Rider of the year 2018

[tobydawq]

Re:

You wrote any other damn ranking, not me. And that's an actual ranking, not your extra arbitrary one.

Lol, because the point with the WCRR obviously doesn't have any merits or what?

 

[roundabout]

That's a whole different point.

 

[DFA123]

I vote for Froome by quite a margin. Winning the Giro and finishing 3rd in the Tour alone would be enough. But completing the GT set, holding all three at once, as well as dominating on Zoncolan and Finestre - the two hardest climbs raced in GTs this year - and putting in the greatest solo performance for over a decade, puts him way ahead of the rest imo.

 

[Red Rick]

Half the things you listed are last year's achievements.

 

[DFA123]

Re:

Half the things you listed are last year's achievements.

Err, no.

 

[Koronin]

Re:

The problem with your system is that it massively overvalues GTs. Like, by a huge amount. Enough that, given your username and posting history, is going to open you up to accusations of bias especially when your categorisation leads to an all-British 2/3 Sky top 3. Even if those are not unreasonable riders to put top 3 at all, producing a ranking which is so heavily tilted in favour of one type of racing will be seen just as several of El Pistolero's old "objective rankings" were, rankings which would usually be shaped to heavily inflate the value of races won by his preferred rider in the comparison and deflate the value of races won by his less preferred rider or ignore them entirely, such as when he did a comparison of Sagan and Valverde, omitting stage races entirely from the comparison and extirpating races like San Sebastián from the record so as to support his personal viewpoint.

in lieu of a particularly dominant Classics rider or anybody picking up a huge amount of smaller stage races and so forth, the top 3 achieved by your ranking is not an unreasonable one, though I would personally rank Yates above Froome because although Froome achieved the higher overall GC placements across the two combined races, and the Tour is of course the biggest fish, Yates' Giro was far more memorable and high profile than Froome's Tour. Thomas is hard to rank in comparison to them. I mean, he won the Tour and fairly convincingly, but there's less that we can take for posterity from it. We'll remember Yates in Sappada in the maglia rosa and his barking orders at the Colombians to work in the Vuelta, and of course we'll remember Froome's Bardonecchia assault (and Bennett's response) for years to come and, while "being memorable" shouldn't be a factor in this more than actual achievements, it does nevertheless play a part.

Oh, and in case anybody thought I was losing my touch, can we talk about Anna van der Breggen a moment? 1st in Strade Bianche, the Ronde van Vlaanderen, La Flèche Wallonne, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, the Emakumeen Saria and the Worlds Road Race (by miles), 2nd in La Course (in the tensest chasedown in years), the national, European AND World Time Trials, 3rd in the Emakumeen Bira and the Boels Rentals Tour. Annemiek's second half of the season was phenomenal too - 3 stage wins and the GC at the Giro, 1st at La Course, 1st in Veenendaal-Veenendaal, 1st with 3 stage wins at the Boels Rentals Tour and 1st in the Worlds Time Trial, with a stage win and 2nd on GC at Emakumeen Bira and a podium at the Ronde van Vlaanderen and Liège-Bastogne-Liège. And 7th in the Worlds Road Race with a fractured knee. Annemiek is awesome.

I did watch a replay of the women's WCRR and van der Breggen was impressive. I was glad she finally it.

 

[SHAD0W93]

I would say you could make a case for S. Yates, Froome, Tom, and Valverde. From there it goes on personal preference. Me personally, I would say Valverde or Tom.

 

[Keram]

I voted for Sagan , because he had no votes at the time of my voting an he deserves at least one. He had great season for non GC rider.
My real vote would be between Yates and Froome. With all respect to Valverde he won except worlds only Catalunya, two Vuelta stages and bunch of small races. Tom Dumoulin won basically two ITTs this year he shouldnt be in contention for rider of the year with this plamares. However his two podiums at two consecutive grand tours are pretty impressive.

