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Teams & Riders Alberto Contador Discussion Thread

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Re: Re:

LaFlorecita said:
damian13ster said:
You were the one who brought up Froome (deleting quotation from your own post not to show that). I just responded to your post. I understand though, you might be pretty annoyed now and logical thinking is clearly not your strongest suit
Lol I always delete the quotes because it becomes a mess otherwise. Don't spread lies about me.
To the bolded, how nice of you to show the entire forum what kind of person you really are. A pathetic one.

edited: don't link personal twitter accounts to a member.
 
Well, slightly more concerned than I was, but still early days. He does seem to lack racing rhythm. Froome is clearly on good form, and I'm not sure he'll lose a lot tomorrow.

But I do agree - there is now a tendency that somehow unless AC excels on absolutely every stage, and beats all his GC foes, he's off form and unlikely to find it.

On a more annoying note for me, my bitching insurance company has tried to back levy £30 and so I have to sort that out before I can frigging get to France, which was supposed to be tomorrow.
 
You might be right Jspear. And I also will admit if my prediction is wrong. I dont believe though that any GC rider other than Nibali is going to be optimistic for tommorow though. And professional rider is not going to crash by himself (unless acting stupidly like taking both hands off the bar in risky situations), and I am sure they can all keep a straight line of racing if not putting in a massive acceleration. Because of that, his strength on the flat, good domestiques, I believe he will be fine unless other rider takes him out or if there is mechanical.
Same for Contador, except that he looks weaker.
 
Re: Re:

dacooley said:
LaFlorecita said:
damian13ster said:
You were the one who brought up Froome (deleting quotation from your own post not to show that). I just responded to your post. I understand though, you might be pretty annoyed now and logical thinking is clearly not your strongest suit
Lol I always delete the quotes because it becomes a mess otherwise. Don't spread lies about me.
To the bolded, how nice of you to show the entire forum what kind of person you really are. A pathetic one.
but everyone knows what a kind person you are :p

\
Please delete that link.
 
Jul 5, 2010
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Re:

damian13ster said:
You might be right Jspear. And I also will admit if my prediction is wrong. I dont believe though that any GC rider other than Nibali is going to be optimistic for tommorow though. And professional rider is not going to crash by himself (unless acting stupidly like taking both hands off the bar in risky situations), and I am sure they can all keep a straight line of racing if not putting in a massive acceleration. Because of that, his strength on the flat, good domestiques, I believe he will be fine unless other rider takes him out or if there is mechanical.
Same for Contador, except that he looks weaker.

I wouldn't be so sure about them all not crashing. There will be crashes tomorrow. Question is just who crashes and where. Just look at PR itself, always people crashing and that is without GC riders being forced over the cobbles.
 
Re:

damian13ster said:
You might be right Jspear. And I also will admit if my prediction is wrong. I dont believe though that any GC rider other than Nibali is going to be optimistic for tommorow though. And professional rider is not going to crash by himself (unless acting stupidly like taking both hands off the bar in risky situations), and I am sure they can all keep a straight line of racing if not putting in a massive acceleration. Because of that, his strength on the flat, good domestiques, I believe he will be fine unless other rider takes him out or if there is mechanical.
Same for Contador, except that he looks weaker.

Then you understand very little about professional cycling on cobbles where it is very easy to crash without doing anything stupid and that is not even taking into account there are app 100 riders around you that can fall without doing anything stupid and you still might have a few cowboys who will doing something stupid.
 
Re:

bajbar said:
This was terrible. Contador blew up completely when Purito went, and then everyone passed him like he was standing still. He has to improve massively to just be able to keep up with them, let alone beat them. I am really afraid that my 21 favorite days in the year will once again turn into 21 days of dissapointments. It has been 4 years since AC dominated a GT (Giro 2011). I though this might be the year. I won't say he cannot win, because Froome could easily crash tommorow (even though he looks much more solid than last year) and with Contador you never now, but he won't be smokin them in the mountains winning with a minute gap, sadly. I just don't want another 2013 Tour because that was just sad...
Alberto was never going to dominate this race. He still has a good chance to win. He'll get better.
 
Re: Re:

GJB123 said:
damian13ster said:
You might be right Jspear. And I also will admit if my prediction is wrong. I dont believe though that any GC rider other than Nibali is going to be optimistic for tommorow though. And professional rider is not going to crash by himself (unless acting stupidly like taking both hands off the bar in risky situations), and I am sure they can all keep a straight line of racing if not putting in a massive acceleration. Because of that, his strength on the flat, good domestiques, I believe he will be fine unless other rider takes him out or if there is mechanical.
Same for Contador, except that he looks weaker.

