Tadej Pogacar and Mauro Giannetti

[Salvarani]

You are mixing up different questions. We were discussing if talent can be judged on junior results, not if Pogacar is clean. The question so is rather not that if he is clean (I don't know who's posted in the thread recently does so except for one or two), but if he is a generational talent, clean or not. The argument that he isn't based on Junior results doesn't work, as has been laid out.

Exactly, bingo.

 

[Saint Unix]

People misunderstand talent, especially in a sport like cycling. Unfortunately it is widespread.

Some people develop really quickly. However, it does not mean their plateau is the highest. Others develop more slowly but consistently over the years and can reach a higher plateau. Who is the most talented? Most people say number one, I'd argue it's number two. Here implicitly number two is called a Doper, just because earlier he/she was at a lower level. Which is ridiculous and completely misunderstands development and talent.

Not withstanding, I can't really be interested in cycling anymore since they are hitting 7wk/g for 40 minutes which is deemed beyond impossible. Unless someone can convince me it is possible I'll be on sidelines.

I can't think of anyone in the top two tiers of all-time cycling greats (two since Merckx stands alone on the top tier) that didn't crush the field from the moment they started racing competitively, at least before oxygen vector doping muddled the waters between being a talented cyclist and a talented responder. Merckx, Hinault, LeMond, Coppi, Anquetil, Moser, De Vlaeminck, Kelly, Gimondi, Saronni, you name it, their results were simply outstanding as soon as they started entering races. Pogacar's level as a pro so far means can only be compared to that level of rider. So far his results as a young teenager don't match up to any of them, even if they are still very, very good.

I will say, as a counter-argument, that these historically great riders came up at a time when cycling was far more primitive as a whole. Due to little to no scientific testing to determine a rider's physiological potential results were the easy and obvious qualifier as to who had talent, so it's possible we only have prodigies in the top tier of that era because most of, if not all, the late developers gave up the sport early because their results were too poor as youngsters to make cycling a smart financial career choice and no one was able to spot or unlock their innate ability before they pursued other options.

 

[Saint Unix]

Funny how the dude lists all the random results except the most prestigious u23 race



Hirschie was riding in the development team of one of the top WT teams at that time. A team that transformed a member of Kittel's sprint train into a Giro winner and Tour contender. While Pog was in a poor Slovenian conti team on weird Taiwanese bikes

From my post: "Pogacar was admittedly far better in stage races, including l'Avenir which he won."

https://www.readingrockets.org/reading-101/reading-and-writing-basics/reading-comprehension

 

[Peyroteo94]

Only if you look at what he did after Gianetti took him under his wing. I'm looking at the mulitple years of racing he did before that.

Let's do a little head-to-head comparison:
2015: Hirschi beat Pogacar in 13 out of 16 races they raced together. In those races
- Hirschi won one race (GP General Patton). He also finished top 10 in both the Euro and World junior road races and the Euro junior TT
- Pogacar failed to podium and had one top 10 on a stage in a race he finished 74th overall

2016: Hirschi beat Pogacar in 14 out of 16 races they raced together. In those races
- Hirchi had two wins (Tour du Pays de Vaud and Trofeo Emilio Paganessi) and five additional podiums
- Pogacar had one podium, a 3rd place in the European Champs junior road race

2017: Hirchi beat Pogacar in 8 out of 9 races they raced together. In those races
- Hirschi had one podium, a 3rd in the European Champs U23 road race
- Pogacar failed to podium

So that's three full years of racing, and out of the 36 times they've been at the starting line together, Hirschi has placed higher 30 times, or a cool 83.3% if you prefer percentages. In addition, Hirschi is 5 for 5 in stage race GCs. Then comes 2018 where Hirschi placed higher in literally every one day race they raced - the U23 Euro Championship road race (which Hirschi won) and time trial, the U23 world championships (which Hirschi also won, while Pogacar's 7th was his best result in a one day race against Hirschi for the year) and the youngster editions of both Ronde van Vlaanderen and Gent-Wevelgem. Pogacar was admittedly far better in stage races, including l'Avenir which he won.

