Re: Re:
Mr.White said:
movingtarget said:
SeriousSam said:
Scarponi said:
It blows my mind the amount of riders like tejay and Porte who try and win the tour as their first GT. Look at what happened to Cadel Evans who only won one tour and he was in a whole lot better place with the two seconds and vuelts podium. Probably could have won 3-4 gts if he chose those the right ones ( like nibs vuelta)
Evans did the right thing by targeting the Tour relentlessly. He ended up winning it. He might not have, had he done Giros or Vueltas instead.
Evans does not have much in common with Porte apart from their TT ability. From Evans first Tour ride he was always going to be a GT rider and he did well in the Giro 2002 except for his meltdown on one stage. Porte has done nothing comparable. Evans continued looking for a Tour win because he had already podiumed two, losing narrowly plus a Vuelta podium and a fourth, and fifth in the Giro and he was always convinced he could win a GT. Porte has not approached a podium even though many people think he is capable. Evans always had the pedigree to win a GT while Porte has had to develop it much later while riding for others. The jury is out on Porte. It either happens soon or it will never happen. I don't think he will be winning the Tour at 34 like Evans. The Tour is the biggest race in the world and Evans knew he could win it so it was no surprise that he kept trying and like Nibali in 2014,
he had some luck but to win any GT and stay out of trouble for three weeks every winner needs some luck.
What luck Evans had in that Tour?! He was the strongest, hands down!
He was the strongest in the race itself and deserved it, but a lot of factors fell into place for him. I always point out, I thought he'd blown his chance in 2008; that when he'd been in his physical prime he had raced too conservatively and paid for it, and that the more adventurous and aggressive post-Mendrisio version of Cadel would fall too late in his career for him to ever win the big one. In the 2011 Tour you had a few things that worked in his favour:
- Contador with the ban hanging over him hadn't known how long he had left on the road so had raced the Giro first
- The two crashes on stage 1 meaning riders in the first crash losing time because they were baulked by those in the second crash (which was inside 3km to go so they didn't lose time) pushed a few contenders further away than they may have wanted to be
- A large number of crashes in week 1 took out several rivals; maybe none would have challenged Cuddles, but the way they raced could have affected how others raced, specifically when it comes to...
- the Schlecks raced the Pyrenées like it was the 2012 Giro or something, horrifically poor racing. Andy was the strongest by a mile on Plateau de Beille and ended up gaining next to nothing. The lengthy Galibier raid was not a stylistic choice, it was something he had to do because he had failed to take several opportunities to that point and was running out of them
- the backloaded route meant that timing form was crucial, Evans didn't have to spend quite as long chasing around for his lack of domestiques like he had done in, say, the 2010 Giro or the 2008 Tour.
FWIW Porte is starting to strike me as one of those guys who doesn't have the recovery to win a GT - superb over one week, but he tends to have a bad day where it goes
really wrong, whereas Cuddles' general level was pretty high and so apart from the 2002 Passo Coè meltdown and the 2009 Tour (I don't count 2010 because he did well at the Giro and BMC's lack of depth meant he was stupidly overworked by that point even before he got injured) even on a bad day he'd still be moderately competitive and only lose time bit by bit rather than in massive handfuls; his biggest problem earlier was wanting others to do his work for him (eg 2009 Dauphiné when he sits on and wonders why nobody's pulling Valverde and Szmyd back, and others including some who have no business climbing with Valverde and Evans start pinging off the front) or sulking once he realised it wasn't going to go his way.
Evans > Porte as a cyclist in almost every conceivable way, unless Porte really does step up and prove me wrong in the GTs, because Evans also had the whole added facet of one-day racing that Porte has shown next to nothing in. I'll take a World Championships and La Flèche Wallonne over the same number of short stage races, even prestigious ones like Paris-Nice, any day.
Still amazing a rider with his climbing abilities and TT'ing won a GT. Don't get me wrong, because he was one of the best classics rider of his generation. But just a average GT contender.
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