2015 Top 15 GC Riders for Grand Tours

[lemon cheese cake]

Quintana
Mollema
Bardet
Froome
Contador
Aru
Uran
Nibali
TJVG
Rolland
Bardet
Valverde
Pinot
Zubeldia
Peraud
Talansky

Dont necerserely agree about him being top, but he is above Froome Bardet and Mollema

 

[LaFlorecita]

Dont necerserely agree about him being top, but he is above Froome Bardet and Mollema

Mollema and Bardet better than Froome and Contador

 

[Dekker_Tifosi]

I think it is in random order, clearly

a man (or woman, in laflo's case) with half a brain would get that.

 

[phil-i-am]

Mollema and Bardet better than Froome and Contador

Better, Bardet better than Bardet !

 

[Akuryo]

Mollema and Bardet better than Froome and Contador

Better, Bardet better than Bardet !

Bardet surely must be so awesome, that he has to be named twice. Just like Rigoberto Uran Uran.

 

[lemon cheese cake]

Mollema and Bardet better than Froome and Contador

Better, Bardet better than Bardet !

Who is Better Bardet? Is he the brother of Romain?

 

[Tonton]

Re: Re:

Actually, I wonder if I should not have put Nairo at #1: with a course like this, he's the man to beat at the TdF IMO. But I can smell his team disintegrating when Piti plays his own card.

And when exactly Valverde played against Quintana? I remember he helped him couple of times, but not a single time he rode against Quintana and only for himself!

You will see my friend, you will see. Nairo goes there to win, Piti was clear that he'll go for a podium, to me that's one agenda too many...

 

[HelloDolly]

The only 4 possible current GT champions are Contador , Froome , Quintana & Nibali....

After that its a matter of podium & riding for GT where the above 4 are not competing or crash ,etc

Of the rest for me the best are in order of merit...Pinot, Purito,Valverde, , JVdB ,Aru, Uran, TJVG &Talansky

Everyone else mentioned in lists above can be in places 5 to 10 depending on form and who else turns up

I think Pinot is a very good prospect and for me the best of the young guns with Aru not far behind...This is based on climbing ability , improvement in TT , mental strength, physical strength, etc

Porte of course could prove me wrong at the Giro ...time will tell

 

[LaFlorecita]

Re:

I think it is in random order, clearly

a man (or woman, in laflo's case) with half a brain would get that.

Well thanks mate!

 

[Gigs_98]

1.Contador
2.Quintana
3.Froome
4.Nibali
5.Valverde
6.Aru
7.Uran
8.Rodriguez
9.Mollema
10.Porte
11.Pinot
12.TJVG
13.Peraud
14.Majka
15.Pozzovivo
I have to say that I only put Contador on Nr. 1 because I think he is the strongest but I don't think he will win the tour because he will have the giro in his legs. On a normal GT I would also say that Froome is as strong as Quintana but there is no big TT at this years tour so it looks a little bit better for Quintana

 

[Hugo Koblet]

I tried making a comprehensive list using the most – the only? – fair method of comparison: looking at the rider’s actual results. However, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense looking at old results so I narrowed it down to the last three years. Of course a ranking such at this one also has a lot of subjectivism in it. For instance, how highly do you weight consistency versus a one-of podium? How highly do you rate 2014 results as opposed to 2012 results? Anyway, this is my try.

The big 4:

Contador:
2012: 1st Vuelta
2013: 4th Tour
2014: DNF Tour, 1st Vuelta

Froome:
2012: 2nd Tour, 4th Vuelta
2013: 1st Tour
2014: DNF Tour, 2nd Vuelta

Nibali:
2012: 3rd Tour
2013: 1st Giro, 2nd Vuelta
2014: 1st Tour

Quintana:
2012: 36th Vuelta
2013: 2nd Tour
2014: 1st Giro, DNF Vuelta

Based on this, I think it’s pretty clear that top 4 is:

1. Nibali
2. Froome
3. Contador
4. Quintana

The not-so-big 5:

Valverde:
2012: 20th Tour, 2nd Vuelta
2013: 8th Tour, 3rd Vuelta
2014: 4th Tour, 3rd Vuelta

Uran:
2012: 7th Giro, 29th Vuelta
2013: 2nd Giro, 27th Vuelta
2014: 2nd Giro, DNF Vuelta

