Also, Cobo's consecutive GT results are 10 - 1.
Doesn't seem so out of nowhere when you take the two years of bupkiss out, huh? Same goes for Froome, his progress looks less crazy when you take out the fact that he didn't finish a GT between May 2009 and September 2011 and his progress had been going backwards. If you just look at the GT results, Cobo has one of the most reasonable looking progressions of any GT winner in the last 20 years (starting at the edge of the top 20, winning a mountain stage before withdrawing from another, making the lower end of the top 10 with a stage win then progressing to victory), but when riders' other results are taken into account, a different image starts to emerge; taking just his GT results erases his completely abysmal 2010 season as he didn't enter one.
Also just listing DNFs without context makes things hard to take into account. After all, these are all top level GT racers, recording GT DNFs for a variety of reasons:
- Vincenzo Nibali is kicked out of the 2015 Vuelta for holding a car to get back to the bunch after crashing in the first road stage (no clues to his form can be drawn)
- myriad week 1 crashes (Valverde 2006, Contador 2016, Froome 2014, Wiggins 2011, Horner 2009) before we can really see how a rider is performing in a relevant stage
- Joseba Beloki crashes out of the 2003 Tour late in the first set of mountains after being one of the best climbers (clue to strong form, but crashing out)
- Nairo Quintana crashes out of the 2014 Vuelta in the leader's jersey in the TT at the end of week 1 (likewise)
- Andy Schleck is thrown off the 2009 Vuelta for drinking (rider not taking race seriously so not a credible form guide)
- Saunier Duval withdraw from 2008 Tour after doping scandals (riders may have been performing strongly, but in circumstances shady as hell)
- Bradley Wiggins withdraws from 2013 Giro after losing all nerve in the descents (rider may have had form but was not competitive for other reasons)
- Levi Leipheimer crashes out of the 2009 Tour in week 2 (in strong form but only a domestique so final result likely to be affected by that)
- Fränk Schleck withdraws from 2012 Giro in top 10 after 2 weeks (rider had form, but focus is on another race)
- Michael Rasmussen is pulled from the 2007 Tour by his team in week 3 for lying about his whereabouts (rider was on superb form and would almost certainly have won the race, but was doing so in shady circumstances and was pulled from the race as a result)
- Ilnur Zakarin crashes out of the 2016 Giro three stages from the finish, while on the attack while 5th on the GC (rider was on superb form and would likely have scored a very good final GC position)
- Chris Froome is thrown off the 2010 Giro three stages from the finish while lying lower than 100th in the GC (rider had very little form and was not going to be a GC relevance; DQ more about just trying to survive the race than to salvage anything à la Nibali)
With the exception of Froome's and Nibali's DQs, all of these will just simply be recorded as "DNF" if you take results alone into account. The cold result statement is effective in some respects but is not in others. For example, Froome managed 36th in the (original) 2009 Giro results. Barloworld had no real GC threat (Soler was essentially foraging alone) and Froome was mostly quiet, but got into a break in an intermediate stage or two that was allowed to go and gained him some time back. The same GC result was achieved by Quintana in the 2012 Vuelta, his first GT, and where he was allowed to drop time in week 1, and then by week 3 he was one of the top 3 climbers in the race, having to drop back to pull Valverde in that three-way duel, with the strong results in the second half of the race from climbing with the best pulling him up to that 36th in the GC. Two completely contrasting ways of reaching the same end (one working as a team player, dropping time then being with the elites working for his leader, the other having no real leader so stage hunting), which create different impressions in the heads of the viewers. I didn't leave the 2009 Giro thinking Froome was a potential GT winner, I thought of him as a promising stagehunter. I did, however, leave the 2012 Vuelta thinking Quintana was not just a potential but an almost nailed on GT winner.
For the record, I did a long comparison some time ago which reduced GT winners' GT performances down to the final GC results only, and the net result was that it made the likes of Wiggins and Hesjedal look the most bizarre, because they were so far down the GC before their transformations, as opposed to the puncheur-turned-goat riders like di Luca and Scarponi who always had a smattering of DNFs mixed in with decent GC results.
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