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Teams & Riders The official Egan Bernal is the new Egan Bernal thread

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I think he is going to struggle against both if the race has any TTs though.
That's true, Bernal seems seems to be much less complete than the two and therefore likely not as good of a gc rider in general. But I'd still really like to see how he stacks up against them climbing wise.

Recency bias kills everyone. Immunity to recency bias is Simon Yates greatest super power
Do you mean this in the sense of "Bernal is recently performing well again, so people jump to wrong conclusions about him being as good as Pogacar and Roglic" or in the sense of "people were stupid for stopping to consider him an A-Tier gc contender because of one bad season due to a hurting back". Cause I guess in reality it's a bit of a mix.
Winning one giro stage by dropping Giulio Ciccone doesn't put you in tdf winning hemispheres, but then again we must not forget that he has been in this hemispheres before and one bad season really shouldn't be enough to write one off. I'm curious how he'll do in the future. I still think that the one tdf he has will be the only one he ever gets, but that's more due to how highly I rate his rivals than how low I rate him. It just turns out that pure climbers tend to have a really hard time winning the Tour.
 
The best sterrato part for him to attack is too far from the finish, really... Around 60k away... Unless he gets help from other riders and teams. If a very strong group of some very good riders go there, like Bardet, Formolo, Moscon, Ulissi... he could go with them and hope for the others to never come back again... but I just don't expect this. At Strade this works because it's a one day race. But here, with some mountains on the next day... (It would have been great to have the rest day after this.)
I don't think Cavagna is going to be great help for Evenepoel on the sterrato by the way.
If my assessment of Evenepoel is right and he's extremely good at recovery, you won't get rid of him there for good and the attrition will only help him in comparison in the final. It's probably better to play it safe from Bernal's point of view, even if in general I don't like it and in hindsight you may then say "if only he had..."
Problem is, who apart from those I named, like Bardet and Formolo, would then go wild here? The other ones, like Vlasov, Carthy, Martin, will all wait for their chances in the high mountains.
Don't know about Ciccone.
 
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That's true, Bernal seems seems to be much less complete than the two and therefore likely not as good of a gc rider in general. But I'd still really like to see how he stacks up against them climbing wise.


Do you mean this in the sense of "Bernal is recently performing well again, so people jump to wrong conclusions about him being as good as Pogacar and Roglic" or in the sense of "people were stupid for stopping to consider him an A-Tier gc contender because of one bad season due to a hurting back". Cause I guess in reality it's a bit of a mix.
Winning one giro stage by dropping Giulio Ciccone doesn't put you in tdf winning hemispheres, but then again we must not forget that he has been in this hemispheres before and one bad season really shouldn't be enough to write one off. I'm curious how he'll do in the future. I still think that the one tdf he has will be the only one he ever gets, but that's more due to how highly I rate his rivals than how low I rate him. It just turns out that pure climbers tend to have a really hard time winning the Tour.

In my opinion he was overrated before the 2020 Tour then people wayyy overreacted to that Tour questioning if he could still win and everything. The simplest reason for me was that he was overrated is indeed that not 1 GC rider who's not also a strong ITTer has won the Tour twice IIRC. I've posted before that I think Bernal wasn't the new/better Contador but that he's more like a new Quintana who is slightly more rounded and has had better timing/team. I was also noticing back then that Colombians peak early, and now peaking early seems to becoming a more regular thing.

And unless he just destroys this Giro by 10 minutes, the climbing references aren't really there much either this Giro, so if he wins I'll probably still rate him below Roglic and Pogacar. IIRC he has never beaten Roglic in a stage race and never dropped him either. I still maintain that Roglic was the strongest GT winner in 2019 and if he had shown up equally strong in that Tour he would have won it convincingly
 
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IIRC he has never beaten Roglic in a stage race and never dropped him either.

