Geraint Thomas, the next british hope

[JosephK]

Re: Re:

Remember G is/was #1 for Sky if Froomey's banned so he must be on the "Team Leader's Preparation". Though now it looks likly Dawg will be at TdF,

I can see a WAG rift brewing. G taking yellow early, Froome refusing to help him with peacemaking, Michelle angerly tweeting at Gs wife. What a Tour!!

Fans of ridiculousness in cycling have been pampered lavishly since 2012, when Sky engineered the TDF victory for Wiggins -- the antithesis of a mountain goat if ever there was one. And then 2013 came along -- what can be said? It's beyond words. The politically incorrect term "full ***" was resurrected from "Tropic Thunder" and given new meaning. Washing machines and spin cycles were dragged into the conversation. Fortunately for them, they are inanimate objects and are thereby spared any shame that might otherwise have accrued to them from association with Froome's pedaling style. Shame is also unknown to Team Sky, who are preparing for a demonstration of ridiculousness in July the likes of which the cycling world has never witnessed. I don't think I am exaggerating. The G Man will play a role, one way or another. Will we see Wiggins vs. Froome v. 2.0? If no one crashes, this looks like a distinct possibility. Get some popcorn. TDF 2018 is going to go thermonuclear on the absurdity scale.

 

[pastronef]

Thomas stage races

TDF 2011 30th
Bayern Rundfahrt 2011 win
Bayern Rundfahrt 2014 win
Algarve 2015 win
TDF 2015 15th
TdSuisse 2015 2nd
Algarve 2016 win
Paris-Nice 2016 win
TDF 2016 15th
Tirreno 2017 5th
Trentino/Alps 2017 win
Algarve 2018 2nd
Tirreno 2018 3rd
Dauphine 2018 in yellow now

 

[Benotti69]

Thomas stage races

TDF 2011 30th
Bayern Rundfahrt 2011 win
Bayern Rundfahrt 2014 win
Algarve 2015 win
TDF 2015 15th
TdSuisse 2015 2nd
Algarve 2016 win
Paris-Nice 2016 win
TDF 2016 15th
Tirreno 2017 5th
Trentino/Alps 2017 win
Algarve 2018 2nd
Tirreno 2018 3rd
Dauphine 2018 in yellow now

2007

Tdf 140th

2008

Giro 118th

2009

Tirreno 121st

2010

TdF 76th

2013

TdF 140th

GT talent for all to see :lol:

 

[pastronef]

GT talent for all to see :lol:

I didnt say GT, I said stage races.
but twice 15th at TDF while being a domestique is good.
shame he crashed at the Giro last year. a top 5 or top 10 could have been doable

 

[samhocking]

GT talent for all to see :lol:

I didnt say GT, I said stage races.
but twice 15th at TDF while being a domestique is good.
shame he crashed at the Giro last year. a top 5 or top 10 could have been doable

Kind of pointless looking at palamares of a domestique anyway. He's been knocking at the door. I think one Tour he had to give his bike up for Froome on a descent, got taken out by Barguil on that descent, taken out by the motorbike in Giro etc etc. He was running 4th in Tour on stage 19 still iirc, so I would say top 5 is where he would be without crashes and without being a domestique perhaps?

 

[Ripper]

Re:

None of which I would dispute.

Yet, bet you a virtual fiver that if we got a glance of Thomas' training data, over the season roughly 80% of his time will have been spent below the first ventilatory threshold and/or at less than 2mmol blood lactate, ie. at low intensity.

Volume drives relevant adaptations as such.

Of course! Doping changes capacities and recovery, changes abilities, but the science behind the training is still the same science.

 

[thehog]

GT talent for all to see :lol:

I didnt say GT, I said stage races.
but twice 15th at TDF while being a domestique is good.
shame he crashed at the Giro last year. a top 5 or top 10 could have been doable

Thomas certainly has and had more pedigree than Froome. I would expect Thomas to do well in one week stage races. Not only a good track rider with power but he won U23 Paris-Roubaix. GT climber? Never. Strong on the flats? Yes. Climber out climbing Quintana and Bardet, no. That’s the juice talkin’

 

[The Hegelian]

GB: no Tour winners for 100+ years.
Between 2012-19: Two from the same team, potentially three.

 

[silvergrenade]

Re:

GB: no Tour winners for 100+ years.
Between 2012-19: Two from the same team, potentially three.

Okay, you got me there.
So?

 

[The Hegelian]

Re: Re:

GB: no Tour winners for 100+ years.
Between 2012-19: Two from the same team, potentially three.

Okay, you got me there.
So?

How often are GT champs are produced even in traditional cycling nations?

