So are you saying that Visma Lease a Bike has yet another rider blossoming? Team management needs to meet at the round table and hand out dance cards for Giro, TDF and Vuelta? If you are director at Visma what multi week event is the Woutster best suited for? I personally don't see it, but many are sure that he will stand on the boxes at the end of some grand tour. He may indeed stand on the podium at an upcoming GT but it will be green jersey or stage results but I am sceptical that he can contest anything overall.. @5-7 day races suit him perfectly... In my opinion.. and Cancellara is a legend.. an all time great, grand tour contender, I never saw him that way.
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No, I was just pointing out WvA is a better climber than you seem to think - I gave you two examples. I certainly don't think he will ever win a grand tour, but absolutely he can win a week long stage race. I never claimed Cancellara was a grand tour contender either.
Wva just lost 2 min and 10 s to vingegaard on hautacam, he was third after all the hard work he did on that stage.
Yes, 2022 TdF, and look at all the pure climbers who finished behind him that day. For WvA to finish 3rd on that stage was beyond belief.
He did a great job. But if I remember correctly it was from a break. He didn't follow Jonas and pogi that day. There is a very big difference.
You are right, he started hautacam with an advantage of 2min and 25 s, but he worked very hard during all the stage, but even with that factor, he was in the top 10 of the most fastest riders on hautacam.
He was even more faster than the monster climber performer /the king of alto de foia, daniel martinez.
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I got that and I don't know all the specific highlights, and there are many for Fabian Cancellara, but he was an effective climber, obviously with his resume. Again don't know for sure, sort of apples and oranges, Wout strikes me as a better climber currently. A few comments made after Lamperti got an uphill result and having a tough time putting some of these riders in a specific category.. I personally love the versatility
View: https://twitter.com/ammattipyoraily/status/1550349451679698944
View: https://twitter.com/ammattipyoraily/status/1550581142692274182
View: https://twitter.com/velofacts/status/1550130746978734086
Very fine performance in a breakaway after much work indeed.
Some similar factors to when Quintana set the Galibier south record. From the breakaway, after the peloton did Izoard minutes faster. Or like Loze last year. Breakaway isn't always that much worse for a solid climbing performance on the final climb.
Obviously a breakaway isn't "always that much worse" and it simply depends on the amount of energy that was put into the break. How big was the break, how long had the break been formed before starting the climb, how difficult was it to break away, were there teammates domestiques in the break, was there cooperation on the climb... Surely everybody understands this, no?
Probably Pogacar and Vingegaard did individually one of they're best performances ever in terms of pure power, that still adds value to what Van aert did.
IIRC Pogacar was slower than Nibali in 2014 so that's very definitely not career best numbers for Pog.
Basically we haven't seen them do a real fresh watts bazooka climb in the Tour that they didn't wait for the final 1.5km to take off.
Considering the fact that it was a full gas stage, with the aubisque done at a good pace, pogacar spent a lot of energy with the constant attacks on the spandelles, and according to ammattipyoraily he did almost 6.2/kg during half an hour on this climb as a "warm-up", before to get 6.1 w/kg on the hautacam, this in the 18th stage.
In my opinion, it was one of his best performances in his career. Geraint thomas arrived 2 minutes after him.
The differences between pogacar and the rest of the GC riders were huge, if we forget Vingegaard.
It was a great performance, no doubt. He used his skills to max effect. But as a pure climbing perfomance he of course has his limits, he is over 70kg as far as I know. He did lose around 7min to Vingegaard over the two climbs. There is also psychological differences in doing well in the mountains from a break, compared to straight up following the mountain goats when they go nuclear. We see this all the time. But top 10 climbing on the day is indeed crazy.
I wasn't arguing pro or contra Van Aert, i was merely pointing out that "from a break" means nothing without looking at the circumstances. So if you want to compare it to other efforts "from a break", you need to compare those circumstances. You can win from a break where the group is 30 riders, where you get a lot of draft, where you only need to come to the front 1 in 30 times, early in a GT, where the break was let go easily and where the work on the climb was still shared and break was formed only 10-20km before the climb. Or you can win from a break where you had to fight for an hour to get away, with 3 other guys, minimal draft, maximum work load, third week of a GT, with 100km of breakaway before you get to the base of the climb. And you have everything in between. So "he also won from a break" means nothing unless you compare the situation. For all i know, Van Aert had it easier than the riders he was being compared with, but that wasn't the point.
You have to consider GC responsibilities in a GT versus those of a domestique. The domestique gets time off to spare the legs, which a GT contender does not, who has to be THERE every stage. Thus when a domestique gets in a break he has more on that day, which obfuscates the real level in a GT.
I agree of course, a break is not just a break. My comment was in reply to a discussion about his climbing prowess in a GC context. How him finishing 3 on that day was a indication of his climbing level. My only point with the "in a break" comment was that without it, he would not be 3 on the day.
I actually agree with the post I responded to, in that he can absolutely climb well enough to win one-weeks but not GT's.
Common knowledge GTs are won in February ITTs.
February ITT is the new team car?
He just needs the hard miles. Give him two GTs and he will be flying
I don't get this sport anymore then. Look, Kuss is a very talented domestique, but he does not have the ability to excel when it matters and on command, but only when unusually rare circumstances present themselves. And it's February for everybody.
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Most of my opinion was not that the Vuelta was gifted to him, instead that Remco made a huge mistake and all hands on deck to defend the win for Kuss.
Today he gave back a little time at 22k can only imagine what he would drop in a longer TT and if Remco was not the only stallion posting fast times.. It's February, early race but definitely a barometer reading.
I think that too, just have irrational American hope, it's a thing we do... Little of that I would rather be lucky than good thing!!
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