Teams & Riders Alberto Contador Discussion Thread

[Jancouver]

Perfect scenario for Bert. All he got to do is follow Porte's wheel and gain few seconds sprinting by Porte every time Sky/Porte does all the work and drags Alberto to the finish line. That should give him enough buffer for the TT. Game over for Porte IMO

 

[ray j willings]

Bertie looks good on TT bike. You could see why he beat Froome in the TT this year.

Follow Porte's wheel ,,,Bertie will be gone in to the distance
Seriously Porte has never been a contender for GT and can never get near a on form Bertie. Its just massive wishful thinking.
No silly mishaps for Bertie and this Giro is all over.
He looks sharp.

 

[sir fly]

Hello folks,
Just came to brag about my avatar

 

[LaFlorecita]

Re:

Hello folks,
Just came to brag about my avatar

Lol
This reminds me I can change my avatar

 

[Netserk]

I thought you already knew that, but had become so fond of it that you didn't want to

 

[Red Rick]

Nothing trumps Ryo's old Andy avatar

 

[GuyIncognito]

RAI showed the highlits a little while ago, and so I got to see the whole 'Contador and Basso get dropped' shenanigan again, but with a bit more preceding footage.

What I saw was impressive. A rider does his turn on the front and, tired, moves off. Then he has to re-accelerate to a higher speed than the team to get back on. That second effort is exhausting and is almost always when someone gets dropped. Contador took his pull, swung off, accelerated onto Basso's wheel. Then Basso exploded and lost the wheel of whoever was ahead. Contador accelerated yet again and swung around Basso to get up to the team.

If he's being truthful about not being at 100%, he's going to be scary when he is.

 

[LaFlorecita]

Nice GuyIncognito! Nothing to worry about it seems by the way Berto looks so relaxed, it makes me happy, I really believe he loves the Giro

 

[Flamin]

Re:

RAI showed the highlits a little while ago, and so I got to see the whole 'Contador and Basso get dropped' shenanigan again, but with a bit more preceding footage.

What I saw was impressive. A rider does his turn on the front and, tired, moves off. Then he has to re-accelerate to a higher speed than the team to get back on. That second effort is exhausting and is almost always when someone gets dropped. Contador took his pull, swung off, accelerated onto Basso's wheel. Then Basso exploded and lost the wheel of whoever was ahead. Contador accelerated yet again and swung around Basso to get up to the team.

If he's being truthful about not being at 100%, he's going to be scary when he is.

This never happened.

 

[Miburo]

First big stage is on tuesday.

Contador has by far the best team too. Kreuziger and rogers look amazing

 

[LaFlorecita]

Re: Re:

RAI showed the highlits a little while ago, and so I got to see the whole 'Contador and Basso get dropped' shenanigan again, but with a bit more preceding footage.

What I saw was impressive. A rider does his turn on the front and, tired, moves off. Then he has to re-accelerate to a higher speed than the team to get back on. That second effort is exhausting and is almost always when someone gets dropped. Contador took his pull, swung off, accelerated onto Basso's wheel. Then Basso exploded and lost the wheel of whoever was ahead. Contador accelerated yet again and swung around Basso to get up to the team.

If he's being truthful about not being at 100%, he's going to be scary when he is.

This never happened.

Did you see the highlights GuyIncognito mentions?

 

[Flamin]

Re: Re:

RAI showed the highlits a little while ago, and so I got to see the whole 'Contador and Basso get dropped' shenanigan again, but with a bit more preceding footage.

What I saw was impressive. A rider does his turn on the front and, tired, moves off. Then he has to re-accelerate to a higher speed than the team to get back on. That second effort is exhausting and is almost always when someone gets dropped. Contador took his pull, swung off, accelerated onto Basso's wheel. Then Basso exploded and lost the wheel of whoever was ahead. Contador accelerated yet again and swung around Basso to get up to the team.

If he's being truthful about not being at 100%, he's going to be scary when he is.

This never happened.

Did you see the highlights GuyIncognito mentions?

No, I assumed he was talking about the incident we all saw on TV. Is there a link?

 

[qwer]

guys, this giro is in the bag... no chances for aru, uran and porte against contador, IMO even kreuziger will be better than these guys

 

[SeriousSam]

Great day for Contador all things considered but I didn't expect him to be dropped in stage 1 already.

 

[bigcog]

Re:

Great day for Contador all things considered but I didn't expect him to be dropped in stage 1 already.

