Demise of the super domestique

[swuzzlebubble]

What has happended to them?

I guess this is the place to discuss?

 

[SirLes]

I think the fact that in the last week the only riders capable of putting in sustained efforts were the best does suggest a cleaner peloton.

Back in 2004-2005 how many postals would have been driving the pace from Briancon to the lautaret?

Or even in 2008 Cancellera and others were still there hammering it to Bourg having done a shed load of work on the Croix de Fer.

There were a few teammates in the Contador/Evans group after Briancon but they were totally shot.

I take this as a good sign

 

[happychappy]

They're all on Europcar?

 

[TERMINATOR]

They're all on Europcar?

----
Vino love the rain. Vino love the cold. Vino love the hot. Vino not feel the difference

Vino is a doper and a blockhead.

 

[Roninho]

They're all on Europcar?

Exactly. Rolland was a brilliant domestique this TDF, and the one stage where Voeckler actually was dreadfull Europcar's other guys where there to help him out and have Rolland go for his own chances.

I also liked what szmyd did for Basso, but that was not close to superdomestique. Vanendert would have been one for VDB though.

 

[El Pistolero]

They think they deserve leadership.

There's still plenty of people who would be great super domestiques if they wanted to do so like Jelle Vanendert, Smyzt(he IS a great one), Nicolas Roche, John Gadret, Frank Schleck, Velits, etc

 

[luckyboy]

lol who would Velits have been a superdomestique for on HTC?

 

[El Pistolero]

lol who would Velits have been a superdomestique for on HTC?

I'm just saying he would be a great domestique for a real GT contender.

 

[goggalor]

What about Navarro? Last year he dropped everyone but Conta and Schleck. This year he's nowhere. What happened? I haven't been following his season very closely so I'm honestly curious.

 

[hoolaparara]

What about Navarro? Last year he dropped everyone but Conta and Schleck. This year he's nowhere. What happened? I haven't been following his season very closely so I'm honestly curious.

Two reasons.

1. Both he and Jesus had done the Giro

2. The situation for them never really came up, with Contadors bung knee, he didn't want any pace in the pyranees. They did briefly appear on the climb to gap to push the pace, but on the 2 big alp stages things went off plan with the early attacks. I think they made brief appearances in the chases but it never got set up for the big navarro uphill spring near the middle of the final climb.

 

[Epicycle]

A guy that really stood out this Tour was Voigt but that's nothing new. More often than not you can count on him for two things...some eyebrow raising performances and hamming it up for the TV cameras. He's the guy Jaksche had special words for. He always gets a pass because people love Jens, which is fine, but he was doing the same thing in his own way as Horner, and Chris got tons of discussion.

 

[perico]

Van de Velde and Hesjedal were both below their best (had neither been injured in crashes, then they would've likely been Garmin's GC leader), but both performed exceedingly well as superdomestiques for TD, TF, and Thor.

 

[karlboss]

They think they deserve leadership.

There's still plenty of people who would be great super domestiques if they wanted to do so like Jelle Vanendert, Smyzt(he IS a great one), Nicolas Roche, John Gadret, Frank Schleck, Velits, etc

This

Though I'm not sure of the value in it. If you were one of these riders is signing up to for example be a domestique for Evans going to help you in your goal of winning a GC?
How many current GC winners worked as "superdomestique" before climbing onto the top step. Nibali once (and it could be argued that was co leader), Evans no, Contador no, Basso don't think so, Menchov don't think so, Sastre for Basso, Landis/Salvodelli/Heras for Armstrong and that's pretty much the last 10 years.
How early do you sign on to be the next andreas kloden?

 

[Wallace]

I'm not saying that this is not a doping-related issue, but one contributing factor in the decline of the super-domestique might be the current economic situation in pro-cycling. USPS had several super-domestiques because they had the money to pay them, and Telekom also had a hefty payroll. Also Banesto in the Indurain glory days, etc. When teams have smaller payrolls, they can only afford one or two high salary men, and have to hope that the mid-level or below guys will rise above their pay grade in the mountains. So it's kind of a vicious circle: the constant doping scandals has driven sponsors from the sport and made it hard or impossible for teams have a real stable of stars (bye bye, HTC), which means that the stars can't get the kind of support teams used to be able to give them, which means they win less races and aren't as dominant, which means that teams get less race publicity and so the sponsors they have aren't as happy, and on and on.

 

[vedrafjord]

Found this thread while searching for something else - pretty funny to see what people were saying in 2011 with the Sky train just around the corner now that we're in a golden super-domestique age (not just Sky, but others too like Astana in the 2015 Giro).

 

[doperhopper]

wahaha, that dirty pre-2012 era... when even USPS had to go shopping and buy best mountain goats to serve as superdoms, while today... you can make superdom (or even a winner) from anyone, using the magic of marginal gains, pillows, handwashing and sometimes training 7 hours without breakfast (on TUEd steroids)

 

[The Hegelian]

Re:

Found this thread while searching for something else - pretty funny to see what people were saying in 2011 with the Sky train just around the corner now that we're in a golden super-domestique age (not just Sky, but others too like Astana in the 2015 Giro).

Think it's a very interesting historical point - kudos for bringing it out. 2011 looked a lot cleaner than 2012, that's for sure. I reckon there was a period of caution with the blood passport coming in. Then Sky started doing their UPS thing.....and since then GT's have been like a nuclear arms race. 2015 Giro was the full realisation that all bets were off.

 

[movingtarget]

There never was many to start with. Maybe Porte was, Sylvester S, Landa, CSC and US Postal had a few. Sky has a few of course. The last great one was probably Sylvester a few years ago because he was so consistent in the mountains. The others often have strong teams and the workload is shared more equally.

 

[happychappy]

Re: Re:

Think it's a very interesting historical point - kudos for bringing it out. 2011 looked a lot cleaner than 2012, that's for sure.

I wouldn't say that, Evans was so strong the entire race he could have won it with zero team mates -- almost won the final TT without getting out of breath, looked like he was out for a Zone1 recovery ride.
Then September turned into a Nuclear war.

Disclaimer: I'm not implying anything, I'm sure they're all 100% cleans.