Teams & Riders Everybody needs a little bit of Roglstomp in their lives

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There is like 1 stage and 1 race that gets constantly discussed, on when it comes to discussing wheelsucking and Rogla and presenting hard evidence. And even for this 1 stage and 1 race the people that are trying to build the case do admit, that it would be stupid of Rogla, not to wheelsuck.
 
So ITT is behind us and Rogla shifted some time in comparison to Remco. First sector was especially peculiar, on where even Alex was ahead ... But then i feel that Rogla pulled through and overall in my opinion did a solid TT performance. Tomorrow hopefully no crashes and then in my opinion it's time for Bora to step up and to make a difference, the rest is on Rogla.

I like the fact Remco has a rather hefty advantage, this should force both Rogla and Bora to respond on the highest possible level. Considering the current situation, new team and some much needed racing, rather perfect if you ask me.
 
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It seems that Rogla has managed to transfer his ITT ability over to Bora, that is becoming apparent. Now if deeper in the race we get some confirmation his climbing will be up there too, that would be really good.

As for the team, Bora does seem to back Rogla to the fullest. What is still missing is some sort of confirmation they can take and make the race. Hopefully for the team to really shine on at least one stage of this race!
 
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I absolutely understand the concept, perhaps not your specific assignment to riders as a negative characteristic.
If you ride at length behind someone to save energy you are wheelsucking. It is not a negative unless the guy doing the pulling ahead doesn't appreciate the lack of work or you're a fan of a rider that chronically provides that service to someone that beats them. Then the negative is providing the towing service to an adversary or making excuses for the towtruckdonkey.
Drafting is not the same as wheelsucking. Wheelsucking is deliberately not taking on any workload in an attack to increase your chances of winning.
 
Drafting is not the same as wheelsucking. Wheelsucking is deliberately not taking on any workload in an attack to increase your chances of winning.

And to decrease your opponent's chances of winning which is (almost) necessarily if you don't have a common cause e.g. staying away from a group/rider.

You can't expect or require a rider to take turns if he doesn't have the incentive to.
 
No one is saying this doesn’t make sense tactically.
Well, "wheelsucker" is usually used in a bad way (or at least I see it like that).
So if it makes sense tactically why a certain rider is criticized or even disliked over a perfectly fair, tactically good action?

I would call "wheelsucker" a rider who has every reason to pull (at least to some extent) yet he doesn't.
 
Multiple monuments riding like Valverde despite being shown repeatedly he needs to attack if he wants to win.
2022 Vuelta stage 15 Jumbo rides the whole day to set up dropping Evenepoel days after his crash only for Evenepoel to blow up their train, and Roglic decides not to go with MAL and Mas to gain more time (even though he had gained a good chunk the day before). Then he overcompensates the next day and takes himself out of the race.
The of course previously mentioned 2023 Vuelta due to his passivity and team tactics. It’d have been nice if Roglic took a page out of 2009 Contador/Astana to show up the team.
There were no multiple monuments, only monument he had a chance to win, apart from the one he won, was Lombardia 2019, but he and Valverde sort of cancelled each other, so Mollema got away.
 
I think the criticism that's possibly legit is that he can be too passive when he has good legs and miss out on time gains as a result because he prefers to wait for the sprint sometimes.

But a real wheelsucker is always skipping turns in a group when there's guys up the road, and Roglic basically never does that sort of ***.
Yet, in your estimation, Pogacar is a mountain sprinter, yet somehow won the Giro by 10 minutes.
 

He mentions Paris-Nice, where Roglic seemed like he was missing something in the race, as an example. "The weather was bad. The jackets that Primoz wore at Visma were different from ours. One day he almost froze to death on his bike because he didn't know what to wear. It often involved simple things like this."

"We weren't really aware of what it means to have ridden for another team for eight years, to know every detail there and then to arrive in a completely different set-up. It was about simple questions. How do I feel in my racing jersey? Do I wear arm or leg warmers and don't they strain too much? We should have found out in advance."
 

He mentions Paris-Nice, where Roglic seemed like he was missing something in the race, as an example. "The weather was bad. The jackets that Primoz wore at Visma were different from ours. One day he almost froze to death on his bike because he didn't know what to wear. It often involved simple things like this."

"We weren't really aware of what it means to have ridden for another team for eight years, to know every detail there and then to arrive in a completely different set-up. It was about simple questions. How do I feel in my racing jersey? Do I wear arm or leg warmers and don't they strain too much? We should have found out in advance."
It kinda baffles me that they didn't think about this beforehand.
 
Some hiccups were to be expected and on top of that a lot of high profile transfers don't pan out as envisioned, especially when leaving arguably the best sport collective for another that is/was not up there yet, top tier. We shouldn't take anything for granted and that is on why i am extremely pleased Rogličes ITT is starting to look top notch at Bora. Now we need some confirmation in regards to climbing being on the right track, then hopefully for the team to respond and to show it's capable of tilting a race to their advantage. Ideally all of this would happen on this race already, still we have to understand that such time frame is extremely ambitious and we need to be patient.
 
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