Geraint Thomas, the next british hope

[Dear Wiggo]

Re:

I see the point yes, but I doubt he'd outclimb Quintana based on what we've seen so far, even with full team support

I edited my post - people are saying second best rider, not second best climber.

If you added a 40km+ TT he'd smash Quintana for 1+ minutes in that stage alone unless it climbed a proper hill. And more importantly, he doesn't appear to be losing time to Quintana, riding as a domestique.

 

[frenchfry]

Thomas = Hincapie II ?

 

[Echoes]

Look I can list hundreds of riders who could climb & cobble and handle the distance of a classic in the past 30 years. Cancellara won a mountainous Tour of Switzerland and a steep Tirreno while being 10kg heavier than Thomas ...

We should face it that this thread is designed to use antidoping as an excuse for enhancing Tour of France hype and despise for the classics. You only need to look at the publication of the Junior Paris-Roubaix palmares. The poster who did it only meant, look at all the crap riders who won it in the junior ranks. The talent of a Jasper Stuyven, he's not aware of it.

Middling classic riders, Thomas? He couldn't get higher than 60's in Paris-Roubaix before being bombed 7th along with teammate Wiggins. In the mountains, at least he'd already been top20 several times. His evolution in the classics should have been discussed a lot more than this if the posters who reacted on this thread had ever watched a single one of the said classics. But they don't give a flip about it, period.

I've watched classics since 1991 and what I could've seen on these races exceeds this performance by Thomas by lightyears, okay? What has happened on GT's in the same period can't compare with what happened on the classics...

Have you ever seen a classics?
Have you ever felt the cold wind blow?
If you don't know what I mean,
Won't you stand up and scream?
'Cause there's things goin' on that you don't know.

 

[Gung Ho Gun]

Thomas was one of the strongest riders in the Tour of Flanders when Nuyens won it, but had to work for Flecha
While Cancellara won a very bland Tour de Suisse and a Tirreno where the 2km Montelupone climb was the main challenge
That's completely different from a Tour de France alpine stage

 

[BYOP88]

Look I can list hundreds of riders who could climb & cobble and handle the distance of a classic in the past 30 years. Cancellara won a mountainous Tour of Switzerland and a steep Tirreno while being 10kg heavier than Thomas ...

We should face it that this thread is designed to use antidoping as an excuse for enhancing Tour of France hype and despise for the classics. You only need to look at the publication of the Junior Paris-Roubaix palmares. The poster who did it only meant, look at all the crap riders who won it in the junior ranks. The talent of a Jasper Stuyven, he's not aware of it.

Middling classic riders, Thomas? He couldn't get higher than 60's in Paris-Roubaix before being bombed 7th along with teammate Wiggins. In the mountains, at least he'd already been top20 several times. His evolution in the classics should have been discussed a lot more than this if the posters who reacted on this thread had ever watched a single one of the said classics. But they don't give a flip about it, period.

I've watched classics since 1991 and what I could've seen on these races exceeds this performance by Thomas by lightyears, okay? What has happened on GT's in the same period can't compare with what happened on the classics...

Have you ever seen a classics?
Have you ever felt the cold wind blow?
If you don't know what I mean,
Won't you stand up and scream?
'Cause there's things goin' on that you don't know.

Looking at the profiles it wasn't that mountainous.

 

[Brullnux]

Thomas coming 4th in Tour with no real TT's and very mountainous after winning E3, coming 3rd in G-W in the same year after having little to no pedigree in the mountains before March is almost comical. Sky have turned the sport of cycling once again into a complete farce. In fact, this transformation hasn't really happened before, ever. Wiggins won because there were 3 TT's and he was and still is one of the best TT-ers in the world and had Froome shepherding him in all the mountain stages. The transformation was weird and sudden, but not like this. Froome went from zero to hero much like Thomas, but for some reason I find Thomas even more unhuman than Froome. I think it might be because he had always been billed as a strong pursuit rider who can go over cobbles and over hills and set a good pace up a mountain for 2km and on the flat for more. Here he is dmstq-ing for Froome against the best climbers in the world who have been all bar Froome have been ear-marked for GT's ever sonce they were young, yet beating them all. WTF?