Lol. I don't want to argue against Roglic being better, maybe he is, maybe he isn't. Roglic is the better time trialer. But how many times have they ever ridden against each other at all? How many times has Roglic dropped Bernal, except for last year?
And just because Bernal is Colombian doesn't mean he'll be over his peak at 25.
And then look at this: https://www.procyclingstats.com/race/tour-de-romandie/2018/stage-3
;):p
 
The best sterrato part for him to attack is too far from the finish, really... Around 60k away... Unless he gets help from other riders and teams. If a very strong group of some very good riders go there, like Bardet, Formolo, Moscon, Ulissi... he could go with them and hope for the others to never come back again... but I just don't expect this. At Strade this works because it's a one day race. But here, with some mountains on the next day... (It would have been great to have the rest day after this.)
I don't think Cavagna is going to be great help for Evenepoel on the sterrato by the way.
If my assessment of Evenepoel is right and he's extremely good at recovery, you won't get rid of him there for good and the attrition will only help him in comparison in the final. It's probably better to play it safe from Bernal's point of view, even if in general I don't like it and in hindsight you may then say "if only he had..."
Problem is, who apart from those I named, like Bardet and Formolo, would then go wild here? The other ones, like Vlasov, Carthy, Martin, will all wait for their chances in the high mountains.
Don't know about Ciccone.
With zoncolan on saturday and then giau, i think bernal don't need to waste energy to make differences on sterrato.
 
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In my opinion he was overrated before the 2020 Tour then people wayyy overreacted to that Tour questioning if he could still win and everything. The simplest reason for me was that he was overrated is indeed that not 1 GC rider who's not also a strong ITTer has won the Tour twice IIRC. I've posted before that I think Bernal wasn't the new/better Contador but that he's more like a new Quintana who is slightly more rounded and has had better timing/team. I was also noticing back then that Colombians peak early, and now peaking early seems to becoming a more regular thing.

And unless he just destroys this Giro by 10 minutes, the climbing references aren't really there much either this Giro, so if he wins I'll probably still rate him below Roglic and Pogacar. IIRC he has never beaten Roglic in a stage race and never dropped him either. I still maintain that Roglic was the strongest GT winner in 2019 and if he had shown up equally strong in that Tour he would have won it convincingly

Yes - 2019 was a very strange season. It certainly feels as though TDF field was weaker than both Giro and maybe even Vuelta - though for the latter I'm not sure. Pogačar makes the field look strong now, but he was not yet at his full capacity in 2019 Vuelta. And Carapaz is still a bit of unknown quantity to me as well... What I'm sure about Roglič is that he progressed quite a lot in terms of his climbing proficiency since then and I also think he lost some of his TT ability. At least in 2020...

But how many times have they ever ridden against each other at all? How many times has Roglic dropped Bernal, except for last year?
Romandie 2018 where Roglič didn't really drop Bernal but he did beat him in GC. But that's a long time ago and both of them progressed significantly since then. Then you have Lombardia 2019, where Bernal beat Roglič - but Roglič was certainly more tired having come from Vuelta and Italian classics not long before that. What we're left with is last year, but again - Bernal looked to be far from his best... So while you can't really say for sure, Roglič has not only better palmares but has in my opinion accumulated more memorable/convincing results (though I'm biased here, of course). After all, yesterday was Bernal's maiden stage win while Roglič and Pogačar have 18 among them.

But I find the following reasoning interesting. Let's imagine there was no Pogačar and Roglič on last year's TDF. Would Bernal still have cracked and would his back issues have worsened to the point they have? He looked quite solid until 13th stage, he was second behind Roglič in GC after all. Ok he didn't attack so much in the end of the stages but that could be down to TJV enforcing their tempo which was to high for anyone to go for it bar Roglič (and as it turned out - Pogačar). So it's possible that he was just pushed a bit too far which made his problems escalate more than they would have otherwise...
 
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Yes - 2019 was a very strange season. It certainly feels as though TDF field was weaker than both Giro and maybe even Vuelta - though for the latter I'm not sure. Pogačar makes the field look strong now, but he was not yet at his full capacity in 2019 Vuelta. And Carapaz is still a bit of unknown quantity to me as well... What I'm sure about Roglič is that he progressed quite a lot in terms of his climbing proficiency since then and I also think he lost some of his TT ability. At least in 2020...


Romandie 2018 where Roglič didn't really drop Bernal but he did beat him in GC. But that's a long time ago and both of them progressed significantly since then. Then you have Lombardia 2019, where Bernal beat Roglič - but Roglič was certainly more tired having come from Vuelta and Italian classics not long before that. What we're left with is last year, but again - Bernal looked to be far from his best... So while you can't really say for sure, Roglič has not only better palmares but has in my opinion accumulated more memorable/convincing results (though I'm biased here, of course). After all, yesterday was Bernal's maiden stage win while Roglič and Pogačar have 18 among them.

But I find the following reasoning interesting. Let's imagine there was no Pogačar and Roglič on last year's TDF. Would Bernal still have cracked and would his back issues have worsened to the point they have? He looked quite solid until 13th stage, he was second behind Roglič in GC after all. Ok he didn't attack so much in the end of the stages but that could be down to TJV enforcing their tempo which was to high for anyone to go for it bar Roglič (and as it turned out - Pogačar). So it's possible that he was just pushed a bit too far which made his problems escalate more than they would have otherwise...

come on man, you know how that race went
 
Yes - 2019 was a very strange season. It certainly feels as though TDF field was weaker than both Giro and maybe even Vuelta - though for the latter I'm not sure. Pogačar makes the field look strong now, but he was not yet at his full capacity in 2019 Vuelta. And Carapaz is still a bit of unknown quantity to me as well... What I'm sure about Roglič is that he progressed quite a lot in terms of his climbing proficiency since then and I also think he lost some of his TT ability. At least in 2020...
Field of 2019 Vuelta was very thin. There were only 5 or 6 real GC guys. I would definitely not say it was stronger than the Tour, but that's just one man's opinion.
 
Field of 2019 Vuelta was very thin. There were only 5 or 6 real GC guys. I would definitely not say it was stronger than the Tour, but that's just one man's opinion.
Top 10 in TDF: Bernal, Thomas, Kruiswijk, Buchmann, Alaphilippe (!!), Landa, Uran, Quintana, Valverde, Barguil
Top 10 in Vuelta: Roglič, Valverde, Pogačar, Quintana, Lopez, Majka, Keldermann, Hagen, Soler, Nieve
Top 10 Giro: Carapaz, Nibali, Roglič, Landa, Mollema, Majka, Lopez, Yates, Sivakov, Zakaring

For me it's very hard to say. I mean from today's perspective and counting in Roglič and Pogačar, it has to be Vuelta. But from Roglič vs Bernal context, we only need to look at the competition and I think it's still Giro > TDF > Veulta - just barely... So Carapaz is better than Bernal and Roglič. And to borrow @Red Rick 's quote: Quod erat demonstrandum :)
 
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With zoncolan on saturday and then giau, i think bernal don't need to waste energy to make differences on sterrato.

I think if an opportunity is there he should take it.

Relying on the big MTFs is risky in its own way when one of your biggest competitors will be quite happy just setting a steady tempo and relying on their TT if needed (even if they can't attack). Could easily be the case that taking 20-30s on 3-4 separate days is not enough. On the flipside there are more aggressive climbers who will think they should attack him specifically right now given the buffer back to them is small so it's easy to see a situation where he has no allies and has to do it all himself (as opposed to later in the race where people will be more prone to riding to preserve immedaite position)

Meanwhile if you force chases and breakdowns on the sterrato this week you are making the others burn energy too (possibly more if they're not good on the terrain) and it's quite possible the time gaps actually end up being bigger if something decisive sticks there than on any summit finish. It also puts a bit more mental strain on others. Bernal is a good bike handler and comfortable across all sorts of terrain but we know there are several guys in the chasing pack who are rather more questionable.

Not saying he should go into the stage with the plan of 'I'm going to attack right here', just that he and the team should be actively looking for moments they could exploit across the day.
 
In my opinion he was overrated before the 2020 Tour then people wayyy overreacted to that Tour questioning if he could still win and everything. The simplest reason for me was that he was overrated is indeed that not 1 GC rider who's not also a strong ITTer has won the Tour twice IIRC. I've posted before that I think Bernal wasn't the new/better Contador but that he's more like a new Quintana who is slightly more rounded and has had better timing/team. I was also noticing back then that Colombians peak early, and now peaking early seems to becoming a more regular thing.

