Rider with the best palmares relative to their ability?

[Matthijs]

I partly blame Rabobank for this. He got great wins for them without them having to really support him, so they let him do his thing. Great results with very little team-effort, very easy for 'em. Had they actually supported him more often (instead of Michael "born to be second" Boogerd), he might have gotten them much more.

Perhaps typical of that team, Menchov also got his grand tour wins without much help from the team, but in his case, I don't think he would have gotten even further with more support, he used that weakness as a strength by being kinda invisible and no one expected anything else from him.

For years, Rabo did the Gold Race in support of Freire. While Boogerd even won this race (his only really toplevel win) and Freire, year after year, didn't make it in the final climbs...
In support of Freire, he is a sprinter who goes into breaks once in a while. In the cobbles I've seen this even more than ones. Even this year at Gent-Wevelgem.

Also Menchov had his victories in the lesser GT's. While riding in the Tour he had maximum support as it should be. Some years he had good results, but others he blew it. Can you blame Rabo for sending the best squad to the Tour?

 

[Praetor]

For years, Rabo did the Gold Race in support of Freire. While Boogerd even won this race (his only really toplevel win) and Freire, year after year, didn't make it in the final climbs...
In support of Freire, he is a sprinter who goes into breaks once in a while. In the cobbles I've seen this even more than ones. Even this year at Gent-Wevelgem.

Also Menchov had his victories in the lesser GT's. While riding in the Tour he had maximum support as it should be. Some years he had good results, but others he blew it. Can you blame Rabo for sending the best squad to the Tour?

There are other races than the Tour and the AGR. Races where Freire was left to "improvise".

And I'm talking about Menchov's victories in the Giro and the Vuelta. He got those without any help, he was almost always on his own. He actually lost the 2005 Vuelta because Heras (and Liberty) intelligently exploited the severe weakness of his team. If not for Heras and doping, he would have actually lost a race, where he was the clearly the strongest, because of lack of support.

And had Di Luca and LPR been a bit smarter in the Giro of 2009, they could have taken on Menchov and his weak team the same way. Although Menchov would have probably won that one too eventually because of doping/Di Luca.

Management and tactics have been a weakness in the Rabo team for years, Breukink en Van Houwelingen and co aren't the strongest tacticians in the peloton, to say the least.

 

[El Pistolero]

When Kelly won the '88 Vuelta he also won the points jersey. Now thats class.

Kinda like when Menchov won both the Vuelta and mountains classification and the Giro and the points classification?

 

[Zinoviev Letter]

Kinda like when Menchov won both the Vuelta and mountains classification and the Giro and the points classification?

Well yes, those achievements were indeed impressive.

But GC and points is a more impressive combination where the points jersey is essentially a sprinters jersey than GC and KOM or GC and Giro points.

Sometimes a secondary classification can be won almost by accident if the race falls a certain way. There's a strong possibility that whoever wins the Giro next year could win a GC/points/KOM combination for instance, because of the number of climbers finishes. If one climber is clearly stronger than all the rest, he would have a shot at picking up points and KOM jerseys almost as incidentals.

It's different where the points competition is weighted towards the sprints (as it mostly is in the Tour and the Vuelta). Being the best GC man in the race won't get you such a classification by default or by accident.

 

[Matthijs]

There are other races than the Tour and the AGR. Races where Freire was left to "improvise".

And I'm talking about Menchov's victories in the Giro and the Vuelta. He got those without any help, he was almost always on his own. He actually lost the 2005 Vuelta because Heras (and Liberty) intelligently exploited the severe weakness of his team. If not for Heras and doping, he would have actually lost a race, where he was the clearly the strongest, because of lack of support.

And had Di Luca and LPR been a bit smarter in the Giro of 2009, they could have taken on Menchov and his weak team the same way. Although Menchov would have probably won that one too eventually because of doping/Di Luca.

Management and tactics have been a weakness in the Rabo team for years, Breukink en Van Houwelingen and co aren't the strongest tacticians in the peloton, to say the least.

Rabo tactics aren't the best obviously, but eing alone on the last half of the last mountain is very different from getting no support...
In the Vuelta's I saw for instance Ardila, Rasmussen, Tankink, ten Dam even Boogerd and others riding strong in support. Rabo's on top of the peloton for half the day and so on. Or is a weak team a team without at least two GT-contenders in the top 10?
I think your claim is based on the Giro, which wasn't the real focus of Menchovs season in 2009. Maybe Menchov has to learn to focus on one GT a year and not pick two and fail at one of them. So his support team can be send to his strongest performances.
The trick of Heras, teammates in the braek waiting for him to extend an original gap of 5 seconds on a cat. 1 mountain at some distance from the finish, was impressive. But I don't think all the other teams could have stopped Heras easily that day, unless they were of the RadioShack 3 top10 man type.

As for Freire: McEwen and Hushovd have had the same 'problem' for years I think? And if it's such a problem for Freire, why didn't the 3time world champion didn't got himself some other team?