2016 TdF, Stage 16: Moirans-en-Montagne → Bern (209km)

[Carols]

Re:

Sagan has yet shown he'd even be able to compete at Giro di Lombardia, so he's not even on course of equalling Sean Kelly. Not GOAT just quite yet.. lol. If he's not gonna challenge for GTs he has to at least win all monuments several times to even be close to being considered the GOAT.

I totally agree. He better do all 5 monuments at least 3xs each to even make the short list for GOAT.

 

[CheckMyPecs]

Re:

Sagan has yet shown he'd even be able to compete at Giro di Lombardia, so he's not even on course of equalling Sean Kelly. Not GOAT just quite yet.. lol. If he's not gonna challenge for GTs he has to at least win all monuments several times to even be close to being considered the GOAT.

You can't use palmares alone to compare riders of different eras because the level of the competition has improved over time. Merckx would have never won seven Milan-San Remos if he rode today.

 

[CheckMyPecs]

Re: Re:

Sagan has yet shown he'd even be able to compete at Giro di Lombardia, so he's not even on course of equalling Sean Kelly. Not GOAT just quite yet.. lol. If he's not gonna challenge for GTs he has to at least win all monuments several times to even be close to being considered the GOAT.

I totally agree. He better do all 5 monuments at least 3xs each to even make the short list for GOAT.

Under this criterion not even Merckx would make the "short list".

 

[doperhopper]

Re: Re:

Sagan GOAT? He will not even be close

Merckx, Hinault, Kelly, Anquetil, Van Looy are a level above him.

For sure we talk about different times, but Sagan will never win a GT. And i think it will be really difficult for him to win a race like Lombardia. Especially on last years course.

Sagan is probaby much more talented than all those you mentioned. You can't compare different era's. What Sagan is doing in the modern era is unheard of, which makes a comparison with Merckx not absurd. Anquetil wouldn't make it inside the time limit in a modern Tour.

Anquetil? Really? Hopefully Eddy would make the time limit... yet, even in the darkest era they barely managed to break his Hour record on comparable bike (of course, nobody starting superfast to do also shorter distance records)... and in the "new era" nobody even tried (after all those years of talking about new training methods, nutrition, etc.)... so UCI had to allow aerodoping in order to revive The Hour

 

[yetanothergreenworld]

Re: Re:

Sagan will go down as the GOAT when all is said and done. Scary to think this guy is only 26

Sagan palmares aged 26:
Tour of Flanders
World Championships
Gent-Wevelgem x2
E3 Harelbeke
Brabantse Pijl
GP de Montreal
Tour of Sardinia
Tour of Poland
Tour of California
Tour de France: 7 stages
Tour de France: 5 points classifications
Vuelta a Espana: 4 stages

Merckx palmares aged 26:
Milan-San Remo x4
Tour of Flanders
Paris-Roubaix x2
Liege-Bastogne-Liege x2
Giro di Lombardia
World Championships
Paris-Nice x2
Tour de France: 18 stages
Tour de France: 2 points classifications
Tour de France: 2 mountains classifications
Tour de France: 3 general classifications
Giro d'Italia: 10 individual stages
Giro d'Italia: 1 points classification
Giro d'Italia: 1 mountains classification
Giro d'Italia: 2 general classifications

Hinault palmares aged 26:
Liege-Bastogne-Liege x2
Giro di Lombardia
World Championships
Fleche Wallonne
Gent-Wevelgem
Tour de France: 2 general classifications
TdF: 1 points classification
Giro: 1 GC
Vuelta: 1 GC

Not even close.

You forgot to adjust for era

You're right. Merckx and Hinault's wins came against harder competition.

And, don't forget, in the snow.

 

[Cannibal72]

Re: Re:

Nope. The fact that you can earn a damn good living by becoming a (good) pro these days, automatically increases the overall level. Because of this, many young guys dream of being a pro and they'll do whatever it takes to become one. You can call it simplistic, but it's true.

Firstly, the vast majority of pros don't earn a 'damn good living' at all. The superstars earn more than ever before, but everyone else is on very low wages. On a Conti or even ProConti team? You're lucky to make a living at all, let alone a decent one. Even WT teams' budgets, with one or two obvious exceptions, are startlingly low.

Secondly, the traditional heartlands of cycling - Flanders, Brittany, the Basque Country - were poor regions. Merckx himself, who came from a middle-class family, is something of an exception. Hinault - working on a poor farm from an early age - is far more the rule. Nowadays, thanks to tourism (Brittany), services (Flanders), or EU money (all three), these regions are a hell of a lot richer. Nowhere near as many young riders dream of becoming a pro in the regions which provided the vast majority of the pros in Merckx's or Hinault's day.

(Rather a nice parallel is football. From the 1940s onwards, Scotland provided a huge number of pro footballers, culminating in the famous Lisbon Lions team of '67. Why? Because it was the only way out of poverty in the deprived areas of Glasgow. If you read the reminiscences of players like Matt Busby, they explicitly describe this as their reason for trying to get into football. Now, both Celtic and Scottish football are...a bit weaker. Now the British and Western European leagues are considerably more internationalised. Does this automatically make Messi a better footballer than Cruyff? No.)

No, of course not, but the point is that you CAN earn a very nice living. And you don't have to be Sagan or Froome. Van den Broeck, hardly a super talent, for example made 1 million/year during his peak years.

Even if what you say is true, that more young guys dreamt of being a pro back in the day, how many of them actually had the possibility to train properly? Nowadays you see young guys almost training and living like professionals from a very young age.