 

[Dear Wiggo]

Re:

Thomas was one of the strongest riders in the Tour of Flanders when Nuyens won it, but had to work for Flecha
While Cancellara won a very bland Tour de Suisse and a Tirreno where the 2km Montelupone climb was the main challenge
That's completely different from a Tour de France alpine stage

Or multiple, back to back Pyrenees stages and then Alpine stages towards the end of the 2nd and 3rd weeks of the most fiercely contested race in the world due to the significant value any outstanding performance netts the rider and the team in terms of income.

 

[gillan1969]

Re:

Thomas coming 4th in Tour with no real TT's and very mountainous after winning E3, coming 3rd in G-W in the same year after having little to no pedigree in the mountains before March is almost comical. Sky have turned the sport of cycling once again into a complete farce. In fact, this transformation hasn't really happened before, ever. Wiggins won because there were 3 TT's and he was and still is one of the best TT-ers in the world and had Froome shepherding him in all the mountain stages. The transformation was weird and sudden, but not like this. Froome went from zero to hero much like Thomas, but for some reason I find Thomas even more unhuman than Froome. I think it might be because he had always been billed as a strong pursuit rider who can go over cobbles and over hills and set a good pace up a mountain for 2km and on the flat for more. Here he is dmstq-ing for Froome against the best climbers in the world who have been all bar Froome have been ear-marked for GT's ever sonce they were young, yet beating them all. WTF?

yup...even jaja had the decency to transition from an ardennes spring classics man rather than a flat, side-winds spring classics man...

 

[Dear Wiggo]

Re:

Thomas coming 4th in Tour with no real TT's and very mountainous after winning E3, coming 3rd in G-W in the same year after having little to no pedigree in the mountains before March is almost comical. Sky have turned the sport of cycling once again into a complete farce. In fact, this transformation hasn't really happened before, ever. Wiggins won because there were 3 TT's and he was and still is one of the best TT-ers in the world and had Froome shepherding him in all the mountain stages. The transformation was weird and sudden, but not like this. Froome went from zero to hero much like Thomas, but for some reason I find Thomas even more unhuman than Froome. I think it might be because he had always been billed as a strong pursuit rider who can go over cobbles and over hills and set a good pace up a mountain for 2km and on the flat for more. Here he is dmstq-ing for Froome against the best climbers in the world who have been all bar Froome have been ear-marked for GT's ever sonce they were young, yet beating them all. WTF?

Only issue I'll take here is Wiggo's TT was top 10, not best in the world.

Otherwise, in full agreement.

 

[matter]

Look I can list hundreds of riders who could climb & cobble and handle the distance of a classic in the past 30 years. Cancellara won a mountainous Tour of Switzerland and a steep Tirreno while being 10kg heavier than Thomas ...

We should face it that this thread is designed to use antidoping as an excuse for enhancing Tour of France hype and despise for the classics. You only need to look at the publication of the Junior Paris-Roubaix palmares. The poster who did it only meant, look at all the crap riders who won it in the junior ranks. The talent of a Jasper Stuyven, he's not aware of it.

Middling classic riders, Thomas? He couldn't get higher than 60's in Paris-Roubaix before being bombed 7th along with teammate Wiggins. In the mountains, at least he'd already been top20 several times. His evolution in the classics should have been discussed a lot more than this if the posters who reacted on this thread had ever watched a single one of the said classics. But they don't give a flip about it, period.

I've watched classics since 1991 and what I could've seen on these races exceeds this performance by Thomas by lightyears, okay? What has happened on GT's in the same period can't compare with what happened on the classics...

Have you ever seen a classics?
Have you ever felt the cold wind blow?
If you don't know what I mean,
Won't you stand up and scream?
'Cause there's things goin' on that you don't know.

