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Tadej Pogacar and Mauro Giannetti

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I think it's a bit about context as well. For example, Roglic is an amazing time triallist, in the first two weeks of stage races. Not all that great in the third week.

Dumoulin and Roglic rode the climb slower than Van Aert, Barguil, Landa, Martinez, Mas, Bilbao etc... And barely beat an injured Quintana on the climb. They clearly were quite a long way from their best here.

I think we should try to put Pogacar's ride into some perspective. And shouldn't pretend that he put a minute or two into the best Dumoulin or the best Roglic.
Let's say Dumoulin does a bike switch and does the ITT 30s faster. Then he's still beaten by 50s by a non ITTer who didn't have the legs to attack Roglic 2 and 3 days ago.
 
I'm not really sure what that tells us to be honest. By the way, I'm not really defending Pogacar here, it's an insane, pretty unbelievable performance. But just seeing Porte and Van Aert the other two fastest climbers, does make me wonder if the GC field is a bit weak. Roglic has a history of poor TTs in the last week. And Dumoulin has been below par all race.

I have absolutely no doubts that if Froome was in Pogacar's position at the start of the day. And Roglic put in that TT. Then Froome would have taken yellow by over a minute as well.

Whether or not its a good thing comparing Pogacar with Froome though...

I agree with you. We saw this year many mountain stages with big groups coming together, including with Caruso, Valverde and others subpar performers. The time differences between the cyclists is very low (specially looking to the GC yesterday) comparing to previous years. This all points out to a rather weaker-than-usual field, which can be explained in many ways. WVA, De la Cruz, Cavagna or Porte are also very surprising results.

There is clearly a transition in the peloton, with many sub-23 cyclists riding at an incredible high level. This is very uncommon in cycling and points out to a rather weaker field for those in the late 20's / 30's.

Obviously the huge time difference, UAD / Aderlass brings a shadow to this result, but i would not compare Pogacar to Ricco / Piepoli / Schumacher...
 
That's not actually as bad as I thought it would be. 20 seconds on Porte in 16 minutes. Van Aert in third.

I know it's a cliche; but is this just a really weak field?
No. We are coming off a lockdown. Pogacar and Roglic were free to train for a month while the French, Spaniards, Brits, etc were dealing with trainers. We were always going to have weird results this year.

Yeah Thomas would’ve made it more interesting but this is the new generation rising. Nibali tactically would’ve changed things, but he’s not going to win another TDF. He’s turned into Simoni- he can win the Giro but shows up at the Tour happy with the stage. Froome would’ve finished OTL on stage 2.
 
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When De la Cruz suddenly turned the screws on La Loze out of nowhere and dropped Landa, i thought it odd that an injured rider can suddenly become a good helper. Pogachar perf today is Merckxian which is probably 1 in 5000/10000. He beat the best climbers by a huge margin on the climb and he also beat the best flat/rolling TT on the flatter terrain. His past performance have been good but never this good. Now put Bernal statements about him doing his best numbers also in context. Then on top that he got dropped on La Loze by MAL and Roglic. How do you recover from that to completely obliterating the competition on the flats and the climbs? the team should release the power data and the UCI should check more deeply the entire team.
 
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I agree with you. We saw this year many mountain stages with big groups coming together, including with Caruso, Valverde and others subpar performers. The time differences between the cyclists is very low (specially looking to the GC yesterday) comparing to previous years. This all points out to a rather weaker-than-usual field, which can be explained in many ways. WVA, De la Cruz, Cavagna or Porte are also very surprising results.

There is clearly a transition in the peloton, with many sub-23 cyclists riding at an incredible high level. This is very uncommon in cycling and points out to a rather weaker field for those in the 20's / 30's.

Obviously the huge difference, UAD / Aderlass brings a shadow to this result, but i would not compare Pogacar to Ricco / Piepoli / Schumacher...
Weaker field argument selectively ignores that TP was part of said weaker field and could not do that much damage on MTFs, which is his playground. That is not just 2-3 weeks ago, that is 2 days ago. Then today. Smokes the whole TT, not just a portion of it.

