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Is it nowadays possible to win all 5 monuments?

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Re:

ray j willings said:
Thomas has no chance :D ,, Fab is now riding a normal bike so he can't do it ;)
Sagan is just marked to death in every race.

Kwia IMO has the best chance because he seems to ride under the radar. But if he got near it he would be heavily marked.

Gilbert for that period was incredible " unbeatable" Some of the best riding I have ever seen.

Nibs I don't think so.

I think it's near impossible. Vos could do it if she was a man.
Vos? She couldn't even complete the worst 1.1 races.
 
Re: Re:

Hugo Koblet said:
ray j willings said:
Thomas has no chance :D ,, Fab is now riding a normal bike so he can't do it ;)
Sagan is just marked to death in every race.

Kwia IMO has the best chance because he seems to ride under the radar. But if he got near it he would be heavily marked.

Gilbert for that period was incredible " unbeatable" Some of the best riding I have ever seen.

Nibs I don't think so.

I think it's near impossible. Vos could do it if she was a man.
Vos? She couldn't even complete the worst 1.1 races.
I don't think Ray was implying that she could do it at all.

She's so usually so dominant, or has been in the past anyway. That kind of dominance isn't seen on the male side, so if you took Marianne Vos and made a male version of her, that male counterpart could win the 5 monuments.
 
Re: Re:

Hugo Koblet said:
ray j willings said:
Thomas has no chance :D ,, Fab is now riding a normal bike so he can't do it ;)
Sagan is just marked to death in every race.

Kwia IMO has the best chance because he seems to ride under the radar. But if he got near it he would be heavily marked.

Gilbert for that period was incredible " unbeatable" Some of the best riding I have ever seen.

Nibs I don't think so.

I think it's near impossible. Vos could do it if she was a man.
Vos? She couldn't even complete the worst 1.1 races.
I think Ray meant that if there was a male with the exact capabilities of Vos in women's cycling world then he would win all 5
 
Re: Re:

Brullnux said:
Hugo Koblet said:
ray j willings said:
Thomas has no chance :D ,, Fab is now riding a normal bike so he can't do it ;)
Sagan is just marked to death in every race.

Kwia IMO has the best chance because he seems to ride under the radar. But if he got near it he would be heavily marked.

Gilbert for that period was incredible " unbeatable" Some of the best riding I have ever seen.

Nibs I don't think so.

I think it's near impossible. Vos could do it if she was a man.
Vos? She couldn't even complete the worst 1.1 races.
I think Ray meant that if there was a male with the exact capabilities of Vos in women's cycling world then he would win all 5

But for Vos to have the same relative capabilities, she'd have to go back to the 1980s or earlier. Simply not possible to have such dominance in such a specialised field
 
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Libertine Seguros said:
Don't mind Echoes, they just have a bee in their bonnet about people being interested in stage races over classics (even those from countries like Spain which are traditional cycling countries where stage races have pretty much always been king), and then when we DO talk about classics they have a bee in their bonnet about people being interested in the WRONG classics.

It's weird but with the current routes it is probably true that unless they race like complete idiots like they did in 2014 Liège is the biggest obstacle to a cobbles rider (the Vigevano route of Lombardia would have been more than this crappy Brescia route. Bring back the Como finish, for the sake of all that is holy, Bettini 2006 was almighty), in much the same way as Roubaix is obviously the biggest obstacle to a more hilly rider. If Cancellara had continued to go down his 2009 route maybe he could have been the one, but Liège would have still been a problem because of the uphill finale. Gilbert could feasibly have done it but it's getting too late and unlikely he'd have had it for Roubaix anyway. Geraint Thomas now feasibly has the skillset but is going to get pushed in the stage racing direction and, besides, has enough trouble staying upright in the Classics at this point. Maybe if they hit the ground running and then developed in the required direction to complete the set somebody like Silvio Herklotz or Mathieu van der Poel (if he focused on the road) could do it due to comparatively wide-reaching skillsets, but overhyping them before they've even turned pro won't do anybody any help, and it's also of course easier to be a non-specialist as an espoir anyway.
They will finish in Como this year. Not that the final route has been announced yet...

Personally I wish for Muro+Ghisallo+Civiglio+SFDB
 
Aug 4, 2011
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I think a male rider equal to Vos at her best could do it. Without her this year, you look at the results in all the women's races and you wonder if Vos could have won. I don't think there is a male equivalent.
 
