Question Climber types?

[ingsve]

In Italy they traditionally distinguish two basic types of climber: the scalatore and the rampicatore. A scalatore is someone who excels in riding a steady pace on a long, high climb. A rampicatore is a more punchy type who likes short, steep climbs and sudden accelerations. Combined with ITT skills you could distinguish these types:

• Scalatore with good time trial: Bobet, Anquetil, Merckx, Hinault, LeMond, Indurain, Ullrich, Froome, Evenepoel
• Scalatore with medium time trial: Poulidor, Zoetemelk, Thévenet, Fignon, Basso, Nibali, Yates
• Scalatore with bad time trial: Rasmussen, Schleck, Landa, Lopez
• Rampicatore with good time trial: Coppi, Gaul, Ocaña, Armstrong, Contador, Roglic, Pogacar, Vingegaard
• Rampicatore with medium time trial: Bartali, Van Impe, Delgado, Pantani, Valverde, Quintana, Bernal
• Rampicatore with bad time trial: Bahamontes, Fuente, Herrera, Parra, Jimenez, Rodriguez

Of course there are many riders who are somewhere in-between and hard to fit into one of these categories.

I think this is the most useful breakdown I've seen here. It highlights the two basic types. The steady wins the race types and those that wear you down by constant tempo changes.

One could probably further distinguish riders due to other factors as well like overall stamina or ability to recover etc.

If we look at riders that are good at hills for example then those are almost purely Rampicatore since you don't really have time to make a difference on a short hill as a Scalatore and even though the Scalatore is more than capable of getting over the hill, they couldn't follow the attacks of the Rampicatores up the hill. However when the hills turns to mountains those hill specialists are either to heavy for the long haul climb or they just lack the stamina to maintain the longer efforts needed for the longer climbs. This is where I put riders like Pidcock, Alaphilippe, Hirschi, Healy etc.