Then you understand very little about professional cycling on cobbles where it is very easy to crash without doing anything stupid and that is not even taking into account there are app 100 riders around you that can fall without doing anything stupid and you still might have a few cowboys who will doing something stupid.
I took that into account.
We will see tommorow. I just think mechanical/someone taking Froome out is the bigger worry than him not matching Contador/Quintana 1 on 1 on cobbles in both pure strength and even bike handling
 

rm7

Mar 14, 2015
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I have no doubt that the plan for Contador is to be better and better during the tour, but the question is simply; will he be any better with the fatigue, and if "yes", how much stronger will he be?

I also don't like the way he tends to blow himself up. Sometimes he should just let go, and then pace himself, so he can loose even less.

I'll be really sad if it'll be 2013 in the mountains.
 
Re: Re:

LaFlorecita said:
bajbar said:
This was terrible. Contador blew up completely when Purito went, and then everyone passed him like he was standing still. He has to improve massively to just be able to keep up with them, let alone beat them. I am really afraid that my 21 favorite days in the year will once again turn into 21 days of dissapointments. It has been 4 years since AC dominated a GT (Giro 2011). I though this might be the year. I won't say he cannot win, because Froome could easily crash tommorow (even though he looks much more solid than last year) and with Contador you never now, but he won't be smokin them in the mountains winning with a minute gap, sadly. I just don't want another 2013 Tour because that was just sad...
Alberto was never going to dominate this race. He still has a good chance to win. He'll get better.

This exactly. Last year was about bossing the race in the mountains but he basically never got far enough to show whether he could do that. This year is more about Giro-esque performances and hanging in there. I still think his team and he will do a killer TTT.
 
Jul 29, 2012
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One thing going for him is that he blew himself up following froome, he would hae easily stayed with nibali group otherwise
 
Re: Re:

damian13ster said:
GJB123 said:
damian13ster said:
You might be right Jspear. And I also will admit if my prediction is wrong. I dont believe though that any GC rider other than Nibali is going to be optimistic for tommorow though. And professional rider is not going to crash by himself (unless acting stupidly like taking both hands off the bar in risky situations), and I am sure they can all keep a straight line of racing if not putting in a massive acceleration. Because of that, his strength on the flat, good domestiques, I believe he will be fine unless other rider takes him out or if there is mechanical.
Same for Contador, except that he looks weaker.

Then you understand very little about professional cycling on cobbles where it is very easy to crash without doing anything stupid and that is not even taking into account there are app 100 riders around you that can fall without doing anything stupid and you still might have a few cowboys who will doing something stupid.
I took that into account.
We will see tommorow. I just think mechanical/someone taking Froome out is the bigger worry than him not matching Contador/Quintana 1 on 1 on cobbles in both pure strength and even bike handling

It is the bike handling part that you are getting wrong. Making corners at speed on cobbles (even if they are dry) requires a Herculean effort for someone with the bike handling skills (or lack thereof) of Froome. Sure he can stay upright as long as he slows down enough, but don't believe for a second that especially Nibali and but also AC will slow down to accommodate for Froome. Both have superb confidence in their bike handling skills, something Froome quite rightly hasn't.
 

rm7

Mar 14, 2015
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Re: Re:

GJB123 said:
LaFlorecita said:
bajbar said:
This was terrible. Contador blew up completely when Purito went, and then everyone passed him like he was standing still. He has to improve massively to just be able to keep up with them, let alone beat them. I am really afraid that my 21 favorite days in the year will once again turn into 21 days of dissapointments. It has been 4 years since AC dominated a GT (Giro 2011). I though this might be the year. I won't say he cannot win, because Froome could easily crash tommorow (even though he looks much more solid than last year) and with Contador you never now, but he won't be smokin them in the mountains winning with a minute gap, sadly. I just don't want another 2013 Tour because that was just sad...
Alberto was never going to dominate this race. He still has a good chance to win. He'll get better.

This exactly. Last year was about bossing the race in the mountains but he basically never got far enough to show whether he could do that. This year is more about Giro-esque performances and hanging in there. I still think his team and he will do a killer TTT.

Killer TTT or not, if he doesn't really improve he'll loose around a minute on each MTF.
 
Jun 9, 2010
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Re:

Taxus4a said:
Contador is the clever rider of the peloton and who better use his strong team, but he should start to understand that although he is young, at least younger than Purito, he cant follow in this new era to better people as Landa or Froome, that way if he doesnt try to follow stronger people than him, he would lose less time and a meritable podium could be for him if he has luck with crashes and problems...

