the peloton, cajoling a fading Armstrong to the finish line.

Horner got plenty of recognition for winning Pais Vasco and Popo always seems to get praise for what in reality is mostly under achieving.
Maybe he deserves the award for stone walling the Feds?

Vasil Kiryienka, I think is worth a mention for the enormous amount of work he gets through in a season.

Kvinto said:
Besides those already mentioned, I think: Volodymir Gustov (helped Sastre a lot), Valerio Agnolli (one of the unsung Liquigas's Giro heroes) and Vasil Kiryienka (just a great guy, who always sacrifices his own chances, working for the team).
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I see I am only seconding an opinion, which is good.
 
Danilo Hondo. He rode 17045 km in 2010, further than any other pro cyclist. And one of only two riders to clock up 100 days racing (with Voigt).
 
Kevin de Weert
José Iván Gutiérrez
Hernâni Broco
Pasquale Muto
Vasil Kiryienka

...got several more of these, but I'll stick to these for the time being.
 
I think S.Szmyd and especially Y.Popovych were way more useful in 2009 season. Don't know what wrong happened to Sylwester but imo in 2010 he was not that good at the front of the peloton, in the mountains he has been dropping back too quickly (all in the comparison with 2009 season). As for Yaroslav, he had some problems with a thyroid in spring and the only one time, I can really remind him in 2010 was the Roubaix stage at Tour, were he was the only Radioshack rider to help Armstrong.
 
Here's another one -

Paul Voß - shock winner of the Catalunya prologue, was instrumental in Milram's plan at Frankfurt, putting in an early break and forcing Tony Martin to mark him, putting Columbia on the back foot early and helping Milram pick up one of their biggest wins, then wore the KOM jersey for nearly a week at the Giro and got in breaks left right and centre.

And nobody mentions him at all, and in 2011 he'll be riding for a British continental team.
 
Libertine Seguros said:
Here's another one -

Paul Voß - shock winner of the Catalunya prologue, was instrumental in Milram's plan at Frankfurt, putting in an early break and forcing Tony Martin to mark him, putting Columbia on the back foot early and helping Milram pick up one of their biggest wins, then wore the KOM jersey for nearly a week at the Giro and got in breaks left right and centre.

And nobody mentions him at all, and in 2011 he'll be riding for a British continental team.
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He won something therefore he got acknowledged for that accomplishment. Not exactly an Unsung Hero. I'm surprised there is so many names posted for those that have actually won or got on podium this year. Real unsung hero is a workhorse, team player, that never won anything and get no acknowledgement for the hard but overlooked efforts.
 
Maybe not completely unsung but Maxime Monfort did a lot for HTC, like chasing brakes ed on parcours that he doesn't really like... Bit like Grabsch but different 😛
 
Mellow Velo said:
Not if they merit such an award, but to my mind, they don't.

Big difference in the work the likes of Bert Grabsch undertakes, driving on the front of the peloton for hour after hour, chasing down breaks for Cav.
Popo and Horner spent much of their domestique duty at the other end of the peloton, cajoling a fading Armstrong to the finish line.

Horner got plenty of recognition for winning Pais Vasco and Popo always seems to get praise for what in reality is mostly under achieving.
Maybe he deserves the award for stone walling the Feds?

Vasil Kiryienka, I think is worth a mention for the enormous amount of work he gets through in a season.



I see I am only seconding an opinion, which is good.
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if it is popo or horner I go with horner at his age and frankly you criteria of not objective, agenda boy

but this is why I went with TR. one example dude pulled wheelsuck hincape to bigbear with him and george got the most aggressive rider go figure
 
vanotti did a lot of work for liquigas in the first 100km of every stage at the giro.
agnoli did incredible job at the giro too
these are real unsung hero.

not so unsung:
kyrienka , very strong rider
danilo hondo, gave up his chances to lead out petacchi and helped the team a lot.
paolo tiralongo and navatto at the tour.

these are the best, then every team has domestique , all unsung hero
 
I think a lot of the unsung heroes are on smaller teams, who kill themselves day after day trying to get into breaks, or in the case of teams like Xacebo working 100% for a team leader.

Who was the Vacan guy who got into a break 2 stages in a row during one of the pt races this year. Think it might have been hoogerland.
 
Yeah, i agree Hitch - and the domestiques who get a sprinter into a better position with 500m to go than the sprinter deserves only to see the sprinter finish 10th say.

David Zabriskie anyone? Must do a lot of work for Farrar that goes unnoticed. Aside from his second place in that California race he goes around fairly unnoticed as expectations were once higher?
 
People still talk about him at every TT, while his results hardly are better then Koos Moerenhout (which some people do not even know he can TT apparently 😉)
 
Surely the winner must be Bauke Mollema.

No, hang this is the unsung heroes, not the oversung no-marks.

Sorry, my mistake.
 
The Hitch said:
Oh and Cancellara for his heroic effort in keeping Andy in the Tour on the Ardennes stage 🙄
Click to expand...

What about Big Schleck for going down breaking bones just so Andy could get a gap on the cobbles... 🙁
 
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