And unless he just destroys this Giro by 10 minutes, the climbing references aren't really there much either this Giro, so if he wins I'll probably still rate him below Roglic and Pogacar. IIRC he has never beaten Roglic in a stage race and never dropped him either. I still maintain that Roglic was the strongest GT winner in 2019 and if he had shown up equally strong in that Tour he would have won it convincingly
I think people did realize that his TdF performance in 2019 wasn't all that great and that he mostly won due to weak competition. But crucially the reason people rated him so highly was because he was 22. Even Quintana hit his peak at 23 so there was reasonable hope that we hadn't seen his final form yet. When he didn't improve last year and it became rather clear that hope will not be fulfilled the opinion of many cycling fans swung in the opposite direction of him being a failure.

Mind you, that mistake is extremely easy to make. Right now everyone and his mother is in on Pogacar being the next big thing, but if the same happens to him that happened to Bernal and he doesn't improve any further after his first Tour win, he isn't gonna win loads of gt's either. I suppose you could argue that Pogacar last year was better than Bernal in 2019 but then we also really didn't forget that he only won the Tour in the first place because of one freak TT that I'm still not sure he'll be able to reproduce in future gt's. For 19 stages it seemed like he was unable to beat Roglic and he might face stronger rivals than that in the future.

I guess the takeaway should be, don't judge youngsters after their first great performance and don't pretend to know how where their trajectory is gonna take them when you really don't.
 
Top 10 in TDF: Bernal, Thomas, Kruiswijk, Buchmann, Alaphilippe (!!), Landa, Uran, Quintana, Valverde, Barguil
Top 10 in Vuelta: Roglič, Valverde, Pogačar, Quintana, Lopez, Majka, Keldermann, Hagen, Soler, Nieve
Top 10 Giro: Carapaz, Nibali, Roglič, Landa, Mollema, Majka, Lopez, Yates, Sivakov, Zakaring

For me it's very hard to say. I mean from today's perspective and counting in Roglič and Pogačar, it has to be Vuelta. But from Roglič vs Bernal context, we only need to look at the competition and I think it's still Giro > Vuelta > TDF - just barely... So Carapaz is better than Bernal and Roglič. And to borrow @Red Rick 's quote: Quod erat demonstrandum :)
Still unsure what exactly to think of the Vuelta field that year though. We now read the name Pogacar, think of last years Tour and conclude that the 2019 Vuelta field must have been insanely good. But Pogacar clearly hadn't peaked in 2019 so I think we should rather rate how good Pogacar was in 2019 by comparing him to the rest of the Vuelta contenders than rating how good the Vuelta field was by comparing it with Pogacar.
 
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In my opinion he was overrated before the 2020 Tour then people wayyy overreacted to that Tour questioning if he could still win and everything. The simplest reason for me was that he was overrated is indeed that not 1 GC rider who's not also a strong ITTer has won the Tour twice IIRC. I've posted before that I think Bernal wasn't the new/better Contador but that he's more like a new Quintana who is slightly more rounded and has had better timing/team. I was also noticing back then that Colombians peak early, and now peaking early seems to becoming a more regular thing.

And unless he just destroys this Giro by 10 minutes, the climbing references aren't really there much either this Giro, so if he wins I'll probably still rate him below Roglic and Pogacar. IIRC he has never beaten Roglic in a stage race and never dropped him either. I still maintain that Roglic was the strongest GT winner in 2019 and if he had shown up equally strong in that Tour he would have won it convincingly
His own team mate has been better than Roglic overall in the last 2 grand tours they have raced for GC. Roglic is hugely over rated as a 3 week racer (with some justification, in 1 week stage races he is absurdly good). Pog is a different situation entirely
 
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Still unsure what exactly to think of the Vuelta field that year though. We now read the name Pogacar, think of last years Tour and conclude that the 2019 Vuelta field must have been insanely good. But Pogacar clearly hadn't peaked in 2019 so I think we should rather rate how good Pogacar was in 2019 by comparing him to the rest of the Vuelta contenders than rating how good the Vuelta field was by comparing it with Pogacar.
Vuelta field was fine. Not amazing, but not weak either. Pogacar was more inconsistent rather not all that great. Apart from Roglic they were all kinda inconsistent though, but I'm inclined to regard MAL as the most consistent GT rider in there. Acebo probably the fastest climb that year. Roglic literally never got in trouble.

