• The Cycling News forum is looking to add some volunteer moderators with Red Rick's recent retirement. If you're interested in helping keep our discussions on track, send a direct message to @SHaines here on the forum, or use the Contact Us form to message the Community Team.

    In the meanwhile, please use the Report option if you see a post that doesn't fit within the forum rules.

    Thanks!

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

Page 179 - Get up to date with the latest news, scores & standings from the Cycling News Community.

What will Valverde's impact be the cycling world in 2012

  • Nuclear Holocoust

    Votes: 27 100.0%

  • Total voters
    27
Nope, Abu Dhabi is a pretty horrible race. 3 sprints and a MTF he might or might not win. Compare that to Andalucía which he is just gonna dominate and win between 1 to 3 stages, maybe even 4, lmao. You can obviously race both races, but he shouldn't ride Dubai at the expense of Andalucía.

mariposa: Use an image uploader like tinypic or something like that, it shouldn't be too complicated.
 
Re:

Velolover2 said:
The short, explosive ITT suits him well.

It's more the long, steady climb I'm concerned about. It's made for Dumoulin, Zakarin and co.
I'd back Valverde to beat Dumoulin or Zakarin on any climb in the world: from 500m to 50km, with gradients from 1% to 20%.

He may not be quite on the level of Froome or Quintana in the middle of a GT, but he's still one of the very best in the world - particularly during week long stage races (see Cataluña last year for example).
 
Aug 6, 2015
4,139
2
0
Visit site
Re: Re:

DFA123 said:
Velolover2 said:
The short, explosive ITT suits him well.

It's more the long, steady climb I'm concerned about. It's made for Dumoulin, Zakarin and co.
I'd back Valverde to beat Dumoulin or Zakarin on any climb in the world: from 500m to 50km, with gradients from 1% to 20%.

He may not be quite on the level of Froome or Quintana in the middle of a GT, but he's still one of the very best in the world - particularly during week long stage races (see Cataluña last year for example).
I think valverde can't beat dumoulin on a super high mountain stage
 
Re: Re:

portugal11 said:
DFA123 said:
Velolover2 said:
The short, explosive ITT suits him well.

It's more the long, steady climb I'm concerned about. It's made for Dumoulin, Zakarin and co.
I'd back Valverde to beat Dumoulin or Zakarin on any climb in the world: from 500m to 50km, with gradients from 1% to 20%.

He may not be quite on the level of Froome or Quintana in the middle of a GT, but he's still one of the very best in the world - particularly during week long stage races (see Cataluña last year for example).
I think valverde can't beat dumoulin on a super high mountain stage
Of course he can. Perhaps he wouldn't win every time, but it's ludicrous to say he can't beat him. He's simply a better climber.
 
Aug 6, 2015
4,139
2
0
Visit site
Re: Re:

DFA123 said:
portugal11 said:
DFA123 said:
Velolover2 said:
The short, explosive ITT suits him well.

It's more the long, steady climb I'm concerned about. It's made for Dumoulin, Zakarin and co.
I'd back Valverde to beat Dumoulin or Zakarin on any climb in the world: from 500m to 50km, with gradients from 1% to 20%.

He may not be quite on the level of Froome or Quintana in the middle of a GT, but he's still one of the very best in the world - particularly during week long stage races (see Cataluña last year for example).
I think valverde can't beat dumoulin on a super high mountain stage
Of course he can. Perhaps he wouldn't win every time, but it's ludicrous to say he can't beat him. He's simply a better climber.
no he isn't... valverde couldn't beat a off shape nibali and chaves (and in a certain way kruisjvick) in the 2016 giro.
we have different opinions but doumoulin is the best gt rider after froome for some reason and that is not just because of his time trialing
 
mariposa said:
I was going to put up some photos from the start today but have received a message to say the board attachment quota has been reached.
Thankfully the sun came out today to warm things up! Great win again doing what Alejandro does best.

All the riders seemed to be in a good mood. Nice to see the Cofidis Spanish champions jersey and bike on show as well.

Post the pics on imgur and then link us to them eh? I'd love to see them.

Just watched the final 20km of today's stage. Fun racing, nice to see Visconti throw down and more than token attacks on the climb proper. But Valverde...such a consummate professional. Never doing any more than necessary for the win, but winning emphatically. Praying he has an injury_and_other_drama-free year!
 
The reason Valverde is unlikely to beat other good climbers on the super high mountains is that he struggles with high altitude. He always has and always will. The stage of the Giro 2016 that he lost a good bit of time was because of the altitude. He even explicitly stated that he got altitude sickness and was very dizzy and debating about climbing off the bike that how sick he got. Once they got him out of the altitude and to the hotel he was able to recover, but he was in bad shape after that stage. He made a comment after that stage something along the lines of: I was born, raised, and still live at sea level. I've always had issues with altitude and at this point it's not going to change. It's his biggest weakness that is fairly well known within the peloton. I remember the 2015 Tour de France when he had a slight bit of issues with altitude on the one stage where he dropped back before the top of the climb and then recaught the rest of the leaders on the descent. Christian VanderVelde made a comment to the effect that he always struggles with altitude. The others just looked at him and asked what he was talking about it. VanderVelde responded that he's always struggled with altitude, that's it not exactly a secret the entire peloton knows that's his biggest weakness and one he really can't do anything about. Then he said altitude has cost Valverde more Tour's than I ever had a shot and and more than he would care to remember.
 
bala-gif-canteras-18.gif


Insane if they are riding in the same gear.
 