Not sure if aimed at me, but the spring (semi-)classics are the season highlights for me. I also love to ride in that area myself.
Thomas has been a name in the Flanders/cobbles classics for a couple of years now, at least to me. He's been better then let's say a Nick Nuyens in his Rabo years. I expected him to become a challenger. That he became a superior rider might even have been expected since he's a britt riding for Sky (natural progression right?).
The insufferable thing is the accumulation of his brilliant form in the sping classics combined with challenging Quintana in the mountains of TdF in the same year. That is on a whole different level.

In short... you assume to much.

 

[Franklin]

Re: Re:

If you added a 40km+ TT he'd smash Quintana for 1+ minutes in that stage alone unless it climbed a proper hill.

1 minute? 3 minutes at least.

2013 TdF In 32km with two 2nd cat climbs Quintana lost 1.11 on Froome.
2014 Giro in 42km he got creamed in by 2,40 by Uran

On a pancake 40km he would be murdered by Sky's TT specialists*.



*Sky riders can specialize in any discipline they choose. Hummiliate everyone at the TdF during mountainstages and a month later take 1 and 3 on the Olympic TT. +> Corrected for factual error.

 

[AICA ribonucleotide]

I was listening to the telegraph cycling podcast last night and in an interview Thomas said he sat up on the Mur de Huy and the Mur de Bretagne earlier in the tour.
Thats 2'09 he lost! He would be 14 seconds behind Valverde now and 1'15 back on Quintana.

 

[blackcat]

but riders unforseen as timetrialers, and even those who have been dominante, like Gonchar, they come out of the woodwork, Kirchen, Schumacher

 

[wendybnt]

Re:

I was listening to the telegraph cycling podcast last night and in an interview Thomas said he sat up on the Mur de Huy and the Mur de Bretagne earlier in the tour.
Thats 2'09 he lost! He would be 14 seconds behind Valverde now and 1'15 back on Quintana.

Nope. 11 minutes now

Looks like he's not the next great Brit hope after all.

 

[Lyon]

Re: Re:

I was listening to the telegraph cycling podcast last night and in an interview Thomas said he sat up on the Mur de Huy and the Mur de Bretagne earlier in the tour.
Thats 2'09 he lost! He would be 14 seconds behind Valverde now and 1'15 back on Quintana.

Nope. 11 minutes now

Looks like he's not the next great Brit hope after all.

Back to the old drawing board. Just a Porte not a Froome after all.

 

[58teeth]

Dunno...something tells me that they backed him off the gear a bit to appear human.

 

[goggalor]

Re: Re:

I was listening to the telegraph cycling podcast last night and in an interview Thomas said he sat up on the Mur de Huy and the Mur de Bretagne earlier in the tour.
Thats 2'09 he lost! He would be 14 seconds behind Valverde now and 1'15 back on Quintana.

Nope. 11 minutes now

Looks like he's not the next great Brit hope after all.

Back to the old drawing board. Just a Porte not a Froome after all.

Maybe, but it makes sense that he would start to feel that crash of his after a couple of days. Was no light hit.

 

[Pierrot le Fou]

Look I can list hundreds of riders who could climb & cobble and handle the distance of a classic in the past 30 years. Cancellara won a mountainous Tour of Switzerland and a steep Tirreno while being 10kg heavier than Thomas ...

We should face it that this thread is designed to use antidoping as an excuse for enhancing Tour of France hype and despise for the classics. You only need to look at the publication of the Junior Paris-Roubaix palmares. The poster who did it only meant, look at all the crap riders who won it in the junior ranks. The talent of a Jasper Stuyven, he's not aware of it.

Middling classic riders, Thomas? He couldn't get higher than 60's in Paris-Roubaix before being bombed 7th along with teammate Wiggins. In the mountains, at least he'd already been top20 several times. His evolution in the classics should have been discussed a lot more than this if the posters who reacted on this thread had ever watched a single one of the said classics. But they don't give a flip about it, period.