After 2018, of course, Pogacar joins UAE and starts pounding World Tour opposition in his first year, but if you looked at that head-to-head without knowing their names and were told that, before they turned 26, one of those riders would go on to win Liege-Bastogne-Liege, Ronde van Vlaanderen, Il Lombardia three times and Strade Bianche twice and one of those riders would win three Tours de France and one Giro d'Italia, what are the odds you'd say Pogacar is both of them?


Again, we're looking at what he was doing before he was even contracted to a pro team. I might be naïve, but I find it unlikely that a junior rider is able to find the golden formula of insane performance boosts that go undetected in testing without the backing of a professional programme, which is why I find pre-pro contract result so much more interesting when judging talent. No doubt Lefevere have been doping his guys for decades at this point, but Evenepoel's results were consistently dominant long before he'd decided to even sign for them, let alone get the benefits of any sort of doping programme, and remained equally dominant for the remainder of the year after the signing was announced in July 2018.

Maybe my brain is failing but isn't Hirschi under Gianetti too?

 

[Peyroteo94]

People claiming Hirschi was better than Pogacar in his youth and what? Nole was way worse than Nadal and he is now the GOAT, beating consistently Nadal over the years. Of course no one would have thought Pogacar would be so good but claiming he didn't show anything is in youth is just trolling. He improved a lot under Gianetti's wings but Hirschi is in UAE too! Why he didn't develop like Pogacar? Maybe he is an early boomer. Of course they are all doping, that's not the point but Tadej was always a promising talent. How can Tadej being this good? I really don't know but his genetics are off the charts or he is the only one racing an e-bike.

 

[Stablo]

Maybe my brain is failing but isn't Hirschi under Gianetti too?

Missed couple of crucial seasons in second grade doping schemes 😉
Or maybe for him:

The drugs dont work

😅

 

[Stablo]

People claiming Hirschi was better than Pogacar in his youth and what? Nole was way worse than Nadal and he is now the GOAT, beating consistently Nadal over the years. Of course no one would have thought Pogacar would be so good but claiming he didn't show anything is in youth is just trolling. He improved a lot under Gianetti's wings but Hirschi is in UAE too! Why he didn't develop like Pogacar? Maybe he is an early boomer. Of course they are all doping, that's not the point but Tadej was always a promising talent. How can Tadej being this good? I really don't know but his genetics are off the charts or he is the only one racing an e-bike.

I still havent seen anybody claiming Poggie was a nobody and didnt show anything as a junior. Yet his development and this season especially is highly suspicious and unnatural. In fact it would be to anyone regardless talent, supertalent or generational talent. It's something we have never seen in modern procycling and the ones that are even remotively close are all known heavy dopers.

 

[Peyroteo94]

I still havent seen anybody claiming Poggie was a nobody and didnt show anything as a junior. Yet his development and this season especially is highly suspicious and unnatural. In fact it would be to anyone regardless talent, supertalent or generational talent. It's something we have never seen in modern procycling and the ones that are even remotively close are all known heavy dopers.

All legends have a highly suspicious development because we can't really acknowledge their ceilling when they are 16-19 years old. What is the point of this conversation? Is he doping? Of course he is, just like everybody. The only question should be, is he using motor doping (and others don't)? This is the only reason I can find to this discrepancy of level. I don't think he uses so my only explanation is his genetics are way better than everybody else.

 

[Stablo]

All legends have a highly suspicious development because we can't really acknowledge their ceilling when they are 16-19 years old. What is the point of this conversation? Is he doping? Of course he is, just like everybody. The only question should be, is he using motor doping (and others don't)? This is the only reason I can find to this discrepancy of level. I don't think he uses so my only explanation is his genetics are way better than everybody else.

In many other sports you know the generational talents even before the age of 16-19 and the ceilings/greatness theyre likely going to achieve. Given many examples before here and they are currently dominating or were dominating their sport at their time. Of course not all of the generational talents make it big in the pro sports(many things can happen), but the ones that do make it, have been usually known from quite a young age. And even still they usually dont dominate in the style Poggie has done this season, which in away makes monsters performances even more absurd.

And im not in anyway saying that Poggie didn't have room for development and improvement. But imho this current level is absurd, not normal and unnatural kind of development.

 

[ppanther92]

...

One day stage races in Junior ranks are a whole different animal though. 2018: LBL is 173km, RvV is 165km. In LBL, Pogacar didn't start (team was not invited), in RvV it was a mass sprint (and Hirschi apparently the better sprinter back then).

Pogacar was still on a local team, Hirschi was on Sunweb.

Pogacar won the races that mattered for him as a GC rider back then: Avenir but also Grand Prix Priessnitz (so 2 out of 2 GCs in his last Junior season). Pogacar won another adult GC in Italy, Hirschi not (not until 2023 actually). Pogacar finished a strong Tour of Slovenia as 4th.

Pogacar scored more points than Hirschi based on Procyclingstats scoring, at age 18, 19, and almost exactly the same at 20 than/as Hirschi (which granted, was a great Junior season for him). (https://www.procyclingstats.com/rider-vs-rider/tadej-pogacar/marc-hirschi)

And most important point - lets not forget Hirschi was thrown out of DSM for a "breach of trust". Whatever this means, he for sure was destined for greater things in 2020 than he actually has shown afterwards. So not sure, his 2018 and 2019 should be considered the clean talent gold standard...

Anyway, if we compare Pogacar with Hirschi and Evenepoel it should already be clear that he was among the greatest talents of the last decade.

 

[ppanther92]

Merckx, Hinault, LeMond, Coppi, Anquetil, Moser, De Vlaeminck, Kelly, Gimondi, Saronni, you name it, their results were simply outstanding as soon as they started entering races. Pogacar's level as a pro so far means can only be compared to that level of rider. So far his results as a young teenager don't match up to any of them, even if they are still very, very good.

Pogacar won the one race that matters for a teenager racing for GCs - Avenir. He tried once, he won once. With 19, against older guys. Mäder was 21 in that edition, Vlasov 22, Almeida and Gall 20. And its simply also a fact that there are a lot more Junior results available nowadays. I can look up for Pogacar that he finished Junior Paris - Roubaix as 30th at 16. But what does it give? Not his focus, nor the age to win something in U21. For old guys it only shows wins or top 3 (more is usually not available for those races).

Other than that, its like if I would say De Vlaeminck is a weird case in the classics. After all he finished only 28th in the Amateurs RvV in 1967 (https://www.procyclingstats.com/race/tour-des-flandres-espoirs/1967/result), or Indurain getting 50th at 21 in the 1985 Tour de l'Avenir (https://www.procyclingstats.com/race/tour-de-l-avenir/1985/gc), or whatever.

 

[ppanther92]

And to quote the 2nd post in his RR thread:

Celebrating his overall win at the Tour de l'Avenir:

Signing for UAE:

It doesn't look like he was an early bloomer in bodily development, tbh. So combining his results, body, and local team - I think his results as Junior were exceptional.

 

[Saint Unix]

To address the Hirschi comparisons...

Some dude was claiming Pogacar was always a Merckx level talent. That's about as bombastic a statement as you can make when it comes to cycling, and it simply doesn't stand up to scrutiny. I chose to compare to Hirschi because
A) He's in the same team
B) They're the same age (born less than a month apart)

A Merckx level talent comes along once or twice a century, yet you don't even have to travel beyond Pogacar's own team to find a rider who consistently and conclusively outperformed Pogacar when they raced each other, for four straight years. I wasn't trying to argue against Pogacar's talent. I was calling out how utterly ridiculous a statement it is to say that Pogacar was anywhere near being such a unique talent before joining UAE.

And Pogacar's pre-UAE years matter. A lot. What did Armstrong show before joining Postal? What did Froome show before joining Sky? What did Vingegaard and Roglic show before Visma? Riders' performance levels exploding after joining shady teams and/or team-wide performances suddenly going through the roof out of nowhere are pretty much the main themes of the last 35 years or so of cycling, and there's one common denominator every time. It's a giveaway when it's some 27 year old potato from the autobus, but it's still suspect as hell when it's some young kid.

I don't doubt for a second that the peloton have learned from the random mid-20s transformations of yore and are actively working to find and sauce up their new super-responder stars as soon as possible these days. If they've been amazing since we started juicing them as teenagers they can't question them, right? Somehow missed the memo on staying below 6W/kg along the way though, or maybe that rule of thumb doesn't apply when you start them young enough that you can say the once-a-century level talent was always there.

Looking at it realistically, the jump required to go from being one of a few standout riders in the U23s and juniors to podiuming a grand tour as a 19-year-old first year pro is completely unheard of. As in, it literally hadn't been done ever in the professional era of the sport until UAE comes along with TWO OF THEM in quick succession in Pogacar and Ayuso. How remarkable! I bet they complete the hat-trick with Del Toro next month because f*** it, why not? Merckx level talents everywhere! All from the same team! Very normal, much cleans.

 

[Peyroteo94]

To address the Hirschi comparisons...

Some dude was claiming Pogacar was always a Merckx level talent. That's about as bombastic a statement as you can make when it comes to cycling, and it simply doesn't stand up to scrutiny. I chose to compare to Hirschi because
A) He's in the same team
B) They're the same age (born less than a month apart)

A Merckx level talent comes along once or twice a century, yet you don't even have to travel beyond Pogacar's own team to find a rider who consistently and conclusively outperformed Pogacar when they raced each other, for four straight years. I wasn't trying to argue against Pogacar's talent. I was calling out how utterly ridiculous a statement it is to say that Pogacar was anywhere near being such a unique talent before joining UAE.

And Pogacar's pre-UAE years matter. A lot. What did Armstrong show before joining Postal? What did Froome show before joining Sky? What did Vingegaard and Roglic show before Visma? Riders' performance levels exploding after joining shady teams and/or team-wide performances suddenly going through the roof out of nowhere are pretty much the main themes of the last 35 years or so of cycling, and there's one common denominator every time. It's a giveaway when it's some 27 year old potato from the autobus, but it's still suspect as hell when it's some young kid.

I don't doubt for a second that the peloton have learned from the random mid-20s transformations of yore and are actively working to find and sauce up their new super-responder stars as soon as possible these days. If they've been amazing since we started juicing them as teenagers they can't question them, right? Somehow missed the memo on staying below 6W/kg along the way though, or maybe that doesn't apply when you start them young enough that you can say the once-a-century level talent was always there.

Looking at it realistically, the jump required to go from being one of a few standout riders in the U23s and juniors to podiuming a grand tour as a 19-year-old first year pro is completely unheard of. As in, it literally hadn't been done ever in the professional era of the sport until UAE comes along with TWO OF THEM in quick succession in Pogacar and Ayuso. How remarkable! I bet they complete the hat-trick with Del Toro next month because f*** it, why not? Merckx level talents everywhere! All from the same team! Very normal, much cleans.

Your post was good until you mentioned Ayuso. Who is Ayuso?? Not even a top10 climber in the world. These hot takes without any logic kill me

 

[E_F_]

Nole was way worse than Nadal and he is now the GOAT, beating consistently Nadal over the years.

Doping is widespread in tennis...

 

[Saint Unix]

Your post was good until you mentioned Ayuso. Who is Ayuso?? Not even a top10 climber in the world. These hot takes without any logic kill me

Right, so let's see if I've got this right then?

Finishing 3rd in the Vuelta in their first year as a pro at 20 years old = Merckx level talent.

Finishing 3rd in the Vuelta in their first year as a pro at 19 years old = Who the **** even IS that guy?

 

[Rechtschreibfehler]

It worked for Froome.

Froome is a totally different case. Pogacar was an exellent Junior. Froome won his first pro race at 26. Pogacar is bound to have 100 wins before he turns 27....

 

[Netserk]

This is a pointless argument. How young do we need to go? The same old posters wearing them self out here but with a blind eye to their hero (never admitted).

