Geraint Thomas, the next british hope

[Cycles Goff]

Ahahahahahahaha. Yeah right. Today’s the day grand tour racing died for me.

 

[DFA123]

Re:

I honestly think Thomas is acting as a shield for Froome by taking yellow and stage wins.

Thomas has been booed onto the podium for consecutive days. Imagine the vitriol if Froome was in yellow now.

You can almost write the script. Thomas will have a bad day and Froome will relieve him of yellow in another week. No way will Thomas be allowed deprive Froome of his place in history.

But how has he managed to get to a level where he is so good he can act as a shield, and casually destroy all the other elite climbers in world cycling on consecutive stages?

How are Sky able to just suddenly pick a rider and decide that he will take the heat off Froome by winning everything? It's ludicrous.

 

[thehog]

Re: Re:

I honestly think Thomas is acting as a shield for Froome by taking yellow and stage wins.

Thomas has been booed onto the podium for consecutive days. Imagine the vitriol if Froome was in yellow now.

You can almost write the script. Thomas will have a bad day and Froome will relieve him of yellow in another week. No way will Thomas be allowed deprive Froome of his place in history.

But how has he managed to get to a level where he is so good he can act as a shield, and casually destroy all the other elite climbers in world cycling on consecutive stages?

How are Sky able to just suddenly pick a rider and decide that he will take the heat off Froome by winning everything? It's ludicrous.

Thomas is riding smart, Froome is doing a lot of chasing. Other teams need to get it to Thomas and Froome as they really don’t know what to do when they are 1-2.

 

[Merckx index]

What Thomas has done so far this Tour is not as impressive as what Simon Yates was doing in the Giro until the final week.

Just sayin'.

 

[thehog]

Re:

What Thomas has done so far this Tour is not as impressive as what Simon Yates was doing in the Giro until the final week.

Just sayin'.

Fully agree. Thomas is riding for the 3 weeks. He hasn’t actually done a lot of work. Just attacked at the very end of two stages.

 

[alspacka]

Re: Re:

magically?
after a 2nd in Suisse GC, a Paris-Nice GC, a domestique role that didnt allow him to go for GC?

He was allowed to go for the GC. He was the 'second card' in 2015-16 whose role was to stay high in the standings. Yet he couldn't do it - he tried to limit his losses, but he had to go so deep just to stay within a few minutes that he ended up cracking big time.

Henao, Poels, Landa, Froome and Nieve all managed to get top 10 GC finishes playing the same domestique role at Sky in recent years. So it was hardly an impossible task. But Thomas wasn't able to do it - because he was nowhere near a good enough climber. Now, two years later, aged 32, he's dropping everyone on multi-mountain Alpine stages of the Tour. It's a ludicrous transformation.

I do understand the scepticism about his transformation (I thought he should specialise for classics till like 2 years ago ffs), but I think just taking his GT results without context is a bit disingenuous. Firstly because he's been well on his way to better results a few times before bad luck/bike handling. Mainly though due to the hierarchical nature of the skytrain. Yes he's ridden a lot of tours, but largely further down the train wrecking himself in valleys and such.
Say hypothetically another one day man/all rounder in Kwiatkowski stops riding classics and focuses entirely on climbing/stage racing, all while keeping his mid train position in the Tour. He won't be getting anything better than top 20. Then, in 2022, at the age Thomas is now, he's given leadership role, would you be surprised to see him leading GC after 12 stages?
Also today's Alpe ascent was extremely slow.

 

[JosephK]

Re:

I honestly think Thomas is acting as a shield for Froome by taking yellow and stage wins.

Thomas has been booed onto the podium for consecutive days. Imagine the vitriol if Froome was in yellow now.

You can almost write the script. Thomas will have a bad day and Froome will relieve him of yellow in another week. No way will Thomas be allowed deprive Froome of his place in history.

Yes, Froome will get his Giro-2018 moment in week 3, no worries. It's the new Froome approach -- coming back from losing time to win GTs. Of course, G will have to suffer a setback along the way, a mild jour sans . . . just enough to open the door for a Froome blast. Now, I will admit that if G's lead gets out to 2 minutes, then things could get very entertaining, WWF style.

 

[BigMac]

Re:

I honestly think Thomas is acting as a shield for Froome by taking yellow and stage wins.

