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2021 Strade Bianche, March 6th

Page 5 - Get up to date with the latest news, scores & standings from the Cycling News Community.
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Is he a time traveller? He only gets the trident a week and a half after Strade.
 
MvdP is obviously a top contender. Last year he was undertrained / underraced and he still got 15th (after a flat).
This year he is even more of a monster. WvA has more (proven) climbing pedigree but not by much, and he comes from a high-altitude training camp.
Still, both WvA and MvdP will be closer to cracking on the very steep slopes, compared to Fuglsang , Pogacar and Alaphilippe.
 
MvdP is obviously a top contender. Last year he was undertrained / underraced and he still got 15th (after a flat).
This year he is even more of a monster. WvA has more (proven) climbing pedigree but not by much, and he comes from a high-altitude training camp.
Still, both WvA and MvdP will be closer to cracking on the very steep slopes, compared to Fuglsang , Pogacar and Alaphilippe.
yep agree.. on the longer climbing strokes mvdp will suffer the most. But if he is still there in Siena no way is he at a disadvantage on a 500m hill vs those guys. MVDP excels at sprinting on <1km ramps.
 
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It's certainly an impressive line-up!

Men:
****Alaphilippe, Van der Poel, Van Aert
***Fuglsang, Pogacar, Asgreen
**Pidcock, Küng, Bettiol, Formolo, Ballerini
*De Marchi, Brambilla, Van Avermaet, Wellens, Valverde, Mas, Bilbao, S. Yates, Bardet, Kwiatkowski, Stybar

Women:
****Van der Breggen
***Van Vleuten, VDB-Blaak, Kopecky (?)
**Bastianelli, Deignan, Uttrup, Vollering,
*Longo Borghini, Guderzo, Niewiadoma, Vos, Lippert

I can't find Kopecky and D'hoore on the current start list, but Kopecky was announced.
 
Alaphilippe himself didn't exactly set the world on fire the only time he climbed via Santa Caterina with a chance to win the race. He followed Van Aert until Fuglsang attacked and then followed him all the way to the top. He outsprinted Fuglsang on the flat part.
Their time up the wall was around 50".

I think we have enough examples of very punchy rider being beaten (or even blown away in some cases) on via Santa Caterina to be aware that anything can happen once they get there.
And i would rate Fuglsang that year higher than i would both van der Poel and van Aert now, when it comes to steep climbs like that.
 
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Perhaps. With Valverde there, I do Hope for a rematch between them.
Every race is a rematch between Woods and the whole peloton.

My stars:
**** * Van Aert
**** Van der Poel, Alaphilippe
*** Fuglsang, Bettiol, Wellens, Stybar, Pogacar
** Pidcock, Formolo, Mollema, GVA, Kwiatkowski, Kung
* Bernal, Valverde, Clarke, Brambilla, Simmons, Ballerini, Madouas, Mohoric
 
Can someone tell me why Pogacar is rated so high here?

If Roglic was more aggressive with his friend he would have dropped him on stage 18 in Le Tour 2020.

I think Roglic should have tried, but I'm not sure he could have.

Why I rate Pogacar very high for this race: Because he can produce insane watts, he's punchy, he can climb, he was there in the finale of LBL, he's in form as shown in UAE. He's not the most skilled, but not bad skilled either.
 

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