Michal Kwiatkowski Thread

[RichieTheBest]

i agree with portal. kwiatkowski is the future of the tour. maybe not this year but he will be fighting for top spots in coming years im suree

 

[Angliru]

Why did he choose not to start? Just to get some rest before the Tour?

Too lazy to look it up myself, 5 hours in the saddle earlier tired me out to much to make the effort.

Same here today. 25 to 30 mph winds made what is normally a 2 and a half hour ride into a 5 hour sufferfest.

 

[saneguy]

Doubt that he is a serious contendor this year - but the way he is shaping up, the future looks good. Of course he needs to do some serious climbing. But then hey Quintana is a super climber but he also needs to do some good TTing. So its a balance that people need to strike.

 

[VeloHuman]

Doubt that he is a serious contendor this year - but the way he is shaping up, the future looks good. Of course he needs to do some serious climbing. But then hey Quintana is a super climber but he also needs to do some good TTing. So its a balance that people need to strike.

Bonus seconds at a race like the Giro would really work in his favor. He was nearly in the Top 10 in last year's Tour, could probably already get a GT Top 10 this year, though he may need a big more seasoning and mountain training to do much better. In the meantime I think he's got a good shot at the classics. The new MSR route should suit him, tough late hill to drop non-climbers, flat finish to showcase his sprint.

I'm glad he got that prologue win and then peaced--the first WorldTour win will give him some confidence, and now he can take it easy to recover for the Dauphine.

 

[Dazed and Confused]

i agree with portal. kwiatkowski is the future of the tour. maybe not this year but he will be fighting for top spots in coming years im suree

Kwia has a long way to go still. Must find a way to limit gaps on the longer climbs. Could come with experience and a more focused approach but he needs to be free from other team duties.

Anyway it will be interesting to see if he can improve from last year.

 

[RichieTheBest]

Kwia has a long way to go still. Must find a way to limit gaps on the longer climbs. Could come with experience and a more focused approach but he needs to be free from other team duties.

Anyway it will be interesting to see if he can improve from last year.

kwiat did a very good stage at tivo last year. his rise in a role of top climber is something unavoidable i hope lefevre will anyway make him free from a lead-out work in the tour.

 

[greenedge]

How long's his contract with OPQS?

 

[pigoonse]

SoOooOo cute. Young Kwiatkowsi on a time trial in Poland.

OMG.....soOH adorable! Go Kwiato

 

[The Hitch]

i agree with portal. kwiatkowski is the future of the tour. maybe not this year but he will be fighting for top spots in coming years im suree

Reminds me of the Pinot hype last year. Before the July fans knew who Quintana was.

Its always easy to point to the biggest talent from an age group right now and say they are the next big thing. In cycling there is so much fluctuation. When the reigning tdf champion was this age, few people would have bet on him even making another TDF roster.
Andy Schleck on the other hand, 1 month younger, was on the podium of the Giro at age 21. Schleck was an identical age at the 2009 TDf when he came 2nd as Kwiatkowski will be this year.

People probably overrate Kwiatkowski's gt ability because he is a tter. Since the 90's its been a lot easier for tters to become great climbers (Indurain, Ullrich, Armstrong, Wiggins) than it has been for the climbers (Pantani, Rasmussen Heras, Olano Schleck, Shleck) to be great tters.

So even though Kwiatkowski will get his **** kicked in most gts right now by Quintana, Betancur, Majka, Aru maybe, people assume his climbing will improve because it did for others.

 

[RichieTheBest]

Reminds me of the Pinot hype last year. Before the July fans knew who Quintana was.

Its always easy to point to the biggest talent from an age group right now and say they are the next big thing. In cycling there is so much fluctuation. When the reigning tdf champion was this age, few people would have bet on him even making another TDF roster.
Andy Schleck on the other hand, 1 month younger, was on the podium of the Giro at age 21. Schleck was an identical age at the 2009 TDf when he came 2nd as Kwiatkowski will be this year.

People probably overrate Kwiatkowski's gt ability because he is a tter. Since the 90's its been a lot easier for tters to become great climbers (Indurain, Ullrich, Armstrong, Wiggins) than it has been for the climbers (Pantani, Rasmussen Heras, Olano Schleck, Shleck) to be great tters.

