Re: Re:
Once again, an excellent post. Nail, head.
Libertine Seguros said:Sure, and other riders with bizarre, even ugly styles have been good climbers over the years - Fernando Escartín, Francisco Mancebo, Juan Mauricio Soler - but one of the issues with those "unorthodox" styles is that a lot of the "classical" styles are so effective because they're the most effective ways of changing up and down pace fluidly, enabling energy to not be wasted and resulting in less effort being expended. Quintana, for example, is aided by his general poker-faced expressionlessness, but when he changes up and down the tempo it looks effortless, fluid and graceful, no wasted energy. Froome even more so than those mentioned above, owing to his crazy high-cadence seated attacking and legs akimbo style (notwithstanding that none of them posted results of his level either), looks highly inefficient and wasteful of energy. Which makes his dominance even more egregious, because you then imagine, how good could he be if he wasn't wasting all this surplus power on his crawling-over-the-bike technique? And he time trials like a spider with its front legs raised, yet is almost able to match the world's best when he's on form - how good could he be if he had the almost perfect TT position of Martin? At least with Wiggins, when he was stomping the TTs, you could see why - he had a perfect flat back, minimal frontal area, absolutely no upper body movement. When Froome TTs up there with the specialists, it's hard to compute - how does he put that much power out while riding in such an efficient position?Supimilian said:Sometimes being a werido is a good thing. Plenty of riders with a godly style that never won anything, much less the big one. It's obviously quite effective.
Chris Froome's transformation back in 2011 always reminds me of another guy who was able to stomp everybody due to seemingly limitless ability to put the power down despite a wasteful, inefficient technique that many purists were mortified by. His name was Johann "Juanito" Mühlegg and his fairytale ended exactly the way you expect. I've never been able to unsee that.
Once again, an excellent post. Nail, head.