staubsauger said:
This guy got dropped by Trofimov on the Mortirolo and would've lost his 2015 Giro d'Italia podium during a medium mountain stage if Astana wouldn't have slowed down and threw away Landa's chances to win in order to make the local boy finish second. Something Aru still only archived because in fact the race results where fixed when Shefer called back Landa on the way to Sestriere.
This has been repeated multiple times with Diego Rosa at Lombardy and Lopez during last years Vuelta a Espana. Arguably even Fuglsang surpassed him in last years Dauphine. Although Aru set up the Danes race winning move.
This is Aru's true level. Maybe a bit less worse. But everyone with a clue knew this was going to happen when he left Astana. Aru's an average moron.
He might come back fighting for stage wins and the mountains jersey at the Giro d'Italia with Savio or Reverberi. Wish him all the best for that. His 3 Mio paycheck and leadership status though, he never deserved it since fall 2015!
Aru is rather fragile and not great when it's a war of attrition in the high mountains.
Still, 2017 Aru was on a different level, he missed the Giro and peaked a bit early for the Tour, but still managed to finish top 5, with a stage win an he was even able to wear the yellow jersey for a while. Durning that Tour his team was bad and durning the 2nd half of the race he didn't have a real team.
Aru and Tiralongo should know how to prepare for a gt, they'd just have to copy what they did at Astana. Maybe they tried to fix some of Aru's flaws and messed things up.
Frankly I don't trust anyone at UAE to be a be a better coach then Tira, that team is horrible at developing young riders, they only had one homegrown star and that was Ballan, everyone else was already a big name (many became worse when they signed with them) or suddenly improved after leaving the team.
He has been great on easier mountain stages that have a longer climb at the end, his ability to attack and keep going with 3-2km to go was always impressive and he was a beast in MTTs, it's hard to belive that he suddenly lost all of that.
Aru clearly has his flaws and according to Martinelli he's hard to deal with and seems to be pretty impulsive/emotional (
he moved in together with his GF after dating for 2 weeks) and Nibali has hinted at the fact that his nerves could be a problem, maybe it's also a bit of a mental thing like with TJVG.