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It was the only time he performed in such a long race, while he's often a contender in shorter races...
In that regard the same can be said about Kwiatkowski. Possibly even more talented and only got his first GT stage win last year in the Tour.
I think he underperforms in the Ardennes cause he peaks or the Giro. Also the monuments simply have a stronger field.
What about the Worlds then? He never performed there, and Italy often had high expectations. Also he has exactly one top 10 placing in Monuments in his whole career out of 26 participations! If we include the Worlds, it is 1 of 32!!! To me it really looks like he has a problem with length and hardness of the race.
Ulissi was a massive talent, double junior World Champion, won a GT stage at 21 already, everything was pointing that he'd became a great one-day racer and stage hunter. But, around 200km he's a contender, at 250km he isn't.
If he wasn't a pure stage hunter, to get 8 Giro stage wins would've been even more impressive.
Also at the Giro is the same, Fiuggi is an outlier and was pretty easy, even in 2016 when he was flying and in shorter stages like Andalo and Risoul he was there fighting with the top GC riders in the 200+ kms Dolomitic stage he exploded and lost half an hour, the longer and the harder the race/stage is the more his capabilities sink.
IMHO he didn't try seriously for most of his career, in 2018 he started with intentions to do well and was around 5th position of the peloton at the top of the Poggio, just unlucky that he crashed on the bottle that Nibali throw to the wall and bounced back on the street on the descent, at least a top 10 would have been very likely that year.
According to Bettini Ulissi was already training harder than most pros as a junior rider. His big weaknesses have already been mentioned.
Yep, a strange one indeed. Bartoli won it, Rebellin won it three times, Bettini at least should've been a contender...
Richie Porte and GTs in general. He got that anomalous 7th in the Giro thanks to a huge time gap in 2010, but even when he wasn't riding in the service of others he was a painfully negative rider in Grand Tours who threw in the towel as soon as any misfortune befell him, so it took him what, six years to get another top 10, he has recorded more DNFs than finishes when riding as leader and he was 35 when he finally got a podium - and since he has spent much of his career being either a domestique or kind of just another guy in the group until such point as he isn't in the group anymore, it's not surprising that he hasn't got a stage win. Yet he was talked up like a favourite relentlessly thanks to his formidable one-week stage race record and his performances as a super-domestique. And if he'd been willing to let go and accept a GC fail (or could stay on his bike throughout rather than that string of DNFs) he could have dropped enough time to rescue the race with a stage win the way we've seen at the Tour in recent years from Quintana. Although to be honest, I've never really rated Porte that highly so I don't think he's underperformed that badly and in getting a Tour podium in his twilight years he's salvaged something that means he won't be forever wondering 'what if'.
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