Re: Cannondale-Drapac
EroicaStradeBianche said:
Cannondale is 8th on 18 teams. 17th and 18h we have IAM (won stages every GT) and DD. They are even over Astana, Trek, AG2R.
Can someone say that cannondale (0 World Tour victory; 1 podium (3rd) in the monuments/grand tours) has had a better season based on this ridiculous classification which has nothing to do with proper cycling?
Astana, it's true they hadn't the best season, had only one top ten in the Grand Tours: but was their season really worse than cannondale? Or maybe they raced for victory instead of points.
Sky did only two top 10s in the grand tours according to this way of thinking
IAM which has half the quality of Cannondale in the roster managed to win stages everywhere. Look at the roster. Cannondale has a superion roster on every aspects to IAM but still IAM raced like proud lions without giving nothing about the useless WT classification and they delivered great cycling and emotions.
Even DD (exluding Cavendish) won at the tour of Britain with Cummings, at the eneco with Boasson. For me the trophy for the worse season in the World Tour should be between Cannondale and DD (considering that DD won and not a few races). So yes considering cannondale's roster and his financial ability their season (outside the fantasy world of WT points) was very very poor. All the teams below Cannondale in WT teams classification with the exception of DD, considering their rosters and budgets, have had better seasons than cannondale.
I mean they have good, hungry riders. Bettiol is young and strong, he attacked to win. Uran made a spectacular end of season but look how they raced in all the grand tours. They always tried only from the break (like all other teams). They never tried to blew up the race in order to win. They never made well planed audacious attacks to win (too risky I suppose). Uran at the Giro? good 6th, well he took the podium already two times, but has he ever tried to attack, to do something? An Action?
Look only recently at Cannondale's vuelta. They tried only from the break. Why not try to win a stage with formolo, preparing a serious action using his position near the top to force the various Quintana/froome/Contador/Chaves to came out and then Talansky taking advantage of that.
Or like Astana tried with LL, they do not won, but they tried. There's an enormous gap in attitude which is visible. Astana's reaction to Rosa 2nd: f*ck. Cannondale instead: very satisfied with Uran 3rd.
I mean Cannondale has a clear crisis of results made laughable by their strong roster. With top 5s and top 10s they can figure in the WT classification but the teams and the riders should try to win. I mean, could they not win a stage at the Tour de Romandie or some races like that?
Moreno Moser has practically declared in a veiled way to an italian newspaper that he's leaving C because he's tired to race for placement and he would like to return to victory
I'm not arguing about Cannondale having better season than anyone. It's hard reach an agreement here. I acknowledge the fact that such a long winless streak at WT level is somewhat embarassing (I've complained about it myself a couple of times) but I sometimes feel it's blown out of proportion and people read way too much from it.
Well, that part about Moser is interesting, because I really struggle to recall any race this year where he could be forced to race for placing instead of the win. He was free stagehunting in the Giro and he screwed that stage where he didn't pay enough of attention to Trentin himself (he removed his earphone so the team couldn't tell him). He's also had his chance during the Vuelta and I don't recall other races where he could be compromised. But maybe there's something behind the scenes I was not aware of. Maybe the Formigal stage where he was pulling for Formolo instead of saving energy for potential stage win? Well, his new team pulled for Scarponi on the very same stage to protect 9th overall, I'm not sure if he will be better at his new team if it was really about that. And I think his future was already decided by that point?
It's also easy to point out that someone could have done more here and there. You could do the same for any team apart from 2-3 in pretty much any given race. Uran didn't try more in the Giro because he was struggling with ilness in mid-race. They were so close many times this season that a bit of luck could cause we would be talking about entirerly different season. If we recall that Giro stage where Moser lost with Trentin, Uran's attack in Quebec where he was caught in the last 100 meters, Plouay, Lombardia and a couple of others, then I think it's really harsh luck on Cannondale to get 0 wins out of those. Nothing more than harsh luck, because they didn't lose these races by playing conservative or by lacking strength or whatever. They just lacked than tiny bit of luck every time. I believe it's down to probability and if we were able to "re-simulate" this season again and again, Cannondale would be getting at least one WT win in 9 out of 10 cases. They even got one last year, which was much worse than this year in terms of actually being in the mix of the best in particular WT events.
It's true they might have raced Vuelta a bit conservatively (but not extremely conservatively, Formolo made it to the first part of the split on Formigal stage after all) because they weren't entirerly safe from relegation at that point, but over the rest of the season I really struggle to see how their approach was any significantly different from a couple of other teams who pretty much relied on being in the right break at the right time for most if not all of their WT wins and that's always highly circumstancial. I can't see where for example IAM took more risk than Cannondale. Their biggest win is Plouay and it was from the very same move that Cannondale was in and Naesen just beat Bettiol head to head. All of their GT wins were either taken by a quickish guy or from an early breakaway. Not any other than Cannondale tried. The same goes with Lampre, FDJ or most of other bottom half WT teams. None of them took any significant risk of losing a good haul of WT points in the process of hunting for wins. They either went for an early break or just had the strongest rider at the end of the race to win after sprint/punchy attack.
Also Vaughter's team historically often went for wins instead of placing, Dan Martin's stage in in TdF 2013 or Dauphine 2014 are good examples. But an opportunity has to arise and this year it wasn't that many of them.
Also call WT ranking what you what, but it was kinda important this season when it was to decide who would get a WT license for next year. There's no way any team who wasn't safe after first part of the season completely ignored it, maybe apart from IAM who didn't care as they were no longer to exist in 2017. The fact that Cannondale heavily outscored those bottom-half WT teams in the 2nd part of the season doesn't mean those teams would took any more risk if they were in the same position. It was just because of the fact Cannondale has more depth than those teams, but not guys with skillset that would allow to take them frequent wins at high level.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram