Future GT Winner (Edition 2021)

[Kaptain Kool]

I'd also like to add that Pinot would have had a very good shot at winning the 2019 Tour had he not run into an injury at the worst possible time, so even if Vingegaard's 2021 is Pinot's 2014, that doesn't mean he can't win a GT. And Vingegaard beat Carapaz instead of losing to a Peraud type, quite a big difference.

I'm not saying Pinot is a bad rider. He's good. But he didn't win a GT. Not many riders do. Sure, maybe he could have won a GT if many things that happened didn't happen.
Vingegaard is good, too. But IMHO finishing second while never being anywhere close to first the entire race isn't an indication of likely winning a GT in the future.

 

[Devil's Elbow]

I'm not saying Pinot is a bad rider. He's good. But he didn't win a GT. Not many riders do. Sure, maybe he could have won a GT if many things that happened didn't happen.
Vingegaard is good, too. But IMHO finishing second while never being anywhere close to first the entire race isn't an indication of likely winning a GT in the future.

Quintana's 2013 Tour comes to mind...
In fact, the last rider who was 26 or younger when he came second in the Tour who didn't go on to win a GT was Herman Van Springel in 1968 (!). The youngest rider this century to come second in the Tour without ever winning a GT was Klöden in 2004, aged 29. So precedent suggests Vingegaard will be a GT winner.

 

[Escarabajo]

I'd also like to add that Pinot would have had a very good shot at winning the 2019 Tour had he not run into an injury at the worst possible time, so even if Vingegaard's 2021 is Pinot's 2014, that doesn't mean he can't win a GT. And Vingegaard beat Carapaz instead of losing to a Peraud type, quite a big difference.

But there is absolutely nothing in the history that show me that Pinot was in way to winning that Tour.
The Pinot story became like the Landa story. Making those assumptions with those riders is completely crazy when you have riders as unreliable as they are.

 

[Red Rick]

But there is absolutely nothing in the history that show me that Pinot was in way to winning that Tour.
The Pinot story became like the Landa story. Making those assumptions with those riders is completely crazy when you have riders as unreliable as they are.

Rider flying all Tour and only behind because of missed echelon and TTT and was ahead of other climber wasn't on way to winning Tour with only mountain stages to go?

 

[Escarabajo]

Rider flying all Tour and only behind because of missed echelon and TTT and was ahead of other climber wasn't on way to winning Tour with only mountain stages to go?

Do not agree given the history of Pinot, as I said before. Crimes, problems, projects, etc are solved based on data history. I cannot believe that theory based on someone who is so unreliable.

 

[Devil's Elbow]

But there is absolutely nothing in the history that show me that Pinot was in way to winning that Tour.
The Pinot story became like the Landa story. Making those assumptions with those riders is completely crazy when you have riders as unreliable as they are.

Pinot would definitely have overtaken Alaphilippe and needed to take 15 seconds on Thomas, 3 on Kruijswijk, and retain a 12-second gap to Bernal, after having outclimbed everyone on both Pyrenees stages. Of course, there's no guarantee he would have won (and I never claimed there was) given that Bernal did improve in that final week, especially with landslides messing up the final stages (what tactical decision would he have made when Bernal attacked on the Iséran?), but he went into the Alps as the favourite for a reason...

Whether Pinot would have won is irrelevant to Vingegaard though, the point was that even a rider as inconsistent as Pinot could ride at GT winning level, while his third place as a young rider was less impressive than Vingegaard's second place, so Pinot's career is not an argument against Vingegaard winning a GT, rather the contrary.

 

[Red Rick]

Do not agree given the history of Pinot, as I said before. Crimes, problems, projects, etc are solved based on data history. I cannot believe that theory based on someone who is so unreliable.

That Tour was also the only time in his career he was the best climber in the race.

 

[Ilmaestro99]

Do we compare Pinot to Sastre or Evans?

 

[Gigs_98]

The candidates feel a lot less promising this year than in previous editions.

I have this bad gut feeling that Evenepoel's career just isn't going the way it's supposed to go for him to become the rider everyone and his mother expected him to become just over a year ago. He was still the only one I voted because I want to believe he still has that big career in front of him, but I'm honestly very unsure.

