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Mar 18, 2009
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Ferminal said:
5th and 3rd (if you don't count Kohl). I'd be surprised if Evans beats that this year.

Great achievement. He could've won too. Maybe the Giro took that bit out of him.

He was the strongest at the first and last mountain stages. Too bad that in the middle he was on antibiotics for a flu for 3 days...that coincided with 3 mountain stages.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
If I were Evans I'd go for the Giro GC, and then forget the Tour GC, enjoy myself and go for a couple of stage wins.

He's never in a million years going to beat AC and one or two others, even if he has the Tour of his dreams (which being his 4th or 5th GT in a row, ain't gonna happen, Sastre showed that last year). He's done the podium thing, so he doesn't need that, especially at this stage of his career. Make sure you lose a whole heap of time early on so you're not a watched rider, then go for a couple of stages in the mountains. How good would it be to win a Tour stage wearing the rainbow bands? If it were me, that photo would stay on my mantlepiece for the rest of my life.
 
Hibbles said:
If I were Evans I'd go for the Giro GC, and then forget the Tour GC, enjoy myself and go for a couple of stage wins.

If he can win something - anything, really - then he can be justifiably proud of himself and I'll be proud of him. Time would honour him more for winning a few bits and pieces than it will for him being ten times the runner-up.

I was chuffed when he won the Worlds. I thought it was the beginning of something. Then, after watching one stage of the 2010 Tirreno as it played out like last year's Flèche Wallonne with Evans jumping too soon, I couldn't escape the feeling that the man is wasting his best years.

Yet despite myself, I find myself rooting for him every time. I'm fed up of these placings, these small advances, this thing of sacrificing now in favour of later.
 
Jun 16, 2009
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karlboss said:
and not lose 3 minutes in a TTT to liquigas.
In a 30km straight ttt I don't think so. Max they would lose is a minute.
L'arriviste said:
I was chuffed when he won the Worlds. I thought it was the beginning of something. Then, after watching one stage of the 2010 Tirreno as it played out like last year's Flèche Wallonne with Evans jumping too soon, I couldn't escape the feeling that the man is wasting his best years.

Yet despite myself, I find myself rooting for him every time. I'm fed up of these placings, these small advances, this thing of sacrificing now in favour of later.

When did he jump too soon in tirenno?

I still think it is a bit much to say that he'll never win the tour. i wouldn't say that about armstrong in the next two years. he has a better chance of winning one than LA imo. he personally thinks he is getting to his peak of his career now. Imagine if he had some of the attitudes that some posters on here had?
 
The problem is that he will need to lose a LOT of time before anybody's willing to let him go - the GC candidates won't let Evans go if he's only 5 minutes back, and even if he's more than that, we've seen from Cancellara last year that a rider of Evans' calibre has to be so distant as to be GC-irrelevant (as Pellizotti was last year) to be welcome in a break. I think Evans is too driven to deliberately lose that time à la Moncoutié or Cunego in search of a KOM or stage win, and so he's doomed to another year of being 'one of the heads of state' without ever taking the top prize.

I always wonder if Evans actually feels safer when he has an excuse for not winning. The only problem with this is that it makes him come across as a whiner so that even when he does have a case (the terrible luck with the puncture in the Vuelta, or Gesink blocking him in the chase for the line on Xorret del Catí) people roll their eyes and go 'yea yea, whatever, Cadel'. I also suspect that, much like Britain and America, outside of the dedicated cycling community the Tour de France is all that's known of the calendar, and Cadel has focused all his effort on the Tour for that reason, to disastrous effect on his palmarès, which really ought to be better than it is. And I'm sure he knows that. After all, Denis Menchov has 3 GTs, and Cadel Evans has 0. Is Menchov really THAT much better?
 
Well of course, literally, the Grand Tour record says Menchov's that much better than Evans. But realistically, is he much better than Evans, if at all? I don't think so. I think he's been more confident about going for his goals and he's been more realistic about his goals and he's been in Austria too ;)
 
Jun 16, 2009
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Libertine Seguros said:
Well of course, literally, the Grand Tour record says Menchov's that much better than Evans. But realistically, is he much better than Evans, if at all? I don't think so. I think he's been more confident about going for his goals and he's been more realistic about his goals and he's been in Austria too ;)

I think evans would definetly of loved to have at least a few more wins to his name. i think he should of definetly won fleche in 08 and possibly 09, but both times badly timed his sprints. the tour 08 he was unlucky with the crash and had a hard time with saxo ganging up on him. i think he should of really had at least one win out of the giro 2002, tdf's 07 & 08, and la vuelta 2009.

Cadel's newly modified bmc bike
80620143.jpg


Susan, because it is my thread about wonderful me does that mean i get to delete people's messages who don't make nice comments to cadel?
 
Mar 13, 2009
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auscyclefan94 said:
I think evans would definetly of loved to have at least a few more wins to his name. i think he should of definetly won fleche in 08 and possibly 09, but both times badly timed his sprints. the tour 08 he was unlucky with the crash and had a hard time with saxo ganging up on him. i think he should of really had at least one win out of the giro 2002, tdf's 07 & 08, and la vuelta 2009.

Cadel's newly modified bmc bike
80620143.jpg


Susan, because it is my thread about wonderful me does that mean i get to delete people's messages who don't make nice comments to cadel?

Double edged sword I feel. You take the good with the bad.
 
I'd like to see him win the Giro.
A good finish in le Tour - top 10 or even top5 would be fine as well. I'd hate to see him have two sh*t Tours in row and another thirty-something finish this year.
I doubt many would be too worried about him in the Tour this year if he wins the Giro, so he could sneak through on some of them while they're watching others - then again, that little rainbow makes it hard not to be noticed...
 
A

Anonymous

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auscyclefan94 said:
Susan, because it is my thread about wonderful me does that mean i get to delete people's messages who don't make nice comments to cadel?

So abusive comments to you personally won't be deleted?



;)
 
auscyclefan94 said:
I think evans would definetly of loved to have at least a few more wins to his name. i think he should of definetly won fleche in 08 and possibly 09, but both times badly timed his sprints. the tour 08 he was unlucky with the crash and had a hard time with saxo ganging up on him. i think he should of really had at least one win out of the giro 2002, tdf's 07 & 08, and la vuelta 2009.

I think he should have had some wins out of those too. But it was part terrible luck with regards to teammates (as I've said before, Lotto worked very hard to get domestiques to help him but had some terrible luck with them becoming Clinic material or suffering inexplicable year-long losses of form before being reunited with a former DS and returning to top form) and part poor tactical awareness. As you say, he timed things badly at Flèche two years running, the 2009 Dauphiné he really should have won, and so on. There's also just plain bad luck, of course, such as the puncture at the Vuelta '09, but he didn't attack Valverde at any point after that (though of course, having already done the Tour, he may not have had enough left to do so).

Never mind though - he did apparently say that the Vuelta was Worlds prep for him, although I had no doubt that he would go for GC the second he was in contention (Evans is like that), and then Worlds prep would be a ready-made excuse if he didn't do so well. In the end, he obviously had the best Worlds prep he could possibly have had otherwise he wouldn't have won!

Maybe now he's got that monkey off his back with his first really major win he'll relax about it and go on to win several more, the same way as a forward who has gone several games without a goal will suddenly score several once they've broken their duck. He is far too good a rider to finish his career without adding more major wins to his palmarès.
 
Jul 27, 2009
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auscyclefan94 said:
I think he should of really had at least one win out of the giro 2002, tdf's 07 & 08, and la vuelta 2009.

Bad luck in the 09 Vuelta for sure.

The others, he either beat himself, or got beaten (just).

He could have gone to the Giro last year and beaten Menchov, but he didn't. I guess this year he's not trying to repeat the same mistakes.

In summary, he has made some of his own bad luck and not chased GT's he could have won, for concentrating on the ultimate prize of the TdF.

He wasn't helped by riding for Comical-Lotto.
 
Mar 18, 2009
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M Sport said:
He could have gone to the Giro last year and beaten Menchov

No he couldn't. Even in the form of his life. I'm as sure as I've ever been of anything in my life.

EDIT: I just realized I haven't justified this, so here goes.

Look at Anthoine Vayer's climbing power calculations (they've been shown by comparison to real SRM data later made available by riders that they're extremely accurate). For the past two years, Menchov has shown a climbing strength at the Giro that is far above what anyone except Contador has done at the Tour since 2007.

On a side note, I really like Vayer's analysis. It allows me to compare performances of different years or just different races and take conclusions. For example, it allows me to realize that (in case his training buddy Jesus Hernández saying it was bull**** wasn't enough) Contador's "I was at the beach" didn't have an ounce of truth in it because his climbing at the 2008 Vuelta (where he made a point of stating he was in the form of his life) wasn't as good as at the 2008 Giro. And that's just one example.
 
Jul 27, 2009
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Interesting theory, but the fact is Menchov won by marking the climbers on the mountains holding wheels, and then blasted them away in the TT that mattered. M Rogers was sitting 12 secs behind Menchov going into that TT and that proved he was also holding climbers wheels. Cadel would easily have matched or beaten Rogers to that point.

