Best stage racer never to podium a grand tour.

[Angliru]

Re:

Iban Mayo

I was a huge Mayo fan back in the day. I just knew (well hoped) that he would be the next great grand tour champion. Loved his swashbuckling style, with his jersey unzipped, flowing behind him in the wind like a cape!

 

[jaylew]

Clearly this is driven by Richie 'jonah' Porte who despite having all the gifts to be a multiple grand tour winner

I disagree.

A well thought out and reasoned response.

His bike handling skills are not good enough over three weeks.

His bike handling skills are plenty good enough for a podium. Flat tires are generally not about handling. We overplay riders crashing tendencies. 95% of the time, it's just bad luck. Statistically, there are always going to be some riders that crash more than others but it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with their handling skills, unless of course we're talking about someone who is always crashing while on their own and even then it doesn't mean it's about handling. It's just the nature of the game.

 

[GuyIncognito]

Porte's bike handling skills are terrible. That's why he crashes.

Remember when Sky tried to cross the line on the Champs with all the riders arm in arm? It was a herculean effort to get Porte riding in a straight line without his hands on the bars, and when it seemed they'd finally done it he lost control and almost brought down the whole team. And this was at a leisurely pace.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Re:

Port has one 6 WT stage races of wins, plus 2 more stage races

He also has forth in the tour which would have been a podium but for a mechanical

Does any non GT podium finisher come close to this, of course this all may be mute after the Vuelta

The problem is, what constitutes a 'stage racer' in the context of this thread. Arguably the best one-week racer around right now is Simon Špilak, he has a formidable record of podiums in them, but he barely even considers a three week race. And somebody like Vicente Trueba would be an almighty threat in stage races now, but back then he was a nobody because he would lose truckloads of time everywhere except the mountains.

Are you mis-remembering from the 2016 Tour though, Richie was 5th to the best of my knowledge, and none of the riders above him have been declassified? The thing is, that's the only time Richie has backed up his one-week ability over three weeks - he hadn't really been shown to have that at the time of that 2010 Giro top 10, his only other one, and I don't think we can really call that a representative example of his level seeing as he was still learning the stage racing ropes back then, was completely untested over 3 week and got given a huge bonus of 13 minutes.

The problem for me is simply that I am still struggling with accepting that Richie has become as good as he has as many of his biggest successes have come during early season races in ski season so I've been paying less attention, but the other issue is that he's now 33 and there isn't that much time for him to convert that success to a Grand Tour, because really, his GT record is no better than people like Walter Riccomi, Christian Seznec and Ronan Pensec - which considering the strength he's shown in one-week races, seems absolutely bizarre.

 

[jaylew]

Re:

Porte's bike handling skills are terrible. That's why he crashes.

This is where I disagree. Most people that go down in the bunch don't go down because of anything they themselves did wrong. Nothing about Porte's DNF was his fault or due to bike handling, though maybe he's more fragile than others?

 

[del1962]

Re: Re:

Are you mis-remembering from the 2016 Tour though, Richie was 5th to the best of my knowledge,

My mistake