With Almeida and Vingegaard it's different. They both look insanely promising and are both still really young but these last few years have made me skeptical of whether young riders will actually keep improving after they arrived on the big scene. I guess Almeida was better in this Giro than last years or at least his highs were higher than last years (his Sega di Ala performance was genuinely great) but then he looked extremely inconsistent. Even in the last week where everyone just remembers how great he was he finished the 4 mountain stages as the 6th, 1st, 2nd and 4th best gc rider in a field that was considered as relatively weak by most. I'd argue that only in 2 out of those 4 stages he showed the kind of level he would need consistently over 3 weeks if he wants to win gt's. Now in the past I would have said, no problem, he only just turned 23 he's gonna improve massively, but unfortunately it's 2021 and riders have somehow decided to collectively peak 3 years earlier than in the past so considering his improvement from 2020 to 2021 wasn't that huge I just don't know how much I should expect him to improve going forward.

Vingegaard meanwhile has improved a lot from 2020 to 2021 but then he is 24 already which is ancient for the 2021 peloton. I don't know, it's just that so often in the last few years I watched young gc riders having their first big appearence in a gt and thought "now imagine how good this guy will be in a year" and then he wasn't. Tbf this is the same thought process that last year made me think Pogacar isn't the "real deal" because he might not improve much after his 2019 Vuelta performance. But while I was collosally wrong about Pogacar the same thought applied to pretty much all other young gc contenders from the last few years would have been correct.

Actually looking a bit deeper into this here is a list of all guys standing on a gt podium while being at most 25 years old from 2014 to 2020:
Aru, Quintana, Landa, MAL, Hindley, TGH, Pinot, Bardet, Bernal, Pogacar, Mas (Majka and Carapaz missed the list for being 2 and 5 days too old)
This is a list of some seriously good riders but then I ask you, outside of Pogacar has any other one of these riders improved after getting their first gt podium? You might argue that 2015 Quintana was slightly better than 2013 Quintana or that 2019 Pinot was better than 2014 Pinot and of course Hindley and TGH might have only had an off year before becoming better than their 2020 selves in the future. These predictions are always so hard to make because we are consistently fooled to think that some riders will come back in a year to be even stronger when in reality we have already seen the best of them. Vingegaard looked really really good in the Tour but if I had to make a bet on him either winning or never winning a gt, I would take him never winning one.

 

[Netserk]

Vingegaard needs to replicate, he doesn't need to improve.

 

[Red Rick]

The candidates feel a lot less promising this year than in previous editions.

I have this bad gut feeling that Evenepoel's career just isn't going the way it's supposed to go for him to become the rider everyone and his mother expected him to become just over a year ago. He was still the only one I voted because I want to believe he still has that big career in front of him, but I'm honestly very unsure.

With Almeida and Vingegaard it's different. They both look insanely promising and are both still really young but these last few years have made me skeptical of whether young riders will actually keep improving after they arrived on the big scene. I guess Almeida was better in this Giro than last years or at least his highs were higher than last years (his Sega di Ala performance was genuinely great) but then he looked extremely inconsistent. Even in the last week where everyone just remembers how great he was he finished the 4 mountain stages as the 6th, 1st, 2nd and 4th best gc rider in a field that was considered as relatively weak by most. I'd argue that only in 2 out of those 4 stages he showed the kind of level he would need consistently over 3 weeks if he wants to win gt's. Now in the past I would have said, no problem, he only just turned 23 he's gonna improve massively, but unfortunately it's 2021 and riders have somehow decided to collectively peak 3 years earlier than in the past so considering his improvement from 2020 to 2021 wasn't that huge I just don't know how much I should expect him to improve going forward.

Vingegaard meanwhile has improved a lot from 2020 to 2021 but then he is 24 already which is ancient for the 2021 peloton. I don't know, it's just that so often in the last few years I watched young gc riders having their first big appearence in a gt and thought "now imagine how good this guy will be in a year" and then he wasn't. Tbf this is the same thought process that last year made me think Pogacar isn't the "real deal" because he might not improve much after his 2019 Vuelta performance. But while I was collosally wrong about Pogacar the same thought applied to pretty much all other young gc contenders from the last few years would have been correct.

