I was wondering about this while taking a look through the threads on here. Here are the reasons I think this might be the case.
First of all, he is clearly the most popular rider on here and its not close. You'll get more thread activity here from him posting some picture on instagram than you will from any other rider in the peloton announcing their retirment. You also have plenty of Contador nutters. And a large number of posters who aren't full out Contador fans but are sympathetic to him.
He also seems to me to be clearly the most popular rider on twitter, with all of the above and in particuar the nutters.
Secondly, what is most remarkable to me and what made me make the thread is that his fanbase totally transcends nationalism in a way no one else in the sport seems to have done. Its a difficult comparison since few have reached these heights to begin with but Armstrong I do think was more popular in US. Evans had legions of fans, but 99% of them were Australian. Valverde I feel clearly has a greater % of his fanbase in Spain. Froome and Wiggins fanbases are clearly heavily British. Nibali has fans outside of Italy but nowhere near as many as Contador. Quintana is liked but any diehards are from Colombia (apart from that one idiot).
Contador's fans are from everywhere. UK, US, Denmark, Netherlands.I can't even think of many Spanish ones. In fact the 2 most active Spanish posters on here dislike Contador.
For France, Bein sport actually had a tweet section the whole Giro of people who tweeted the network with some Giro hashtag and over the whole race I'd guess over half the tweets were praising Contador and the rest talking about sprints or weather or none gc ***. I think Contador fans alone made it a good investment for Bein to buy the race.
Thirdly Contador doesn't have massive media hype like say Armstrong did. Which makes it more remarkable. Global superstars like Armstrong or Bolt, Federer etc are almost always heavily hyped by the media in cringeworthy ways so become household names. Which creates a superficial fanbase of people who might watch a documentary or read a book but not guys who are going to watch things like Oman or Andalucia in desperate attempts to gauge his form 5 months out from the TDF.Which is my fourth point. The hype for any race Contador does no matter how small is really big on here and twitter. The Evans fans for example only ever turned up in July and one year a few of them turned up in May. I doubt but a tiny % of Bolts 50 billion twitter followers or whatever would watch the Jamaican nats to see his form or federer fans watch some intergrandslam minor tournaments.
Contador never had that. First they all prefered Armstrong and the media outright attacked him, tried to make him unpopular. Then they wanted to scapegoat him with the clenbuterol.
They were against him and despite that he is still the most popular.
In fact, looking back at the last 5 years I would even say he beat the media because, and this is my final point a lot of people who seemed to dislike him or wanted to use him as a pinata have backed off. I can think of quite a lot of examples of people I expected to criticise Contador, who criticised Contador before, praise him, or lay off. I remember Harmon only 1 month after Contador's return from the ban saying that even with the ban Contador is maybe the GOAT.
I think this is partly because of his riding style. Also becuase of the slightly less clear cut nature of his case they can get away with giving him less grief over the positive and they do. Other guys who tested positive get far worse. I saw at least 2 networks during the Giro take a compromise on the 7 vs 9 think saying - oficially its 7 but he also won 9 and its complicated bla bla bla, when I fully expected them to say - its 7 full stop.
First of all, he is clearly the most popular rider on here and its not close. You'll get more thread activity here from him posting some picture on instagram than you will from any other rider in the peloton announcing their retirment. You also have plenty of Contador nutters. And a large number of posters who aren't full out Contador fans but are sympathetic to him.
He also seems to me to be clearly the most popular rider on twitter, with all of the above and in particuar the nutters.
Secondly, what is most remarkable to me and what made me make the thread is that his fanbase totally transcends nationalism in a way no one else in the sport seems to have done. Its a difficult comparison since few have reached these heights to begin with but Armstrong I do think was more popular in US. Evans had legions of fans, but 99% of them were Australian. Valverde I feel clearly has a greater % of his fanbase in Spain. Froome and Wiggins fanbases are clearly heavily British. Nibali has fans outside of Italy but nowhere near as many as Contador. Quintana is liked but any diehards are from Colombia (apart from that one idiot).
Contador's fans are from everywhere. UK, US, Denmark, Netherlands.I can't even think of many Spanish ones. In fact the 2 most active Spanish posters on here dislike Contador.
For France, Bein sport actually had a tweet section the whole Giro of people who tweeted the network with some Giro hashtag and over the whole race I'd guess over half the tweets were praising Contador and the rest talking about sprints or weather or none gc ***. I think Contador fans alone made it a good investment for Bein to buy the race.
Thirdly Contador doesn't have massive media hype like say Armstrong did. Which makes it more remarkable. Global superstars like Armstrong or Bolt, Federer etc are almost always heavily hyped by the media in cringeworthy ways so become household names. Which creates a superficial fanbase of people who might watch a documentary or read a book but not guys who are going to watch things like Oman or Andalucia in desperate attempts to gauge his form 5 months out from the TDF.Which is my fourth point. The hype for any race Contador does no matter how small is really big on here and twitter. The Evans fans for example only ever turned up in July and one year a few of them turned up in May. I doubt but a tiny % of Bolts 50 billion twitter followers or whatever would watch the Jamaican nats to see his form or federer fans watch some intergrandslam minor tournaments.
Contador never had that. First they all prefered Armstrong and the media outright attacked him, tried to make him unpopular. Then they wanted to scapegoat him with the clenbuterol.
They were against him and despite that he is still the most popular.
In fact, looking back at the last 5 years I would even say he beat the media because, and this is my final point a lot of people who seemed to dislike him or wanted to use him as a pinata have backed off. I can think of quite a lot of examples of people I expected to criticise Contador, who criticised Contador before, praise him, or lay off. I remember Harmon only 1 month after Contador's return from the ban saying that even with the ban Contador is maybe the GOAT.
I think this is partly because of his riding style. Also becuase of the slightly less clear cut nature of his case they can get away with giving him less grief over the positive and they do. Other guys who tested positive get far worse. I saw at least 2 networks during the Giro take a compromise on the 7 vs 9 think saying - oficially its 7 but he also won 9 and its complicated bla bla bla, when I fully expected them to say - its 7 full stop.
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