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The Eternal Second

Nov 17, 2009
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oldcrank said:
Is this Farrar's lot in his cycling life?

Well, he's got 5 wins this year.

He's not as good as Cav and he's just on par with the next level of guys, not ahead of them. He's beaten Greipel about as often as he's lost to him head to head over the last few years.
 
Oct 29, 2009
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He is a damn good sprinter, but he has proven he can't win consistently without a leadout. That's all he needs. Garmin needs to assert themselves and really push the pace. This will also help him with positioning which isnt all that impressive, but I suspect he is a bit hesitant after his dad was involved in a horrible accident and his best friend was recently killed. A lot of sprinters throw caution to the wind, Tyler seems a little more reluctant.
 
Jul 2, 2009
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He's won stages in all three Grand Tours, Vattenfall twice and Scheldeprijs, so he's doing pretty well for himself.
 
Mambo95 said:
He's won stages in all three Grand Tours, Vattenfall twice and Scheldeprijs, so he's doing pretty well for himself.

I was just about to post sort of the same thing. He seems to be able to win in the races that really matter and the races where he tops out at 2nd to 5th is more during intermediate races in between the bigger goals. It might be that he gets that extra little spark needed to win when the stakes get really high.
 
Nielsa said:
He's got a lot of physical talent, I just think he needs to get better with his tactics.

Agree on the tactics. He showed in the Tour he could match Cav's speed sometimes and nearly close him down. But in one stage he started 2 bike lengths behind Cav because his leadout man was on Cav's wheel. In that situation, his leadout even needed better tactics by pulling Ty alongside Cav so Cav and Ty could have started at the same position. Easier said than done tho.
 
Jul 29, 2009
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The Hitch said:

Aaaarrrrggghhhhh


Mods please ban that man for making me watch that advert again.

I can't believe there was no warning or anything.

I didn't even have the sound on but I now how the commentary spooling through my brain on and endless loop. It took months of expensive therapy and hypnosis to make me forget the first time, what chance do I have now.
 
hrotha said:
This is the first time I watch this ad, so naturally I can't see anything bad about it. How many times do I need to watch it to get the full Transitions experience?

About 1000.


Isn't the eternal second going to be Schleck now? I was afraid Evans was gonna be an eternal 2nd in GTs, but thankfully he got a win.

Schleck is probably going to win his fair share of GTs at some point though, but he's been 2nd 4/5 times he's finished a GT and it seems like there could be a few more of those if Contador stays around.
 
Jul 26, 2011
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King Of The Wolds said:
If Mark Cavendish hadn't taken up cycling, Tyler Farrar would be well on his way to being considered a legend of the sport.

Nah, field has been fairly even behind Cav, remember Petacchi won two stages last year. And Greipel would have been HTC's main sprinter anyway.

P.S. How many monuments would J-Rodriguez have if not for Gilbert :D
 
Jan 27, 2011
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The eternal second is either Poulidor or Zoetemelk, even though Joop won the the Tour once.
 
Jul 2, 2009
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Nielsa said:
P.S. How many monuments would J-Rodriguez have if not for Gilbert :D

None. Gilbert's never stood between him and a monument. Andy Schleck has, but not Gilbert.
 
hrotha said:
This is the first time I watch this ad, so naturally I can't see anything bad about it. How many times do I need to watch it to get the full Transitions experience?

Say Eurosport show it every ad break and they have an average of 6 ad breaks a stage.

And say you watch about 150 days of cycling a year.

Now consider that the ad also appears on other eurosport programming and has even appeared on occasion on non eurosport programmes.

Every moment of this advert is therefore as familiar to me as the experience of sticking food into my mouth.

I dont think its annoying or anything though, just making the point that even if Tyler somehow managed to win the Worlds, MSR and even the Tour for arguments sake, to thousands of cycling fans out there he will always simply be remembered as Transitions Tyler.
 
Jul 16, 2010
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Andy Schleck is the eternal second, there are not many people with 4 second places in GTs and 0 wins. Zoetemelk at least won the Tour once and became WC.
 
search said:
but they don't show it anymore, or do they in the UK? I have not seen it for quite a while now

they even synchronized it for german televesion... "Ich bin Tyler Farrar..."

Yeah they dont show it on Eurosport anymore, i figure because its Garmin Cervello rather than Transitions now, but i think ive seen it on sky news once or twice. (not that i would watch sky news, i mean at the airport of course)
 
The perception of a successful sprinter has been skewed by Cavendish. Garmin certainly could do better with a more prolific lead out, but again the standard is set by HTC; Thor was excellent this year and we all know it.

The answer to your question 10 years from now will probably be a yes, though, just because of this guy named Mark