You're right, I'll take some deep breaths. I thought we were talking about WvA though? He has been poor on the climbs. Yates beat froomie by 5+ min, wout about equal to froomie...
In tl;dr
(okay I failed the tl;dr bit)
- Froome's time was like 2 minutes slower than the Giro record
- Going 2 minutes faster than 2011 or 2015 happens on most climbs
- Finestre is a rare climb, so there's no particular reason to believe the current Giro record was particularly fast
- Finestre is a really long climb, which means pacing strategy matters a lot, and it's not like Rujano, who had the current Giro record, was the best climber in the 2011 Giro. If anything Rujano having that Giro record speaks a lot to the importance of pacing, because he attacked early and did a very consistent effort.
- Pablo Torres went like 1 minute slower than today? And while that was a meme length stage and a MTF, I don't think going 1 minute faster on a 1 hour climb than an 18 year old in Tour de l'Avenir is particularly outragous. And with this I would highlight the stage had been very easy before Finestre
- As for Van Aert - there's like 3 things I would point to. The first is that the break was large and the stage as a whole before Finestre was really easy, which helps a lot. Often with riders like that you see they suffer most from repeated climbs rather than one big steady climb
- Kiriyenka basically did the same time as the GC group in 2011, winning from a breakaway on a 240km stage, so it's not exactly unprecedented to lose not that much time to the GC group. In fact, he barely lost time to the GC group that year.
- Van Aert has shown before that on a 60 minute climb he can defend a lead to a GC group from a breakaway. On the Ventoux IIRC he only lost 4 minutes, and this is actually where gradient is not a bad thing because gradient limits drafting in a a larger group behind. Also Ventoux is infamous for headwind on the top 3rd of the climb, and theoretically, as a much heavier rider, the gravel should relatively favor Van Aert over Froome
I don't think for Van Aert today is too different from his previous breakaway escapades in the high mountains, and depending on his exact climbing time, I think he's done considerably crazier ones.
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