Teams & Riders Nairo Quintana discussion thread

[Hugo Koblet]

Wow! Not so generous are you? I firmly believe he will be on the podium....I’m rooting for him to take 1st but that’s gonna be hard.

Well, this is not about being generous or not, but about discussing his ability and his likely placement. I would love to see Quintana win or podium, but I just think that 5th to 9th is more likely.

You must be kidding. On a climber's course TdF please point to 9 better climbers in the peloton than Quintana spring 2020 version. Even better, tell me one. Now, lots of things can happen, he has only one and a half stage where he can show his skills but if he stays safe Nairo is at least podium material.

No, I'm not. "Quintana spring 2020 version" is pretty overrated, or at least misunderstood, in my book. Quintana has always been good in the spring and he has always been good in one-week races.

Is he one of the best climbers in the peloton? Perhaps. At least when he has one of his good days, he probably is, but his consistency and recovery that he was known for definitely isn't what it used to be based on the last few years' performances.
Is he podium material? Sure, I just don't think that's the most likely GC finish for him. A GT is about a lot more than just climbing ability and he seems to be lacking in other departments.

He might be the 5th biggest Tour favorite at the moment, but not more than that in my opinion.

 

[ppanther92]

I loved his bike throw today at the finish. He has come to battle! Looks good for a top 10 finish, perhaps even top 5. I think he'll finish somewhere in the 5th to 9th range.

If he is not on the podium, I am sure he will be dissappointed. Hell, maybe he will be dissappointed with everything but the win since he already podiumed several times. So, a top 10 will give him nothing and I, personally, think that he can do quite more than that (although I do not see him winning, unfortunately).

 

[ppanther92]

Is he one of the best climbers in the peloton? Perhaps. At least when he has one of his good days, he probably is, but his consistency and recovery that he was known for definitely isn't what it used to be based on the last few years' performances.

Is he podium material? Sure, I just don't think that's the most likely GC finish for him. A GT is about a lot more than just climbing ability and he seems to be lacking in other departments.

He might be the 5th biggest Tour favorite at the moment, but not more than that in my opinion.

Ok, on that I can agree.

 

[Kaptain Kool]

Roglic and Bernal are the top 2, obviously. Who are 3 and 4? IMO Quintana is at least equal with the rest. Dumoulin lost 4 minutes in the mountains even in the Giro he won; he won't be able to make up that time on Stage 20. Pinot has finished ahead of Quintana a GT once in his entire career... and that was a GT in which neither was a contender for the overall.

 

[Jspear]

Roglic and Bernal are the top 2, obviously. Who are 3 and 4? IMO Quintana is at least equal with the rest. Dumoulin lost 4 minutes in the mountains even in the Giro he won; he won't be able to make up that time on Stage 20. Pinot has finished ahead of Quintana a GT once in his entire career... and that was a GT in which neither was a contender for the overall.

This basically. Pinot might beat Quintana, but Quintana has an equal chance of beating him as well. Same goes for Dumoulin. Perhaps Landa could go thermonuclear, but Quintana with the good form he's shown this year, should be able to match him. Pogacar could be the one who poses the greatest threat to Quintana, but even then who knows how well he will do with Tour level competition. All that said ,I agree with you that Quintana is equal with the rest. Quietly in the back of my mind I'm thinking he might even be better than Bernal....

 

[Hugo Koblet]

Roglic and Bernal are the top 2, obviously. Who are 3 and 4? IMO Quintana is at least equal with the rest. Dumoulin lost 4 minutes in the mountains even in the Giro he won; he won't be able to make up that time on Stage 20. Pinot has finished ahead of Quintana a GT once in his entire career... and that was a GT in which neither was a contender for the overall.

Dumoulin has been a much better GT rider than Quintana the last few years. Landa has at least equal results to Quintana the last few years. If Pinot manages to get everything together for three weeks, I'd rate him higher as well. That's a big if, of course. I think that Pinot has a higher chance of actually winning the Tour than Quintana (perhaps even better chance to top 3 as well), but I'd pick Quintana in a head to head bet versus him. Pogacar is a wild card. His Vuelta was impressive for a 20-year-old, but he's still unproven in the Tour of course. He does look good though so far, and I'd back him over Quintana.

Look, I'd love for Quintana to finally win the Tour. It would be a good story, and I'll be rooting for him to do so. I just don't think it's very likely, and I don't buy that he all of a sudden should be back to his 2013-2016 level.

Was he actually better this spring than he has been the last few years? Even in 2017-2019 he was top 5 in all of the one-week WT races he participated in in the spring. In 2018 he was incredible strong in Catalunya and in Suisse where he destroyed the field on the queen stage. In 2019 only Bernal could follow him in Paris-Nice. I just don't see the evidence that he should be that much better this year.

