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Giro d'Italia 2022 Giro d'Italia, Stage 16: Salò – Aprica 202 km (Tuesday, May 24th)

Page 39 - Get up to date with the latest news, scores & standings from the Cycling News Community.
I think Almeida is maybe a little bit too much hyped - not only in this Giro, but in general.

He had some good wins and was in Pink at young age, but others are better.

If Carapaz keeps on losing boni sprints against Hindley, Carapaz will have a problem… ;)

Hindley super good, again. I think Hindley can win this Giro - it‘s just unbelievable… :) He‘s really good.

Of course, the unspectacular and not-really-intimidating-looking Carapaz is absolute world-class, he already has a palmares which makes him a legend. He is still the favourite.

Maybe Carapaz and Hindley will go into the final TT with same time in GC - just like TGH and Hindley in 2020. In 2020, Hindley lost, and in 2022, he would probably lose again.

So Hindley should have a few seconds time gap to Carapaz before this ITT (with Carapaz in 2nd, ofc)…

I know that we are in the age of the Pogacar's, but Almeida is en route to have at 23 years of age 3x top-5s in GTs (considering that last he tied with Martinez for the 5th), potentially a podium this year.

He is not the watts monster that Pogacar is, not even the monster winner that Remco is, but he deserves the credit that he is given. Give him another year or couple of months in the new team to see exactly where he is. He has said many times that this year he is "only" targeting the podium, as still adjusting to the new training methods.
 
I know that we are in the age of the Pogacar's, but Almeida is en route to have at 23 years of age 3x top-5s in GTs (considering that last he tied with Martinez for the 5th), potentially a podium this year.

He is not the watts monster that Pogacar is, not even the monster winner that Remco is, but he deserves the credit that he is given. Give him another year or couple of months in the new team to see exactly where he is. He has said many times that this year he is "only" targeting the podium, as still adjusting to the new training methods.
True, he said to Portuguese press before the start of this Giro That he needs 1 more year of development to be able to fight for the win. He said that at this moment he can only maybe try a podium.
 
The point is that even Almeida thinks he still needs to develop further to be able to fight for the win. Just that. If he, who above everyone else knows himself and his capabilities atm thinks that he isn’t yet good enough to win this year Giro who am I to say the opposite? He clearly stated that his goal this ter is podium and next year yes he thinks that he will be able to fight for the win.
 
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Apparently the level was pretty outrageous today

Totally diferent stages, for one thing they rode up the Stelvio beforehand and for another they went up a less hard ascent of the Mortitolo, where Pantani went alone (not with a train pacing him), before tackling Santa Cristina, plus the bikes these days....
 
Hard to figure out Almeida, he seemed to have the power to stay with the favorites, but literally was always just 10 second behind. You would think it would be a benefit to make a short harder effort to join up and then the pace would naturally get slower.

View: https://twitter.com/OutOfCycling/status/1529115689495281667?s=20&t=reEoQhWQRJbzGnplWav-aQ
He said he didn't have any more to give. Either he is lying or he doesn't know how to dig deep enough.
 
The point is that even Almeida thinks he still needs to develop further to be able to fight for the win. Just that. If he, who above everyone else knows himself and his capabilities atm thinks that he isn’t yet good enough to win this year Giro who am I to say the opposite? He clearly stated that his goal this ter is podium and next year yes he thinks that he will be able to fight for the win.

I just hope UAE can get him a better team for the mountains and that he starts to position himself better during the race. The amount of energy he wastes for no reason is unbelievable.
 
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Apparently the level was pretty outrageous today


It wasn't outrageous. 6.2 w/kg for 36 minutes (or 6.3 w/kg for 22 minutes) are good but not thermonuclear (that would be 6.5 w/kg for about half an hour, which peak Pogacar, Quintana or Roglic could do).

Besides, w/kg isn't pefrect estimator for climbing speed as it's bigger for lighter guys (at the same climbing speed). VAM is better, at least for similar gradients (for different slopes there is a way to compute equivalent). VAM of 1785 m/h on such a steep climb isn't that spectacular: i.e. Pogacar this year had a VAM of almost 1900 m/h on Carpegna (almost the same gradient but a bit shorter).
 
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Congratulation to Jan Hirt for winning the queen stage.

That was some nice racing today. Riders all over the race each plotting some story. I don't know but i somehow feel we could get a surprise this year. In regards to overall. Wiggins couldn't believe he is still as fast as Valverde. The only difference being one on a bike and another one on a motorbike. Most people got Almeida all wrong today. It's not that he chased Landa, Carapaz and Hindley. By the way they not being able to drop him but only distancing him is rather amazing. Anyway it's he was trying to get away from a shark! One of these day Carthy will win a stage.
 
