Behave...there were many Giro and GT that were very good without Remco
I am looking at Yates, Landa and Almedia to battle INEOS as well as Astana
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Behave...there were many Giro and GT that were very good without Remco
I am looking at Yates, Landa and Almedia to battle INEOS as well as Astana
Red Rick
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Bonimenier
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I think it's low too but you have always been a bit less hot on Carapaz than reality would dictate if I recall correctly.
If you mean Carapaz (I haven’t viewed the exact odds), I would think it’s because he’s won this before, podiumed last year’s Tour, has one of the strongest teams (and throw on Olympic champion if you wanted). No one else has those, especially including the recent podium.
Maybe Contador will officially say something.
oh he is already trying to surprise everyone.
Red Rick
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Reality dictates that people look very much at results and not at all at how these results happened. Just look at who finished below him in the 2020 Vuelta and 2021 Tour.
Yeah, but still. A Giro win followed up by a podium in both Vuelta and Tour the following years is just not as negligible as you make it sound.
Bonimenier
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What a weird thing to say about the Vuelta of 2020. The way how he finished 2nd and how close he came to 1st is more relevant than the fact that he got 2nd that year.
Who finished above him also matters. And non of them is in this race. Literally Kelderman is the guy with the best GT results outside Carapaz in the last 2 years, throw 3 if you want..
That's probably inflating the odds.
The most consistent riders (Kelderman, Almeida) are considered weaker climbers.
The better climbers like Lopez, Landa, Yates... are massive enigmas for various reasons.
Then you have wild cards like Hindley/ Buchmann/Bardet/Dumoulin but none of them showed promise that he can be a threat for Carapaz recently.
Look at the bright side, if you're a betting man, you basically get free money for whoever you think is better than him
.There is 26KM of TT'ing total (with technical/hilly courses), it will likely be almost completely irrelevant to the GC win for a guy at Carapaz' level in TT's, and Carapaz has never been in particularly good form until shortly before the GT he is targeting, he's also the most consistent climber by far of all the top favourites during GT's, which is why he's rated above riders who are very inconsistent but may have done better peak climbing performances (Almeida and Yates).
His result at Catalunya far surpassed my expectations, and anyone who has paid attention to Carapaz' results at stage races over a month out from a GT he's done well at. I'm not sure how someone wouldn't have noticed that fairly obvious pattern.
Excluding races that ended less than two weeks before the GT he was targeting he has recorded:
A 3rd at Coppi Bartali, and 11th in PN in 2018 prior to the Giro
20th at Tirreno Adriatico and 26th in Catalunya in 2019 prior to the Giro
13th at the Tour in 2020 prior to the Vuelta
21st at Catalunya and 19th at Basque (9th at Fleche but not a stage race ofc) in 2021 prior to the Tour
2nd at Catalunya in 2022 prior to the Giro
If anything him climbing that well that far out from the Giro is an extremely positive sign when you consider the rest of the pattern.
I think with Carapaz you'd have to think about who could beat him, assuming of course that he will be on decent form.
And I don't see anyone quite on his level and consistency and with a comparable team. I'm still not convinced about Almeida's climbing and Yates's and Landa's consistency/recover. OTOH I think Bahrain and UAE are coming with strong enough teams that could support Landa or Almeida in pink. Bora to me is a complete wild card. Hindley and Buchmann could top 5 or DNF.
But it's the Giro, so there are a couple of monster stages where huge chunks of time could be taken or lost.
Anyway, I'm really looking forward to Blockhaus, especially as it comes relatively early.
And I don't see anyone quite on his level and consistency and with a comparable team. I'm still not convinced about Almeida's climbing and Yates's and Landa's consistency/recover. OTOH I think Bahrain and UAE are coming with strong enough teams that could support Landa or Almeida in pink. Bora to me is a complete wild card. Hindley and Buchmann could top 5 or DNF.
But it's the Giro, so there are a couple of monster stages where huge chunks of time could be taken or lost.
Anyway, I'm really looking forward to Blockhaus, especially as it comes relatively early.