 

[Gigs_98]

I don't really see how a recent comparison between Quintana and guys like Pinot, Dumoulin, Landa ends in Quintana's favor. 2015 Quintana beats all of those guys with one leg, but frankly it's a fact Quintana has been on a decline ever since. 2016 Quintana wasn't able to battle Froome in the TdF anymore, but at least he still won a Vuelta. Then 2017 Quintana suddenly struggled against Dumoulin and Nibali uphill before being nowhere in the Tour. And then finally 2018 and 2019 Quintana wasn't even able to properly fight for gt wins anymore.
All this time however he was still able to pull off top climbing performances throughout the season without ever being consistent. So what has Quintana done this year that suggests this year it's gonna be different?

Also I think it's worth mentioning that we've been at this exact spot multiple times over the last few years. In 2018 people were favoring Quintana to win the Vuelta until the 3rd week because he was at times the strongest climber. People were saying the old Quintana is back after PdBF last year. Then they said the same when he took the red jersey early in the Vuelta.

Believe me, I really hope I'm wrong and he's actually back. But the past definitely points towards the opposite.

 

[AlexNYC]

I begrudgingly have to agree with the two posts above.

I really really hope he will regain some semblance of the level he was at 2014-2015, but that would be an amazing come back and there's no logical reason we should expect it. For me, a podium would already be an amazing result. All I'm realistically hoping for is that he is among the strongest in the 3rd week and close enough that he's willing to go for broke.

 

[Jspear]

So in the 2019 spring, he was as good as this years spring?

 

[Kaptain Kool]

I don't really see how a recent comparison between Quintana and guys like Pinot, Dumoulin, Landa ends in Quintana's favor. 2015 Quintana beats all of those guys with one leg, but frankly it's a fact Quintana has been on a decline ever since. 2016 Quintana wasn't able to battle Froome in the TdF anymore, but at least he still won a Vuelta. Then 2017 Quintana suddenly struggled against Dumoulin and Nibali uphill before being nowhere in the Tour. And then finally 2018 and 2019 Quintana wasn't even able to properly fight for gt wins anymore.
All this time however he was still able to pull off top climbing performances throughout the season without ever being consistent. So what has Quintana done this year that suggests this year it's gonna be different?

The difference is someone has to finish 3rd and all of the GC contenders have question marks. Dumoulin and Pinot are extremely overhyped here. Dumoulin was better than Quintana one year (2018) and then was out with a long injury. Pinot was on a GT podium once (6 years ago) and, since then, has been more likely to DNF than even finish a GT. Even bad Quintana's results are better than Pinot's. Quintana outperformed Landa when they were both at Movistar. Pogacar has a shot at the podium, too, but the Tour is more difficult than the Vuelta.

 

[Hugo Koblet]

So in the 2019 spring, he was as good as this years spring?

Hard to tell when he didn't really face that much tough competition outside Paris-Nice this year, but I'd say yes, probably. Only Bernal could follow him in Paris-Nice last year, he was as good as anyone in Catalunya and he beat Bernal, Lopez and Sosa in Colombia.

The difference is someone has to finish 3rd and all of the GC contenders have question marks. Dumoulin and Pinot are extremely overhyped here. Dumoulin was better than Quintana one year (2018) and then was out with a long injury. Pinot was on a GT podium once (6 years ago) and, since then, has been more likely to DNF than even finish a GT. Even bad Quintana's results are better than Pinot's. Quintana outperformed Landa when they were both at Movistar. Pogacar has a shot at the podium, too, but the Tour is more difficult than the Vuelta.

Quintana has question marks as well. He was seemingly getting worse and worse in Dauphine before he had to abandon because of his knee. He did look good yesterday, though.

Dumoulin was better in 2017 as well. It's hard to argue that he was not when he won the Giro ahead of Quintana.
I also don't see how Quintana outperformed Landa when they were both on Movistar. Quintana got 8th and 10th in the Tour and 6th and 4th in the Vuelta those years, while Landa got 7th and 6th in the Tour and 4th in the Giro.

I agree with you on Pinot and Pogacar, though.

 

[ppanther92]

Sure, Quintana has huge question marks. Therecent years were just too disappointing. Still, in my opinion he looked better in spring then he did in the previous years and yesterday was also encouraging. And a guy who won two GTs and finished on the podium of the TdF multiple times should not be ruled out completely, when age shouldn't be a matter yet. As few as 3 years ago, Quintana was clearly one level above Pinot and Landa. It all depends if he can find this climbing form again.

 

[Gigs_98]

The difference is someone has to finish 3rd and all of the GC contenders have question marks. Dumoulin and Pinot are extremely overhyped here. Dumoulin was better than Quintana one year (2018) and then was out with a long injury. Pinot was on a GT podium once (6 years ago) and, since then, has been more likely to DNF than even finish a GT. Even bad Quintana's results are better than Pinot's. Quintana outperformed Landa when they were both at Movistar. Pogacar has a shot at the podium, too, but the Tour is more difficult than the Vuelta.

Okay, there is a lot to go through here.
It's a very weird thing to argue Dumoulin was only better than Quintana in 2018 when Dumoulin was the guy who beat Quintana in the Giro that year. So Dumoulin was clearly better than Quintana in 2 of the last 3 seasons and the one season where you can't say that Dumoulin basically just didn't race.

Saying bad Quintana results are better than good Pinot results is simply wrong. Pinot was argubly the best climber of last years Tour until his DNF. Quintana wasn't. Quintana also finished behind Pinot in the last GT they both finished and Pinot didn't even plan to ride for gc. And even outside of the gt's they both raced it's almost an insult to Pinot's palmares from the last 2 years to even compare it to Quintana's. Really, it's not even close.

Quintana has not outperformed Landa in their time at Movistar. The last two seasons weren't exactly Landa's best either but even then both times the two entered the Tour Landa finished higher in the gc. Now Quintana does indeed have stage wins that Landa is missing this last couple of years, but then Landa was always too well positioned to go into breaks. Quintana wasn't.

Now you've mentioned Pogacar yourself but really there are a lot more guys who could absolutely beat Quintana. Valverde has looked pretty bad, so I don't expect it from him, but what about Buchmann? What about Lopez? What about Uran? And really those are just the first coming to my mind. Tbf none of those names are guys I'm confident will finish ahead of Quintana, but I wouldn't be surprised if any of them do. Buchmann was close to the Tour podium last season. Lopez consistently outclimbed Quintana in last years Vuelta. Uran...well he isn't the most spectacular climber but he is very consistent and finished 2nd in the Tour after Quintana's last gt podium.

 

[Põhja Konn]

It was the way he dominated mountain stages that made his early season caimpaign look so impressive. Most of his strong climbing performances in previous 2-3 seasons were isolated good days, while he no longer looked like big GT contender and was just hanging on most of the time and sometimes not even able to do that. They came like against the run of play, if one can borrow from football terminology.

This spring however was different in a way that reminded the springs of his peak seasons, when he started every smaller stage race as one of the big favourites and usually confirmed that on the road. One can question the level of opposition he faced in those races in 2020 as even in Paris-Nice the bigger name rivals had varying form, but he didn't just beat them, he completely obliterated everyone on MTF-s on three consequtive stage races. There's a difference between winning and winning. He very clearly looked reinvigorated.

All that wouldn't have necessarily meant a return of peak Quintana in a GT environment even without the training accident in Colombia, which interrupted his preparation. But what it did was to give a lot of credence to the idea that his troubles of recent years had significantly less to do with irreversible physical decline than many of us had previously thought. Hence the heightened hopes and expectations of him becoming a kind of dark horse in the Tour who could smash the trains of Ineos and JV off the rails and blow the race wide open.

 

[Tonton]

In the past two seasons, Pinot has been a stronger rider than Quintana. Yes, durability, GT results, but last GTs they raced together was the '18 Vuelta, Pinot better, and last year's Tour, not even close.

Quintana looked good on stage 4. I give him that.

 

[CyclistAbi]

What changed is Quintana moved to Arkéa–Samsic and the leadership issues got resolved. This likely contributed to greater desire to perform good.

Increased motivation.

 

[Kaptain Kool]

Now you've mentioned Pogacar yourself but really there are a lot more guys who could absolutely beat Quintana. Valverde has looked pretty bad, so I don't expect it from him, but what about Buchmann? What about Lopez? What about Uran? And really those are just the first coming to my mind. Tbf none of those names are guys I'm confident will finish ahead of Quintana, but I wouldn't be surprised if any of them do. Buchmann was close to the Tour podium last season. Lopez consistently outclimbed Quintana in last years Vuelta. Uran...well he isn't the most spectacular climber but he is very consistent and finished 2nd in the Tour after Quintana's last gt podium.

Could others beat Quintana? Of course they can. That was my point. There are a bunch of riders who can finish 3rd, all with questions. Someone has to finish 3rd and Quintana is in that group. I mean, last year Steven Kruijswijk of all people got a podium.

And Quintana absolutely was better than Pinot in GTs last year. 8th in the Tour, 4th in the Vuelta and stage wins in both. Pinot had a Tour stage and a DNF. How is that even debatable?

And Quintana also clearly outperformed Landa in 2018 and 2019. Landa finished a couple spots better in GC but a top 10 with stage wins are better than lower top 10's without a stage. Landa had one WT win during his entire time at Movistar. That's really poor for a team leader. Quintana had four and has better overall results in both GTs and week-long stage races. Quintana also finished well ahead of Landa in UCI points both years. Quintana wasn't great, but Landa was poor.

 

[Pantani_lives]

The pessimist in me says he will lose a lot of time by crashing or in a windy stage 10.

The realist in me says he will finish between third and seventh.

The optimist in me says he will launch a Pantaniesque attack on the Madeleine and send the others back to kindergarten.

 

[Gigs_98]

Could others beat Quintana? Of course they can. That was my point. There are a bunch of riders who can finish 3rd, all with questions. Someone has to finish 3rd and Quintana is in that group. I mean, last year Steven Kruijswijk of all people got a podium.

And Quintana absolutely was better than Pinot in GTs last year. 8th in the Tour, 4th in the Vuelta and stage wins in both. Pinot had a Tour stage and a DNF. How is that even debatable?

And Quintana also clearly outperformed Landa in 2018 and 2019. Landa finished a couple spots better in GC but a top 10 with stage wins are better than lower top 10's without a stage. Landa had one WT win during his entire time at Movistar. That's really poor for a team leader. Quintana had four and has better overall results in both GTs and week-long stage races. Quintana also finished well ahead of Landa in UCI points both years. Quintana wasn't great, but Landa was poor.

Hold up, there is a big difference between being better and getting the better results and you seem to mix up the two.

Quintana is indeed probably happier about his last Tour than Pinot, but you cannot seriously suggest watching last years Tour gave you the impression Quintana was actually better or "showed more podium potential". Pinot could have won the whole thing if not for a freak injury.

Landa is a similar case. He was clearly stronger than Quintana, Quintana only even finished so close to him because he was allowed to go into breakaways.

 

[Kaptain Kool]

Results are facts. "Podium potential" is fantasy. Sure, Pinot could have won multiple GTs if all of the things that happened didn't and if all of the things that didn't happen did.
For Landa, his one WT win at Movistar was a stage in T-A. Quintana's 2018-2019 results were better and it's not even close. In the 2 Tours, 2 stage wins beats a few minor placings differences.

 

[starlord]

And Quintana absolutely was better than Pinot in GTs last year. 8th in the Tour, 4th in the Vuelta and stage wins in both. Pinot had a Tour stage and a DNF. How is that even debatable?

This. Results speak for themselves. Quintana actually managed to finish his races, in fact does he ever DNF? In a pre-race favourites debate I would pick Quintana over Pinot every time.

 

[Gigs_98]

Results are facts. "Podium potential" is fantasy. Sure, Pinot could have won multiple GTs if all of the things that happened didn't and if all of the things that didn't happen did.
For Landa, his one WT win at Movistar was a stage in T-A. Quintana's 2018-2019 results were better and it's not even close. In the 2 Tours, 2 stage wins beats a few minor placings differences.

I'd answer your stage win argument but frankly I did that in my last two comments already so I'm not gonna do it again.

Dismissing the fact Pinot was miles better than Quintana last year, yeah sure, you are free to do so. Be aware though that what you are doing is hiding behind result sheets to ignore any context that lead to those results, which tbh I think you actually know yourself.
In terms of facts about podium chances though. Quintana did indeed finish last years Tour. He did so in 8th place.

 

[Cassirer]

Can't really see this (meaning only results should count). Why would you just choose not to look at circumstances when they absolutely matter? Why does a number at the end say more than what was clearly visible during a race? Maybe when talking about revenue and marketing value it could be valid, but not when discussing performances.
(Btw would LOVE to see Quintana raiding the mountains 13/14/15-style)

 

[Hugo Koblet]

Results are facts. "Podium potential" is fantasy. Sure, Pinot could have won multiple GTs if all of the things that happened didn't and if all of the things that didn't happen did.
For Landa, his one WT win at Movistar was a stage in T-A. Quintana's 2018-2019 results were better and it's not even close. In the 2 Tours, 2 stage wins beats a few minor placings differences.

Wait, we're talking about GC-potential this year, right? Like how likely a podium or win (or top 5 or top 10) is. Why does stage wins matter then? And if you only look at results, how do you come to the conclusion that Quintana is better than Landa when the former finished 12th, 10th and 8th in the last three Tours, while the latter finished 4th, 7th and 6th?

 

[RedheadDane]

Nairo has a new friend!
Inability to actually speak to each other be damned!