Chicken himself didn't keep the wheel of Contador like Concentration Camp Chicken keeps the wheel of Pogacar...absolute nonsense. We're back to the Sky/Froome dark days for the foreseeable
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Imagine what Van Aert would be like if he hadn't had that knee injury prior to the tour. Day after day after day he is riding at the front, he is like the duracell bunny.
I think only insiders know. We can only speculate.
You got lucky. Nobody expected that.
Today Pogi/Vingo/Thomas were faster on the Alpe than on any time during those “dark” years. Thomas did a faster ascent today then when he won on the Alpe in 2018.
Ironic that a Pantani fan calls this the dark ages. Your guy would have taken two and a half minutes on the other favorites today.
Van Hoydonck, guys. Van Hoydonck dropping damn good climbers. Van Aert MONSTROUS day in, day out. Vingegaard better than Alien Pogacar. And we know Kuss and Kruijswijk are good climbers, but my, that team does not hold back one single bit.
I notice a difference in how my Eurosport commentators tackle the theme of doping now. From 2020 saying the sport now is clean they have started saying they hope it's clean. Such small nuances. But yeah.
It foreshadowed in Paris Nice and the Dauphine. And now it's the Grand finale
Eh? Pantani years were the best years of cycling ever. And who could ever doubt his natural talent? NvH get in the bin. Laporte get in the sea. Jonas, get in the fish factory. Even the ski jumper for all his redeeming qualities can do one too with his sudden rise years ago.
Pantani rode mano a mano, some days he had it, some days he didn't. We may never see Jonas on a bad day just like Froome because their team is cancerous to every other competitor trying to attack.
I really struggle to see how anyone can enjoy Jonas and Jumbo beating Pogacar. One is a throwback to the GOATS of our sport, the other is what killed the sport as a contest in the 00s and and the 10s.
I agree. Except for the ski jumper part. He didn't rise suddenly, he went through all the stage hunting - winning smaller races - winning bigger races - winning GT's - losing GT's phases since 2016 over several years. Was there pharmaceuticals involved? lol, this is pro cycling. But one things is for sure, Jumbo had no clue how to win anything before Roglic smashed down a few glass ceilings for them. But the sheer cynicism of Jumbo creating a new lab monster to take down Pogacar is unbelievable (literally unbelievable).
What were the odds in September 2020 Jumbo Visma would suddenly find a new better rider who would become a generational talent overnight & win the TdF less than 2 years later? It's crazy & people are crazy for believing this story. Vingegaard was a bottle carrier in the October 2020 Vuelta. Today? Best climber in the world doing 39 minutes on Alpe D'Huez without even trying & with one finger in his nose.
As I said, this is far too cynical for me, i.e. even as someone who was raised watching doped champions. This is just too much.
Can you please link the 2020 documentary that you keep talking about?
Edit: is it code yellow? I've just found it and watch it later
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I agree with you to a certain extent, but Jumbo are just following the strategy perfected by Sky with Wiggins, Froome and Thomas.
This is just what cycling has become. I don't know where things went wrong, but the lack of positive doping tests certainly does not mean that cycling is suddenly cleaner, just that the riders are using something undetectable.
I was aggitated at first, but has come to accept it now, just cheering for my favorite riders, knowing all too well, that they are probably doping.
I know this is wildly hypocritical of me, since I have always disliked Sky and Froome for this and their total domination, but now enjoy Jumbo, Roglic, Pogacar and Vingegaard doing exactly the same (no proofs of course).
That being said, I would like some more positive doping tests, as this would mean, that something was being done about the doping problems, as I do feel, that the average rider is being cheated big time by teams with money and structure.
Edit: There is of course also the health concern of the riders (Colbrelli is a good example)
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Give it one more year and we'll see NvH carrying Roglic or Vingo up the Stelvio or Ventoux.
The hypocrisy in this post is unreal.
Pantani literally reached the highest climbing level we've ever seen, and even finished 3rd in a TdF time trial. He was not inconsistent in the years leading up to his failed hematocrit test.
You are glorifying one doper and cursing another. Only difference is you like one rider, and hate the other.
