Teams & Riders Fabio Aru discussion thread

[Cookster15]

Aru is now stronger than everyone in GC except Froome and Porte (equal). But he still lost 19 seconds on Emossen which was telling. Will be interesting to see what Astana now throw at the race. If Sky ease up or show weakness there could be fireworks. If Sky continue to drive the pace it will be difficult for Astana and Aru to do anything.

 

[RattaKuningas]

Re:

Aru is now stronger than everyone in GC except Froome and Porte (equal). But he still lost 19 seconds on Emossen which was telling. Will be interesting to see what Astana now throw at the race. If Sky ease up or show weakness there could be fireworks. If Sky continue to drive the pace it will be difficult for Astana and Aru to do anything.

Well it will be less difficult if the objective is not dropping Froome. If he tries to move up on the GC then I don't think he will mind if Froome follows his attack.

 

[Dekker_Tifosi]

Woops

 

[Billie]

3 bad days in the heavy rain. Don't remember him having troubles with it during Giro.

 

[Vino attacks everyone]

Re:

Woops

That was weird. Did he forget to eat or something?

 

[SafeBet]

How can you forget to eat in such a stage? Peloton was taking it easy from the get go. They were taking a cup of tea during the penultimate climb. I don't believe this for one second.

 

[huge]

Re:

How can you forget to eat in such a stage? Peloton was taking it easy from the get go. They were taking a cup of tea during the penultimate climb. I don't believe this for one second.

What else could it be?

If he needs to lie about the reason, it would be easier to just say he was sick or something instead of looking like a moron because he "forgot" to eat.

 

[SeriousSam]

This is what a Vuelta winner and Giro runner-up looks like doing the Tour de France. It's a different league. He'll have to step up to be competitive in the Tour.

 

[huge]

Re:

This is what a Vuelta winner and Giro runner-up looks like doing the Tour de France. It's a different league. He'll have to step up to be competitive in the Tour.

Oh, come on!!! Until this morning he was 6th in GC and just 1.30 from a podium spot.

 

[Eshnar]

Re:

This is what a Vuelta winner and Giro runner-up looks like doing the Tour de France. It's a different league. He'll have to step up to be competitive in the Tour.

Valverde was looking pretty good actually. Despite not even being runner-up in the Giro only 2 months ago.

And, you know, being 3rd at the Tour last year.

 

[IndianCyclist]

I think this is Aru std. for cracking absolutely same as motirolo without any early warning.

 

[movingtarget]

Re: Re:

For the love of God let there be carnage tomorrow and Saturday !!!

There will be. All Astana riders are hitting peak shape at the right time.

Yes there was carnage. Biggest collapse of the race for any GC rider except for TJVG who should be a domestique anyway.

 

[Von Mises]

Re: Re:

This is what a Vuelta winner and Giro runner-up looks like doing the Tour de France. It's a different league. He'll have to step up to be competitive in the Tour.

Oh, come on!!! Until this morning he was 6th in GC and just 1.30 from a podium spot.

Still, he was disapointing. But I guess, he was a bit overhyped anyway.

 

[Rollthedice]

Not good enough for Tour top 5 in the first place then this weird collapse thing is becoming a problem for Aru.

 

[Cookster15]

Re:

This is what a Vuelta winner and Giro runner-up looks like doing the Tour de France. It's a different league. He'll have to step up to be competitive in the Tour.

+1. The pressure of the Tour is on a different level to the other Grand Tours. It looked like Aru was coming home with a wet sail after his ride in the MTT but it seems the physical and mental pressure finally told today.

 

[huge]

Re: Re:

This is what a Vuelta winner and Giro runner-up looks like doing the Tour de France. It's a different league. He'll have to step up to be competitive in the Tour.

Oh, come on!!! Until this morning he was 6th in GC and just 1.30 from a podium spot.

Still, he was disapointing. But I guess, he was a bit overhyped anyway.

Disappointing? Yes.
Overhyped? I don't think so. He is a very strong rider, but no one was expecting anything more than a very good GC position at this Tour, possibly a podium spot, which up until this morning was still in his sight.

Last year he was the favourite for the Vuelta and he won it.
He was aiming at the Giro and he got second, behind someone called Contador.

This is probably his first big failure in his pro career.

I don't see how he is overhyped.

