Re:
dacooley said:
having the best climbing train is a very big deal because it maximizes your gains when your leader is clearly the strongest and salvages leader's chanches when opponents put him in difficulty which happened to froome on alpe d'huez. sure even a train of domestics de luxe can not guarantee anything and all the more so can not win the tour for a leader, nonetheless it may play a decisive role if there are a few contenders being at a very close level.
Of course is very important to have a very good team, not just for a mountain train, but for everything,becouse to be well prorecting and positioanting in the flat or at the begining of the short finakl climbs is maybe the more important work to do in cycling.
But people maybe think that to have a team with big stars means that they are going to be in the mountains as they showed before once, so Landa (if he rode) every mountain better that Contadior as in the Giro, Poels aalways like in his best days, Thomas the same , Roche who was 5th in la Vuelta,...in a team like that, someone has to do the work people dont see. For instance, if roche is everyday pulling the peloton, or protecting Froome of the wind or geting bottles from the car, in the last climb he will be droped from the begining. But the same Pole,s Landa, Thomas,...maybe thay can keep a little pullin in a mountain train, but just a little after that work.
The amazing of Thomas last year is that he was very strong helping in the flat, and later he was in the first days on the mountains with the best...he showed he cant be that way all the Tour, but with someone protecting Thomas on the flat stages, he could last more stages with the best... anyway,.. he is not a pure clinmber, so a stage with several climbs, with a high pacefrom the begining, he must fade.