Carols said:
Red Rick said:
Carols said:
I just Really hate to see all of you youngsters delude yourselves. He showed glimmers of his class in this race, it's called back class, and rode a good final ITT while finishing 3rd and 6th on 2 stages and 9th overall. I surely would like to see him win one final GT before he hangs up the bike. But your expectations are Very High.
Has he signed a contract for 2018?
I think people are mostly discussing an optimal route toward 2018, and most want to see him on good form in a GT one last time. I don't think people are necessarily expecting a win.
That said, I suffered through supporting Andy Murray in 5 Aussie open finals, I can handle this dammit
The optimal way for him to go out with a win IMO is to rest now, build to the Giro. If he wins it, just do a grand farewell ride around Spain in the Vuelta with no pressure. If he loses the Giro, well he has one more chance.
But Alberto will decide if he feels well enough now to ride this years Vuelta. I just pray he doesn't ride the Tour next year, it has never been good for him for 7 years now.
I'm pretty sure he's done with the Tour. He made his last kamikaze move, showed a lot of guts and panache throughout the race, and finished with a great ITT. He basically tore the GC opposition bar Froome a new one. I think like to think that he showed in the Tour that if he doesn't crash he's still a force to be reckoned with. It is a small thing, but it seems a lot better than just fading horribly toward the end and any small win for the mind, heart or ego is of some consolation I hope.
It's been a bit of a mental ride for fans the last 2 years. I know it has been for me. In 2014 he was insane. Then in 2015 there were crashes and spring illness, and a Giro with crashes, followed by a Tour-ridden crash, and he still top 5'd. In 2015 there were obvious excuses as to why he didn't perform.
Then last year, he's good in the spring, is amazing in PV, wins the DL prologue and crashes out of the Tour again. That Vuelta was painful, but yet again there were crashes, and it was quite obvious this couldn't have been the best he had left to give.
Then 2017 rolls around. Again he's up there in the spring, but the sharpness to make the difference when it matters seems to have faded when you look back through the years.
Last year I had hopes he could win the Tour and was quite devastated when he crashed and dropped out. The Vuelta was a disappointment, but at least he decided the race and I could give myself some hope for 2017. I do have to say that I hadn't stopped hoping for a win but that losses, especially respactable losses, haven't been as hard for me to deal with as a fan. The most frustrating thing has been that there hasn't been any pay off this year in terms of wins, and that he keeps crashing in GTs to the extent that we have to keep guessing what the best is that Alberto Contador can do as he's closing in on his 35th birthday.
One last thing that makes it easy to say that he's past it, is that competition across all stage races has gotten a lot denser. Top performances haven't gotten better than 2012-2015, and the Tour hasn't seen any out of this world performances since 2015, but it would seem that the amount of riders capable of a level just below that has increased. That partially explains why a bad GT means getting 9th rather than 5th, like it might have been a while ago.
Honestly, the most important thing is that I see Contador retiring happily. If he seems at peace with how his last few years in the peloton ended up, or with how he finished, that would help. Seeing favorite athletes not bitter post retirement is a great thing, no matter how frustrating it was to support them toward the end.
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