We can't turn back time so we shall agree to differ, and I did actually say could rather than would.
 
Oct 25, 2009
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issoisso said:
.....
Contador's "I was at the beach" didn't have an ounce of truth in it because his climbing at the 2008 Vuelta (where he made a point of stating he was in the form of his life) wasn't as good as at the 2008 Giro. .....

Spanish pollen falls with the leaves did you not know?
 
If I was Evans, I would go for the Giro overall, and if it got to a point where he was too far back, I would pull out (or just go for a stage win) & aim for the Tour.
Many people say the Contador etc will be too strong, but anything can happen. Everyone can have a bad day.
Take Rasmussen & time bonuses out of the 2007 tour, and who knows what the result would have been..
 
Mar 13, 2009
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issoisso said:
No he couldn't. Even in the form of his life. I'm as sure as I've ever been of anything in my life.

EDIT: I just realized I haven't justified this, so here goes.

Look at Anthoine Vayer's climbing power calculations (they've been shown by comparison to real SRM data later made available by riders that they're extremely accurate). For the past two years, Menchov has shown a climbing strength at the Giro that is far above what anyone except Contador has done at the Tour since 2007.

On a side note, I really like Vayer's analysis. It allows me to compare performances of different years or just different races and take conclusions. For example, it allows me to realize that (in case his training buddy Jesus Hernández saying it was bull**** wasn't enough) Contador's "I was at the beach" didn't have an ounce of truth in it because his climbing at the 2008 Vuelta (where he made a point of stating he was in the form of his life) wasn't as good as at the 2008 Giro. And that's just one example.

Do you hav a link to vayers numbers? I can find ferrari's but not vayers. Why can't you be at the beach and be doing 6-8 hour training days? I always found it funny that people assumed coming from the beach meant he wasn't training.
 
Mar 18, 2009
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M Sport said:
Interesting theory, but the fact is Menchov won by marking the climbers on the mountains holding wheels, and then blasted them away in the TT that mattered. M Rogers was sitting 12 secs behind Menchov going into that TT and that proved he was also holding climbers wheels. Cadel would easily have matched or beaten Rogers to that point.

We can't turn back time so we shall agree to differ, and I did actually say could rather than would.

Yes, but Menchov's top numbers at that Giro came in the last week, after the time trial. As for Rogers being close, remember he won a bit of time in the TTT and on a split in a flat stage.

karlboss said:
Do you hav a link to vayers numbers? I can find ferrari's but not vayers. Why can't you be at the beach and be doing 6-8 hour training days? I always found it funny that people assumed coming from the beach meant he wasn't training.

You can be at the beach and training, absolutely. It's just that Contador said at the time that since he was on holiday at the beach and not training, he wouldn't have form.

Vayer publishes his articles on a few magazines. Some of them are occasionally published at cyclismag.com if you want to go look for them :)
 
Mar 19, 2009
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i really hope Evans maintains his focus on the Giro. IMO he goals this year should be Giro podium, TdF top 10, and defending the Worlds in his home town (which I'll be watching from the road side :cool: )
 
Mar 13, 2009
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mherm79 said:
i really hope Evans maintains his focus on the Giro. IMO he goals this year should be Giro podium, TdF top 10, and defending the Worlds in his home town (which I'll be watching from the road side :cool: )

Cadel has no hope in the Worlds, and if he podiums the giro and goes top 10 that will be 2010...FAIL. Yes I know for any number of riders that would mark a fantastic year, but Cadel shouldn't be aiming for podiums anymore.
 
M Sport said:
He wasn't helped by riding for Comical-Lotto.

Good thing he's joined a team of good climbers that can help him out. Oh, wait..


issoisso said:
No he couldn't. Even in the form of his life. I'm as sure as I've ever been of anything in my life.

Yep. I've gone from having a huge dislike of Menchov to quite liking him tbh.


karlboss said:
Cadel has no hope in the Worlds, and if he podiums the giro and goes top 10 that will be 2010...FAIL. Yes I know for any number of riders that would mark a fantastic year, but Cadel shouldn't be aiming for podiums anymore.

If he podiums the Giro, I'd think that he would be lucky getting a top 10 in the Tour.
 
Mar 13, 2009
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luckyboy said:
If he podiums the Giro, I'd think that he would be lucky getting a top 10 in the Tour.

That may be, but would he ever aim for it? I think he'd take a win at the Giro and crash out in the prologue at the tour over a podium and top 10.