So even though Kwiatkowski will get his **** kicked in most gts right now by Quintana, Betancur, Majka, Aru maybe, people assume his climbing will improve because it did for others.

i share your point. though i don't think pinot was a candidate for top 5 last year. he was called a rider who could show bright climbing perfomances.
moreover, obviously kwiatkowski's future is the tour, the race with a significant role of time trialing. in our era a pure climber cannot win the tour imo and a completto rider really has advantages in terms of perspectives in the tour

 

[Akuryo]

How long's his contract with OPQS?

He extended it last year until 2015.

 

[Netserk]

i share your point. though i don't think pinot was a candidate for top 5 last year. he was called a rider who could show bright climbing perfomances.
moreover, obviously kwiatkowski's future is the tour, the race with a significant role of time trialing. in our era a pure climber cannot win the tour imo and a completto rider really has advantages in terms of perspectives in the tour

1) Pinot was a candidate for top-5 last year.

2) Kwiat's future is classics (and week-long stage races) more than it is GT. He just doesn't climb well enough, especially on multi-mountain stages.

3) Two of the last three Tours have been the perhaps most mountainious editions ever with extremely little ITT. Climbing and recovery is much more important than TTing. Why do you think Quintana does better than Tony Martin?

4) A pure climber can easily win the Tour. Last year Froome would have won even if he was the worst of the top-10 in TTing, and the other two on the podium are both bad TTers. Your dear Andy should have won it three years ago, and he is absolutely crap on a TT-bike.

 

[theyoungest]

4) A pure climber can easily win the Tour. Last year Froome would have won even if he was the worst of the top-10 in TTing, and the other two on the podium are both bad TTers. Your dear Andy should have won it three years ago, and he is absolutely crap on a TT-bike.

And where did he lose it? Right, in the TT...

I don't see how Kwiatkowski will be able to compete with someone like Quintana in the future. But yeah, who knows, today's GT stars are completely different from 3 years ago (except for the return of Contador), things move quickly in modern cycling.

 

[RichieTheBest]

1) Pinot was a candidate for top-5 last year.

2) Kwiat's future is classics (and week-long stage races) more than it is GT. He just doesn't climb well enough, especially on multi-mountain stages.

3) Two of the last three Tours have been the perhaps most mountainious editions ever with extremely little ITT. Climbing and recovery is much more important than TTing. Why do you think Quintana does better than Tony Martin?

4) A pure climber can easily win the Tour. Last year Froome would have won even if he was the worst of the top-10 in TTing, and the other two on the podium are both bad TTers. Your dear Andy should have won it three years ago, and he is absolutely crap on a TT-bike.

your andy rhetorics is irrelevant in a discussion in the thread.as for kwiatkowski completely disagree.

 

[Netserk]

And where did he lose it? Right, in the TT...

No. He lost it in the Pyrenees and the Gap stage. He knew all along he would lose time in the ITT, yet only managed to take two seconds from Evans on the first two HC MTFs. Less than Evans took from him two times in the first week. Pathetic.

 

[Netserk]

your andy rhetorics is irrelevant in a discussion in the thread.as for kwiatkowski completely disagree.

Do you also disagree with my point in number 3?

 

[Volderke]

Agree with Netserk on Kwiatkowski, but I still see potential as he is only 23. Take Wiggins, Froome, even Evans, they were nowhere at 23 in terms of grand tour potential.

 

[Netserk]

Agree with Netserk on Kwiatkowski, but I still see potential as he is only 23. Take Wiggins, Froome, even Evans, they were nowhere at 23 in terms of grand tour potential.

Evans wasn't pro at age 23 (well not on his birthday). In his 2nd season he was close to (win)podium his first GT he ever rode.

As for Froome and Wiggins: Kwiat is on a much higher level at this stage in his career, and probably closer to his limit(forum20) than the other two were at that age.

 

[Volderke]

Evans wasn't pro at age 23 (well not on his birthday). In his 2nd season he was close to (win)podium his first GT he ever rode.

As for Froome and Wiggins: Kwiat is on a much higher level at this stage in his career, and probably closer to his limit(forum20) than the other two were at that age.

