Teams & Riders He's coming home!!!! Alejandro Valverde comeback thread.

[Netserk]

Re: Re:

Liege is an uphill finish.

I'll give you Ponferrada. Amstel is a bit more complicated and heavily influenced by Cauberg, so while the sprint is flat, granted, I wouldn't compare it to Via Roma. He only outright won the sprint in Amstel in '13, mind.

The biggest difference is of course the vertical gain in races. A hard hilly race favors Valverde in the sprint, obviously. That can't be said of MSR (nor Flanders).

You asked for a flat sprint and you got it tho. You can also add a bunch of Catalunya stages to that list.

Yep. He has won 1 flat (bunch) sprint, which was just after the top of a climb in a hilly race. And it wasn't even for the win.

Of the three mentioned, he only beat one of them there (Kwiatkowski), back when Kiwi was 22 years old.

 

[Blanco]

Let me reverse the question, how many times he was beaten by those guys in a flat sprint?

 

[Netserk]

More times than reverse. And they have all three won flat(ish) races in a flat sprint. Unlike Valverde.

Valverde has a great sprint, no doubt. But the scenario we are discussing is the end of MSR. He has never showed that he has what it takes to outsprint Sagan there.

 

[Blanco]

I don't think so.

Alaphilippe barely won anything.
Van Avermaet can contest sprints after hard cobbled races, and he's pretty fast in them (same as Valverde in hilly races).
Kwiat is probably most versatile of them all, he's up there in both cobbled and hilly races and often clashes against Valverde. Outcome is pretty even I would say.
Sagan is in another league, and the only way they could beat him is if he tires himself too much (like in MSR), or if the race is too hard for him.

So in theory Sagan is almost unbeatable for Valverde in a flat sprint, but in scenario like last year where Sagan pulled like a madman almost whole time from top of the Poggio, I think Valverde has a chance just like Kwiat and Alaphilippe had.
Remember Valverde beating certain Oscar Freire couple of times, while Freire was much superior sprinter than him. Similar to what Kwiatkowski and Van Avermaet did couple of times to Sagan...

 

[DFA123]

Re:

More times than reverse. And they have all three won flat(ish) races in a flat sprint. Unlike Valverde.

Valverde has a great sprint, no doubt. But the scenario we are discussing is the end of MSR. He has never showed that he has what it takes to outsprint Sagan there.

Isn't this almost completely dependent on Sagan rather than Valverde? Obviously if he's anywhere near his best then Sagan wins comfortably. But he also has a pretty regular habit of putting out an awful sprint at the end of long races, while Valverde is much more consistent. The question is how much would Sagan's sprint have to collapse for Valverde to beat him. 2016 E3 bad? 2017 MSR bad?

 

[Red Rick]

Valverde is great at beating up climbers in sprints. Or at sprinting in after his climbing ability give him an edge against heavier riders. The Poggio has neither.

 

[WheelofGear]

Re:

More times than reverse. And they have all three won flat(ish) races in a flat sprint. Unlike Valverde.

Valverde has a great sprint, no doubt. But the scenario we are discussing is the end of MSR. He has never showed that he has what it takes to outsprint Sagan there.

To be fair, Alaphilippe has never showed anything in a flat sprint (unless you count getting beaten by Albasini twice) and isn't that fast unless it goes uphill. Valverde should easily be able to outsprint him in a flat one, the other three are a bit harder to outpace.

 

[Netserk]

Yes, sorry; somehow I didn't have Alaphilippe in mind when I wrote that. No reason to think that Valverde can't do a flat sprint as well as him.

 

[portugal11]

ouch!! I saw a video of valverde and those scars look awful... I don't know why but I had flashbacks of phinney's leg. I hope he recovers well enough to be able to defend his liege title.

 

[Koronin]

Re:

ouch!! I saw a video of valverde and those scars look awful... I don't know why but I had flashbacks of phinney's leg. I hope he recovers well enough to be able to defend his liege title.

Valverde's injury isn't as bad as Phinney's. Phinney had torn and otherwise damaged soft tissue (muscle, tendons, and ligaments), whereas Valverde's injury was strictly broken bones. He's saying his power numbers are where they were before the injury, and that he feels like he did before the injury and he still has his sprinting speed. The thing about those two scars is that they were deep cuts, but actually didn't do any damage.

 

[El Pistolero]

Re: Re:

ouch!! I saw a video of valverde and those scars look awful... I don't know why but I had flashbacks of phinney's leg. I hope he recovers well enough to be able to defend his liege title.

Valverde's injury isn't as bad as Phinney's. Phinney had torn and otherwise damaged soft tissue (muscle, tendons, and ligaments), whereas Valverde's injury was strictly broken bones. He's saying his power numbers are where they were before the injury, and that he feels like he did before the injury and he still has his sprinting speed. The thing about those two scars is that they were deep cuts, but actually didn't do any damage.

That's what they always say.

When has Valverde ever said the truth anyway?

 

[lenric]

Re: Re:

ouch!! I saw a video of valverde and those scars look awful... I don't know why but I had flashbacks of phinney's leg. I hope he recovers well enough to be able to defend his liege title.

Valverde's injury isn't as bad as Phinney's. Phinney had torn and otherwise damaged soft tissue (muscle, tendons, and ligaments), whereas Valverde's injury was strictly broken bones. He's saying his power numbers are where they were before the injury, and that he feels like he did before the injury and he still has his sprinting speed. The thing about those two scars is that they were deep cuts, but actually didn't do any damage.

