^ Whoever claims that Indurain could not climb with the best or was not a supreme climber has not watched the races. When you do watch them, it becomes apparent that - even more so in the years 94 and 95 - he was more often the man that was hurting others on the mountains than the being the man that got hurt.
In 94 and 95 he premiered a tactic later used by USP and SKY: destroying the competition on the first mountain top finish. 94 on Hautacam he lead the main group for the uttermost part of the climb, dropping everyone except Luc Leblanc and catching and dropping Pantani, who escaped at the bottom of the climb.
In 95 the same at La Plagne. He put 2:30 on Pantani, 4:00 on Virenque and Rominger, 4:30 on Escartin and 5:30 on Riis. Tonkov, who had excaped with Rominger, but was dropped, could only hold Indurains wheel for 20 seconds. But he had something like the 3rd or 4th fastest time of the ascent.
On the next day, only a supernatural Pantani was faster than Indurain on Alpe D'huez and Indurain lead the group with Zülle and Riis and hurt them a lot. Watch how Riis is suffering and nearly dropping a lot of times.
On the ascent to Mende Zülle attacked, then Pantani. Indurain chased and catched Pantani, with a suffering Riis on his wheel, while dropping Zülle.
Nobody was consistently stronger in the Mountains than Indurain in the Tours he won. Sure, Pantani had some great hunts in 94 and 95, but he lost a lot of time on other summit finishes and he is like the best climber in history until 2024. And in 94 Ugrumov had some absolutely magical juice on the last 3 mountain stages, but he was so far back, that Indurain did not need to hunt his long-range escapes down. On stage 18, he drilled the last climb to reduce the gap and dropped everyone bar Virenque. Pantani lost a minute.
In 93 Rominger could not escape the shadow of Indurain and in 92 after his legendary ride to Sestriere, Chiappucci was unable to drop Indurain in the remaining stages.
The reasons Indurain never won a non-ITT stage 1991-1995 are:
- when he went as hard as he could, he was trying to reduce the gap to a longe-range attack (e.g. La Plagne 95).
- Oftentimes, there was somebody that could follow him (e.g. Leblanc on Hautacam 94, Bruyneel in 95) and Indurain did not contest the sprint or pulled >90% of the time
- His team was not strong enough to catch all breaks / he did not feel the need to
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