Be ready... here comes a pick out of left field.
In the last couple of rounds Equipo Libertine Seguros-Banesto presented by ONCE have taken pure climbers, to sharpen up Indurain's mountain assistance. Chava Jiménez and Fernando Escartín are great climbers, no doubt about it, and I do note netserk's point about Jiménez's brother-in-law, who I did consider for pick 41. However, the thing with Sastre is that he was always consistent, but there isn't a truly spectacular version of him; '99 Escartín got the nod based on that he could climb with all but the 2nd and 3rd overall picks of the draft, and Piau-Engaly was the stuff of legend.
But while obviously it's now irrelevant since Hitch took Carlos off the table, it removes my temptation to pick him with selection number 60. Which might actually be a good thing, because if he'd been available, I would probably have taken him. And I need to balance out my team a bit. After all, Mig's Tour wins - especially at the point I have picked him for - were based on the template of taking the lead in the first long ITT, and then controlling the race from that point. So we could be looking at trying to control the race for two weeks here; there won't be two weeks of mountain stages. So the flats need controlling as well. And for that you need some powerful engines. People not afraid of doing the gritty work, with time trialling pedigree, and, bearing in mind they're going in the late rounds of the draft, preferably not necessarily with too many aspirations of their own victory, since they'll be domestiquing primarily.
And it's for that reason I've gone way back in time and picked perhaps the unexpected GT winner to beat all unexpected GT winners, so with the final pick of the 6th round, Equipo Libertine Seguros-Banesto presented by ONCE select
Melcior Mauri Prat, CRI specialist, Catalunya, from the 1991 Vuelta a España.
When Melcior Mauri turned up at the 1991 Vuelta, he had just turned 25 and had no significant professional victories. His best GT performance to date was 71st at the previous year's Vuelta, and he was well down the team's hierarchy with some far more illustrious riders in ONCE's lineup than the unheralded Catalan. When he left, he had four; three stages and the overall, after holding the leader's jersey for over two weeks.
So, how did he do it? Well, this is the remarkable thing and why he's in my team. The prologue was credited to him but was in fact a trios time trial, where he along with two undrafted riders set the best time; on the second day he was an important part of a punishing ONCE team time trial unit that put almost two minutes into Banesto over 40km. He took the lead from a teammate in stage 4, thanks to a shredded péloton in a painful flat-to-rolling stage over 292km (yes, you read that right) in the heat of Andalucía. And then he went full mutant. Mauri then proceeded to cement his lead by stomping Big Mig by a minute in the 47k ITT at the end of week one, before gritting his teeth and holding on in the mountains. He forced Miguel Indurain, of all people, into having to race aggressively in the mountains to make up for his losses in the time trial.
Let me repeat that: he forced
Miguel Indurain to race aggressively
to make up for his losses in the time trial. The greatest time triallist of all time lost more time to Mauri in the MTT to Valdezcaray, and despite desperate attempts to shake his Catalan shadow, couldn't put more than a few seconds into him on Lagos de Covadonga or Monte Naranco. And then, after his efforts in the mountains, Miguelón lost over a minute to Mauri in the second long ITT.
Yes, I know April-May 1991 Mig is different from the 1995 Miguelón that I selected for my team. But he was only a couple of months removed from setting the Indurain template at the Tour de France, a template which bore a striking resemblance to Mauri's. Look, I know Miguelón is a waaaay better climber than Melcior could ever hope to be. I know Melcior lost a minute to Aramón-Cerler and benefited immensely from the weather annulling the Andorra-Pla de Beret stage (strangely, the power rider that Mauri was climbed better in the irregular, steeper slopes of the Sierra Cantabrica than he could in the lower gradient power climbs of the Spanish Pyrenées) in defending his lead from the time trials. But I'm not picking Melcior for his climbing. I have Beloki, Chava and Escartín for that. Melcior emerged from nowhere like many other shock GT winners, and he went back there the following year, losing 40 minutes in a punishing stage over Tourmalet and finishing at Luz Ardiden and eventually retiring in humiliation. He later rebuilt himself as a TT-focused superdomestique and secondary GC hand, managing two further top 10s at the Vuelta and, as a teammate of Zülle and Jalabert, at the 1995 Tour de France where he was part of the ONCE team that tried desperately and in futility to overhaul the Indurain that he had once completely crushed in the chrono. But because of that unassuming character and the out-of-nowhere aspect of his success, Melcior is also not the kind of rider who will demand to ride for his own interest. He was a loyal monster worker for Jalabert, and he can reprise that role here as well as working for Miguelón too.
