Future GT Winner (Edition 2023)

[LesDiablesRouges]

Voted for Ujtedbreckes (i have no ide how to spell this) . Watching him in angliru and tourmalet climbing with the absolut best, knowing he's 20 and doing his first gt, dealing with the 3 weeks well, I think it will happen. Get him to a team that dials in his TT set up, and a couple more seasons of development, he can do it.

He seems to develop at the right rate. That's why I see him more likely than ajuso who just seems extremely over developed for his age and might stall

Never didd I think I would vote for a young overhyped Belgian in one of these polls but here we are.

Ajuso is the next most likely, Rodriguez is also a decent bet and I think people still underestimate Arensmen. Other than that I don't see anybody else do it in any circumstances. If things went differently the last 2 years i would also vote Masnada

How is Uijtdebroeks overhyped? He won Tour L'Avenir and finished 8th in his first GT at 20. He was 6th at Romandie and 7th a TdS, Not to mention nobody talks about him.

 

[Eddy Evenepoel]

What would the GC Power Ranking had looked like after 2015?

9. Porte

I don't know about this..
Porte had his 7th place from the Giro 2010 where he was in the break that got 12 minutes and he still lost like 10 minutes to Arroyo in the last week and that was his only top 15 position in a Grand Tour by the end of 2015.
First in 2016 when he finished 5th in the Tour he showed that he could actually go a full GT without cracking.

 

[Eddy Evenepoel]

How is Uijtdebroeks overhyped? He won Tour L'Avenir and finished 8th in his first GT at 20. He was 6th at Romandie and 7th a TdS, Not to mention nobody talks about him.

It's because it's so hard to talk (and write) about him because of his name..

 

[Zoetemelk-fan]

Whoa, that's a tough one.

Throughout the last decade in particular, we have tried to figure out "who is next?", but time and time again we are overtaken by someone who suddenly comes in from the sidelines and takes it all, whether it was a ski jumper, a soccer player or a fish factory employee (or latest this home trainer guy).

So I dare not put a tick among the well-known suspects in the list.

So perhaps it was more relevant to guess whether the next person who suddenly pops up in the sky is a sanitation worker, a magician, a butcher or a fired bank clerk who has had to flee to other pastures to earn a living?

 

[hayneplane]

What about looking at the Tour de L'Avenir winners and drawing a conclusion. That is very telling. Those youngsters have delivered one way or another.

Getting less relevant in the era now of juniors gong straight to the world tour and placing highly while still a teenager.

That said Isaac del Toro is a very intriguing prospect as someone from a non typical cycling nation riding for a very small club team rather than a feeder team to the big boys or noted CT level team and won very convincingly in the high mountains in L’Avenir.

 

[hayneplane]

If someone targets the Vuelta as a season goal while the best go for the Tour and onto the Olympics then we could have a new winner. Ayuso is the logical pick for this as he also has a strong TT.

I could see Wout Van Aert winning a Grand Tour sooner than I could envisage Almeida/Mas etc doing so as they just don’t have any outstanding attributes where they will gain big time on the field.

 

[Nick2413]

There could already be a rider like Vingegaard out there who is relatively under the radar and we’d have no way of knowing. The timeline for this is rapid. Even Pogacar, what year was he first considered a GT threat and how long was that before his Tour win? There was 12-24 months notice tops if you say Avenir ‘18 put him on this kind of a list.

 

[perico]

What would the GC Power Ranking had looked like after 2015?

1. Froome
2. Contador
3. Quintana
4. Nibali
5. Valverde
6. Aru
7. Landa
8. Purito
9. Porte
10. Dumoulin

If that is an accurate depicting of the expectations at the time, the top-6 had all won a GT, but the following three would never win one. Maybe Majka would even rank above Dumoulin? If so, none of those who hadn't already won one would ever win one.

What about 2014?

 

[Pantani_lives]

We could start doing retrospective polls. Would you have thought Remco Merckx would win a GT based on his results ahead of the 1968 season, or would you have trusted that Landa Julio Jiménez would finally pull it off one day?

Some "future GT winners" from the distant past:

Herman Vanspringel, Joaquim Agostinho, Hennie Kuiper, Charly Mottet, Jean-François Bernard, Erik Breukink, Claudio Chiappucci, Richard Virenque, Fernandon Escartin, Frank Vandenbroucke, Andreas Klöden, Joseba Beloki, Samuel Sanchez, Joaquim Rodríguez...

Is Uijtdebroeks really overhyped? One week ago his rider thread had fewer posts than the Enzo Hincapie thread.

He had the advantage of growing up during the Evenepoel hype, so he could quietly get better without an abundance of media attention.

 

[tobydawq]

What about 2014?

Betancur definitely number 1.

 

[Red Rick]

Yeah I like Del Toro more than anyone on this list bar Ayuso probably.

IMO slow improvement is either way overrated or doesn't happen as often and is hard to predict. The top tier talents hit extremely fast.

 

[staubsauger]

Betancur definitely number 1.

I still think Betancur already could have won the 2013 Vuelta a Espana by that time if he hadn't gotten fat in the summer!

