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Teams & Riders Chris Froome Discussion Thread.

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Is Froome over the hill?

  • Yes.

    Votes: 39 34.8%

  • No, the GC finished 40 minutes ago but Froomie is still climbing it

    Votes: 61 54.5%

  • No he is totally winning the Vuelta

    Votes: 25 22.3%
  • Total voters
    112
Taxus4a

Taxus4a

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Froome has had a knee problem due to overtraining, but now he is training as usual again. His first race was supossed to be San Juan , but the race has been cancelled by covid, so we dont know where he is going to start, but surely no so strong as he expected.
One of the possibilities was to star with Vuelta a Ruanda, but I think if he has good numbers in training he will start in Europe.
 
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Ilmaestro99

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Taxus4a said:
Froome has had a knee problem due to overtraining, but now he is training as usual again. His first race was supossed to be San Juan , but the race has been cancelled by covid, so we dont know where he is going to start, but surely no so strong as he expected.
One of the possibilities was to star with Vuelta a Ruanda, but I think if he has good numbers in training he will start in Europe.
Click to expand...
The mythical Froome 'numbers in training' are back!
 
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Extinction

Extinction

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What does "caught up to Sky" indeed imply? I mean what "tricks" could the British team know, that countless Continental teams have'nt done time and time again? All of the sudden British cycling found something out that the Belgian, French, Spanish and Italian teams had no idea about? Bollocks.
 
tobydawq

tobydawq

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Extinction said:
What does "caught up to Sky" indeed imply? I mean what "tricks" could the British team know, that countless Continental teams have'nt done time and time again? All of the sudden British cycling found something out that the Belgian, French, Spanish and Italian teams had no idea about? Bollocks.
Click to expand...

Lol.

Lots of things... Cycling wasn't exactly in a very scientifically progressive state before Sky.
 
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tobydawq

tobydawq

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Extinction said:
There was only one thing that mattered, unless you believe in "marginal gains," and on that score it was only a question of investing. Perhaps that's all Sky had going for it, a bigger budget.
Click to expand...

Of course I believe in marginal gains, it would be pretty daft not to. Just look at how professional teams are run these days compared to the 90s, 00's or even early 10s. It's just another world.

Pretty much up until Sky (maybe CSC also tried it to some extent), it was always just "we used to do it that way, so we do it that way". Cycling used to be an exceptionally conservative sport.
 
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Extinction

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tobydawq said:
Of course I believe in marginal gains, it would be pretty daft not to. Just look at how professional teams are run these days compared to the 90s, 00's or even early 10s. It's just another world.

Pretty much up until Sky (maybe CSC also tried it to some extent), it was always just "we used to do it that way, so we do it that way". Cycling used to be an exceptionally conservative sport.
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Look. it's not as if in the past nobody had any clue what they were doing. In the 90s preparation reached a most sophisticated level, also with team doctors. What has changed principally is the evolution of the bicycle and equipment, while raising the bar of physiology and consequent training programs (not confined to Sky of course), no doubt enhanced be ever more effective recovery methods. But fundamentally what Sky introduced was a dominating budget to buy the best riders to generate the watts necessary to control the Tour. Yet this, in itself, has nothing to do with "marginal gains," but having enough funding to dominate the contract market. In fact, all it has taken is some other big budget teams to upset the balance of power. Pretty much everyone knows what there is to know at the World Tour level, there is no "magic formula" for success, other than having the funding to enter the big ring with stacked talent and horsepower.
 
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tobydawq

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Breh said:
yikes, people still buy this sky PR talk.
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Eh, breh?

Extinction has a good point about the economic part, I thought he was only alluding to doping, but there's no doubt that there has been a revolution in how cycling teams work and that Sky have been an integral driving force in that movement.

And by the way, probably the only time I have been happy with a Sky win was when Geraint Thomas won the Tour.
 
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tobydawq said:
Eh, breh?

Extinction has a good point about the economic part, I thought he was only alluding to doping, but there's no doubt that there has been a revolution in how cycling teams work and that Sky have been an integral driving force in that movement.

And by the way, probably the only time I have been happy with a Sky win was when Geraint Thomas won the Tour.
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They had a lot of money, that's it. They didn't reinvent the wheel.
 
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Cookster15

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Extinction said:
Pretty much everyone knows what there is to know at the World Tour level, there is no "magic formula" for success, other than having the funding to enter the big ring with stacked talent and horsepower.
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Exactly, and worth re quoting here. Plus talent isn't just the riders, it also extends to support staff, sport scientists etc. That all costs a lot of cash.
 
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Extinction

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SHAD0W93 said:
Money aside, they were one of the first to focus and give the same time on all of the riders on the team to put out their best vs predominantly focusing on the leader and a few key riders. They made sure everyone was equal in what they received.
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Indeed, they focused on "performance" in a maniacal manner, the likes of which had not been seen before. But they fundamentally also had the budget to recrute talent and the watts that came with it. And who knows what other laboratory alchemy.
 
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