Answer: rarely. The Netherlands got their first in decades last year. France hasn't had a win in how long? Spain have had Contador/Valverde + Italy Nibali/Aru.

The implication: It is very, very hard to become a GT champion, and Sky are basically just churning them out - not just buying a known star, but building them, producing them. It's for sure the most suss thing in the picture.

 

[brownbobby]

Re: Re:

GB: no Tour winners for 100+ years.
Between 2012-19: Two from the same team, potentially three.

Okay, you got me there.
So?

How often are GT champs are produced even in traditional cycling nations?

Answer: rarely. The Netherlands got their first in decades last year. France hasn't had a win in how long? Spain have had Contador/Valverde + Italy Nibali/Aru.

The implication: It is very, very hard to become a GT champion, and Sky are basically just churning them out - not just buying a known star, but building them, producing them. It's for sure the most suss thing in the picture.

Ahh...'Brits don't win at cycling' . Now I'm beginning to understand the problem....

 

[Pantani_lives]

Riding for Team Sky is a two-edged sword. On the one hand they can turn you from a donkey into a mountain goat. On the other hand it means you will have to sacrifice your own chances for the leader - usually Froome. Last year they definitely wanted to win the Giro with Thomas, but he crashed. This year he's secretly hoping that Froome will be excluded or tired from the Giro, and he will be the leader for the Tour. Most likely he will just have to sacrifice his chances once again.

 

[Robert5091]

Re: Re:

GB: no Tour winners for 100+ years.
Between 2012-19: Two from the same team, potentially three.

Okay, you got me there.
So?

How often are GT champs are produced even in traditional cycling nations?

Answer: rarely. The Netherlands got their first in decades last year. France hasn't had a win in how long? Spain have had Contador/Valverde + Italy Nibali/Aru.

The implication: It is very, very hard to become a GT champion, and Sky are basically just churning them out - not just buying a known star, but building them, producing them. It's for sure the most suss thing in the picture.

How much money though are Sky throwing at cycling? I mean 5 doctors plus a physio and a "head shrink" plus 4 guys who's job is to see what riders are stuffing into themselves ("fuelling!")?

 

[noddy69]

Re: Re:

GB: no Tour winners for 100+ years.
Between 2012-19: Two from the same team, potentially three.

Okay, you got me there.
So?

How often are GT champs are produced even in traditional cycling nations?

Answer: rarely. The Netherlands got their first in decades last year. France hasn't had a win in how long? Spain have had Contador/Valverde + Italy Nibali/Aru.

The implication: It is very, very hard to become a GT champion, and Sky are basically just churning them out - not just buying a known star, but building them, producing them. It's for sure the most suss thing in the picture.

Ahh...'Brits don't win at cycling' . Now I'm beginning to understand the problem....

Nope that's not really the issue and you know it. When a country starts producing winners where there was none before and dominating a sport then we you look under the hood you always see modifications that aren't legal.

 

[The Hegelian]

Yes. One of course thinks of the USA. After LeMond.......Lance....and Landis, Julich, Hamilton etc. GT stars suddenly everywhere. Then the hood gets opened.

What now? The truth: it may take another decade or two for a genuine US GT talent to emerge and win.

When proper GT stars get unearthed so quickly and easily, it's basically a neon flashing light that says: 'we've found a way.'

Teamwise, one thinks of Gewiss and Mapei

 

[Libertine Seguros]

You're forgetting the key avatar for Geraint Thomas under the US Postal umbrella. Geraint Thomas is George Hincapie. They both fulfil a very specific set of criteria for the team and merge a specific set of skills, and both have been entertained as GC successors to their compatriots as GT leaders despite having very little record of GC racing at that level and being over 30 at the time. Both of them came from the Northern Classics, even though that in and of itself was not their first vocation, Thomas coming from the track and Hincapie from US crits and sprints. Both of them won a few semi-classics and non-monument classics, enough to be considered serious contenders for the monuments, but never quite managed to make it to the top step. Both were pretty decent climbers for northern Classics men, as Hincapie started to be competitive in races like Paris-Nice in 2000, at the age of 26. Thomas' first reasonable climbing performances you would argue would be his 30th in the 2011 Tour, aged 25, but he then has a quiet 2012 because of the track focus, so both of them start to really become climbing hands from around 27. They then spend a couple of years inching further and further forward in the mountain train, utilizing their all-terrain usefulness to become indispensable hands for the team, and while Thomas is the best part of 10kg lighter than Hincapie it is worth noting that in general the lead riders are lighter at present - while there were featherweight climbers in the Lance years, there was far more in favour of stronger men in the GTs in those days so that people built like Olano and Ullrich would be competitors, and even the likes of Mayo and Beloki are heavier than today's equivalents. Thomas also has, because of that track background, a strong short ITT which enabled him to pull on the maillot jaune, something Hincapie never managed (to great controversy in 2009 if I remember correctly, with HTC trying to lead out Cav for the points competition while staging a go-slow to try to get Hincapie into yellow) as while Hincapie also was a very strong prologue rider, he never quite won one in the Tour.