I've watched classics since 1991 and what I could've seen on these races exceeds this performance by Thomas by lightyears, okay? What has happened on GT's in the same period can't compare with what happened on the classics...

Have you ever seen a classics?
Have you ever felt the cold wind blow?
If you don't know what I mean,
Won't you stand up and scream?
'Cause there's things goin' on that you don't know.

The point wasn't look at the crap riders, it was look at the classics riders. Thomas stands out as the only one on that list who is a potential Grand Tour leader. I'm optimistic that Sénéchal will become a very good cobbles rider, but I would never expect him to finish mountain stages with Quintana and Froome. Thomas is obviously a more versatile rider than some on that list, but I still find his performances until today, a little unbelievable.

 

[Escarabajo]

Re:

Dunno...something tells me that they backed him off the gear a bit to appear human.

+1.

They sacrificed Porte and Thomas but not Froome. The criticism will slow down now.

 

[roundabout]

Re: Re:

Dunno...something tells me that they backed him off the gear a bit to appear human.

+1.

They sacrificed Porte and Thomas but not Froome. The criticism will slow down now.

-1.

Doesn't make sense with a somewhat shaky team to stop doping your second best guy for the queen stage after doping him for nearly 3 weeks.

 

[wendybnt]

Re: Re:

Dunno...something tells me that they backed him off the gear a bit to appear human.

+1.

They sacrificed Porte and Thomas but not Froome. The criticism will slow down now.

Ah of course!

What other possible explanation could there be?

#witch finder general

 

[doperhopper]

Re: Re:

Dunno...something tells me that they backed him off the gear a bit to appear human.

+1.

They sacrificed Porte and Thomas but not Froome. The criticism will slow down now.

actually, not a bad idea - different dom each day, so no suspicious GC standings. Just another masterpiece from Brailsfraud, he'll explain tomorrow this is the way to go, save doms from unnecessary thinking about "what if I was the leader", that's why they ordered LRP to lose few minutes in the first week. Marginal gains at their best, combine it with pillow and handwashing and we have a winner. And expect tons of new scientific research papers on special tires that don't get tar sticked on it (so no little rock picking and mechanicals).

 

[oldcrank]

Re: Re:

If you added a 40km+ TT he'd smash Quintana for 1+ minutes in that stage alone unless it climbed a proper hill.

1 minute? 3 minutes at least.

2013 TdF In 32km with two 2nd cat climbs Quintana lost 1.11 on Froome.
2014 Giro in 42km he got creamed in by 2,40 by Uran

On a pancake 40km he would be murdered by Sky's TT specialists*.



*Sky riders can specialize in any discipline they choose. Hummiliate everyone at the TdF during mountainstages and a month later take 1-2 on the Olympic TT.

Your post contains at least one (very easily
verifiable) factual error, my friend.
(note: the bolding is not mine)

 

[Franklin]

Ah yes, 1 and 3, I completely forgot Tony Martin

That said, does it change the obvious point in a meaningful way?

 

[Põhja Konn]

Re: Re:

Dunno...something tells me that they backed him off the gear a bit to appear human.

+1.

They sacrificed Porte and Thomas but not Froome. The criticism will slow down now.

actually, not a bad idea - different dom each day, so no suspicious GC standings. Just another masterpiece from Brailsfraud, he'll explain tomorrow this is the way to go, save doms from unnecessary thinking about "what if I was the leader", that's why they ordered LRP to lose few minutes in the first week. Marginal gains at their best, combine it with pillow and handwashing and we have a winner. And expect tons of new scientific research papers on special tires that don't get tar sticked on it (so no little rock picking and mechanicals).

All that implies that they actually care about how their performance looks like enough to sacrifice some of the possible results. Nothing they have done so far indicates they care that much about appearance. Outside of wild conspiracy theories of course.