 

[Red Rick]

Re:

I voted for Sagan , because he had no votes at the time of my voting an he deserves at least one. He had great season for non GC rider.
My real vote would be between Yates and Froome. With all respect to Valverde he won except worlds only Catalunya, two Vuelta stages and bunch of small races. Tom Dumoulin won basically two ITTs this year he shouldnt be in contention for rider of the year with this plamares. However his two podiums at two consecutive grand tours are pretty impressive.

I agree that Sagan is a little underrated this year. His win in Paris Roubaix is perhaps his most impressive win yet, but his season lost a bit of spark later on after the Tour crash.

And even though his PR win was super impressive, all 5 monuments were absolutely brilliant solo performances, so it doesn't stand out as much as it might have in another year.

2018, it's a bit weird. Nobody is head and shoulders above the rest, but the 10th best rider of the year is might just be the best ever, if that makes any sense.

 

[Zinoviev Letter]

Re: Re:

I voted for Sagan , because he had no votes at the time of my voting an he deserves at least one. He had great season for non GC rider.
My real vote would be between Yates and Froome. With all respect to Valverde he won except worlds only Catalunya, two Vuelta stages and bunch of small races. Tom Dumoulin won basically two ITTs this year he shouldnt be in contention for rider of the year with this plamares. However his two podiums at two consecutive grand tours are pretty impressive.

I agree that Sagan is a little underrated this year. His win in Paris Roubaix is perhaps his most impressive win yet, but his season lost a bit of spark later on after the Tour crash.

And even though his PR win was super impressive, all 5 monuments were absolutely brilliant solo performances, so it doesn't stand out as much as it might have in another year.

2018, it's a bit weird. Nobody is head and shoulders above the rest, but the 10th best rider of the year is might just be the best ever, if that makes any sense.

It makes total sense. This year the nine biggest races were won by nine different men, a different guy came second in the Tour, Giro and WCITT and a sprinter won a million races. That’s without even considering the guy who was the dominant puncheur of the season. The number one probably had a less impressive season than most year’s best riders but the depth of the field at the top end is unusually good.

 

[Red Rick]

Re: Re:

I voted for Sagan , because he had no votes at the time of my voting an he deserves at least one. He had great season for non GC rider.
My real vote would be between Yates and Froome. With all respect to Valverde he won except worlds only Catalunya, two Vuelta stages and bunch of small races. Tom Dumoulin won basically two ITTs this year he shouldnt be in contention for rider of the year with this plamares. However his two podiums at two consecutive grand tours are pretty impressive.

I agree that Sagan is a little underrated this year. His win in Paris Roubaix is perhaps his most impressive win yet, but his season lost a bit of spark later on after the Tour crash.

And even though his PR win was super impressive, all 5 monuments were absolutely brilliant solo performances, so it doesn't stand out as much as it might have in another year.

2018, it's a bit weird. Nobody is head and shoulders above the rest, but the 10th best rider of the year is might just be the best ever, if that makes any sense.

It makes total sense. This year the nine biggest races were won by nine different men, a different guy came second in the Tour, Giro and WCITT and a sprinter won a million races. That’s without even considering the guy who was the dominant puncheur of the season. The number one probably had a less impressive season than most year’s best riders but the depth of the field at the top end is unusually good.

Then you also have a guy being late to the party to kinda steal 3rd in a GT twice in one year and a guy who won 2 WT stage races in dominant fashion and narrowly missed out on a Tour podium, and a World ITT champ who won like 3 ITTs in GTs who are all probably not top 10 this year.

 

[gregrowlerson]

Re:

I vote for Froome by quite a margin. Winning the Giro and finishing 3rd in the Tour alone would be enough. But completing the GT set, holding all three at once, as well as dominating on Zoncolan and Finestre - the two hardest climbs raced in GTs this year - and putting in the greatest solo performance for over a decade, puts him way ahead of the rest imo.

Admittedly I have some bias to GT's, but I agree with this. Zoncolan has been largely forgotten, and Finestre, well, that's the best performance in a GT in at least a decade, and in the second biggest event of the year. And he backed up with a third place in the biggest event of the year.

Someone who is more or less strictly a one day rider needs to win 2 of the big 6 to rank alongside a GT win and a GT podium IMO. Yates cannot contend with Froome as unfortunately his final GC result in the Giro pretty much counts for nothing, and he 'only' won the third of the GT's. A case can be made for Dumoulin though, because he also did very well at the World's (which Froome didn't), and his GT results are reasonably close to Froome.

Valverde would need a podium in either the Tour or Vuelta to be in this conversation.

I can see some people starting to downgrade the Giro as an event though because Froome won it

 

[Red Rick]

If you're gonna put emphasis on the actual level to speak in Froome's favour you have to do the same for Yates too. Regardless, they're the top 2 riders for me this season.

 

[YavorD]

I don't think Valverde was the best rider of the year. Yep, he came back from a horrible injury, but this should have nothing in common with being the best in the year or not. Otherwise one could say Frooime was the best because with all the pressure he had from the Salbutamol case he was still mentally strong enough to win the Giro with some impressive rides and being competitive in the Tour.
For me its a really close between Froome (only on road achievements), Thomas - won Dauphine easily and the Tour comfortable + 2 back to back mountain stage wins (we don't see othen something like this) and another "given"stage win as I think he really slowed down in the end of the TT,
Yates for the obvious reasons + almost won Paris-Nice, 4th Catalunya, 2nd in Poland with stage wins in all these races and Tom Domoulin. 2nd in Giro (with 3rd for one stage being his lowest ranking 2nd in the Tour, actually looking stronger than Froome + his WC performances is really impressive. I would maybe go with Dumoulin.
Had Valverde won FW/LBL maybe it would be him, but in terms in wins I don't think that Valenciana, Oman, Catalunya, Occitanie WCRR comes close to TdF + Dauphine.
P.s. Don't give me wrong, I'm not so much Stage Races biased, but none of the one day riders or sprinters were so much impressive through the year.

 

[Põhja Konn]

I'm very much of the opinion that because he didn't win any of his big goals, Dumoulins season is being heavily undervalued in this thread. He was the closest challenger at both, the Giro and the Tour and made the last four-man selection in WCRR, while also being the runner-up in both TT disciplines.

While Froome was able to take the Giro , it required one of the most controversial performances of the decade to achieve it. However, Dumoulins exploits at the Worlds lift him to another level when entire seasons performance is in question.

Obviously in the longer run we predominantly remember victories and winners and not narrow nearmisses and other lower placings, but this particular thread is about evaluating the season that just ended and about which far more than just wins and winners are fresh in the memory. As such the importance of a singular win (however big the race is) should not be overestimated.

 

[Red Rick]

Re:

I'm very much of the opinion that because he didn't win any of his big goals, Dumoulins season is being heavily undervalued in this thread. He was the closest challenger at both, the Giro and the Tour and made the last four-man selection in WCRR, while also being the runner-up in both TT disciplines.

While Froome was able to take the Giro , it required one of the most controversial performances of the decade to achieve it. However, Dumoulins exploits at the Worlds lift him to another level when entire seasons performance is in question.

Obviously in the longer run we predominantly remember victories and winners and not narrow nearmisses and other lower placings, but this particular thread is about evaluating the season that just ended and about which far more than just wins and winners are fresh in the memory. As such the importance of a singular win (however big the race is) should not be overestimated.

Yeah I think Dumoulin was definitely one of the most impressive riders this year, and he kinda didn't get the reward for it. Especially when discussing entire careers of riders of this level, we're mostly talking GT, WC and monument wins, so he kinda fell flat there this year.

Like in level he was easily top 3 for me with Froome and Yates. But not in results.

I hope Deuxmoulin can stop the streak next year.