That's what they always say.

When has Valverde ever said the truth anyway?

When has any top-cyclist ever said the truth anyway?

Let his legs do the talking when the time comes.

 

[Valv.Piti]

Valverde has said that stuff numerous times in the wake of this injury. I wouldn't trust most cyclists saying that after such an injury, but Valverde is otherworldly so I wouldn't exactly be surprised. Anyways, we will know in the spring.

 

[Koronin]

Re:

Valverde has said that stuff numerous times in the wake of this injury. I wouldn't trust most cyclists saying that after such an injury, but Valverde is otherworldly so I wouldn't exactly be surprised. Anyways, we will know in the spring.

This.

 

[Pennino]

Fantastic vid by the way yesterday posted by Movistar in which Bala puts on a XXXL jersey with "Alberto Contador" printed on it, still wondering if they had prepared that especially for this reason. Or maybe he uses it already secretly in the darts competition in his local pub. Great stuff.

 

[Valv.Piti]

Oh my gooooood a Valverde book, La leyenda del Imbatido. Must have!!

Does anybody know if its available on English? I mean I could read it on Spanish and use a dictionary for every fifth word, but..

 

[Zinoviev Letter]

Re:

Oh my gooooood a Valverde book, La leyenda del Imbatido. Must have!!

Does anybody know if its available on English? I mean I could read it on Spanish and use a dictionary for every fifth word, but..

It seems to be published by a small press specialising in churning out biographies of Spanish athletes, so no chance. Their website invites other publishers to contact them about foreign rights to their books, so I suppose you could organise a whip around here and we could buy the rights to get it translated into Danish or something.

English language cycling biographies fall into three categories: (1) quickly ghostwritten, quickly forgotten, autobiographies of current pros published in their own country. (2) hagiographies of whoever the couple of biggest riders from that country were. (3) an occasional book about Merckx or Coppi or someone similarly nestled into the sport's pantheon. Beyond that, the coverage is terrible, presumably because there's no market for books about even the likes of Boonen, Contador, Cancellara or Valverde.

 

[Koronin]

Re:

Oh my gooooood a Valverde book, La leyenda del Imbatido. Must have!!

Does anybody know if its available on English? I mean I could read it on Spanish and use a dictionary for every fifth word, but..

It was published last spring with a full endorsement of Alejandro. It is only in Spanish and I'm reading with the use of Google Translate. Which means it's taking forever to read a page. I MIGHT have it finished by the time he's racing and winning again. Basically I'm typing it word for word, sentence for sentence into google translate and reading it paragraph by paragraph. It is very time consuming. The first publishing of it sold out within a week or so of it being released. I've heard it's back in stock. Check Amazon. The final chapter is the start of the 2017 season. Some of us (a group of his fans I'm part of) have joked by the time we finish reading it they'll be a new addition with a new chapter titled Comeback.

 

[Valv.Piti]

Thanks for the answers! I will definitely buy it at one point and thankfully I seem to be a bit better at Spanish, that process you have going there seems pretty brutal.

I'd be interested in hearing about that group as well

 

[Koronin]

Re:

Thanks for the answers! I will definitely buy it at one point and thankfully I seem to be a bit better at Spanish, that process you have going there seems pretty brutal.

I'd be interested in hearing about that group as well

What I've read so far is worth it. It's not fun.

I'll send a PM, the group is over on facebook and the vast majority there are Spaniards. I'm one of the very few that does not understand Spanish very well.

 

[Jolene]

Hey guys, you know you can scan the pages of the book onto Koronin's computer into a pdf and then take it over to Google Translate to copy and paste, right?

 

[Valv.Piti]

http://www.velonews.com/2018/01/news/valverdes-comeback-begins-mallorca_454132
I expect him to ride the two harder races at Mallorca, the article says at least one.
Then Valenciana, Murcia (oh, Murcia 2017...) and Almeria. No mentions of Andalucia. I really, really, really hope he will ride that! Thats his race and its usually a great race, from the obliteration of the oppostion in 2014, to the Lo Port-esque climbing display in 2016 to the thriller between the two biggest Spanish riders since Don Miguel in 2017.

 

[Koronin]

http://www.velonews.com/2018/01/news/valverdes-comeback-begins-mallorca_454132
I expect him to ride the two harder races at Mallorca, the article says at least one.
Then Valenciana, Murcia (oh, Murcia 2017...) and Almeria. No mentions of Andalucia. I really, really, really hope he will ride that! Thats his race and its usually a great race, from the obliteration of the oppostion in 2014, to the Lo Port-esque climbing display in 2016 to the thriller between the two biggest Spanish riders since Don Miguel in 2017.

I think he's actually said he's planning on racing the two hilly Mallorca races. I expect that as well.
I really hope Murcia gets their financing sorted out so they can hold the race.
Remember 2 years ago Andalcuia wasn't on his schedule and he added it last minute. I still expect him to race Andalucia as well. He likes it and does well there.
The other thing about that article is that is says Movistar and he have hinted that he may race all 3 Grand Tours again this year. I don't remember seeing/hearing/or reading that anywhere. Plus thought he said after he did it in 2016 he was never going to do that again as it was too much even for him. Obviously he is free to change his mind, but that one doesn't make any sense to me. Esp with the Worlds being one of his big goals for year.

 

[Valv.Piti]

Oh please god no, I don't want him to race 3 GTs this year.. that would be absolutely mental. Especially not this year!

 

[Netserk]

I'd love that. Add Ronde while you're at it :lol: