Biggest Upset in Cycling History

[Cannibal72]

Re: Re:

At least some posters openly admit to despising the classics now. There's progress.

Where did Eshnar say that he (?) despises the classics? He simply pointed out that a random guy winning a classic is not as big an upset as random guy winning a stage race. After all; "randomly" winning a classic simply requires good legs/luck on one specific day, whereas winning as stage race requires good legs/luck for up to three weeks.




(Eeeh... Eshnar... you are a "he", right?)

GTs also tend to have a shallower pool of potential winners, simply because you need to be a very good climber and a very good TTer to win. There's not many other ways to win. A classic, on the other hand, has all kinds of ways to win: you can do a Hayman and make your move from 200km out if you're strong off the front, you can win with 200m to go if you've got a strong sprint, you can win with attacks on climbs, cobbles, or both. In a GT, the pool of potentially victorious riders is essentially limited to the 5 best climbers and the 5 best TTers. A cobbled classic could be won by the 5 best puncheurs, the 5 best sprinters, the 5 best rouleurs, the 5 best cobblestone specialists... What's so surprising about Leicester's victory and, say, Pereiro's Tour is that they were so far out of the limited pool of potential champions. That can't happen in a classic: the pool is so much bigger than you can't be as far outside it as they were.

 

[Echoes]

If many random guys could win a classic, you should be able to list quite a few.


Wins like Durand had happened before? How many can you list? 95% of the winner were expected on races like Milan-Sanremo or Paris-Roubaix

 

[veji11]

If many random guys could win a classic, you should be able to list quite a few.


Wins like Durand had happened before? How many can you list? On Milan Sanremo can you name anyone other than Marc Gomez? On Paris-Roubaix can you name anyone other than Dirk Demol? From 1945 to 1990 fluke wins on such races are extremely rare. You can count them with the fingers on one hand. You cannot realise how much of a shock to anyone the victory by Marc Gomez was in Milan-Sanremo.

fluke wins on a monument are indeed rare, but even rarer are fluke wins on a GT.. this isn't a judgement of value... You don't need to take it as some sort of hierarchy.

 

[Davesta]

Dumoulin at last year's Vuelta would surely be up there, had he managed to hold on for one last stage...

A starting field including Froome, Quintana, Aru, Nibali, Landa, Valverde, Rodriguez, Majka & Pozzovivo...who would've picked the big-framed Dutchman to almost wins over 3 weeks?!

 

[Escarabajo]

Armstrong, Froome, Pereiro.

 

[yetanothergreenworld]

The fact that Voeckler almost almost almost won the 2011 Tour.

 

[Kwibus]

Re:

At least some posters openly admit to despising the classics now. There's progress.

See it's posts like this that I sometimes call you a wee bit crazy. Ofcourse you are entitled to your opinion, but it's completely wrong.

Nowhere I read anyone saying that they despise classics. Not anything close to it, yet you manage to read from someones fair comment that he despises classics, while all he said was that a surprise winner is more likely in a one day race than in a stage race...

You are a fundamentalist/extremist. Luckily for the world only regarding classics racing compared to stage racing!

 

[Kwibus]

Re:

Oliver Zaugg.

Yeh this is one of the biggest surprises imo. I mean... what is he doing today? Completely anonymous.

 

[dacooley]

any guys thinking that Valverde and Rodriguez are losers

 

[Bye Bye Bicycle]

Gwiazdowski was a nice pick.

Also Dirk Müller winning the German national championship in 2006.

 

[gunara]

Echoes,what do you want from this forum, really? You have such a deep knowledge in cycling, anyone could appreciate and make a good use of it, yet for years you've been more focused on calling other people - a large and random group of people - wrong and stupid, it's a bit of a waste, of everything, for everyone.

 

[veji11]

Re: Re:

At least some posters openly admit to despising the classics now. There's progress.

See it's posts like this that I sometimes call you a wee bit crazy. Ofcourse you are entitled to your opinion, but it's completely wrong.

Nowhere I read anyone saying that they despise classics. Not anything close to it, yet you manage to read from someones fair comment that he despises classics, while all he said was that a surprise winner is more likely in a one day race than in a stage race...

You are a fundamentalist/extremist. Luckily for the world only regarding classics racing compared to stage racing!

Yeah, it's a bit sad really.

 

[blackmamba]

Re:

Armstrong, Froome, Pereiro.

 

[jens_attacks]

Pereiro didn't win any tour so stop posting his name

For the betting market, floyd won.

 

[Eyeballs Out]

Lindeman, Koshevoy and Cousin fighting out that Vuelta mountains stage last year - they were all 1000-1 shots

 

[IndianCyclist]

Hesjedal- Giro 2012
Gimondi -TDF 1965
Roche - 1987 Worlds

 

[SafeBet]

Re: Re:

Berzin in the 1994 Giro should be mentioned.

