Christian said:
If you want to have a good laugh read through this thread from 2 years ago:
Canucks: How 'bout our Ryder, eh?
Some very high profile current and past forum members turned out to be very wrong. I guess that just goes to prove that EVERYTHING is possible
I am just kidding though and not trying to expose anyone since even I myself have probably been wrong before. Seriously don't know how anyone could have seen this coming but big respect to Hesjedal, he rode a brave race so far and deserves the win
I was wrong, although in my defence, my case was based on the type of climbs Zomegnan was putting in the Giro at the time.
I was wrong about Hesjedal, I didn't think he had this in him. In fact, I still consider him an even more unlikely GT winner than Cobo, but that's simply because Hesjedal has gone about accumulating his palmarès in quite an unassuming way, that Tour top 10 notwithstanding, and so I simply hadn't noticed a lot of his good performances, while some of Cobo's (often incredibly suspect) big performances to that date had been incredibly visible; there are a few top 10s in Ryder's palmarès in stage races that I simply don't recall him even being at (8th at Tirreno 2009, 6th at Catalunya 2010) and races I wasn't sure how seriously to take (5th, California 2010). It seemed to me that he was predominantly a one day rider who had some decent qualities for stage races but nothing out of the ordinary, who could pick up some fairly good but perhaps anonymous top 10s. But clearly his skills for the race were better than I had suspected, perhaps aided by his being nearly 30 when he broke through meaning he hasn't been as burned out as some young talents who broke through early.
Hesjedal will likely win this Giro, unless he has a 2002 Evans moment tomorrow, which I don't expect. He has been aided by some rather timid racing (Scarponi admitted as much a couple of days ago, that he wished they'd put more pressure on Hesjedal when he wasn't looking as strong earlier in the race, perhaps underestimating him in the mountains), but he is also a strong rider, who has also gone all out to be in the right form at this point in the race, and has timed it perfectly, and is achieving more than most of us could have expected.