Libertine Seguros - 1 Miguel Indurain ('95 Tour), 20 Laurent Jalabert ('95 Vuelta), 30 Joseba Beloki ('01 Tour), 31 José María Jiménez ('98 Vuelta), 41 Fernando Escartin ('99 Tour), 60 Melcior Mauri ('91 Vuelta)
The Hitch - 2 Lance Armstrong ('04 Tour), 19 Michael Rasmussen ('07 Tour), 29 Nairo Quintana ('13 Tour), 32 Vincenzo Nibali ('14 Tour), 42 Andy Schleck ('09 Tour), 59 Carlos Sastre ('08 Tour)
The Sceptic - 3 Jan Ullrich ('97 Tour), 18 Santi Pérez ('04 Vuelta), 28 Chris Horner ('13 Vuelta), 33 Aitor Gonzalez ('02 Vuelta), 43 Mario Cipollini ('02 Giro), 58 Damiano Cunego ('04 Giro)
The Green Monkey - 4 Alberto Contador ('09 Tour), 17 Alex Zülle ('95 Tour), 27 Ivan Gotti ('97 Giro), 34 Emanuele Sella ('08 Giro), 44 Cadel Evans ('07 Tour), 57 TheGreenMonkey - Paolo Bettini ('98 Giro)
zlev11 - 5 Marco Pantani ('99 Giro), 16 Floyd Landis ('06 Tour), 26 Riccardo Ricco ('08 Tour), 35 Iban Mayo ('03 Tour), 45 Laurent Dufaux ('96 Tour), 56 Stefan Schumacher ('08 Tour)
burning - 6 Bjarne Riis ('96 Tour), 15 Richard Virenque ('97 Tour), 25 Gilberto Simoni ('03 Giro), 36 Bradley Wiggins ('12 Tour), 46 Luc Leblanc ('94 Tour), 55 Bobby Julich ('98 Tour)
Netserk - 7 Ivan Basso ('06 Giro), 14 Piotr Ugrumov ('94 Tour), 24 Pavel Tonkov ('98 Giro), 37 Andreas Klöden ('06 Tour), 47 Fabian Cancellara ('10 Tour), 54 George Hincapie ('05 Tour)
Zam Olyas - 8 Gianni Bugno ('90 Giro), 13 Tony Rominger ('95 Giro), 23 Denis Menchov ('09 Giro), 38 Claudio Chiappucci ('92 Tour), 48 Djamolidine Abdoujaparov ('93 Tour), 53 Yaroslav Popovych ('05 Tour)
Tonton - 9 Evgeni Berzin ('94 Giro), 12 Chris Froome ('13 Tour), 22 Alexander Vinokourov ('03 Tour), 39 Alejandro Valverde ('09 Vuelta), 49 Abraham Olano ('98 Vuelta), 52 Leonardo Piepoli ('07 Giro)
ciranda - 10 Roberto Heras ('04 Vuelta), 11 Tyler Hamilton ('03 Tour ), 21 Frank Vandenbroucke ('99 Vuelta), 40 Joaquím Rodriguez ('12 Vuelta), 50 Raimondas Rumsas ('02 Tour), 51 Dario Frigo ('01 Giro)
Pick 61: ciranda -
Pick 62: Tonton -
Pick 63: Zam Olyas -
Pick 64: Netserk -
Pick 65: burning -
Pick 66: zlev11 -
Pick 67: The Green Monkey -
Pick 68: the sceptic -
Pick 69: The Hitch -
Pick 70: Libertine Seguros -
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