Red Rick
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Carapaz has good intangibles, but I don't see how he has some sort of default wincondition. I don't think he had any of the top 15 climbing performances last year, and it's not like he has the ITT to win when everyone's super equal. Yates or Lopez could quite conceivably outclimb him. I think even Almeida has displayed higher peak level than Carapaz last year.
When the "likely" win condition is "3 dudes with higher peak levels should all collapse" then I really don't know why someone is the odds on favorite.
I think Carapaz should be the favorite probably yes. But I agree with Red Rick that the margin by which he is made favorite by the bookies is way too high. There are other contenders that have shown the same climbing ability as Carapaz in the past in my opinion. If it was Roglic I would understand, but for me Carapaz isn't that much better than the other contenders.
Guys like Lopez, Landa now even moved up to an odd of 10+ euro's.
Guys like Lopez, Landa now even moved up to an odd of 10+ euro's.
I suppose with Carapaz, he rode 3 GT's in the previous 3 seasons where he didn't have any really bad GC destroying luck, and in those races nobody in this Giro field beat him. That's the logic to his short odds, although admittedly he doesn't 'look' that much better than his rivals.
Depending on how much you devalue Carapaz's performance compared to Pogi because of drafting:
View: https://twitter.com/faustocoppi60/status/1467585136648671233
Red Rick
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I mean primarily relative to opposition and overall circumstances. Otherwise pure W/kg wise Pog on Romme/Colombiere isn't even that crazy and you probably get like 5 dudes from Prati di Tivo in, you get stuff like 4th place on Luz Ardiden being better than Bernal crushing everyon on Giau.
I definitely rate perfromances like Almeida on Sega di Ala or Yates on Alpe di Mera a fair bit higher.
Carapaz is a big favourite because he wins races while every other candidate who is somewhere close to their prime is renowned for finding ways to lose them.
There's lots of people who can beat him. But you'd be hard pressed to pick which individual it's most likely to be
There's lots of people who can beat him. But you'd be hard pressed to pick which individual it's most likely to be
I think the odds are not only about potential (climbing) ability, but also about trust in a rider being able to win a GT.
Yates has won the Vuelta in 2018, but since then, and even in the Giro 2018, he has been very inconsistent during GTs with at least one off-day. So with that in mind, it's clear that people may not expect him to win another GT.
Almeida has shown extreme improvements in last years' Giro and he has been consistently good in the last two years. But there's still a lot of uncertainty about his potential in GTs. Can he reach his climbing form from last year again? Additionally, last year he had nothing to lose after losing a lot of time early in the race, while the other GC guys didn't really have to consider him a threat for the podium anymore. This year everyone will chase him from the beginning.
López has podiumed the Vuelta and Giro, but he was never really close to winning them. He is clearly one of the best climbers when he is at his best (and IMO a better climber than Carapaz), but he also has the tendency to lose way too much time in ITTs, hilly finishes, bad weather, crashes etc. We can add to that that he's probably not the greatest at dealing with a lot of pressure or with setbacks. All that makes it rather unlikely for him to be a GT-winning rider. Do I think that he may win another big mountain stage in this Giro? Hell yeah. Do I believe that he'll ever win a GT? Hell no.
Landa is also a great climber, at times better than Carapaz. But even more than López, he is ill-fated in most of his GTs. He somehow always finds a way to lose a race or even get out of contention early on. Moreover, Landa has never even won a World Tour stage race in his whole career. So it's kind of hard to see him as a Giro winner now.
Of course, anything can happen and any of these guys has the potential to beat Carapaz. But the thing is that all these riders for some reason appear not to be too likely to win the race. While, in contrast, Carapaz has podiumed his last 3 GTs where he made an GC attempt, won the Giro already and also won the Olympic Road Race last year. He may not have as much potential as the others, but he is a winning guy.
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Horner has Carapaz as the favourite, and Almeida and Yates as the two other riders on the podium.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQT_WXhEIhU
Yates one year ago was 3rd, but most important he had a strong third week, also winning one of the most difficult stages.
He's 30 so still perfect for a GT. I really think he will battle for the victory.
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