He basically treated this climb as if was the Mur, just longer. The last kilometre might as well have the Mur de Huy in April and it looked just as easy as it has looked the past few years. The extra gear he has is simply amazing, when everyone (probably including himself) is at 100%, he can just kick it for 10 seconds and leave everyone in the dust. Thats pretty special..
 
What a marvelous return to racing for Bala. Anyone who has followed how hard he worked at rehabilitation, as I have, can only be happy for his success.

To have him show he can still sprint, maintain a high threshold for a long period and be explosive in attacks means he has retained his former strengths. This means he has many more shows to give us!

Chapeau Don Alejandro :)
 
It did very much look like the Mur de Huy at the end. He's just got that sprint at the end of a hard stage/race that no one else has. It's that sprint that other climbers just don't have. One of the things that makes him special. Now he's got a record number of overall wins at Valencia.
 
Re:

tobydawq said:
And he's the most winning rider of the season.

111 victories in total according to official records. 116 victories obtained on the road.

And compare that to fellow climbers and GC specialists. Froome has around 40 wins, Nibali around 50, others much less.
Compare it to fellow hilly classics fast finishers. Gilbert has approx. 70 wins, Grandpa Rebellin around 60, Cunego 45, Gerrans 35, Kwiatkowski less than 20.

In fact the only guys you could compare him with are sprinters, and only two of them have more wins than him, Greipel and Cavendish, although Sagan is closing on him (he's 9 wins shy).

The guy is simply amazing!
 
Re:

Valv.Piti said:
Im pretty sure I caught Valverde saying that he was going to Murcia, Almeria and Abu Dhabi. Thats a little disappointing, but the competition will be bigger in Abu Dhabi and its WT, so its not all bad.

Is it because of Landa? Normally Valverde always seems to get what he wants for his race schedule.
 
Re: Re:

liamito said:
Valv.Piti said:
Im pretty sure I caught Valverde saying that he was going to Murcia, Almeria and Abu Dhabi. Thats a little disappointing, but the competition will be bigger in Abu Dhabi and its WT, so its not all bad.

Is it because of Landa? Normally Valverde always seems to get what he wants for his race schedule.


I think it may be more about not knowing what his form was going to be before the start of the season along with seeming to have no confidence on how his knee would react to racing and they had to get Landa starting his season in Feb. So it could, although Valverde's also talked about wanting to race with Landa something about their styles of racing complimenting each other. He hasn't always raced at Andalucia it only feels like he always races there.
 
Re: Re:

Blanco said:
tobydawq said:
And he's the most winning rider of the season.

111 victories in total according to official records. 116 victories obtained on the road.

And compare that to fellow climbers and GC specialists. Froome has around 40 wins, Nibali around 50, others much less.
Compare it to fellow hilly classics fast finishers. Gilbert has approx. 70 wins, Grandpa Rebellin around 60, Cunego 45, Gerrans 35, Kwiatkowski less than 20.

In fact the only guys you could compare him with are sprinters, and only two of them have more wins than him, Greipel and Cavendish, although Sagan is closing on him (he's 9 wins shy).

The guy is simply amazing!


I'll add two more GC type riders who are retired. Contador had around 75 career wins and Indurain had 99 when he retired. Valverde only needs around 10 more wins to have more wins for Movistar than Indurain did and all of Indurain's wins were with Movistar.
 
In an interview with Ciclo21 around the season's start he said something about wanting to do the Tour of Flanders (a broken record, I know), but that he really couldn't tell whether he would do it at the moment because it depended on his knee. That doesn't seem to affect him at all, so maybe we will finally see him at the start line alongside Nibali and the rest.

-Eso no lo sé todavía. Todo dependerá de cómo vaya evolucionando y cómo me encuentre con la rodilla. Si fuese por ganas, sí quiero ir a Flandes. Pero una cosa son las ganas y otra distinta el poder.

-I don't know that yet. It all depends on how things develop and how my knee makes me feel. If it were a matter of wanting, yes I want to go to Flanders. But one case is what one wants, a completely other is what one is able to.
 
Re:

tobydawq said:
In an interview with Ciclo21 around the season's start he said something about wanting to do the Ronde van Vlaanderen (a broken record, I know), but that he really couldn't tell whether he would do it at the moment because it depended on his knee. That doesn't seem to affect him at all, so maybe we will finally see him at the start line alongside Nibali and the rest.

-Eso no lo sé todavía. Todo dependerá de cómo vaya evolucionando y cómo me encuentre con la rodilla. Si fuese por ganas, sí quiero ir a Flandes. Pero una cosa son las ganas y otra distinta el poder.

-I don't know that yet. It all depends on how things develop and how my knee makes me feel. If it were a matter of wanting, yes I want to go to Flanders. But one case is what one wants, a completely other is what one is able to.

That sounds very much like what he basically has said about his entire schedule this year. It was almost Mallorca, Valencia, Murcia and after that see how the knee is to decide where else he's going.

One other thing to remember is he's been know to make last minute changes to his schedule. He's added races last minute because he just really wanted to go to a specific race.

Now for rather he'll actually race Flanders, I'd love to see, but since he keeps saying it and not going, at this point, I'll believe when I see him on his bike at the start line.
 

TRENDING THREADS