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Teams & Riders Derek Gee is the new G

2nd - Stage 8,10, 14, 19 Giro 2023
4th - Stage 13,18 Giro 2023
2nd - Points Classification Giro 2023
2nd - Mountains Classification Giro 2023
22nd - GC Giro 2023
Age 25 - Insane performance for a debutant with fantastic recovery
He's also second in the breakaway competition, but he took over the lead in the intermediate sprint classification yesterday, so he won't be leaving Italy empty handed.
 
I watched the race with a friend yesterday. We agreed that we would have to call him D to avoid confusion with G(eraint Thomas).

Massive GT debut! 2nd in four stages and in both major competitions is just bonkers. And probably unprecedented?
1965 Giro, Taccone had 5 2nd places and no stage win, he was 2nd in the GPM, but there were no points competition that year. He was also 6th in GC.
 
Always hated the "G" thing for Thomas: if his friends want to talk to/about him in an abbreviated form of his name, that's fine, but nothing to do with the rest of us. We are not on first name pal terms with the riders, and its always struck me as silly to pretend that we are ( this applies equally to the name Remco appearing in commentary and in posts here about 5 times as often as the word Evenepoel)
So if the emergence of Derek Gee helps to curtail that, so much the better.


But this has been extraordinary. I suspect that it is true for the vast majority of us that if we responded at all to him being signed by Israel (dev team last year, main team this) it was "A Canadian to keep Premier Tech bosses happy"; if we noticed the IPT team announcement at all, his would have been the name that we thought was most out of that team the "make up the numbers, surprised they didn't put one of the Israeli guys in instead" inclusion, and what name recognition we had for him was "that one from the Paris-Roubaix early break whose tyre popped off spectacularly on the Arenberg".

The sum total of his non-TT, non-'have some points for finishing' points on CQ prior to the Giro were:
22nd in Milano-Torino 2022
8th in GP Ville de Lillers 2022
23rd in O Gran Camno 2022
3rd (4 minutes behind) and 7th (nearly 10 minutes back) in Canadian national (2021 and 2019 respectively)
and 5th and 7th in a pair of Moroccan 1.2 races (Trophee Princier and Trophee de l'Anniversaire) in 2017

So in races that any of us really might have paid any attention to, he had a couple of mid-20s placings in sub WT early season events last year, and that's about it.

Most unforeseeable set of GT performances since when???
(I'd say Froome in Vuelta 2011, but that opens a set of baggage that I would rather avoid)
 
Most unforeseeable set of GT performances since when???
(I'd say Froome in Vuelta 2011, but that opens a set of baggage that I would rather avoid)
Marczynski and King winning two stages each (both of the week 1 MTFs in the case of King, the latter ahead of Mollema!) in the 2017 and 2018 Vueltas respectively are up there. As were Hindley and Hart in the 2020 Giro, of course. But Gee probably beats them all, so yes, you'd have to go back to Froome.
 
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Always hated the "G" thing for Thomas: if his friends want to talk to/about him in an abbreviated form of his name, that's fine, but nothing to do with the rest of us. We are not on first name pal terms with the riders, and its always struck me as silly to pretend that we are ( this applies equally to the name Remco appearing in commentary and in posts here about 5 times as often as the word Evenepoel)
So if the emergence of Derek Gee helps to curtail that, so much the better.


But this has been extraordinary. I suspect that it is true for the vast majority of us that if we responded at all to him being signed by Israel (dev team last year, main team this) it was "A Canadian to keep Premier Tech bosses happy"; if we noticed the IPT team announcement at all, his would have been the name that we thought was most out of that team the "make up the numbers, surprised they didn't put one of the Israeli guys in instead" inclusion, and what name recognition we had for him was "that one from the Paris-Roubaix early break whose tyre popped off spectacularly on the Arenberg".

The sum total of his non-TT, non-'have some points for finishing' points on CQ prior to the Giro were:
22nd in Milano-Torino 2022
8th in GP Ville de Lillers 2022
23rd in O Gran Camno 2022
3rd (4 minutes behind) and 7th (nearly 10 minutes back) in Canadian national (2021 and 2019 respectively)
and 5th and 7th in a pair of Moroccan 1.2 races (Trophee Princier and Trophee de l'Anniversaire) in 2017

So in races that any of us really might have paid any attention to, he had a couple of mid-20s placings in sub WT early season events last year, and that's about it.

Most unforeseeable set of GT performances since when???
(I'd say Froome in Vuelta 2011, but that opens a set of baggage that I would rather avoid)
I agree, i think it is ridiculous.
 
Enjoyed watching him this Giro, and what a change seeing an IPT team with some promising youngsters actually livening up the race.

And the man likes his birds:

Judging by his interviews, Gee is a gentle giant. He goofs at his disappointments and seems surprised by the depth of his talent.

And so it somehow doesn’t seem a surprise to learn he harbors one of the most genteel hobbies in the peloton.

“Over COVID I spend a lot of my free time ‘birding,’ looking for rare birds, taking pictures of them,” he said. “I saw a Summer Tanager at the southernmost point of its range. I know this makes me sound like an old person, but I just really love birding.”

Gee told Canadian Cycling Magazine he’s on a mission to document every bird he encounters in the international calendar of his rookie ProTeam season.
 
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