roundabout said:
does consistency matter
for all the mutant watts he did he only beat Tonkov by 2 minutes or something on GC and wasn't even the best climber in the 1997 Tour across all mountain stages
of course 98 Tour to June 1999 is another matter
The 1997 course was better for him than the one in 1998. He was seriously ill in the stage to Courchevel and considered retiring after that stage. Then a super Ullrich was in charge. Bad first week etc...it was his first GT after the accident so it's normal that he wasn't at a level which he had the years after.
However....doing sub 37 minutes in 1997 while still not at his best tells a lot about what Marco had in him. Or doing 36:40 in 1995 (record) while completely missing the last corner. It's not like drafting or pacing was important because Pantani ( similar to Armstrong) attacked before the first corner. Flat out until the top. A 36 flat was surely possible for him in 98/99.
Well...he is a climber so winning by 5-6 minutes wasn't easy for him. 1999 Giro would have been 7 minutes however.
Of course he didn't win by a mile in the 1998 Giro but he destroyed Zülle and the others. It was only Tonkov resisting but then the same Tonkov showed the best climbing performances of his career in that race (6.53 W/kg for 50 minutes after a 240 km long stage - as many W/kg as the best Armstrong over 35-40 minutes).
This thread is about the "best climber". In a GT it would have been a very close fight to defeat Armstrong because ...despite being able to do 49.5 km/h in TT's during 98/99 ..he still would have lost a handful of minutes ( we were robbed of a legendary fight in the years 99- 2003) .
Maybe he would have lost 3-1 ...we don't know....but climbing wise there is no comparing.
Concering consistency....Pantani reached that consistency in 98/99...climbing like a god...TTing better than every other pure climber...it was his misfortunes that we did not see that 98/99 Pantani a year or 2 earlier....in order that we might have seen 3 or 4 years of "that" Pantani. Then the tragic day in 99....He never had the chance to show it for longer.