Thomas has been booed onto the podium for consecutive days. Imagine the vitriol if Froome was in yellow now.

You can almost write the script. Thomas will have a bad day and Froome will relieve him of yellow in another week. No way will Thomas be allowed deprive Froome of his place in history.

I can easily see this happening.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_UEuIbRTMY

 

[spalco]

Pure gold from the pro road racing section. :lol:

Team sky have known that Thomas has the ability to win a GT for years. He's finally got the chance to show it as he's in top form and allowed to ride for himself and has avoided mishap. But I suppose the arrogant keyboard warriors on this forum think they know more about what it takes to win the tour than the team who have won it 5 of last 6 years. Laughable. P.s. 32 is no age at all for modern day endurance athletes

Oh and btw he would have podiumed at least in last year's giro if he hadn't been knocked off by a moto. Was in top form then but didn't get the chance to show it

Amazing how Sky seem to just keep discovering these late career nobodies who were secret Tour winners all along. Even more amazing the succession of marks willing to lap it up and tell us all that there’s nothing surprising about it.

We’ve had the late 20s track rider and second tier prologue specialist who it turns out always had the ability to win GTs. Then we had the late 20s low grade career domestique best known for winning the anatomic jock race and getting thrown out of a Giro for needing a motor vehicle to get to the top of an incline. He also always had the secret ability to win a GTs. Now we have the thirty two year old failed cobbled classics contender who has never come close to even troubling the top 10 of a GT in a dozen previous rides, reaching early middle age as a GT non entity and guess what? Sky knew all along that he was a future GT contender.

I’m thinking of giving “Sir” Dave Brailsford a ring myself, to see if he’ll order a few lab tests for me. After all, I fit the pattern. I’m in my thirties. To the foolish among us I’ve never yet shown any indication that I have capacity to contend for a GT. I would certainly need the help of a motor vehicle to finish a Giro mountain stage. I’ve generally been better at cycling on the flat than uphill, but crucially I’ve never been so good at cycling on the flat that I’m in any danger of winning a cobbled monument or dominating longer TTs. I’ve missed testing myself in the Junior Tour of Wales, but Im pretty sure that I too wouldn’t have been good enough to win it. I could probably do with losing a few kilos too.

All Dave needs to do is provide a contract and a few training plans and I’ll be skipping my way up the Alpe, guiding the last guy to go through the same process behind me. Best of all, there will be an endless supply of slack jawed yokels willing to assure anyone sceptical of my apparent ability that it’s all perfectly normal, expected even. I won’t even have to pay them. They will embarrass themselves for free.

 

[bigcog]

I'd be interested to know the times for the last climb. G is riding out of his skin but I think the rest of them aren't that hot. Froome usually drops Nibali like a bad habit.

 

[Forever The Best]

Re:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_UEuIbRTMY

Haha.

 

[Forever The Best]

Re:

I'd be interested to know the times for the last climb. G is riding out of his skin but I think the rest of them aren't that hot. Froome usually drops Nibali like a bad habit.

Nibali, the client of Ferrari, yet Sky who beats him is clean.

 

[Cookster15]

Re:

I'd be interested to know the times for the last climb. G is riding out of his skin but I think the rest of them aren't that hot. Froome usually drops Nibali like a bad habit.

41:15. It is mentioned in a tweet in the top 100 site. Still outside the top 100 times though (100th is 41:13).

http://www.climbing-records.com/2013/07/all-time-top-100-fastest-rides-on.html

 

[bigcog]

Re: Re:

I'd be interested to know the times for the last climb. G is riding out of his skin but I think the rest of them aren't that hot. Froome usually drops Nibali like a bad habit.

41:15. It is mentioned in a tweet in the top 100 site. Still outside the top 100 times though (100th is 41:13).

http://www.climbing-records.com/2013/07/all-time-top-100-fastest-rides-on.html

Yep, what I thought nothing special. Froome and Dumo have the giro in their legs.

Nibali is a client of Ferrari ? Didn't know that, when did that become known ?

 

[Forever The Best]

Re: Re:

I'd be interested to know the times for the last climb. G is riding out of his skin but I think the rest of them aren't that hot. Froome usually drops Nibali like a bad habit.