 

[hayneplane]

Yeah I like Del Toro more than anyone on this list bar Ayuso probably.

IMO slow improvement is either way overrated or doesn't happen as often and is hard to predict. The top tier talents hit extremely fast.

Yeah even the late age ones tend to have started out as a different type of rider rather than a long build up of better and better GC results eg Thomas, Wiggins or totally random flukes like Hesjedal. Cadel Evans is a rare example of a slow burn winner as is Carlos Sastre.

 

[SafeBet]

Yeah I like Del Toro more than anyone on this list bar Ayuso probably.

I love Del Toro but how is he a better prospect than Uijtdebroeks?

 

[EddyMazzoleni]

So perhaps it was more relevant to guess whether the next person who suddenly pops up in the sky is a sanitation worker, a magician, a butcher or a fired bank clerk who has had to flee to other pastures to earn a living?

Former butcher and former butcher delivery boys had a lot of succes in the '50 and '60

 

[Red Rick]

I love Del Toro but how is he a better prospect than Uijtdebroeks?

I mainly assume he hasnt been training as professionally as long

 

[SafeBet]

I mainly assume he hasnt been training as professionally as long

It's not like those Froome stories that had him riding a bike without shoes though.
He's been training / racing in Europe for some time now. He was even training buddy with Giulio Pellizzari who came second in l'Avenir.

Which is not to say he can't become a GT winner in a few years, but I wouldn't rate him above Uijtdebroeks or even Rodrgieuz (yet).

 

[theyoungest]

If someone targets the Vuelta as a season goal while the best go for the Tour and onto the Olympics then we could have a new winner. Ayuso is the logical pick for this as he also has a strong TT.

I could see Wout Van Aert winning a Grand Tour sooner than I could envisage Almeida/Mas etc doing so as they just don’t have any outstanding attributes where they will gain big time on the field.

Let's put Van Aert in a grand tour with Almeida and Mas as his rivals. See who wins

(hint: it won't be Van Aert)

 

[dercuforever]

I think only Ayuso and Uijtdebroeks could win one tour in their carreer.
I had hope for Mas after last year but now there are too many rider stronger than him.

I'd say chance to win a GT in the future :

Vingegaard	95%	If he doesn't injure himself he should win a GT
Pogacar	95%	Even if he is already incredible, I believe he may still improve his level till 27-28. That way he could even beat Vingegaard in the TDF. And if he stays as he is now, he can win any GT Vingegaard is not attending.
Evenepoel	90%	Even though he had settbacks, and maybe will never show us a incredible climbing performance for a full GT, he'll still have what it takes to win GTs. Time is also on his side.
Ayuso	70%	He has to improve his level, or need a bit of luck. Time is on his side.
Hindley	60%	He can win a GT with few ITT kms.
Geoghegan Hart	50%	If he goes back to his pre-injury level, he may well win another Giro or Vuelta.
Roglic	40%	He is getting old but showed us that if he doesn't crash, he can be the best of the rest. He'd need a ITT though.
Yates.A	10%	They should focus Giro or Vuelta but they could win one of those with their TDF level.
Mas, Almeida, Yates.S	5%	They'd need luck
Anyone	2%	Kuss like scenario required
Uijtdebroeks	10%	Time on his side, he has to continue improving.

 

[TrekCyclist]

Some unknown nephew from the Ingebrigtsen family, who decides he will give cycling a try, instead of track and field ?

 

[Dekker_Tifosi]

voted Ayuso and Rodriguez, seemed the most likely

 

[Miss Violet Smith]

From the list, I'm thinking Ayuso and Uijtdebroeks.

Of course, I remain Team Almeida.

 

[Pantani_lives]

The poll is closed!

1. Juan Ayuso 61
2. Cian Uijtdebroeks 36
3. Carlos Rodríguez 33

It's almost the same top 3 like last year, with the numbers 2 and 3 reversed.

Juan Ayuso wins the poll for the second year running. Only Landa had won it twice before. Will Ayuso be another Landa, a young talent who raises high expectations but never wins a GT? Or will he become the first Spanish Vuelta winner since Contador?

Thanks to anyone who voted.

 

[Squire]

Yeah even the late age ones tend to have started out as a different type of rider rather than a long build up of better and better GC results eg Thomas, Wiggins or totally random flukes like Hesjedal. Cadel Evans is a rare example of a slow burn winner as is Carlos Sastre.

Agree with this. It's rare to see actual gradual improvement over many years. Evans and Sastre were both arguably past their peak or at the end of their peak by the time they won the Tour, and both benefitted from favourable circumstances. It wasn't really because those two got any better. The GTs around 2010 which didn't feature Contador had some very underwhelming fields. Evans and Sastre profited massively from the Puerto fallout that decimated the top of the GT hierarchy for those years. That's also why we can't totally discount GT wins from Mas, Almeida or anyone else lingering around the top 5. At some points there will be some weak GT fields somewhere. Probably not at the Tour though, with all the big hitters we now have.

 

[Netserk]

Nibali gradually improved until he was 29, not too dissimilar to Basso. Purito is an even more unusual case, but his rise was quite gradual.