Even with major breakthroughs compared to previous middling TT results, this is nuts
 
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Yeah, this is what surprised me the most as well. Most GC riders were quite a bit below their best; some like Lopez and Valverde absolutely bombed. Pogacar's rode it like it was early on in the Dauphine or something, just looked so much fresher.
TP was somewhat 'same' as everyone up to today. Looked to be a bit of a naturally better climber, but also lost time just a few days back. Much of GT riding is about who's able to manage the decrease in capacities better. So we was not demonstrating a dramatic change in function, and his history in TTs was not great, but with substantial improvement this year. And then today was a massive jump, which combined with everything else, is just chuckle inducing.

But no, I do not think it was a weak field. Some obviously dealt with the lockdown better, but that factored in pretty early.
 
Anyone can say that the field was weak, but 6.9W/kg doesn't lie. That's a monster effort, especially after matching the best TT specialists in the world on the flats for almost 40 minutes beforehand. It doesn't really matter what the other riders did today. Pogacar's ride was suspicious as hell regardless. All you need is a pair of eyes and a stopwatch.
Thanks. This is basically it. Also, one needs some functioning cognition :)
 
Weaker field argument selectively ignores that TP was part of said weaker field and could not do that much damage on MTFs, which is his playground. That is not just 2-3 weeks ago, that is 2 days ago. Then today. Smokes the whole TT, not just a portion of it.

Even with major breakthroughs compared to previous middling TT results, this is nuts

While that is true, it is also true that TP was the 1st of the favourites in all mountains stages except Maribel. Obviously, without a significant difference.
 
Let's say Dumoulin does a bike switch and does the ITT 30s faster. Then he's still beaten by 50s by a non ITTer who didn't have the legs to attack Roglic 2 and 3 days ago.
Calling Pogacar a non ITTer is ridiculous, and the kind of thing that makes the Clinic lose credibility. He's a 21 year old who has never finished outside of the top 20 in any TT's he's ridden since turning pro. And who also beat Roglic the last time he rode against him in a TT.
 
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That was clearly abnormal. There hasn't been this much excitement since the 1999 Tour de France.

There are few performances that you can point with reasonable certainty (>90%) that the rider is clearly heavily doped. Remember those Pantani and Riis performances. Also Lance is in that category. In this Tour something was going on. Maybe the lack of testing helped the riders dramatically. I don't know what else to say.

Pogacar just made his life and the life of his girlfriend miserable. Those vampires, after the way he performed at the Tour, won't stop knocking at his door.

And what's up with that celebration. I didn't see that much excitement in his face after that tremendous victory. His behavior reminds me of the behavior of the friend of OJ Simpson when he heard the final verdict. LOL.
 
That was clearly abnormal. There hasn't been this much excitement since the 1999 Tour de France.

There are few performances that you can point with reasonable certainty (>90%) that the rider is clearly heavily doped. Remember those Pantani and Riis performances. Also Lance is in that category. In this Tour something was going on. Maybe the lack of testing helped the riders dramatically. I don't know what else to say.

Pogacar just made his life and the life of his girlfriend miserable. Those vampires, after the way he performed at the Tour, won't stop knocking at his door.

And what's up with that celebration. I didn't see that much excitement in his face after that tremendous victory. His behavior reminds me of the behavior of the friend of OJ Simpson when he heard the final verdict. LOL.
The craziest thing here is the overall trajectory of Pogacar this Tour. He seemed weaker in the Alps than in the Pyrenees, then cranks out the biggest single outlier of a performance in years.
 
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That's like saying he's clearly cleanz because he's clearly talented and he's clearly talented because he won.
It's not like saying that at all; literally one of the worst analogies I have ever seen.

Someone who can win TTs aged 21 against a decent field is clearly a specialist. If you didn't realize that he was a specialist before today, then you should have been paying more attention tbh, because lots of people pointed it out in the race threads.
 

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