And no, it does not automatically mean Messi is a better footballer than Cruijff. I didn't say Sagan is better than Merckx either (it seems like that's what you're hinting at with the Messi-Cruijff comparison), only that the overall level is clearly higher, which is why Sagan can never ever build a palmares like Merckx, even he wás better than Merckx.

I mostly agree with this, to be honest, but I would suggest that the improvements in training don't just apply to cyclists around at the same time as Merckx and Hinault - they apply to them themselves. Hinault had built a clearly superior palmares to Sagan at this age while still turning up to the first training sessions of every year like the lovechild of Carlos Betancur and a spoilt Labrador.

Also, VDB2 is a super talent, and any assertion to the contrary is borderline defamatory.

 

[Carols]

Re: Re:

Sagan has yet shown he'd even be able to compete at Giro di Lombardia, so he's not even on course of equalling Sean Kelly. Not GOAT just quite yet.. lol. If he's not gonna challenge for GTs he has to at least win all monuments several times to even be close to being considered the GOAT.

I totally agree. He better do all 5 monuments at least 3xs each to even make the short list for GOAT.

Under this criterion not even Merckx would make the "short list".

Well Merckx won 11, count them, 11 GTs. Sagan will never win a GT.......

 

[KGB]

He should do only classics and some MTB's races and during a GTs take a holiday.

 

[difdauf]

15:00 Dauphine victory for Anquetil

16:58 Officials finalize the last stage of the Dauphine

17:00 Anquetil completed the award ceremony

17:55 He rushed to a shower

18:20 He got into a Ford Taurus for transfer to the airport in Nimes

18:30 Arriving at the airport, he climbed into an airplane made available by the French Government

18:56 The airplane took off for Bordeaux

19:35 The airplane landed in Bordeaux, quickly he is transferred to a hotel for a brief rest and a Pre-race meal

02:00 (AM!) He is at the start line for the grueling (567km) Bordeaux-Paris

17:03 Bordeaux-Paris victory for anquetil



You can hate Anquetil for lot of reasons, but doubting his endurance or his will seems unfair if you ask me..

 

[Cannibal72]

Re:

15:00 Dauphine victory for Anquetil

16:58 Officials finalize the last stage of the Dauphine

17:00 Anquetil completed the award ceremony

17:55 He rushed to a shower

18:20 He got into a Ford Taurus for transfer to the airport in Nimes

18:30 Arriving at the airport, he climbed into an airplane made available by the French Government

18:56 The airplane took off for Bordeaux

19:35 The airplane landed in Bordeaux, quickly he is transferred to a hotel for a brief rest and a Pre-race meal

02:00 (AM!) He is at the start line for the grueling (567km) Bordeaux-Paris

17:03 Bordeaux-Paris victory for anquetil



You can hate Anquetil for lot of reasons, but doubting his endurance or his will seems unfair if you ask me..

This Tour would be a lot more interesting if Froome prepared with a partridge, champagne, and a woman. No idea how you could hate a guy like that...

 

[DanielSong39]

What in the world was Alaphilippe doing? Why not attack in the final 2-3 km?

 

[carton]

Re:

What in the world was Alaphilippe doing? Why not attack in the final 2-3 km?

Because he lacked the right "mentality".

Or you know, rider's aren't machines. He was on the break killing himself two days straight and following someone like Tony Martin in the flat was going to be hard for him regardless.

https://twitter.com/AleTegner/status/755103267445678082

 

[DanielSong39]

It just seemed like a foolish strategy for Alaphilippe to go into the two-man break, even at the time. The obvious strategy would have been to launch an attack on the cobbles or the hill with 3km to go. Granted, it might not have worked, but it had a better chance than what he did do.

 

[Ruby United]

Re:

Sagan will go down as the GOAT when all is said and done. Scary to think this guy is only 26

Regardless of competition or anything else, this statement is either an extreme hyperbole or you're joking.

Sagan is a million miles from Merckx. Not only will he never come close to dominating like him in ANY race (inluding the classics), he will never win a GT of which Merckx has won 11. He won't even win as many World Championships as Eddy (3) or monuments (of which Merckx won all 5, all together he won 18 monuments). Neither will Sagan ever win as many tour stages (34) and we're forgetting the fact that that he won 525 races and smashed the hour record. And that's just to start! How can you even begin to compare?!
Neither will he be as great as Coppi or Hinault etc.
He's lucky if he makes the top 5 at the end of his career

viewtopic.php?p=1245956#p1245956

 

[carton]

Re:

It just seemed like a foolish strategy for Alaphilippe to go into the two-man break, even at the time. The obvious strategy would have been to launch an attack on the cobbles or the hill with 3km to go. Granted, it might not have worked, but it had a better chance than what he did do.

It's Tony Martin. A lot of the teams were tired. It was too hard for several sprinters and basically only a handful of teams that chased. So it was a good tactical move by Etixx. Had IAM and DD in particular not given it an honest pull they might've had a chance. Alaphilippe is just not strong enough to do what Vanmarcke and the Honey Badger tried to do, and the sprint was to fast for him (see Valverde, Alejandro). An earlier go might've been possible (around the 20km mark), but even then it was a longshot, as Rui Costa proved. The finale was simply not hilly enough. He'd also spent a lot of energy a day earlier. So I do think it was a good move. Their slim chances of success there weren't quite as slim had they done anything else. In any case in the las few Kms the team would've been gearing up for Kittel if he was still there and keeping Martin safe, so Alaphilippe would've likely been on team duty. In any case it didn't matter, he was clearly spent. He barely gave it a few pulls and still couldn't follow the wheel.

 

[DanielSong39]

So the punchy finish wasn't quite punchy enough to favor the puncheurs. Got it.