No way. Guy had a monster spring season.

But he was up against Indurain, who hadn't lost a GT in 3 years. And he had no GT palmares to speak of.

 

[Alexandre B.]

Re:

Pereiro didn't win any tour so stop posting his name

For the betting market, floyd won.

Morzine was a joke.

 

[Dekker_Tifosi]

Hayman PR was a pretty big upset, if we talk classics

GT, Pereiro, Horner, Cobo.. but personally the biggest upset for me was Froome's breakthrough, from ABSOLUTELY NOWHERE, in the Vuelta 2011. You can say whatever you want, but none of his results before the Vuelta suggested he could do anything like this. And don't come with a 29th place in a Tour mt stage.

It would be like, I dunno, Cyril Gautier suddenly being able to climb like a god and doing a podium TT performance. And even Gautier showed more than Froome before that Vuelta.

 

[Nick C.]

Iglinsky in LBL. Did anyone seriously think he was going to drop Purito on the Cote de St. Nicolas or whatever the final climb was that year, much less catch Nibali as it unfolded.

 

[Echoes]

Re:

Echoes,what do you want from this forum, really? You have such a deep knowledge in cycling, anyone could appreciate and make a good use of it, yet for years you've been more focused on calling other people - a large and random group of people - wrong and stupid, it's a bit of a waste, of everything, for everyone.

To be honest, I no longer expect a lot from this forum. I'm only posting because it's a good English practice for me. When four or five years ago, I tried to ask questions that interested me nobody really answered because it was indeed about classics that everybody forgot about. I don't claim to be more knowledgeable than any other poster, I'm just interested inother races than the average poster here, I feel like an alien sometimes. What is crazy is that irl I could talk about the classics with non-cycling fans but here on an Internet forum supposed to be frequented by cycling fans, it seems impossible. There has recently been a similar thread on the French forum velo-club.net (to which Veji contributed) and guys like Gregor Gwyazdowsky or Maxim Iglinsky were immediately named.

For the record, I shared a lot of stuff on Velorooms in the last few years. Thanks for the compliments though.

 

[PremierAndrew]

Re:

Hayman PR was a pretty big upset, if we talk classics

GT, Pereiro, Horner, Cobo.. but personally the biggest upset for me was Froome's breakthrough, from ABSOLUTELY NOWHERE, in the Vuelta 2011. You can say whatever you want, but none of his results before the Vuelta suggested he could do anything like this. And don't come with a 29th place in a Tour mt stage.

It would be like, I dunno, Cyril Gautier suddenly being able to climb like a god and doing a podium TT performance. And even Gautier showed more than Froome before that Vuelta.

Even the comparison with Gautier doesn't do it justice - Froome, even on a good day, didn't even deserve to be at a WT team before the Vuelta

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Zaugg was a bigger shock than Hayman. Hayman had been a quality domestique in the cobbled classics for many years and had a few top 10s, albeit a few years removed. Zaugg didn't just have his biggest career win at Lombardia, he had his only career win there.

GT-wise, Melcior Mauri in the '91 Vuelta has to be a contender. Also 30+yo veteran domestique Ferdinand Bracke winning the 1971 Vuelta. Pereiro had been 10th the previous two years and while his holding on like he did may have been surprising, he wasn't a complete out of nowhere like Froome and the fact he did what he did with the benefit of a huge gift of time makes it less egregious. Cobo's 2010 to 2011 is a real shock, but he did arrive at the Vuelta in good form, in fact a few people here were tipping him for the top 10 pre-race. Nobody's mentioned TV Tommy in 2011 though.

 

[RedheadDane]

Re: Re:

Echoes,what do you want from this forum, really? You have such a deep knowledge in cycling, anyone could appreciate and make a good use of it, yet for years you've been more focused on calling other people - a large and random group of people - wrong and stupid, it's a bit of a waste, of everything, for everyone.

To be honest, I no longer expect a lot from this forum. I'm only posting because it's a good English practice for me. When four or five years ago, I tried to ask questions that interested me nobody really answered because it was indeed about classics that everybody forgot about. I don't claim to be more knowledgeable than any other poster, I'm just interested inother races than the average poster here, I feel like an alien sometimes. What is crazy is that irl I could talk about the classics with non-cycling fans but here on an Internet forum supposed to be frequented by cycling fans, it seems impossible. There has recently been a similar thread on the French forum velo-club.net (to which Veji contributed) and guys like Gregor Gwyazdowsky or Maxim Iglinsky were immediately named.

For the record, I shared a lot of stuff on Velorooms in the last few years. Thanks for the compliments though.

I'm happy talking about classics too, when it's classics-time. Problem with you is that you seem upset when people want to talk about GT/stage races as well.

 

[hrotha]

Grzegorz Gwiazdowski, not Gregor Gwyazdowsky