Now, Thomas' transition is a bit more successful than Big George's, but I do suspect part of that is due to the fuller calendar being raced - as one of Ol' One-Race-a-Year's most loyal hands, Hincapie didn't get the chance to build up the short stage race palmarès that Thomas is doing, but he did achieve some somewhat unexpected climbing results where he was visibly larger than the people he was sprinting away from, such as Pla d'Adet. Hincapie also stayed loyal to the Northern Classics, whereas I think at this stage Thomas recognises that he has had to give up that aim if he wants to be a a Grand Tour man; adding and losing several kilos of bulk in such a short space of time is more difficult in the biopassport years, and the fact he was given the opportunity to lead a Giro (I don't believe a word of the co-leader talk between him and Landa, just look at how the team all circled around Thomas and left Landa to drop after the crash with the motorbike) meant peaking for de Ronde/Roubaix and the Giro would be nigh on impossible for somebody aiming for the win in both, so he had to give up the goal of the northern classics, at least for the time being.

Also, like Big George, I would argue that it is likely Thomas' skillset means that the Tour is really the most viable GT for him to aim at; the sheer proliferation of steep climbs in the Vuelta is a problem for him because while he's always been able to grit his way over short steep climbs and indeed has won on places like the Alto do Malhão, the longer the get the more into survival mode he goes and while he's had some good results in climbs like the Rettenbachferner, the amount of places to win back losses of that kind in the Vuelta are limited in the current parcours trends. Big George never got the chance to lead in Grand Tours until he was 33 years old, and while domestiquing managed to finish 14th, one place above Thomas' current best (15th, twice), though Thomas did run in the top 5 until dropping away late on on one occasion. But Geraint is 32 years old, and has only had one opportunity to lead, which we didn't really get to fully see because he crashed and lost time at the end of one week, before withdrawing and returning to his usual role as a domestique de luxe at the Tour. If Froome does get suspended, then Geraint will likely get his first real Grand Tour leadership role at 33, just like Big George.

Just after turning 32, Hincapie won a Tour de France mountain stage at a summit above the town of Saint-Lary-Soulan. This year, there's a mountaintop finish above the town of Saint-Lary-Soulan. Put your money on Geraint Thomas, folks.

 

[veganrob]

Re: Re:

GB: no Tour winners for 100+ years.
Between 2012-19: Two from the same team, potentially three.

Okay, you got me there.
So?

How often are GT champs are produced even in traditional cycling nations?

Answer: rarely. The Netherlands got their first in decades last year. France hasn't had a win in how long? Spain have had Contador/Valverde + Italy Nibali/Aru.

The implication: It is very, very hard to become a GT champion, and Sky are basically just churning them out - not just buying a known star, but building them, producing them. It's for sure the most suss thing in the picture.

Ahh...'Brits don't win at cycling' . Now I'm beginning to understand the problem....

And you want to call out others for being obtuse. Dude, wake up and smell your own ***.

 

[Gung Ho Gun]

Thomas stage races

TDF 2011 30th
Bayern Rundfahrt 2011 win
Bayern Rundfahrt 2014 win
Algarve 2015 win
TDF 2015 15th
TdSuisse 2015 2nd
Algarve 2016 win
Paris-Nice 2016 win
TDF 2016 15th
Tirreno 2017 5th
Trentino/Alps 2017 win
Algarve 2018 2nd
Tirreno 2018 3rd
Dauphine 2018 in yellow now

Seems like something changed in 2015. Bayern has been won by such acclaimed stage racers as Dowsett and Malori, i.e., it's mainly a time trial and not remotely comparable to the rest.

 

[Parker]

Seems like something changed in 2015.

He stopped riding the classics and focused on stage racing. 2015 was the last year he did a proper classics season.
Since then just Milan-San Remo and Flanders in 2016, nothing in 2017 and Paris-Roubaix and LBL this year.

 

[Hayabusa]

Re: Re:

GB: no Tour winners for 100+ years.
Between 2012-19: Two from the same team, potentially three.

Okay, you got me there.
So?

How often are GT champs are produced even in traditional cycling nations?

