State of the Peloton 2026

[rallybanana]

If it is Remco then Valentin Madouas is a gold medallist, Quinten Hermans retroactively given a monument!!!

and Wout gets two more second places

 

[Low is rhe new high]

https://twitter.com/x/status/2011808503938027808

View: https://x.com/i/status/201180850

Maybe it references the guy who did not participate in the Olympics because of the lame excuse that his girlfriend was not selected.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

He was the original mads perdersen man, the propaganda around him for the last 5 years like he was some kind of unicorn when he was a mediocre classics rider who got juiced up for the summer freakshow. Crashes on an easy corner and sprains his ankle like ilmaestro in age group football. Admittedly it gets harder and hard to hate on him but when landa is lying down for 2 months with a snapped spine nobody is showing such sympathy. C'est bizarre

Change the summer freakshow to one Lombardia and you've described Masnada perfectly.

 

[acm]

yep. I tought VAyer and his French pals were lunatics, and the old hardcore anti Sky gang were mad, but the Spanish crew dear me are over the top.

Uncle was right about Lazkano.

 

[Berniece]

I doubt it very much that it's anyone from the big 6

 

[Forever The Best]

It's basically an award for the most exquisitely shady performance of the season. Like, if you crush everybody you're obviously beyond suspicious, but to win the Zakarin Award you need to be irregular, pop up out of nowhere with an absurd performance, disappear just as easily, be doing fine and then explode for no apparent reason, withdraw from a race or retire from the sport in mysterious circumstances, win a race you have absolutely no business winning, that sort of thing

Zakarin was good between 2015-2017. He also had a very good win at Lago Serru in 2019 Giro after which I thought he could contend for the overall but then he disappeared (with the exception of losing a Tour stage in 2020 with horrible descending), also he never won anything big.

I feel like there might be better examples. Hesjedal 2012 Giro looks very off looking at the rest of his career, although they did not do anything on the stages he struggled early on. He did really well in the final week of Giro 2015 too for example (but was too far back after 2 weeks unlike 2012).
Cobo might be the obvious example here, but he had good results in 2007-08 obviously before winning Vuelta in 2011 after which he disappeared. Plus he had motivation/depression issues too IIRC.
Nozal, Santi Perez or Buffalo Gutierrez maybe? Best GT result 25th for the latter (a stage win at Vuelta and 6th at Dauphine 2004 - Phonak had 3 in top 6 - only notable results really). Although these guys immediately disappeared or got caught afterwards.

 

[topcat]

A value of 0 was recorded on the Richter scale of cycling today.
Extreme values of over 9, although rare, have been known to occur.
M = log₁₀(I/I₀)

 

[Tim Cahill]

Noise seems to have veered away from 'imminent positive' towards 'team has been putting out damaging rumours about a rival'.

 

[del1962]

Forget the Zakarin award, who would be up for the JTL award

 

[veganrob]

There needs to be a Pappy Award.