I get your post. But really Pantani was impossible to dislike regardless of the doping. I remember remarking to my training mates at that time that “they are all on it”. Nobody cared. That’s just how it was except then is when we read about cyclists dying in the night from thickened blood. But despite that for me Pantani is still the greatest climber in history. The David who beat the Goliath of Ullrich. And I will always remember the 1998 TdF for Marco, not the Festina scandals.
Personality and image are merely the same thing as long as we watch people through the TV though. It's more or less about whether we like a persona or not, at least when they're been in the game for some time. Roglic has a really fun persona
I agree Pantani was an exciting rider. Wednesdays stage was also one of the most exciting in years, but that's besides the point.
Being vehemently against some riders doping, but tolerating, or even glorifying, other riders who do the same, is hypocritical.
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Vingegaard's climbing had less of an improvement from the 2020 Vuelta to the 2022 Tour than Rogla's did from the 2016 Giro (how much of a help was he to Kruijswijk in pink?) to the 2018 Tour.
Just watched that Code Yellow documentary. The most interesting thing from that documentary was Roglic about Pogacar 1:20 minutes in the ITT:
"It's another world of cycling, eh?"
But Jonas and Roglic came to Jumbo the same year. He was always going to lead after Roglic. They just didn't expect him to be this good. And we still don't even know if Roglic is as good as he is. Because of a haybale.
"It's another world of cycling, eh?"
But Jonas and Roglic came to Jumbo the same year. He was always going to lead after Roglic. They just didn't expect him to be this good. And we still don't even know if Roglic is as good as he is. Because of a haybale.
Not hypocritical because they were different eras. We are talking about unfair advantages. In the 90s virtually every professional took EPO.
Pantani didn’t transform overnight like Vingegaard. Check his record it is blindingly obvious. I tend to agree with the theory that after the humiliation of the 2020 TdF Jumbo needed a top responding lab creation to correct the injustice. Viola!
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Fun documentary, eh? Best parts were also those moments when Grischa Niermann was screaming abuse at Pogacar in the car. I mean just relax... it's only cycling!
As for Vingegaard, I think a rider who finishes 105th in a 33km on November 3rd 2020 in the Vuelta over 6 minutes down on the stage winner (Roglic) shouldn't be viewed as a rider who was "always going to lead after Roglic". There was absolutely nothing in his career at that point which was vastly more promising than other riders, even in his own team. I watched his transformation from bottle carrier to GT contender in the space of 7 months. Pas normal & demoralizing from a cycling romanticist point of view. There's no story there, just watts produced in a lab as fast as possible.
Why not Sam Oomen? Lennard Hofstede? Koen Bouwman? The answer is likely the same as always, i.e. Vinge is a super responder with doctors who saw more potential in him than the others based on the science they employ in that team. Science produces miracles, not random riders plucked out of fish factories & sent up a hill on a bike. What makes Roglic better? Lotto Jumbo were a useless team before he arrived & they built something together. He was a trailblazer for them. Vingegaard? He landed in someone else's laboratory & did whatever they told him to do, with nothing based on his own merit or hard work.
Same way Floyd Landis is a completely useless story without redeeming qualities, i.e. he took the science they'd perfected at Postal (thanks to Michele Ferrari) & used that for his own gain. It's lazy & greedy. Someone like Pantani meanwhile was a maverick, i.e. a freak natural talent who pushed his own limits & used PED's to become a sort of climbing superman we've never ever seen before (& haven't seen since). He was a flawed genius (& yes, there's some of that in Roglic as well, considering his background & crazy idea of becoming a pro cyclist). Landis, Armstrong, Vingegaard, Froome etc. by comparison are all just cynical cash grabs by teams who already have access to the best science in their eras.
That's the way I see it. And that's why certain dopers (Pantani, Virenque & even Ullrich) are viewed by cycling enthusiasts as redeemable whereas others aren't, i.e. due to the cynicism involved with teams on a massive budget producing robots based on existing science. This contrasts massively with others who were natural talents pioneering their own careers with determination, flair & let's face, a cr*p load of PED's. But at least they had panache.
And if we're talking natural talent & results at a youth level, Pogacar > Vingegaard, without doubt in my mind. One is a freak talent on a program, the other is a lab creation in a team copying Sky & Froome.
Kruijswijk finished 124th in stage 1 of this year's Tour. Doesn't say anything, it's just a dom taking it easy. Tony Martin finished 81st in the first ITT in last year's Tour.
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