Geraint Thomas, the next british hope

[Irondan]

Re: Re:

I think his 31st in 2011 is a good hint of his ability when giving it a serious go, at a time when I think he wasn't part of the Teide Troop.

This is all pretty irrelevant, though. We're debating whether he suddenly got x3 or x5 times better this year.

Yeah, only podium contenders are serious about the GTs.........

LOL. Benotti being Benotti. I'm sure Porte is really worried about his GC place. No way BMC is going to pay him even 6 figures now that he's way back at 79th. Me thinks he screwed up his career.

Anyway it looks like Thomas found the not-so-secret loophole Astana had uncorked in the Giro. Riding at the front against the wind on hot days keeps you cool. It's the ultimate marginal gain, I tell ya.

Don't be so sure of that. GC guys are few and far between, he's commanding a 7 figure salary. Guaranteed.

 

[Benotti69]

Re: Re:

I think his 31st in 2011 is a good hint of his ability when giving it a serious go, at a time when I think he wasn't part of the Teide Troop.

This is all pretty irrelevant, though. We're debating whether he suddenly got x3 or x5 times better this year.

Yeah, only podium contenders are serious about the GTs.........

LOL. Benotti being Benotti. I'm sure Porte is really worried about his GC place. No way BMC is going to pay him even 6 figures now that he's way back at 79th. Me thinks he screwed up his career.

Anyway it looks like Thomas found the not-so-secret loophole Astana had uncorked in the Giro. Riding at the front against the wind on hot days keeps you cool. It's the ultimate marginal gain, I tell ya.

Yeah, lets compare apples and oranges.......

The idea that a young pro was not being serious about his GTs is for the birds. Thomas happy to finish 140th, 118th and 67th before thinking, ooh this professional cycling, I better get serious about this malarky before someone drops me from the team!!!

Now the claim is Thomas had GT class but it only showed at age 26/27......hmmmm not buying it.

 

[Irondan]

Enough of the back and forth guys.

 

[zapata]

clearly a future tour winner in the making here. He comes from a track background after all.

Podium this tour? I look forward to him dropping Quintana next.

Any chance you could start some more new Sky threads? This is only the fifth in the last couple of days.

I'm looking forward to the Gallopin thread, he unexpectedly finished with the same group too.

Go ahead and start a gallopin thread, then. See how many comes out to his defense. Do you believe thomas is clean?

 

[ChewbaccaDefense]

Re:

I'm British, fairly hopeless at climbing though. Wonder how long it would take me to win the TdF after joining Sky

The bigger question is how long it would take before Sky gave you your own motor home?

 

[TheGreenMonkey]

Re: Re:

I think his 31st in 2011 is a good hint of his ability when giving it a serious go, at a time when I think he wasn't part of the Teide Troop.

This is all pretty irrelevant, though. We're debating whether he suddenly got x3 or x5 times better this year.

Yeah, only podium contenders are serious about the GTs.........

Thomas is the kind of rider who might not try his best on mountain stages so that he can rest up to be a domestique on the other stages where he could help a leader. So he could have the same physical capacity and finish 31st or 140th. There is a big difference between taking the race seriously, all the riders do this and taking their place on GC seriously. Some riders who finish inside the top 20 might not be taking their GC position seriously, they are just doing a job for their team which ends them up there and some who finish behind them might be trying their best to finish top 20. This has no impact on whether they are doping or not.

However you would expect rider capable of doing a ride like todays at age 30 to have shown a bit more previously at some stage in his career than what Thomas has in his career, that is what is so suspicious about his ride.

 

[The Hitch]

Re:

I said this in the SKY thread already, but I think that Thomas' best case scenario in GT GCs is probably a Christian Vande Velde-esque career. Future tour winner is probably hyperbole. Though I will be interested to see if he can handle multiple climbs in a true mountain stage.

His performance today alone arguably surpassed any performance CVV ever did

 

[The Hitch]

clearly a future tour winner in the making here. He comes from a track background after all.

Podium this tour? I look forward to him dropping Quintana next.

Any chance you could start some more new Sky threads? This is only the fifth in the last couple of days.

I'm looking forward to the Gallopin thread, he unexpectedly finished with the same group too.

You don't know how to create threads on here? Its pretty simple.

 

[fantomas]

Re: Re:

I think his 31st in 2011 is a good hint of his ability when giving it a serious go, at a time when I think he wasn't part of the Teide Troop.

This is all pretty irrelevant, though. We're debating whether he suddenly got x3 or x5 times better this year.

Yeah, only podium contenders are serious about the GTs.........

LOL. Benotti being Benotti. I'm sure Porte is really worried about his GC place. No way BMC is going to pay him even 6 figures now that he's way back at 79th. Me thinks he screwed up his career.

Anyway it looks like Thomas found the not-so-secret loophole Astana had uncorked in the Giro. Riding at the front against the wind on hot days keeps you cool. It's the ultimate marginal gain, I tell ya.

Porte knows The Secret of Marginal Gains. That in itself is worth at least 7 figures.