Re:

ray j willings said:
I think a male rider equal to Vos at her best could do it. Without her this year, you look at the results in all the women's races and you wonder if Vos could have won. I don't think there is a male equivalent.

Yep. It's called Merckx. Back then the field wasn't as specialized hence his domination. Right now the ladies field isn't quite as specialized (as the men's) hence her domination (well not this year.)
 
May 2, 2010
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Billie said:
Miburo said:
Sagan will never survive LBL unless he loses weight

Or if you've a shitty edition where no one does something, nvm he has a great chance :eek:

last 3 editions he should've no problems being in those big groups that arrive in ans

Sagan could have quite easily won the LBL Gerro won.
 
Nov 16, 2011
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Sagan the best candidate, due to his proven engine, speed, bike handling skills, sprint positioning, and age working favorably for him. However, I don't think it'll happen.
 
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I think first we should remember that only three riders have won all Monuments. Van Looy, Merckx and De Vlaeminck Only Merckx ever won them all more than once. In Onehundred Editions for each (except for the Ronde which has 99 editions) only these riders have ever managed to win them all. And one of them is Merckx, who basically doens't even count. It's just incredibly hard to do it. The last one to complete the collection was De Vlaeminck almost 40 years ago (1977). Merckx and Van Looy achieved 5 wins in all on them within 3 seaons, De Vlaemink needed seven. To do it within 3 seasons today seem insane to me. According to the stats Steven Roots posted no one even podiumed all 5, not even 4, in the last 20-25 years.
To even speculate that someone could do it seems totally unrealistic to me. There is not one rider I can think of who I am sure would have had the potential to do it whithin the last 20 or 25 years. Hell ,the only one past the three who did it I can think of now who'd I've think could've done it if he ever cared to would've been Hinault!
There is no one in the peloton today who could do it I think. Plus: even if someone was strong enough to do it, he needed to be smart enough to do it as well. The combination is just more than unlikely.
Today for example whe have Van Avermaert and Sagan, one never has the edge and the other one must be lucky to last 250k+k, is hated by the peleton and has no killer instinkt what so ever.
 
Rechtschreibfehl3r said:
I think first we should remember that only three riders have won all Monuments. Van Looy, Merckx and De Vlaeminck Only Merckx ever won them all more than once. In Onehundred Editions for each (except for the Ronde which has 99 editions) only these riders have ever managed to win them all. And one of them is Merckx, who basically doens't even count. It's just incredibly hard to do it. The last one to complete the collection was De Vlaeminck almost 40 years ago (1977). Merckx and Van Looy achieved 5 wins in all on them within 3 seaons, De Vlaemink needed seven. To do it within 3 seasons today seem insane to me. According to the stats Steven Roots posted no one even podiumed all 5, not even 4, in the last 20-25 years.
To even speculate that someone could do it seems totally unrealistic to me. There is not one rider I can think of who I am sure would have had the potential to do it whithin the last 20 or 25 years. Hell ,the only one past the three who did it I can think of now who'd I've think could've done it if he ever cared to would've been Hinault!

Eh, what about Sean Kelly? He won 4 and got the podium of the 5th three times! (in fact the first time he didn't even chase the winner because he owed him for helping him the previous season!)
 
Re:

Buffalo Soldier said:
Is GVA the only current rider with a top 10 result in all 5?

edit: only 12th in Lombardy
There was an interesting post about this topic a while ago on Irish Peloton, here. With this year included, GVAs monument top results are 9-3-3-7-12 (total 34). He is certainly very versatile, but as mentioned, hasn't even won one yet. One might think that his ability to score so well in all of them keeps him from winning.

Of the younger riders, let's see what Kwiatkowski can do in the future. It's hard to see anyone re-focus on eg the cobbled classics after winning in the Ardennes, rather than going for repeat Ardennes victories. Would like to see someone go for it though, or at least talk/think about it...
 
bala v said:
Liege was always more important race than Fleche Wallonne. Way back in the days of Ardennes Week Fleche was ridden on Saturday and Liege on Sunday as more important race. Old cycling greats praises their Liege wins much more than Fleche wins, Merckx and Argentin for example. Paris-Tours was a big classic, maybe in rank of Liege till 1989, you're probably right about that. But Ghent-Wevelgem was nowhere near Liege, never!

With all respect, that's inaccurate.