 

[Bot. Sky_Bot]

Re:

The problem with your system is that it massively overvalues GTs. Like, by a huge amount. Enough that, given your username and posting history, is going to open you up to accusations of bias especially when your categorisation leads to an all-British 2/3 Sky top 3. Even if those are not unreasonable riders to put top 3 at all, producing a ranking which is so heavily tilted in favour of one type of racing will be seen just as several of El Pistolero's old "objective rankings" were, rankings which would usually be shaped to heavily inflate the value of races won by his preferred rider in the comparison and deflate the value of races won by his less preferred rider or ignore them entirely, such as when he did a comparison of Sagan and Valverde, omitting stage races entirely from the comparison and extirpating races like San Sebastián from the record so as to support his personal viewpoint.

in lieu of a particularly dominant Classics rider or anybody picking up a huge amount of smaller stage races and so forth, the top 3 achieved by your ranking is not an unreasonable one, though I would personally rank Yates above Froome because although Froome achieved the higher overall GC placements across the two combined races, and the Tour is of course the biggest fish, Yates' Giro was far more memorable and high profile than Froome's Tour. Thomas is hard to rank in comparison to them. I mean, he won the Tour and fairly convincingly, but there's less that we can take for posterity from it. We'll remember Yates in Sappada in the maglia rosa and his barking orders at the Colombians to work in the Vuelta, and of course we'll remember Froome's Bardonecchia assault (and Bennett's response) for years to come and, while "being memorable" shouldn't be a factor in this more than actual achievements, it does nevertheless play a part.

Oh, and in case anybody thought I was losing my touch, can we talk about Anna van der Breggen a moment? 1st in Strade Bianche, the Ronde van Vlaanderen, La Flèche Wallonne, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, the Emakumeen Saria and the Worlds Road Race (by miles), 2nd in La Course (in the tensest chasedown in years), the national, European AND World Time Trials, 3rd in the Emakumeen Bira and the Boels Rentals Tour. Annemiek's second half of the season was phenomenal too - 3 stage wins and the GC at the Giro, 1st at La Course, 1st in Veenendaal-Veenendaal, 1st with 3 stage wins at the Boels Rentals Tour and 1st in the Worlds Time Trial, with a stage win and 2nd on GC at Emakumeen Bira and a podium at the Ronde van Vlaanderen and Liège-Bastogne-Liège. And 7th in the Worlds Road Race with a fractured knee. Annemiek is awesome.

Yes, of course I'm Sky fanboy so I wll give my personal rankings in previous 4 years:
2014:
GT winners: Quintana, Nibali, Contador
But Contador won TA + Pais Vasco, so Contador was the best (and I'm not a Contador fan because of obvious one reason) - I had to apply my 7th point of my system.
2015:
Contador vs. Froome vs. Aru
So Aru better than Froome thanks to his 2nd place at Giro (and I'm not a Aru fan).
2016:
Nibali vs. Froome vs. Quintana
So Quintana also better than Froome, because of his wins at Catalunya and Romandie (Froome - only Dauphine) - also 7th point of my system.
2017:
Dumo vs. Froome (TdF & Vuelta).
Froome, no doubts.

 

[DFA123]

Re:

I'm very much of the opinion that because he didn't win any of his big goals, Dumoulins season is being heavily undervalued in this thread. He was the closest challenger at both, the Giro and the Tour and made the last four-man selection in WCRR, while also being the runner-up in both TT disciplines.

While Froome was able to take the Giro , it required one of the most controversial performances of the decade to achieve it. However, Dumoulins exploits at the Worlds lift him to another level when entire seasons performance is in question.

Obviously in the longer run we predominantly remember victories and winners and not narrow nearmisses and other lower placings, but this particular thread is about evaluating the season that just ended and about which far more than just wins and winners are fresh in the memory. As such the importance of a singular win (however big the race is) should not be overestimated.

I think the opposite. Dumoulin is being overrated, largely because some can't bring themselves to acknowledge the superiority of Sky and Valverde. 2nd place (or 4th at WRR) can be impressive if you are pushing for the win all the way against an incredible field and narrowly fall short.