Yes he's was struggling wasn't he. He needs Froome there to follow Looks like Porte, Aru, and Uran are going to kick his a** Nevermind, he can concentrate on coming in the top 10 in the TDF from now on

 

[ILovecycling]

Re:

Hello folks,
Just came to brag about my avatar

nice one sir



Congrats saxo fot great ttt

 

[Ataraxus]

Barring mishaps, this giro seems in the bag indeed. Even if Porte is on par with Contador in the mountains (very doubtful he'll be better), Sky don't seem to have an attack strategy which can drastically reshape the GC.
In fact they have exhibited only 2 strategies this far. 1-the Sky Train and 2-the one-by-one mini attacks like in Ruta del Sol.
Both of them are strategies which are applied at the last climb(not very hard last climbs at this Giro) and both of them cannot shake Contador if he's ahead in GC.
With 4 stages having the penultimate climbs as the hardest of the day (Daone, Mortirolo, Saint-Pantaleon and Finestre) this Giro would require Contador more than one minute behind in GC for good racing to happen. Most probably Contador will not be behind in GC, let alone more than one minute, so I'm expecting boring racing in the mountain stages. Hope I'm wrong though,

 

[Carols]

Re:

Nice GuyIncognito! Nothing to worry about it seems by the way Berto looks so relaxed, it makes me happy, I really believe he loves the Giro

He does love the Giro and the tifosi

Before and after the team time trial, Contador said he had time to appreciate the affection the tifosi on the roadsides. “They call me Albetino, Conta, Conti. I’m enjoying it.”

Yes LaFlo please no more topless Tom It's time to change the avatar!

 

[Jelantik]

Re:

I re-watched the moment when Alberto and Basso were momentarily dropped and it is much clearer to me what happened. Contador just finished his turn, while Paulinho in front of him didn't do a turn anymore and just rolled back so the two of them were going to the back, wih Contador the second of the two riders in the duo. Contador then looked back, as Basso was the last one in the line and slowed down a fraction to slot in behind him. But at the very same time Basso let go and Contador found himself next to Basoo, a few meters behind the team. As soon as he realised what was happening he started sprinting while at the same time he hand gestured Basso to grab his wheel, as they were clearly planning to put Basso in pink (in case of a win that was very likely at that moment). Then Contador dragged Basso back to the group, only for Basso to do nothing later and drop two kilometers to go.

so all this talk about contador didn't look good is non sense. It was nice if they did indeed plan to put Basso in Pink. Contador said that they got to that fast.. if that's true, no wonder when Basso exploded just as Contador finished his pull, it would be a monstrous effort for him to catch the yellow fluo express train Btw, the only Russian finished with the rest 5. So paulinho, tosato and basso dropped.

 

[Carols]

Buen trabajo chicos, orgulloso de vosotros!!! Great job guys, I very proud of you!!! ‪#‎GirodItalia‬ ‪#‎TinkoffSaxo‬

Alberto is a much better leader than Oleg. Give them some praise and recognition, it works!

 

[Electress]

Re:

Hello folks,
Just came to brag about my avatar

An absolute beauty. Avatar's not bad either.

You must be very proud. Kudos for spreading the joy



Very happy with how things are started but there's a lot of racing left and many things can go wrong over three weeks. I don't much like hubris. Let's leave that to David Brailsford.

Buen trabajo chicos, orgulloso de vosotros!!! Great job guys, I very proud of you!!! ‪#‎GirodItalia‬ ‪#‎TinkoffSaxo‬

Alberto is a much better leader than Oleg. Give them some praise and recognition, it works!

Especially because they'll all know it's sincere.

 

[elfed68]

Wasn't Basso hired to be Bertie's last man not TTT beast?

And please, haven't we all been here before with the Contador didn't look too well scenario...

 

[The Hitch]

Re:

Wasn't Basso hired to be Bertie's last man not TTT beast?

And please, haven't we all been here before with the Contador didn't look too well scenario...

I agree.

However, I think the reason people are discussing it is its the 1 million dollar question as far as the Giro is concerned. If he's off form, there is a race for the win. If he's on it, its a race for 2nd.

 

[elfed68]

Re: Re:

Wasn't Basso hired to be Bertie's last man not TTT beast?

And please, haven't we all been here before with the Contador didn't look too well scenario...

I agree.

However, I think the reason people are discussing it is its the 1 million dollar question as far as the Giro is concerned. If he's off form, there is a race for the win. If he's on it, its a race for 2nd.

He entered the Vuelta with a barely healed broken bone, and still won!
Against second tier opposition and with Porte having his trademark awful day losing minutes he's well in control, it's his to lose.

 

[movingtarget]

Re: Re:

Wasn't Basso hired to be Bertie's last man not TTT beast?

And please, haven't we all been here before with the Contador didn't look too well scenario...

I agree.

However, I think the reason people are discussing it is its the 1 million dollar question as far as the Giro is concerned. If he's off form, there is a race for the win. If he's on it, its a race for 2nd.

He entered the Vuelta with a barely healed broken bone, and still won!
Against second tier opposition and with Porte having his trademark awful day losing minutes he's well in control, it's his to lose.

The only serious adversaries missing from the Giro are Froome and Quintana unless you think Pinot or Bardet could win the Giro and I don't. Many people are counting on Porte having a bad day but if he doesn't he is in the race. Uran has finished second in the last two Giros and is a better TT rider now. Aru is the one who's form is a bit of a mystery. Just like the Tour there are only three or four possible winners unless something unusual happens due to a crash or something or illness. Yes Contador deserves to be favourite but the Giro and Vuelta are much different races and the Vuelta comes at the end of the season where you can start it and do well without much racing as many other riders who have ridden more races are starting to go backwards in form. Contador was in great form before last year's Tour and there was a lot of conflicting info about his leg injury. The break he had before the Vuelta did not affect him much as he was ready for the Tour anyway.