Re:
Mayomaniac said:
Why are Bora sending Konrad to the TdS after riding the Giro once again?
The guy already has 47 race days and just finished a really hard Giro, give him a break, you already tried the same thing last year, he faded and was pretty bad durning the 2nd half of the season.
I get that the route should suit him, I just think that it's a bit much. Maybe he won't ride the Vuelta, maybe it will just be Formolo and Buchmann (his big goal, wants to fight for top 5 on the gc), but Konrad will probably want to ride the Vuelta to prepare for the WC.
Speaking of Bora messing up, Formolo recently said in an interview that the team choose the wrong gearing for the Zoncolan, he and Konrad had to climb with 36x30 as their smallest gear and couldn't get their cadence up to 75 rpm or higher, according to him 34x32 would have been much better.
The thing is Bora is racing on three different fronts at the same time (Dauphiné, Suisse, Slovénie). Knowing that König and Schwarzmann are currently out and Baska probably not completely fit after his fall during its training, Bora has only 24 riders that can race. 3x7 = 21. So, there aren't really a lot of options left.
Konrad racing in Switzerland makes anyway kind of sense in the situation since he's a very reliable rider, his profil is perfect to assist Sagan and also to ride for its own for the GC, and last but not the least, it's also useful to compare his development compared to last year. Konrad for his first time ever raced two GTs last year. It can be expected he's now stronger than ever and he won't fade for the rest of the season. Honestly, he's so regular I'm not worried for him at all. He has developped in such a very strong rider there is not much to be afraid in him participating to the TDS.
And yes, he (very problably) won't ride the Vuelta. The leadership has to be shared fairly. And Konrad has got his fair share (leader in Algarve, in Paris-Nice, in the Flèche Wallonne, co-leader for Liège, co-leader for the Giro, wouldn't be surprised if Bora favours him for the Austrian NC too since the profil should be good to him and he's kinda racing at home). Others also deserve their fair share. And I think Bora is pretty good at giving opportunities to everyone! With only 8 riders for the Vuelta, you can't put in everyone that would have liked to racen it.
Buchmann will be the leader (completely normal since the three other GC contenders all got the leadership on a GT). Formolo will also race. Probably Majka too. Ackermann fully deserves a spot and it would be a real shame not to see him on the Vuelta. I guess Schwarzmann will race too since he couldn't race the Giro because of his hard crash. The non-selected for the Tour (expectingly Pöstlberger and Kennaugh) are also likely to race the Vuelta.
In my eyes, only one spot is still in debate. And I don't think Konrad is the most convenient for this spot at all.
(different options are preferable: 1) König (but I don't believe he'll ever be back
) 2) Kolar (not a big fan of him but he deserves to race a GT at some point) 3) Grossschartner (it would make sense he tries to race two GTs in a season. It's a necessary step in a development of a rider like him))
In my eyes, Konrad has plenty of other races to race (Deutschland Tour where I see him as the leader of the team, the Italian races and especially Il Lombardia, the Canadian races in support of Sagan....). He has a lot of nice races ahead of him. And hopefully for him, he'll eventually get a win