Actually looking a bit deeper into this here is a list of all guys standing on a gt podium while being at most 25 years old from 2014 to 2020:
Aru, Quintana, Landa, MAL, Hindley, TGH, Pinot, Bardet, Bernal, Pogacar, Mas (Majka and Carapaz missed the list for being 2 and 5 days too old)
This is a list of some seriously good riders but then I ask you, outside of Pogacar has any other one of these riders improved after getting their first gt podium? You might argue that 2015 Quintana was slightly better than 2013 Quintana or that 2019 Pinot was better than 2014 Pinot and of course Hindley and TGH might have only had an off year before becoming better than their 2020 selves in the future. These predictions are always so hard to make because we are consistently fooled to think that some riders will come back in a year to be even stronger when in reality we have already seen the best of them. Vingegaard looked really really good in the Tour but if I had to make a bet on him either winning or never winning a gt, I would take him never winning one.

Judging by Landa winning 2 years apart this is hardly the least exciting generation.

 

[Escarabajo]

Do we compare Pinot to Sastre or Evans?

Sastre and Evans won Tours. And I am not sure about Pinot's reliability. I don't know why this forum is so high on him given his history of failing to get results at GT's (whatever the reasons). Sastre and Evans were very consistent riders IMHO.

 

[Red Rick]

Sastre and Evans won Tours. And I am not sure about Pinot's reliability. I don't know why this forum is so high on him given his history of failing to get results at GT's (whatever the reasons). Sastre and Evans were very consistent riders IMHO.

Give Pinot the luck of Evans' 2011 Tour he wins one not even joking. Or Bernals win.

 

[Kaptain Kool]

Sastre and Evans won Tours. And I am not sure about Pinot's reliability. I don't know why this forum is so high on him given his history of failing to get results at GT's (whatever the reasons). Sastre and Evans were very consistent riders IMHO.

16, DNF, 4, DNF, 6, DNF, 29, DNF. Looks like someone likely to win the Tour!

 

[Escarabajo]

Give Pinot the luck of Evans' 2011 Tour he wins one not even joking. Or Bernals win.

No.

 

[Devil's Elbow]

The bad faith arguments here are something else....

For one, nobody is arguing that Pinot is about to win the Tour, or any GT for that matter. Certainly for the Tour, it seems that his moment has come and gone, mainly because he's lacked that little bit of consistency and that little bit of luck for most of his career.

However, you simply cannot have watched the first two weeks of a GT, and concluded that the guy who's been the strongest climber throughout, and is 15 seconds down on the first actual GC rider, has no real shot at winning the race with three mountain stages as the only remaining GC days. Regardless of that rider's history. Even someone like Richie Porte would have been the outright favourite in the same situation.

It's also incredibly misleading to just look at the topline results to judge someone's GC ability. A DNF can mean absolutely anything, and in Pinot's case, just presenting all his DNFs without context dismisses one Tour where he was almost certain to finish first or second, and one Giro where he most probably would have made the podium. Certainly the DNF in the former was not due to his own mistake, or recurring health issues, it was simply a case of terrible luck - how often has he had knee issues? Using the same logic, Simon Yates was not one of the top favourites going into the 2018 Vuelta because he'd never made the top-5 of a GT despite competing in six. Let alone Geraint Thomas, who had never done better than 15th overall in any of his 12 GTs, but was certainly seen as a strong contender ahead of his 13th, the 2018 Tour. Again, that doesn't mean Pinot looks like winning a GT in the future, but it also means those topline results don't accurately reflect whether that was the case in the past.

 

[SafeBet]

Do we compare Pinot to Sastre or Evans?

Sastre was a monster of consistency.
He finished 22 consecutive GTs, 6 of them on the podium and 14 of them (+1 a couple years before) in the top10.
He's like the opposite of Pinot.