Jrod:
2012: 2nd Giro, 3rd Vuelta
2013: 3rd Tour, 4th Vuelta
2014: 54th Tour, 4th Vuelta

Pinot:
2012: 10th Tour
2013: DNF Tour, 7th Vuelta
2014: 3rd Tour, DNF Vuelta

Aru:
2012: -
2013: 41st Giro
2014: 3rd Giro, 5th Vuelta

Now it starts getting hard but In my opinion it’s:

5. Valverde
6. Jrod
7. Uran
8. Pinot
9. Aru

From here on it gets a lot more difficult as you could argue for any of these 11 riders for the next 6 spots:

Pozzovivo:
2012: 8th Giro
2013: 9th Giro, 6th Vuelta
2014: 5th Giro

Kelderman:
2012: -
2013: 16th Giro
2014: 7th Giro, 14th Vuelta

Konig:
2012: -
2013: 9th Vuelta
2014: 7th Tour

TJVG:
2012: 5th Tour
2013: 45th Tour
2014: 5th Tour

Peraud:
2012: 44th Tour
2013: DNF Tour
2014: 2nd Tour

Rolland:
2012: 8th Tour
2013: 24th Tour
2014: 4th Giro, 11th Tour

Bardet:
2012: -
2013: 15th Tour
2014: 6th Tour

Majka:
2012: 32nd Vuelta
2013: 7th Giro, 19th Vuelta
2014: 6th Giro, 44th Tour

Hesjedal:
2012: 1st Giro, DNF Tour
2013: DNF Giro, 70th Tour
2014: 9th Giro, 24th Vuelta

Zubeldia:
2012: 6th Tour
2013: 36th Tour, DNF Vuelta
2014: 8th Tour, DNF Vuelta

Mollema:
2012: DNF Tour, 28th Vuelta
2013: 6th Tour, 52nd Vuelta
2014: 10th Tour

I think that Pozzovivo, Peraud and TJVG definitely deserve a spot but the last three are much harder.

10. Pozzovivo
11. Peraud
12. TJVG

In my opinion the last three spots go to:

13. Rolland
14. Konig
15. Mollema

What do you think?

 

[LaFlorecita]

If you only look at the results, then yes, that is a fair list. However, results don't tell the whole story.

 

[Hugo Koblet]

Re:

If you only look at the results, then yes, that is a fair list. However, results don't tell the whole story.

Perhaps not, but it's the only comparable criteria.

 

[LaFlorecita]

Re: Re:

If you only look at the results, then yes, that is a fair list. However, results don't tell the whole story.

Perhaps not, but it's the only comparable criteria.

You can also just make a list based on who you think is strongest it's always going to be subjective, do you use the last 3 years? 5 years? 2 years? And how much more important is the TDF compared to the other 2 GTs? Is a podium at the TDF better than a Vuelta win? But props to you for trying to come up with an objective ranking system now my question is: do you agree with your ranking?

 

[Mr.White]

Re: Re:

If you only look at the results, then yes, that is a fair list. However, results don't tell the whole story.

Perhaps not, but it's the only comparable criteria.

You can also just make a list based on who you think is strongest it's always going to be subjective, do you use the last 3 years? 5 years? 2 years? And how much more important is the TDF compared to the other 2 GTs? Is a podium at the TDF better than a Vuelta win? But props to you for trying to come up with an objective ranking system now my question is: do you agree with your ranking?

No way

 

[Gigs_98]

Re: Re:

If you only look at the results, then yes, that is a fair list. However, results don't tell the whole story.

Perhaps not, but it's the only comparable criteria.

Not really, because although nibali was two times first and one time second in a gt of the last two years, none of the other big four finished in one of those three races. So you cannot really compare nibali with the other three. I think the better way is to give points for different placements. For tdf you get 4, 3 and 2 points (for the first, the second and the third place) for the giro and the vuelta you get 3, 2 and 1 points In addition to that you get one point for every other one of the big four you beat (it doesn't count that contador bet quintana in the vuelta 2012 because you can't compare the quintana from 2012 with the quintana of 2014). Then you multiply the points from 2013 with 1,5 and the results from 2014 with 2
I think the result is still garbage but at least I tried to calculate it . If I calculated correctly this is the result:
Nibali wins with 17,5 points
Froome is just 0,5 points behind Nibali (so I think you can also say a draw between these two)
Contador and Quintana both have 12 points