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Team Ineos (Formerly the Sky thread)

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Not equivalent to that. but this is a weak field in an unusual year. And GC riders rarely make their move before the final climb anyway.
But anytime Cancellara, Van Aert, Kwaitkowski etc starts dropping GC riders the Clinic shouts 'Doping, how is this possible?' If you can't understand how something has happened you have to consider that the fault may be with you understanding.
So, no example then.
 
A domestique like Dennis or Wout 'should' be able to ride a slightly higher level for a shorter period of time than the leader, by the very fact they A) have to be on the front facing the wind in early parts of the race, while their leader saved energy and B) their finish line is long before their leaders so the comparative efforts are not overlayed but offset i nthe race. Dennis isn't as good as Kuss or Wout and the level at Giro is far from Tour de France, by the fact nobody of recent GT winning ability is in the race anyway.
 
yeah, there were only 2 riders with Dennis at the top, 3 riders within 1 minute, 5 within 2 minutes, 6 within 3, 7th after Dennis was at 3 and 3 quarter minutes behind.

I mean sure, Stelvio is a brutal climb, but this was something else entirely

Edit: may have missed Novak, but that doesn't change anything
Novak is also a bit of an elephant in the room for me on the mountain stages, the guy has suddenly become a great climbing domestique. Today his pace dropped Nibali, who tried to stay with him and Bilbao for a bit after they caught them.
 
That's because long range efforts like this are incredibly rare. The parcours doesn't often present the opportunity. But I can point to plenty of examples of the Clinic crying doper when a TTer drops better GC riders.
Please, do give me a 15km comparable example then. Hell, even a 10km one. Remember the conditions:
  • similar grade
  • drops everyone but his team leader and one (I'll even give you two) adversary
  • first time that rider pulled something like this
  • it's not known as a world class climber
  • a world class time trialist

You can point about those examples, sure, but not with me and you keep on pushing that idea when I did nothing like that. Sounds to me like a dodge, but please prove me wrong.
 
Please, do give me a 15km comparable example then. Hell, even a 10km one. Remember the conditions:
  • similar grade
  • drops everyone but his team leader and one (I'll even give you two) adversary
  • first time that rider pulled something like this
  • it's not known as a world class climber
  • a world class time trialist
You can point about those examples, sure, but not with me and you keep on pushing that idea when I did nothing like that. Sounds to me like a dodge, but please prove me wrong.


Can you give me any example of any domestique doing a 10km turn on the front dropping people.?No. Because the opportunity doesn't present itself. GC riders without two or three domestiques with 5km to go is rare enough. Having them down to their last one with 50km to go is almost unheard of.


But fans of climbing records will be glad to know that TGH and Hindley equalled the previous record for Torri di Fraele today, with Bilbao going just over a minute faster
 
Can you give me any example of any domestique doing a 10km turn on the front dropping people.?No. Because the opportunity doesn't present itself. GC riders without two or three domestiques with 5km to go is rare enough. Having them down to their last one with 50km to go is almost unheard of.
So, again, nothing comes to mind and yet you're insinuating people are freaking out about something that, by your own admission, never happens. Alright, fair enough.
 
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So, again, nothing comes to mind and yet you're insinuating people are freaking out about something that, by your own admission, never happens. Alright, fair enough.


No, I said whenever a TT rider drives on the front and drops GC riders the Clinic shouts 'doper, how is this possible'. Examples include Van Aert at the Tour, Castroviejo pre Tour. Kwiatkowski is Tours gone by. We can go all the way back to Cancellara at CSC. The Clinic fails to understand that those riders don't care when they finish the stage. Their finish line is some kilometres before.

However, if you want examples of Rohan Dennis putting out 5.7w/kg for an hour (according to estimates), I would point to you his entire career.
 
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OK, so a rider who's always been considered one of the most insane talents of his generation, two Ineos riders (which really does the opposite of helping your point, might as well point out Ritchie Porte at Ax 3 Domaines 2013), and if Fabian Cancellara dropped everyone on the Stelvio all the way to taking the summit KOM, I think I would have started a riot.
 
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A domestique like Dennis or Wout 'should' be able to ride a slightly higher level for a shorter period of time than the leader, by the very fact they A) have to be on the front facing the wind in early parts of the race, while their leader saved energy and B) their finish line is long before their leaders so the comparative efforts are not overlayed but offset i nthe race. Dennis isn't as good as Kuss or Wout and the level at Giro is far from Tour de France, by the fact nobody of recent GT winning ability is in the race anyway.

Van Aert wasn't even close to what Dennis did today. He was there with 15 guy left at best. And being compared to Van Aert isn't a cleanzzz thing in the first place

Kuss is about as pure a climber as can be and that's all he's good for.
 
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Van Aert wasn't even close to what Dennis did today. He was there with 15 guy left at best. And being compared to Van Aert isn't a cleanzzz thing in the first place

Kuss is about as pure a climber as can be and that's all he's good for.
Van Aert was there with 7-8 riders or so at Glieres. And he had much less climbing pedigree than Dennis. And it was a ridiculous performance as well.
Kwiatkowski, Van Aert, Castroviejo and Cancellara never had a performance like this where they dropped everyone bar 2 on such a hard climb and do 5.6 W/Kg or so for 70+ mins.
 
No, I said whenever a TT rider drives on the front and drops GC riders the Clinic shouts 'doper, how is this possible'. Examples include Van Aert at the Tour, Castroviejo pre Tour. Kwiatkowski is Tours gone by. We can go all the way back to Cancellara at CSC. The Clinic fails to understand that those riders don't care when they finish the stage. Their finish line is some kilometres before.

However, if you want examples of Rohan Dennis putting out 5.7w/kg for an hour (according to estimates), I would point to you his entire career.
Now, now... lying is not nice. What you said was:
"Dennis rides stages like this all the time. It's more like an 800m champion pacemaking at world record pace for 1000m in a 1500m"
"How many times do people have to get shocked by a top level Time Triallist doing a big one-off domestique performance in the mountains before you realise it's quite usual"

So, it wasn't just about the Clinic freakin' out. It was about being usual. Actually, quoting you, "quite usual". Yet, you've produced zero examples and keep dodging.

On to your last sentence and this,

Why don't time trials count? He can obviously put out big watts for long periods Does power transform into a different entity at altitude?

I suppose you are confused by lead out men in sprints too aren't you. How can they go faster than the sprinters from 700-300m?

I see now why you keep implying we're easily baffled by the sport. We mustn't be talking about the same sport at all... I'm talking road cycling, what about you?
 
Now, now... lying is not nice. What you said was:
"Dennis rides stages like this all the time. It's more like an 800m champion pacemaking at world record pace for 1000m in a 1500m"
"How many times do people have to get shocked by a top level Time Triallist doing a big one-off domestique performance in the mountains before you realise it's quite usual"

So, it wasn't just about the Clinic freakin' out. It was about being usual. Actually, quoting you, "quite usual". Yet, you've produced zero examples and keep dodging.

I said TT riders doing big performances in the mountains. It usually happens on the final climb like Van Aert at the Tour and many before him.

Power is power. If someone who has plenty of it and no concern about his finishing time they are going cause those that do a lot of problems.
 
Not really a shock that Dennis can do that. He's a great time trialist and doesn't weight like 80kg+ or something, plus he has a history of being a good, solid climber with results to back it up.

If he kept going up Torri di Fraele and they dropped Hindley instead of turning it off and finishing 8 minutes down then we can say something
 

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