 

[The Hitch]

Re:

Think we might get ahead of ourselves here. G hasn't proven that he can hang with best on a real mountain stage with several hard climbs. To me it isn't totally unexpected that G could do something like this on one climb. He is a fairly skinny rider with a great engine. Compare his performance with Gallopin, another rider that weighs around 70 kilos: G beat Gallopin with 21 seconds today. If G is 5th on a stage like stage 12, I start raising some eyebrows.

I agree.

While we are at it I feel we also got a little ahead of ourselves with Horner. We should wait for Horner to age a little more and then win all 3 gts. That will be far more telling. If he wins all 3 gts at age 47, then I'll start raising some eyebrows.

 

[Billie]

The guy had all incentive to go all out in 2010 in the mountains. He was 2ND in GC that year when the tour entered the mountains. Unfortunately for him Sky had net yet invested that heavily in blenders and pillows

 

[Pierrot le Fou]

Quick question for the historians amongst you. Who was the last rider who won both cobbled classics and was also a top 10 candidate in Grand Tours. I've seen Hincapie mentioned a bit. Would it be him and Bugno? Any others since the likes of Kelly, Hinault etc?

 

[hrotha]

Re:

Quick question for the historians amongst you. Who was the last rider who won both cobbled classics and was also a top 10 candidate in Grand Tours. I've seen Hincapie mentioned a bit. Would it be him and Bugno? Any others since the likes of Kelly, Hinault etc?

Vandenbroucke, perhaps. He was 12th in the 1999 Vuelta, the same year he won the Omloop Het Volk among other things, but he didn't really ride for the GC.

He was 24 at the time.

 

[The Hitch]

Re:

I'm British, fairly hopeless at climbing though.

So basically, identical to Geraint Thomas (before this year)

 

[PremierAndrew]

Re: Re:

I'm British, fairly hopeless at climbing though.

So basically, identical to Geraint Thomas (before this year)

Tbf, G did have some pedigree, beating LRP after domming for him (nothing special though)

Everyone successful athlete has a breakthrough year, but it is fairly hard to believe someone do so well on both the MTs and the cobbles when the field is so speicalised

 

[Billie]

Nardello finished fifth twice in de Ronde and took some top 10s in the post festina tours. Even that involved some breakaway luck and never climbed like Thomas did today. Also was nowhere as good in the classics

 

[Saint Unix]

Damn shame Paolini got cracked for coke. The man who outrode Geraint at Gent-Wevelgem would have shat on Froome from a great height today.

Because that's how pro cycling works now. Apparently.

 

[mortand]

Re:

Nardello finished fifth twice in de Ronde and took some top 10s in the post festina tours. Even that involved some breakaway luck and never climbed like Thomas did today. Also was nowhere as good in the classics

Yes, Daniele Nardello was my first thought too. He didn't actually win any classics, but he top-10'd Paris-Roubaix and Ronde van Vlaanderen several times, while riding GC - almost randomly at times - too. A true allrounder.

 

[Eagle]

Devolder, don't remember him performing in classics and Grand Tours in the same year though

 

[carton]

Evans won Wallone in 2010 and finished 5th in the Giro with the blue jersey. Not cobbled, but still a classic, I guess. He also got a 4th at Liege and held the maillot jaune he went on to win the following year. And, good ol' G himself finished 31st at the Tour and 10th in Flanders 8 seconds back in 2011. Chava came in second at Roubaix that year, he'd worn the jaune twice in the first week the year before, the second time after a fairly hilly stage 7 ending in back to back cat. 2 climbs. The latter would be the comp for me so far.

If he keeps this up, going way back obviously Mercxx in '70 won the Tour, Giro, Roubaix and though he was only third at Flanders he did win the Belgian Champs, which can feature the odd stretch of cobbles/set/pave. That would be a fun accomplishment for G. As you point out, Hinault won Roubaix and the Tour the same year, Kelly Gent and the Vuelta in '88, so that could be a fall back.

 

[leon993]

Really depressed now.We have a mix in Peleton. More and more are getting clean. Also in GC contenders. There is really only one possible solution, Give dope all free so everybody competes at same terms. Only way. The clean path is a lost course. We get 80 plus kg flying over the mountains but so be it. It is the only way, As check systems are so easy to circumvent, it is only way.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

 

[Poursuivant]

Re:

Lol, lol.

The Brit hate is strong in this one.

Maybe it has something to do with us maybe winning the ashes back in, what, our fifth sport? Sixth?

 

[Dear Wiggo]

Re: Re:

Lol, lol.

The Brit hate is strong in this one.

Maybe it has something to do with us maybe winning the ashes back in, what, our fifth sport? Sixth?

Given I have been to school there, have British family I care about there and find cricket interminably dull, you are going to get a:

lolnope. Try again.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

Re: Re:

Lol, lol.

The Brit hate is strong in this one.

Maybe it has something to do with us maybe winning the ashes back in, what, our fifth sport? Sixth?

Given I have been to school there, have British family I care about there and find cricket interminably dull, you are going to get a:

lolnope. Try again.

How about you start by explaining the truth of what the image says?

Yeah try that one on for size.

Betcha can't, believably!