Even in the last week where everyone just remembers how great he was he finished the 4 mountain stages as the 6th, 1st, 2nd and 4th best gc rider in a field that was considered as relatively weak by most. I'd argue that only in 2 out of those 4 stages he showed the kind of level he would need consistently over 3 weeks if he wants to win gt's.

The day he was 6th he had been in the break all day so it shouldn't really count.
Overall I stand by my position he was the strongest climber in the race come the third week, or at least the most consistent.

 

[Pantani_lives]

Jonas Vingegaard is predestined to stay at Jumbo-Visma because of his initials.

 

[BlueRoads]

I think unfortunately this question cannot be answered without taking the possibility of people reaching heights one never thought possible for them through clinic stuff into account. But since this is the doping-free part of the forum I will leave it at that.

Vlasov: could still improve. If he doesn't get the full pressure which could make him fail and give up I think it's possible, although I wouldn't call it likely. Mostly because he's not a pure climber to begin with. 20/100

O'Connor: started to have a thing for this guy, but he's a climber whose tt will make him lose out on the GT wins I think. I hope he mixes good GT results with a few one day wins. 5/100

Dani Martinez: I love him, he's a very decent time trialer and a very good climber, he's at the right team; I also think Ineos will give him chances because Thomas and Porte aren't getting younger/ are out soon; Pidcock, Hayter and the guys are not there yet, and Adam Yates did not exactly prove himself as a GT leader this year. Unfortunately he will crash out of 3/4 of the races he will take part in. I don't know how he does it, but it happens again and again. Winning a GT would be... luck, despite his qualities. 20/100

Mas: obviously underestimated by me. He can win a Vuelta. But it won't be easy with a lot of young guys with very good time trialing and good sprinting coming up. 30/100

Mäder: if Bahrain continue where they are this year it's possible. 15/100

Haig: probably not. 5/100

Almeida: possible. Most likely the Giro. 40/100

Vingegaard: if he can hold this year's level. But his improvement came very suddenly and I find it impossible to tell whether this will go on. 40/100

Lopez: no. 2/100

Evenepoel: yes, I think so, he's got plenty of time and the base is there; although I agree with Gigs, his career might not turn out to be the dominant one one imagined not too long ago. 80/100

 

[BigCoward]

I'm not saying Pinot is a bad rider. He's good. But he didn't win a GT. Not many riders do. Sure, maybe he could have won a GT if many things that happened didn't happen.
Vingegaard is good, too. But IMHO finishing second while never being anywhere close to first the entire race isn't an indication of likely winning a GT in the future.

He lost the majority of the time on one stage or when chaperoning his team leader. If he had been riding for the win at the time and was committed and not worried about towing other riders he doesn't lose 3 mins on the stage. And the TTs were a wash though obviously pog could have probably done more in the last one. And maybe put more time in MTFs if he needed to.

 

[Red Rick]

No.

It's literally reversing the DNFs that Tour and Pinot wins that thing.

 

[hayneplane]

Do we compare Pinot to Sastre or Evans?

Neither as both of those riders maximised their talent in amassing the palmares they respectively ended up with whereas Pinot leaves a long trail of what ifs....

 

[Ilmaestro99]

@hayneplane @SafeBet the Evans/Sastre thing was a joke because every thread results in riders being compared to Evans or Sastre.

 

[Rackham]

It might sound crazy but Wout van Aert seems closer to unlocking GC winning form than many of the names often cited here.

And before everyone rubbishes that idea, just keep in mind the progression curve of WvA since 2019 has been massive.

...

And this is cycling. It's not like everything happens in a 2+2=4 linear fashion. So a little loss of weight + keeping the same power.... & sparks would fly on the road behind WvA in a GT.

 

[Red Rick]

It might sound crazy but Wout van Aert seems closer to unlocking GC winning form than many of the names often cited here.

And before everyone rubbishes that idea, just keep in mind the progression curve of WvA since 2019 has been massive.

...

And this is cycling. It's not like everything happens in a 2+2=4 linear fashion. So a little loss of weight + keeping the same power.... & sparks would fly on the road behind WvA in a GT.

Van Aert would almost certainly have to drop muscle mass and then you never know what power output remains.