Answer: rarely. The Netherlands got their first in decades last year. France hasn't had a win in how long? Spain have had Contador/Valverde + Italy Nibali/Aru.

The implication: It is very, very hard to become a GT champion, and Sky are basically just churning them out - not just buying a known star, but building them, producing them. It's for sure the most suss thing in the picture.

This is pure nonsense.

Realistically the UK has only had one GT champion which is Froome. Wiggins won due to having a course which heavily favoured his speciality with a number of key rivals hampered by other efforts or a lack of a strong team.

Spain have had stronger GT riders in the last few years than the UK (i.e. Contador, Valverde, Rodriguez). All three are better GT riders than Wiggins.

 

[thehog]

Thomas stage races

TDF 2011 30th
Bayern Rundfahrt 2011 win
Bayern Rundfahrt 2014 win
Algarve 2015 win
TDF 2015 15th
TdSuisse 2015 2nd
Algarve 2016 win
Paris-Nice 2016 win
TDF 2016 15th
Tirreno 2017 5th
Trentino/Alps 2017 win
Algarve 2018 2nd
Tirreno 2018 3rd
Dauphine 2018 in yellow now

G also managed to get a 6 on the suspicion index for the UCI. That was a good result

6 Linus Gerdemann, Christian Knees, Egoi Martínez, Alessandro Petacchi, Francesco Reda, Mauro Santambrogio, Geraint Thomas

7 Jeremy Hunt, Andreas Klöden, Tony Martin, Christophe Moreau, Michael Rogers, Wesley Sulzberger

8 David De la Fuente, Ivan Gutiérrez, Danilo Hondo, Matthew Lloyd, Iban Mayoz, Dmitriy Muravyev, Rinaldo Nocentini, Daniel Oss, Kevin Seeldraeyers, Kanstantsin Siutsou, Jurgen Van Den Broeck

9 Denis Menchov

10 Carlos Barredo,Yaroslav Popovych

 

[hrotha]

Re: Re:

Realistically the UK has only had one GT champion which is Froome. Wiggins won due to having a course which heavily favoured his speciality

This myth again. Wiggins outclimbed everyone but Froome in that Tour. That includes Nibali.

 

[roundabout]

Thomas stage races

TDF 2011 30th
Bayern Rundfahrt 2011 win
Bayern Rundfahrt 2014 win
Algarve 2015 win
TDF 2015 15th
TdSuisse 2015 2nd
Algarve 2016 win
Paris-Nice 2016 win
TDF 2016 15th
Tirreno 2017 5th
Trentino/Alps 2017 win
Algarve 2018 2nd
Tirreno 2018 3rd
Dauphine 2018 in yellow now

Seems like something changed in 2015. Bayern has been won by such acclaimed stage racers as Dowsett and Malori, i.e., it's mainly a time trial and not remotely comparable to the rest.

something changed in 2013 when he was able to control Contador and co relatively comfortably on the Noyer in the Dauphine

And while I agree about BR, the last one he won had a finish here

http://www.quaeldich.de/paesse/winklmoosalm/profile/stichstrasse-von-reit-im-winkl-seegatterl/

 

[Alexandre B.]

Thomas stage races

TDF 2011 30th
Bayern Rundfahrt 2011 win
Bayern Rundfahrt 2014 win
Algarve 2015 win
TDF 2015 15th
TdSuisse 2015 2nd
Algarve 2016 win
Paris-Nice 2016 win
TDF 2016 15th
Tirreno 2017 5th
Trentino/Alps 2017 win
Algarve 2018 2nd
Tirreno 2018 3rd
Dauphine 2018 in yellow now

Seems like something changed in 2015. Bayern has been won by such acclaimed stage racers as Dowsett and Malori, i.e., it's mainly a time trial and not remotely comparable to the rest.

In 2015 he was already able to outclimb everyone bar teammate Richie Porte in Paris-Nice.

 

[pastronef]

Thomas stage races

TDF 2011 30th
Bayern Rundfahrt 2011 win
Bayern Rundfahrt 2014 win
Algarve 2015 win
TDF 2015 15th
TdSuisse 2015 2nd
Algarve 2016 win
Paris-Nice 2016 win
TDF 2016 15th
Tirreno 2017 5th
Trentino/Alps 2017 win
Algarve 2018 2nd
Tirreno 2018 3rd
Dauphine 2018 in yellow now

Seems like something changed in 2015. Bayern has been won by such acclaimed stage racers as Dowsett and Malori, i.e., it's mainly a time trial and not remotely comparable to the rest.

In 2015 he was already able to outclimb everyone bar teammate Richie Porte in Paris-Nice.

Croix de Chaubouret, they smashed the field and little Richie won