It wasn't outrageous. 6.2 w/kg for 36 minutes (or 6.3 w/kg for 22 minutes) are good but not thermonuclear (that would be 6.5 w/kg for about half an hour, which peak Pogacar, Quintana or Roglic could do).

Besides, w/kg isn't pefrect estimator for climbing speed as it's bigger for lighter guys (at the same climbing speed). VAM is better, at least for similar gradients (for different slopes there is a way to compute equivalent). VAM of 1785 m/h on such a steep climb isn't that spectacular: i.e. Pogacar this year had a VAM of almost 1900 m/h on Carpegna (almost the same gradient but a bit shorter).
Apparently the level was pretty outrageous today

This is a hard one to interpret honestly, because it's reall hard to estimate how accumulated fatigue affects climbing times, but I tend to think that because both Croce Domini and Mortirolo both clearly went below threshold I think it's probably not as important as many think. I think fatigue just really hits the riders that have to go on the limit on previous climbs, so by the final climb the gaps get huge. In this case, Teglio at 6.2 W/kg was significant cause quite some GC riders did Sante Cristina slower than the breakaway.

Another example I know where this happened is when Quintana broke the Galibier record. The peloton behind him drilled the Izoard, and Bernal dropped everyone on the Galibier but he was still half a minute slower than Quintana on the Galibier that day.

Secondly, Sante Cristina is very low altitude for a climb of this caliber, and you never see this taken into account in these performance curves.

Finally, there's a lot of unknown variables or variables that also don't really get taken into account. Often the highest W/kg on a performance curve of a rider isn't even a riders best result in a race. For Almeida for example, Sega di Ala, by far his best climbing result in a GT, is below average on the performance curves.
 
It wasn't outrageous. 6.2 w/kg for 36 minutes (or 6.3 w/kg for 22 minutes) are good but not thermonuclear (that would be 6.5 w/kg for about half an hour, which peak Pogacar, Quintana or Roglic could do).

Besides, w/kg isn't pefrect estimator for climbing speed as it's bigger for lighter guys (at the same climbing speed). VAM is better, at least for similar gradients (for different slopes there is a way to compute equivalent). VAM of 1785 m/h on such a steep climb isn't that spectacular: i.e. Pogacar this year had a VAM of almost 1900 m/h on Carpegna (almost the same gradient but a bit shorter).
Pogacar best performance in 36 min was prati di tivo, 6.3 w/kg, in a stage with less than 5000 m vertical meters, and it wasn´t after 16 stages. It was a unbeliavable performance today.
 
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I just hope UAE can get him a better team for the mountains and that he starts to position himself better during the race. The amount of energy he wastes for no reason is unbelievable.
Let’s see what’s ahead because looking at UAE team in this Giro it’s clear that they also didn’t believe that Almeida could win it. The only rider that could be with Almeida in the mountains is Formolo that was allowed to chase a stage win in the first week and therefore burning himself to a point that now Almeida is all by himself in the last climbs in all stages. If today he had just one rider to close that gap to Hindley, Landa and Carapaz he would be able to sprint with Hindley and Carapaz for the bónus. I really think that he is doing an amazing job all by himself constantly closing The gaps and as we saw today being a target for those 3. Funny how they worked together alternating pulls and looking back to check if Almeida was being left behind.
 
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Let’s see what’s ahead because looking at UAE team in this Giro it’s clear that they also didn’t believe that Almeida could win it. The only rider that could be with Almeida in the mountains is Formolo that was allowed to chase a stage win in the first week and therefore burning himself to a point that now Almeida is all by himself in the last climbs in all stages. If today he had just one rider to close that gap to Hindley, Landa and Carapaz he would be able to sprint with Hindley and Carapaz for the bónus. I really think that he is doing an amazing job all by himself constantly closing The gaps and as we saw today being a target for those 3. Funny how they worked together alternating pulls and looking back to check if Almeida was being left behind.
Do you think that Formolo would be likely to be with the 4 GC contenders after every other climbing dom from every other team has been shredded under any circumstances? Do you really think that the only reason Formolo does not outclimb Bilbao/Buitrago/Poels, Keldermann/Buchmann/Kamna, Sivakov/Porte is an effort 9 days earlier?
What previous mountain domming performance by Formolo do you base this on?
 
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Do you think that Formolo would be likely to be with the 4 GC contenders after every other climbing dom from every other team has been shredded under any circumstances? Do you really think that the only reason Formolo does not outclimb Bilbao/Buitrago/Poels, Keldermann/Buchmann/Kamna, Sivakov/Porte is an effort 9 days earlier?
What previous mountain domming performance by Formolo do you base this on?

first of all he should be with Almeida at least untill the last climb starts.
He spent unnecessary energies not only at stage 9. Did you see him on breaks and doing efforts only at stage 9? You are kidding right?
I speak of Formolo not because he is an amazing mountain domestique but just because he is at this Giro UAE team the best domestique for the mountains from them all.
 

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