Descender said:
woodburn said:
Indurain had also won on Luz Ardiden, beating Lemond in sprint in 90.
He'd also won two Paris-Nice, a Volta a Catalunya, a Clasica de San Sebastian, the Tour de l'Avenir itself... Indurain was a boringly predictable Tour winner in 1991. People were just skeptical because he was supposed to be Pedro Delgado's domestique in 91 again and some people said he was too big to win a three-week race.
...and he'd won more Tour mountain stages other than the one you mentioned.
And he'd been by far the strongest guy in the race the previous year, only for Banesto/Movistar to do their usual of having the strongest guy work for the designated leader.
Then came the last mountain stage and he was finally given freedom. It wasn't a sprint, he straight up dropped everyone.
The talk at the end of that edition was "Indurain would probably have won if he had freedom" since negating the time loss of just a single stage would have him winning, and that's without even removing the time loss from domestiquing in every other stage