So you agree Evans was nowhere with his Grand Tour potential at age 23? I remember him in 2002 (age 25) in that Giro, when he obviously was going in the red and probably forgot to eat/drink in that stage where he lost everything in the Maglia Rosa. Evans needed some time to get everything right in the mountains before really making a chance winning a grand tour...
I agree that too many young talents are deemed to do good in grand Tours while they are more fit for classics / small 1-week tours, but you can't write off Kwiatkowski at this age. Just like you can't rave about him as a more-than-likely grand tour winner in the future, because this is far from sure.

 

[Netserk]

So you agree Evans was nowhere with his Grand Tour potential at age 23? I remember him in 2002 (age 25) in that Giro, when he obviously was going in the red and probably forgot to eat/drink in that stage where he lost everything in the Maglia Rosa. Evans needed some time to get everything right in the mountains before really making a chance winning a grand tour...
I agree that too many young talents are deemed to do good in grand Tours while they are more fit for classics / small 1-week tours, but you can't write off Kwiatkowski at this age. Just like you can't rave about him as a more-than-likely grand tour winner in the future, because this is far from sure.

How would I know when he hadn't ridden a single one? He did great on his first try. It's as stupid as saying Sagan had greater cobbled potential than Boonen as 20 years old.

Kwiat has ridden two and I doubt he'll do much better this year than last year. Kwiat will never podium a GT. Never.

 

[Angliru]

How would I know when he hadn't ridden a single one? He did great on his first try. It's as stupid as saying Sagan had greater cobbled potential than Boonen as 20 years old.

Kwiat has ridden two and I doubt he'll do much better this year than last year. Kwiat will never podium a GT. Never.

If Peter Velits can podium at the Vuelta, I'd have to give Kwiatkowski a chance.

 

[Netserk]

If Peter Velits can podium at the Vuelta, I'd have to give Kwiatkowski a chance.

That would require him to target the Vuelta GC and not ride the Tour.

What's more the field in the Vuelta is much better these years when several riders can do great in two GTs in the same season than it was back then.

The Vuelta route has also changed, and if they continue the current trend (which I sadly find very likely) the race will have more km's of steep MTF than flat TT. Truly bizarre.

 

[Volderke]

How would I know when he hadn't ridden a single one? He did great on his first try. It's as stupid as saying Sagan had greater cobbled potential than Boonen as 20 years old.

Kwiat has ridden two and I doubt he'll do much better this year than last year. Kwiat will never podium a GT. Never.

Nevermind, compare Kwiatkowski at age 23 (11th in the Tour) with Evans at age 25 (failure in Giro after getting prepared by Ferrari).

But you reason that Kwiatkowski is done with grand Tours at age 23 just because he can't climb well enough in his first grand Tours, lacking experience and endurance. At the same time, some riders that won the Tour showed nothing at all in their first pro year, let alone at age 23. In your theory, Kwiatkowski cannot podium because he is already at his max., but you could maybe, just for a moment, imagine that this guy is not yet at his top. Time will tell.
I hope you get that point (you sure did, but for the sake of arguing, you keep on going?).

 

[greenedge]

No. He lost it in the Pyrenees and the Gap stage. He knew all along he would lose time in the ITT, yet only managed to take two seconds from Evans on the first two HC MTFs. Less than Evans took from him two times in the first week. Pathetic.

Evans was just superb

 

[Netserk]

Nevermind, compare Kwiatkowski at age 23 (11th in the Tour) with Evans at age 25 (failure in Giro after getting prepared by Ferrari).

But you reason that Kwiatkowski is done with grand Tours at age 23 just because he can't climb well enough in his first grand Tours, lacking experience and endurance. At the same time, some riders that won the Tour showed nothing at all in their first pro year, let alone at age 23. In your theory, Kwiatkowski cannot podium because he is already at his max., but you could maybe, just for a moment, imagine that this guy is not yet at his top. Time will tell.
I hope you get that point (you sure did, but for the sake of arguing, you keep on going?).

1) 'Cause Kwiat wasn't prepared by a doctor (like Ibarguren)? Also, I haven't compared him with Evans.

2) I don't think he is 'done with GTs'. I just don't think he'll ever podium one.

3) I'm fully aware just how crap Wiggins and Froome was at that age. You seem to miss my point, or did you get it and just keep on going for the sake of arguing?

4) I have never said he was at his max, so I can quite easily image he isn't. Next time read what I write.