41:15. It is mentioned in a tweet in the top 100 site. Still outside the top 100 times though (100th is 41:13).

http://www.climbing-records.com/2013/07/all-time-top-100-fastest-rides-on.html

Yep, what I thought nothing special. Froome and Dumo have the giro in their legs.

Nibali is a client of Ferrari ? Didn't know that, when did that become known ?

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/pellizotti-and-nibali-deny-working-with-ferrari/

Well, he denied but I think the truth is pretty clear.

 

[Blanco]

Re: Re:

I'd be interested to know the times for the last climb. G is riding out of his skin but I think the rest of them aren't that hot. Froome usually drops Nibali like a bad habit.

41:15. It is mentioned in a tweet in the top 100 site. Still outside the top 100 times though (100th is 41:13).

http://www.climbing-records.com/2013/07/all-time-top-100-fastest-rides-on.html

Yep, what I thought nothing special. Froome and Dumo have the giro in their legs.

Nibali is a client of Ferrari ? Didn't know that, when did that become known ?

It didn't, but he is.

 

[thehog]

Re: Re:

I'd be interested to know the times for the last climb. G is riding out of his skin but I think the rest of them aren't that hot. Froome usually drops Nibali like a bad habit.

41:15. It is mentioned in a tweet in the top 100 site. Still outside the top 100 times though (100th is 41:13).

http://www.climbing-records.com/2013/07/all-time-top-100-fastest-rides-on.html

Yep, what I thought nothing special. Froome and Dumo have the giro in their legs.

Nibali is a client of Ferrari ? Didn't know that, when did that become known ?

Did you watch the stage and see them slow up or just slow yourself today? And the Nibali / Ferrari link, imagine you never knew

 

[bigcog]

Re: Re:

I'd be interested to know the times for the last climb. G is riding out of his skin but I think the rest of them aren't that hot. Froome usually drops Nibali like a bad habit.

41:15. It is mentioned in a tweet in the top 100 site. Still outside the top 100 times though (100th is 41:13).

http://www.climbing-records.com/2013/07/all-time-top-100-fastest-rides-on.html

Yep, what I thought nothing special. Froome and Dumo have the giro in their legs.

Nibali is a client of Ferrari ? Didn't know that, when did that become known ?

Did you watch the stage and see them slow up or just slow yourself today? And the Nibali / Ferrari link, imagine you never knew

They did slow up but still weren't stellar. I am slow everyday in the eyes of some :lol:

 

[bambino]

Re: Re:

I'd be interested to know the times for the last climb. G is riding out of his skin but I think the rest of them aren't that hot. Froome usually drops Nibali like a bad habit.

41:15. It is mentioned in a tweet in the top 100 site. Still outside the top 100 times though (100th is 41:13).

http://www.climbing-records.com/2013/07/all-time-top-100-fastest-rides-on.html

Yep, what I thought nothing special. Froome and Dumo have the giro in their legs.

Nibali is a client of Ferrari ? Didn't know that, when did that become known ?

Did you watch the stage and see them slow up or just slow yourself today? And the Nibali / Ferrari link, imagine you never knew

They did slow up but still weren't stellar. I am slow everyday in the eyes of some :lol:

They could have gone probably about 30-45sec faster without waiting which would've more or less led to Froome to break his own record. Nothing magical though still.

 

[thehog]

They lost 90 seconds to two minutes. At one point all four were soft pedalling across the Alpe side by side.

 

[thehog]

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.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves

 

[The Hegelian]

What it comes down to is this:

I could potentially believe in Wiggins. Froome is a tougher ask, but maybe it's possible to believe. Likewise Thomas. There are ways of arguing/ establishing their legitimacy as clean champions.

But not all three together, in a row, without even a little break, as the dominant climbers in the tdf. In each case, without demonstrating that pedigree before. i.e. each involved a definite transformation.

It's just so completely implausible. Especially when you consider the champions they have thoroughly destroyed - L'avenir winners, the golden era of Colombian climbing talent and everyone in between.

 

[Saint Unix]

Yep, and all three British, riding for the British team that spends MILLIONS hiring non-British riders that have and always have had far moret talent and pedigree but still can't match the level of the post-transformation British boys.

 

[The Hegelian]

Indeed. The company is a British media company after all ~ for all that investment, they need Brits in yellow at the tour. And they get it, every time without fail.