maltiv said:Sagan is extremely overrated as a climber. He's a great puncheur, but he's never shown anything in the mountains. And no, I don't count getting over the top of a HC climb in a slowly paced 15 man breakaway group (including climbing prodigy Salerno) as a particularly impressive climbing feat.
He's massively impressive in hills, sprints and prologues, but when he both lacks the ability to do a decent long ITT and climb a mountain I don't see how anyone can consider him to be a likely future GT contender. Not that it matters, because he'll certainly pick up a couple of monuments, WCs and Olympic medals.
yeah, at the foot of the climb maybe he topped that climb with ten Dam, Fuglsang and Salerno, while the others (including not too shabby climbers like de Greef and Caruso) were long gone.
so no, I don't think he's overrated as a climber. he can handle a climb pretty ok if he goes for it. except that he almost never does that, since these days are more or less days off-duty for him, given his 'I race to win all year long'-approach.