But that wasn't the case with Dumoulin. He never seriously looked like winning either GT - even when Yates collapsed out of nowhere, Dumoulin was spectacularly unable to take advantage. And in the WRR he was basically a non-factor, completely disregarded by the eventual winner.

Added to the fact he had a low number of race days, so should be more consistent than riders who were racing a lot more, yet still didn't win any non-TT race. No-one will remember anything about Dumoulin's season in a few years - because he did absolutely nothing remarkable.

Froome, Thomas, Yates and Valverde, on the other hand, all provided multiple memorable moments to go along with their significant wins. Those four are head and shoulders above the rest - Dumoulin included.

 

[Blanco]

Re:

I don't think Valverde was the best rider of the year. Yep, he came back from a horrible injury, but this should have nothing in common with being the best in the year or not. Otherwise one could say Frooime was the best because with all the pressure he had from the Salbutamol case he was still mentally strong enough to win the Giro with some impressive rides and being competitive in the Tour.
For me its a really close between Froome (only on road achievements), Thomas - won Dauphine easily and the Tour comfortable + 2 back to back mountain stage wins (we don't see othen something like this) and another "given"stage win as I think he really slowed down in the end of the TT,
Yates for the obvious reasons + almost won Paris-Nice, 4th Catalunya, 2nd in Poland with stage wins in all these races and Tom Domoulin. 2nd in Giro (with 3rd for one stage being his lowest ranking 2nd in the Tour, actually looking stronger than Froome + his WC performances is really impressive. I would maybe go with Dumoulin.
Had Valverde won FW/LBL maybe it would be him, but in terms in wins I don't think that Valenciana, Oman, Catalunya, Occitanie WCRR comes close to TdF + Dauphine.
P.s. Don't give me wrong, I'm not so much Stage Races biased, but none of the one day riders or sprinters were so much impressive through the year.

Never, in the history of this sport, a guy who won only two TT's in entire season, was the best rider of the year! So, just no!

 

[Red Rick]

By that logic, Valverde just won a few reduced bunch sprints this year.

Which is why it's an unfair argument

 

[DFA123]

Re:

By that logic, Valverde just won a few reduced bunch sprints this year.

Wow, a contender for worst analogy of the year here. Even if you count every one of Valverde's wins as a reduced bunch sprint, he still won ten of them. TEN. That's orders of magnitude more than a couple of TTs.

But he didn't just win that, he also won the GC of 4 stage races.

 

[Bot. Sky_Bot]

No doubts, it was so close season. There are reasons to point S. Yates or Froome, or Thomas as the best rider of the year. But others, don't think so.

 

[Red Rick]

Re: Re:

By that logic, Valverde just won a few reduced bunch sprints this year.

Wow, a contender for worst analogy of the year here. Even if you count every one of Valverde's wins as a reduced bunch sprint, he still won ten of them. TEN. That's orders of magnitude more than a couple of TTs.

But he didn't just win that, he also won the GC of 4 stage races.

complains about bad analogy, immediately brings everything back to solely quantity of wins.

Viviani also won 2 GCs this year. And he won more sprints.

Does quality of races suddenly have to count now?

 

[movingtarget]

Froome of course. No one dominated in the classics. Movistar couldn't even hit the podium in a grand tour. Yates, Thomas, Valverde and Dumoulin probably make up the top five.

 

[DFA123]

Re:

Froome of course. No one dominated in the classics. Movistar couldn't even hit the podium in a grand tour. Yates, Thomas, Valverde and Dumoulin probably make up the top five.

I'd put Sagan ahead of Dumoulin as well - he's the closest to dominating in the classics. He's probably pretty close to Valverde, but Valverde trumps him on the minor wins.

Paris Roubaix and GW wins is pretty impressive. Add inn three Tour stages and the green jersey, plus top 10s in MSR, RVV, AGR and SB, and its a very strong season. It almost seems average because of the standards that he and GVA have set in the last few years - but objectively it's way stronger than a few second places in big events.