I think people did realize that his TdF performance in 2019 wasn't all that great and that he mostly won due to weak competition. But crucially the reason people rated him so highly was because he was 22. Even Quintana hit his peak at 23 so there was reasonable hope that we hadn't seen his final form yet. When he didn't improve last year and it became rather clear that hope will not be fulfilled the opinion of many cycling fans swung in the opposite direction of him being a failure.

Mind you, that mistake is extremely easy to make. Right now everyone and his mother is in on Pogacar being the next big thing, but if the same happens to him that happened to Bernal and he doesn't improve any further after his first Tour win, he isn't gonna win loads of gt's either. I suppose you could argue that Pogacar last year was better than Bernal in 2019 but then we also really didn't forget that he only won the Tour in the first place because of one freak TT that I'm still not sure he'll be able to reproduce in future gt's. For 19 stages it seemed like he was unable to beat Roglic and he might face stronger rivals than that in the future.

I guess the takeaway should be, don't judge youngsters after their first great performance and don't pretend to know how where their trajectory is gonna take them when you really don't.
I mean Iseran was a big performance and lesser stage races basically showed he was consistently one of the 2 best climbers in the race. Bernal did clearly underperform in the Pyrenees.

For Pogacar, I still rate him much higher, and it's not really because of that ITT, which is mostly down to the specific ITT charactersitics completely blowing up gaps. I rate him higher because of the climbing records he crushed, the raid to the Vuelta podium, and his ITTs in 2021 basically show he's not gonna lose a lot of time to the top GC ITTers if at all. Also has a sprint for bonis, etc, he can simply do everything it would seem.
 
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His own team mate has been better than Roglic overall in the last 2 grand tours they have raced for GC. Roglic is hugely over rated as a 3 week racer (with some justification, in 1 week stage races he is absurdly good). Pog is a different situation entirely
Does Jumbo have some Zubeldian figure who rides invisibly in front of every race I don't know about that also doesn't appear on the results sheet?
 
His own team mate has been better than Roglic overall in the last 2 grand tours they have raced for GC. Roglic is hugely over rated as a 3 week racer (with some justification, in 1 week stage races he is absurdly good). Pog is a different situation entirely
Who - Harper? Is that you Kirby?

His GT GC podium per attendance ratio is second best in the current peloton I'm sure while podiums per active season must be the highest. Totally overrated...
 
His own team mate has been better than Roglic overall in the last 2 grand tours they have raced for GC. Roglic is hugely over rated as a 3 week racer (with some justification, in 1 week stage races he is absurdly good). Pog is a different situation entirely

Primoz Roglic has participated in 7 GTs, and he finished (in consecutive order) 58, 38, 4, 3, 1, 2, 1 - how could he possibly be "overrated"?
 
Primoz Roglic has participated in 7 GTs, and he finished (in consecutive order) 58, 38, 4, 3, 1, 2, 1 - how could he possibly be "overrated"?
Because his last 4 podiums were 2 wins in vueltas, one of which he won on time bonuses, and the other 2 were massive choke jobs. He's the best one week racer I've ever seen, but he doesn't come through when it really matters as much as he should.
And yes, apologies, I was talking about Bernals teammate I.e. Carapaz, not Roglics teammate.
 
Vuelta field was fine. Not amazing, but not weak either. Pogacar was more inconsistent rather not all that great. Apart from Roglic they were all kinda inconsistent though, but I'm inclined to regard MAL as the most consistent GT rider in there. Acebo probably the fastest climb that year. Roglic literally never got in trouble.


I mean Iseran was a big performance and lesser stage races basically showed he was consistently one of the 2 best climbers in the race. Bernal did clearly underperform in the Pyrenees.

For Pogacar, I still rate him much higher, and it's not really because of that ITT, which is mostly down to the specific ITT charactersitics completely blowing up gaps. I rate him higher because of the climbing records he crushed, the raid to the Vuelta podium, and his ITTs in 2021 basically show he's not gonna lose a lot of time to the top GC ITTers if at all. Also has a sprint for bonis, etc, he can simply do everything it would seem.
Maybe bernal could be a little better than roglic and pogacar(2 best world gc cyclists) in the mountains above 2000 m, because of the altitude. Miguel Angel lopez beat pogi and roglic on la loze because of that, but in the mountains with less altitude pogi and roglic are better than angel lopez and also bernal. And that climbing records thay you're talking about are the proof. And of course, they are so much better on itts.[
 

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