Of course he is likely doping, like the others, but when Pog joined UAE he was still growing. At 19 or 20 the line is blurred and not everyone matures athletically at the same age or rate. Many variables at 19 or 20, not just doping.

If it's pointless, then I think that should be pointed out to the one who made the point.

It's a very strong claim to say that one particular rider is the single most talented one of the past 50 years. If there is anyone else who has a stronger claim to that, or if it's too hard to say who is the most talented, then that goes against the claim that Pogi is the most talented rider since Merckx.

 

[Rechtschreibfehler]

In many other sports you know the generational talents even before the age of 16-19 and the ceilings/greatness theyre likely going to achieve. Given many examples before here and they are currently dominating or were dominating their sport at their time. Of course not all of the generational talents make it big in the pro sports(many things can happen), but the ones that do make it, have been usually known from quite a young age. And even still they usually dont dominate in the style Poggie has done this season, which in away makes monsters performances even more absurd.

Two things:
(1) which sports would that be and who are we talking about? LIke knowing their ceilings especially. How would you even do that?
(2) so your assumption seems to be whoever is very very good in an early age should be seen as a generational talent, and some who are generational talents don't make it, while other not so generational talents outperform them later?

And im not in anyway saying that Poggie didn't have room for development and improvement. But imho this current level is absurd, not normal and unnatural kind of development.

No one is arguing it is normal, just as noone would argue Vingegaards comeback or level of performance was normal. Or Derek Gee being better than peak Froome is normal, who's resultwise an all time great GC rider.

 

[Salvarani]

Right, so let's see if I've got this right then?

Finishing 3rd in the Vuelta in their first year as a pro at 20 years old = Merckx level talent.

Finishing 3rd in the Vuelta in their first year as a pro at 19 years old = Who the **** even IS that guy?

In his first year he won Algarve, a pro race, and California before his excellent Vuelta.

What exactly did Merckx do in his first pro years that was so exceptional or fortelling that he would have the career he would have?

Why would Pog have to win every race in his first year to showcase he was that type of talent?

He showed more than enough that he could have potential for greatness and has achieved it, which isnt a given no matter what you have done before or the end of how much more someone can improve. He had showed a great level of potential before going pro, which anyone cant argue with as been pointed out.

And nobody was saying Pog was Merckx-level after 3rd place in the Vuelta... it is something that has come with time as he has hit milestone after milestone.

 

[Slavique Nuke]

From my post: "Pogacar was admittedly far better in stage races, including l'Avenir which he won."

https://www.readingrockets.org/reading-101/reading-and-writing-basics/reading-comprehension

[[deleted untrue accusation and personal attack]] While Pog won the biggest race in that age category which you are trying to sell as a footnote.

The guy is at age 18, just behind WT-level top climbers in a stage like this. No one in the current peloton has performed at this level in the mountains at the age of 18, except Pogacar.[[deleted accusation]]

 

[Peyroteo94]

Right, so let's see if I've got this right then?

Finishing 3rd in the Vuelta in their first year as a pro at 20 years old = Merckx level talent.

Finishing 3rd in the Vuelta in their first year as a pro at 19 years old = Who the **** even IS that guy?

And now where is Ayuso?

 

[Peyroteo94]

In his first year he won Algarve, a pro race, and California before his excellent Vuelta.

What exactly did Merckx do in his first pro years that was so exceptional or fortelling that he would have the career he would have?

Why would Pog have to win every race in his first year to showcase he was that type of talent?

He showed more than enough that he could have potential for greatness and has achieved it, which isnt a given no matter what you have done before or how much more someone can improve.

These folks don't even know (me included) how good was Merckx in his youth but like to say Merckx was an unique talent lol.

 

[E_F_]

Looking at PCS I think it's fair to say that Pogacar didn't stand out at all in a pretty untalented year of juniors. Loads of nobodies have won l'Avenir...

 

[Salvarani]

These folks don't even know (me included) how good was Merckx in his youth but like to say Merckx was an unique talent lol.

It is funny. I am enjoying it.