Red Rick said:
About the spring. For the last 10 years the spring has been a good indicator for Contador's shape in the GT's he rides. That's not so much the case for Froome, Quintana or Nibali. Some of his rides in the spring were as good or almost as good as in his best years. The Dauphine is hard to compare to previous years because of better competition, because Froome didn't crash out this time and because frankly blowing up on Vaujani or whatever the climb was is a lot easier than on Col du Beal, which isn't more than 6%. The competition beside Froome in the Dauphine was a lot stronger this year. For the rest of the Dauphine, he basically got better by the day, and he got rid of the Sky Train on the Noyer.
From the Tour you can't draw any conclusions at all, as the crashes had happened before any GC stage were ridden. As for the Vuelta, the assumption that's made is that he left the Tour in the same shape as in 2014, and at a similar moment in the Tour. I'm inclinded to disagree with that. He rode around with an injuries for over a week. He rode around in a Tour peloton when his body needed the energy to recover. You don't hold your shape doing that. So I used more energy in those 9 stages of the Tour than he did in the 10 stages he started in 2014, and came out in worse shape. Then there's a difference in injury, bone vs muscle, and for condition, there's an argument that muscle injuries are worse if they have the same recovery time. How much worse we don't know. Also, coming out the Tour with worse shape en more fatigue, recovery is worse. yada yada yada.
All in all, I don't think this Vuelta is enough to say that Contador is past it. Spring was good, I think the Dauphine was ok, Tour means nothing, and the Vuelta is a rather complicated matter with all that has happend is since landing on a traffic island somewhere in north-western France in early July. Now I am a fan of the guy, and I all hope this is true, but I'm just trying to put the pieces together here.
I'll wait for the spring of 2017 at least before writing him off. If that's good, I'll wait for the GT's of 2017, and even if he fails, I'll be shouting at my television screen when he attacks from 50km out because he can rather than because it's a good choice.
Well, the spring was pretty bad in my opinion. He finished 3rd in Algarve behind Thomas and Ion. Was behind a guy like Pinot in the TT. Was far behind at Alto Foia, outside the top 20. Only Malhao was good. All in all his worst Algarve ever.
After that he rode Paris-Nice. An average Prologue at the beginning. At the one and only MTF he was not able to hold the wheels of Thomas and Zakarin. A great show at the last stage, but not able to drop a guy like Porte and only gained 5 secs to a really bad Thomas at this day.
The next race was Catalunya. At the Queen-stage at Port Aine he was dropped clearly by Quintana and lost the race there.
At Pais Vasco he was not able to drop Henao a week long. Only one amazing TT brought him the win. With 12 seconds to Henao in GC...
After that there is standing a 5th place at Dauphine behind guys like Bardet, Porte and Dan Martin. And a blow off at the first Uphill finish.
Compare this with the spring of 2014 were he won Tirreno with over 2 Minutes!!!! in front of Quintana, won Pais Vasco easily and destroyed all others at the first stage, only lost Catalunya because of the uphill sprints to Purito, finished Dauphine at 2nd place only because he was riding without a team at the last stage. Not mentioned his awesome spring in 2010. So the spring 2016 was pretty average in my opinion.
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