New era? Froome 30yo, do you know? New era is Quintana and Aru, they are leaders, dont put them in the same bag as a domestique like Landa. ;)
 
Re: Re:

Jspear said:
damian13ster said:
So? He saved his strength and gained time to all 3 of his rivals in the flat stage. He will do the same tommorow (except for Nibali). All he has to do is follow Astana/Etixx and Quintana + likely Contador judging by his perfomances so far will be gone.
He doesn't actually have to attack on the cobbles to gain time on them...
Well he has to follow them to not lose time. That's where he'll have trouble imo. I think Nibbes and AC will do better than him. You heard it here first. Sagan will be in yellow tomorrow and AC will be ahead of Froome in the GC. :p

I think if Sagan was allowed to go then he would be in yellow, although I am curious on how Martin will perform. He has the engine, weight, bike handling....
But afraid that Sagan will be asked to babysit Contador so yellow for him is unlikely.
How is Contador going to pass Froome other than mechanical/crash for the latter? Froome has great domestiques for the cobbles and shown to be stronger rider atm.

I just think he'll suck on the cobbles. He doesn't like them and even that mentality will bleed into how he performs, imo. Hey if I'm wrong I'll be the first to admit it. I just think AC is a better bike handler/racer and will be able to take time on him in a stage like tomorrow.

I personally would be shocked if anyone apart from Nibali gains time on Froome tomorrow tbh
 
Re:

Miburo said:
One thing going for him is that he blew himself up following froome, he would hae easily stayed with nibali group otherwise

This was my own impression. Contador instinctively wants to follow Froome's wheel. Today that got him in big trouble, since Froome was on exceptionally good form today. I didn't expect Froome to still be near the front all the way to the top of the Mur. No one was going to be able to follow that, save Purito, who is a bit of a specialist in these scenarios.
 
Re: Re:

PremierAndrew said:
Jspear said:
damian13ster said:
So? He saved his strength and gained time to all 3 of his rivals in the flat stage. He will do the same tommorow (except for Nibali). All he has to do is follow Astana/Etixx and Quintana + likely Contador judging by his perfomances so far will be gone.
He doesn't actually have to attack on the cobbles to gain time on them...
Well he has to follow them to not lose time. That's where he'll have trouble imo. I think Nibbes and AC will do better than him. You heard it here first. Sagan will be in yellow tomorrow and AC will be ahead of Froome in the GC. :p

I think if Sagan was allowed to go then he would be in yellow, although I am curious on how Martin will perform. He has the engine, weight, bike handling....
But afraid that Sagan will be asked to babysit Contador so yellow for him is unlikely.
How is Contador going to pass Froome other than mechanical/crash for the latter? Froome has great domestiques for the cobbles and shown to be stronger rider atm.

I just think he'll suck on the cobbles. He doesn't like them and even that mentality will bleed into how he performs, imo. Hey if I'm wrong I'll be the first to admit it. I just think AC is a better bike handler/racer and will be able to take time on him in a stage like tomorrow.

I personally would be shocked if anyone apart from Nibali gains time on Froome tomorrow tbh

Prepare to be shocked. :eek: :p
 
Jun 9, 2010
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Today showed that the Dawg came into the race in very good form, Contador just arrived to the race with no racing at all and his base form is kinda low also, He should be improving form if everything goes as planned tho, He is motivated so is not like 2013 again... I just want him to hold the wheels for his dear life until He gets better form
 
Feb 21, 2014
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Contador will win this race, I'm still convinced. Too much evidence ;)

Keep those haters posts in your mind guys, it will be time to quote them later in the race :D
 
Re: Re:

Aristarchus said:
Miburo said:
One thing going for him is that he blew himself up following froome, he would hae easily stayed with nibali group otherwise

This was my own impression. Contador instinctively wants to follow Froome's wheel. Today that got him in big trouble, since Froome was on exceptionally good form today. I didn't expect Froome to still be near the front all the way to the top of the Mur. No one was going to be able to follow that, save Purito, who is a bit of a specialist in these scenarios.

If I remember correctly AC tried to cover the move (moved out of the wheel of Froome to left side of the road) by Purito and then blew up. A bit overoptimistic on his part as he is well aware that Purito is much better at these kinds of finishes. But Froome did look mighty strong today, so it doesn't bode well if AC doesn't up his game somewhere in the next week or so.
 
Jul 1, 2013
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Re:

BlurryVII said:
Contador will win this race, I'm still convinced. Too much evidence ;)

Keep those haters posts in your mind guys, it will be time to quote them later in the race :D

Hope you are right !
 
Re: Re:

Aristarchus said:
Miburo said:
One thing going for him is that he blew himself up following froome, he would hae easily stayed with nibali group otherwise

This was my own impression. Contador instinctively wants to follow Froome's wheel. Today that got him in big trouble, since Froome was on exceptionally good form today. I didn't expect Froome to still be near the front all the way to the top of the Mur. No one was going to be able to follow that, save Purito, who is a bit of a specialist in these scenarios.
Indeed, and I doubt Contador is already in top shape. He barely trained between the Giro and the Tour.