The Arrow was part of the Challenge Desgrange-Colombo, the year of the latter's creation in 1948. Liège-Bastogne only joined it in 1951. So for 3 years at least, the Arrow was objectively more prestigious. But even then, for the two decades of the Ardennes Weekend, if you look at the palmares and the field, it looks like the Arrow was way more international than the sister race (it can be discussed though). Liège got a better field when Paris-Brussels was scrapped from spring but I think I saw somewhere at until the late seventies, the Superprestige Pernod system granted equal points to both races, which gives an idea of the rank of the Walloon Arrow.

Pernod2.jpg



My point is that the very concept of "Monument" was unknown to the cycling fans of the seventies and early eighties. My dad said that to me several times. There were a dozen classics: Paris-Tours, Paris-Brussels, the Arrow, Ghent-Wevelgem, the World Championship & the 5 present-day monuments. Some were harder than the others of course, I did not mean the opposite but those we now call monuments have never been singled out from the others. That was a consequence of the UCI revolution of 1989. When the Wincanton Classic was created ex-nihilo and with equal status as LIège-Bastogne while the Arrow was not granted World Cup status, we all had the intuition that some classics were worth more than these "new" classics.
 
You have to admit that the ranking of the races as listed above is outdated.

To the winner ('monuments' in bold):
110 Tour de France
75 Giro d'Italia
70 Vuelta a España, World Championship
65 Paris-Roubaix, G.P. des Nations (de facto WCTT)
60 Milano-Sanremo, Ronde van Vlaanderen, Bordeaux-Paris, Tours-Versailles, Giro di Lombardia
55 Paris-Nice, Dauphiné Liberé
50 4 Jours de Dunkerque, G.P. de Midi-Libre, Paris-Bruxelles
45 Flêche Wallonne, Liège-Bastogne-Liège
40 Tour de Romandie, Amstel Gold Race, Setmana Catalana

Do you really think the two Ardennes races are so much lesser than the other great classics?

PS: Also funny to note that back then the Tour was even superior compared to other Grand Tours than it is now, at least in terms of points :D
 
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What was the "status" of Paris Tours. I recall reading that Van Looy raced to make Merckx lose so that he would be the only rider to have won all the classics. That would mean that there was some classification back in the late 60s to early 70s but I can't recall which races were included.
 
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Re:

Netserk said:
You have to admit that the ranking of the races as listed above is outdated.

To the winner ('monuments' in bold):
110 Tour de France
75 Giro d'Italia
70 Vuelta a España, World Championship
65 Paris-Roubaix, G.P. des Nations (de facto WCTT)
60 Milano-Sanremo, Ronde van Vlaanderen, Bordeaux-Paris, Tours-Versailles, Giro di Lombardia
55 Paris-Nice, Dauphiné Liberé
50 4 Jours de Dunkerque, G.P. de Midi-Libre, Paris-Bruxelles
45 Flêche Wallonne, Liège-Bastogne-Liège
40 Tour de Romandie, Amstel Gold Race, Setmana Catalana

Do you really think the two Ardennes races are so much lesser than the other great classics?

PS: Also funny to note that back then the Tour was even superior compared to other Grand Tours than it is now, at least in terms of points :D

Super Prestige Pernod was organized by French, that's why Tour, Roubaix, Paris-Tours or even Bordeaux-Paris was valued so highly, also Dauphine and Paris-Nice. In reality Paris-Tours was never more important race than Liege, they were on a same level for quite some time, but never more important. Not to mention Bordeaux-Paris, that race was always been below Ardennes races.
 
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Re:

Maaaaaaaarten said:
Maybe Sagan should try winning one monument first before we hype him as the most likely to win all five.......

Don't worry, as everyone knows since at least 3 years, he's going to win at least one... next year (pity the opposition knows it as well).
 
Re:

Nick C. said:
What was the "status" of Paris Tours. I recall reading that Van Looy raced to make Merckx lose so that he would be the only rider to have won all the classics. That would mean that there was some classification back in the late 60s to early 70s but I can't recall which races were included.
Tours-Versailles in the above list is Paris-Tours; it ran in the opposite direction for a period in the 70s and 80s before reverting back to the original direction and to the pre-74 route in the late 80s.

The main thing I get from looking at that is very sad at what Paris-Bruxelles has become; a very disappointing race that was repeatedly won by that great classics hardman Robbie McEwen (!) before being euthanized into an appallingly bad flat race in the Brussels area recently. There are a lot of ways they could go to improve this and a lot of unknown cobbled climbs, flat cobbled stretches and tarmacked hellingen in the area south of Brussels not known to any Classic that they could use to try to at least partially ape some of the race's historical appeal, but it just isn't happening to date.
 

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