NickBVK said:
Evans has experience of going solo, going on the attack - Schleck really doesn't.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXUTlb2O22Q
auscyclefan94 said:
Erm, on two MTF's Basso couldn't beat a sick Evans. Evans would of won the giro if he wasn't sick.
Kronplatz I'll give you, but I don't think Basso really cared on Tonale. Evans was no longer a threat. The whole thing with sickness, it's just conjecture. He may have been better, he may not have been, it's just nice to have an excuse to cling to. If it hadn't been for the thousands of different things that have got in the way, he'd have won every single race he's ever entered. You can only beat who you have to face on the day. Maybe Basso had a little something in reserve to use on Tonale if he needed it, in case Scarponi or Arroyo put in concerted attacks. Maybe he didn't. We don't know.
theyoungest said:
Or maybe you need to check some of the footage of the Vuelta 2009, where Evans was at least as strong as Basso. Or some of the Giro stages, even. You seem to base your judgement on this one GT, where we just didn't see Evans at his best. I'm not even an Evans fan, but the guy is almost perpetually underrated (except by ACF, of course). Evans got 2nd twice in a GT where he had to deal with much stronger opposition than Michele Scarponi.
Evans is difficult to rate. He is both extremely underrated and extremely overrated. He is often pushed as a threat to win a lot of races that he has the
ability to win, but tbh hasn't really shown the mental capacity necessary to win - until he is at an age where he's passing his peak. It looks like that Worlds win got the monkey off his back so to speak, as he's looked like a different rider since; but yes he got 2nd twice in a GT where he had to deal with stronger opposition than Scarponi... but that doesn't stop the fact that he only managed 5th in the Giro, behind the likes of Scarponi. If we're going on conjecture based on field strength and the past, then Armstrong can win the 2011 Tour based on coming 3rd in the 2009 Tour against the likes of Menchov (65th), Evans (30th) and Sastre (17th), and Damiano Cunego can win it too based on winning a GT. But both of them are different riders now, and the Evans of 2011 is a different rider than the 2008 Evans. Just because Evans was stronger than better riders than Scarponi in 2008 doesn't change that Scarponi was stronger in 2010.
auscyclefan94 said:
I don't think Cadel could respond to Sastre on the Alpe. Even though I don't think he does wheel suck, sometimes he doesn't attack because he just can't.
And I think there's his problem. He doesn't attack because he can't - fair enough, can't blame him for that. But you do see things like the Zonc and the Mortirolo, where he will cling desperately on to the wheels in front and push himself way into the red, causing him to blow up and lose time quickly, whilst other riders like Sastre and Scarponi are willing to let go and go at their own pace. How many times have we seen Sastre blown out the back door quite early on a mountain only for him to reappear not having lost much time? Scarponi was dropped from the leading trio a LONG time before Evans on Zoncolan. But in the end he only lost a handful of seconds. On the other hand, when Evans went too hard on Mortirolo, he suddenly lost time hand over fist.
Angliru said:
In Basso's defense, he had spent 2 years away from competition. Granted the Vuelta was near the end of the season of his first year back but I would think that he would still be building back to his pre-suspension form (less the PED's) all during the first year back.
As stated earlier unless Evans can regain his prowess versus the clock I can't see him gaining any advantage on Basso. They are similar climbers, diesel-like, except Basso's diesel has more horsepower. Evans still should be up there in the fight for the podium but I can't see him being able to stay with Schlecklet and Basso when the tempo increases in the mountains.
The thing with Basso is that he is still a diesel; I don't see him responding to super fast jumps like he'll likely face from Schleck (and probably Gesink and Rodríguez too). But yes, Basso's diesel seems to have a few more horsepower at present, though we should also bear in mind that by week 3 of the Giro Evans had been in constant top level competition for a long time what with the Ardennes. If Evans had been left with a rider capable of changing up the tempo a bit more, would he have gone even further into the red trying to chase them? (Of course, more realistically, the Zoncolan is so tough that everybody just makes it up when they can, there's not so much in the way of tactics in the last couple of kilometres, just fighting)
biopass said:
But then again, if Evans hadnt waited 2 minutes on a mountain stage because his rear derailleur suddenly went siesta.
Where the hell did you get 2 minutes from? Evans finished 1'18" down on Valverde that day, and there's no way he caught 42" back on him. Evans was quickly able to rejoin the Samuel Sánchez group (Sánchez had already been dropped before Evans' mechanical) and Samu finished 58" ahead of Cuddles - and just 20" behind Valverde.
Cadel lost approximately 50" stationary in that incident, but then he had to get back up to speed and there's the time lost slowing down. Sánchez did a great recovery ride, of the kind that I was talking about earlier with Sastre, and caught up much of the time lost. Conveniently, he was just before a timecheck, and the timecheck stated he was 1'15" behind the Grupo Maillot Oro, so that's the best and most reliable timecheck on it we can get. He did lose a bit of time to Sánchez but use a fair bit of energy chasing back on to the Sánchez group to be fair. But he would also have likely been outsprinted to the line in the end by Valverde - he had already been outsprinted for bonus seconds once in the race.
Again, like I said in my first post on this thread: Can Evans win the Tour? Yes. He's one of the best GT riders in the world, he's got great all-round skills. But will he win it? No, unless quite a few things fall into place for him. Which we know from the rest of his career that they tend not to.
He wasn't that much stronger than Scarponi, though. He only managed to drop him on the Zoncolan.
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