 

[jsem94]

Aru hasn't been as good uphill this entire year to be fair. In the Dauphine he also got left behind while he wasn't too far off the best last year.

 

[RattaKuningas]

Unfortunately things like this happen and really disappointed that he didn't get at least his 6th spot but it's not end of the world. He will rebound and eventually win a Tour (I hope).

 

[Valv.Piti]

Aru has been a disaster the whole season, much worse than Nibali in 2014 and 2015, but seemed like he was coming into shape like the Astana leaders always do. Hopefully he will do the Vuelta now, he can't stop racing after the Olympics after this season.

 

[Walkman]

Re: Re:

This is what a Vuelta winner and Giro runner-up looks like doing the Tour de France. It's a different league. He'll have to step up to be competitive in the Tour.

Oh, come on!!! Until this morning he was 6th in GC and just 1.30 from a podium spot.

Still, he was disapointing. But I guess, he was a bit overhyped anyway.

Disappointing? Yes.
Overhyped? I don't think so. He is a very strong rider, but no one was expecting anything more than a very good GC position at this Tour, possibly a podium spot, which up until this morning was still in his sight.

Last year he was the favourite for the Vuelta and he won it.
He was aiming at the Giro and he got second, behind someone called Contador.

This is probably his first big failure in his pro career.

I don't see how he is overhyped.

To be fair, he was gifted that second place because Landa was held on a tight leash. Landa could easily have been second and won another stage or two if he hadn't been forced to babysit Aru. Not a nock on Aru, but that was the case last year.

And last years Vuelta, well many of the top guys rode the Tour and Froome even crashed out. Not really what we would call stiff competition. Although doing well in both the Giro and the Vuelta in the same year is impressive, others have tried and failed, so that's a big plus on Aru's side.

Still, I don't think he is a tier 1 GC at the moment. And as others have pointed out, le Tour is a different beast. Boring as f*ck from time to time, but it's still a tougher race. As someone (maybe Basso) once said:

The climbs in the Giro is twice as steep, but the climbs in the Tour are raced twice as fast.

 

[Kokoso]

Re:

Aru hasn't been as good uphill this entire year to be fair. In the Dauphine he also got left behind while he wasn't too far off the best last year.

This. One could even say he sucked all season and until today actually his performance was surprisingly good.

 

[phanatic]

Re:

This is what a Vuelta winner and Giro runner-up looks like doing the Tour de France. It's a different league. He'll have to step up to be competitive in the Tour.

You write very harshly, but the pace of the Tour probably did him in. I expected him to achieve what Bardet had done on stage 19, but he clearly didn't have the strength. He really fell apart on the last stage, too; otherwise I wanted to say nobody seemed at his best in this Tour, as it was really just a grind like the 2012 Giro, and had Froome not been so dominant in ITT, Bardet may have pulled out an upset victory with one attack as Hesjedal had done in Italy.

 

[Ikbengodniet]

Just saw back the footage when he dropped and his pedalling looked very weird, like he was injured or something.

 

[May0maniac]

Re: Re:

This is what a Vuelta winner and Giro runner-up looks like doing the Tour de France. It's a different league. He'll have to step up to be competitive in the Tour.

You write very harshly, but the pace of the Tour probably did him in. I expected him to achieve what Bardet had done on stage 19, but he clearly didn't have the strength. He really fell apart on the last stage, too; otherwise I wanted to say nobody seemed at his best in this Tour, as it was really just a grind like the 2012 Giro, and had Froome not been so dominant in ITT, Bardet may have pulled out an upset victory with one attack as Hesjedal had done in Italy.

I find it hard to believe that it was the pace, the 2015 Giro was raced hard from start to finish (freaking Mick Rogers said that it was the hardest gt that he has ever ridden and the guy has seen some wild stuff, to say the least), he just cracked and the fact that he usually underperforms in cold and rainy weather probably didn't help either.
Maybe you could say that he wasn't used to the pace set by Sky on the final climbs, but it's not like his team has ridden as a slow pace, if someone made the race hard on the earlier climbs it was usually Astana.
He'll be mad about it, but he'll probably bounce back and return even stronger, he's not the kind of guy who just gives up.

 

[staubsauger]

He was shitty prepared. Nothing more. Slongo should be fired. Ask Rasmussen how to train and peak only. But Aru's preparation has been a complete fail. He needs to win the Vuelta now. And please *** off about the Olympics ...