You realize that one of those 2 is Evenepoel's performance on Lo Port when he was beaten by Roglic, right? Does that seem like the best evidence to cite? To me that undercuts this whole, "top 3 greatest performances ever" narrative: The curators who are defining this are selective, biased, making assumptions and decisions in their model, and incentivized to sell hard.
Sure, although I'd point out that Remco is 5 minutes down on Pogacar despite winning the ITT, so "sharp end" is a bit of a stretch." Regardless, I'm not sure how Roglic's rocky start undercuts my skepticism that suddenly the top 10 or so would all beat Lance in 2000 and Contador in 2007. It almost makes me think this picture is a bit too simplistic...
Exactly. We're really supposed to believe that Remco being absolutely obliterated is "better" than anything that Lance, Contador, Basso, Froome, Roglic, Vingegaard (until this Tour when he is barely recovered from an extremely bad crash), and Pogacar (until this Tour) have ever done?
To be clear, I'm not referencing The Clinic, which I know how to find. I am more speculating regarding:
- Biased analysis & reporting
- Unreported / unacknowledged factors that explain consistently high performances across the top 10; I have no idea if any of these are relevant, but a non-exhaustive list of factors could include:
- Weather conditions
- Road surface
- Changes in the start or finish
- The way the race was ridden
- The way previous top performances on the climb were ridden (I know Contador and Rasmussen did a series of sprints and recoveries, which indicates they could have certainly gone faster)
- Impact of motorcycles