I'm away for 8 hours and this thread has 2 extra pages? Do you guys post of anything other than Evenepoel? Please consider professional help.
I remember Logic keeping track of all his crashes in his rookie season and there were quite a lot. Last year was a bit better until Lombardia.
Last year there were no crashes to speak of until Lombardia, I remember he got held up behind a crash in stage 1 of San Juan, and later he got trapped in the 2nd echelon due to not being vigilant. That's basically it iirc. The year turned pro he crashed almost every race in the first half of the season, so to speak. He crashed 3 or 4 times in Romandie, including BEFORE the actual prologue. He crashed into a motor in UAE tour (he got taken out of the race), he crashed in Turkey in one of the tricky sprint finishes. He crashed on the final day in the sprint of Baloise Belgium Tour. He crashed in Adriatica Ionica on a gravel/dirt section. I'm probably forgetting some. Ah,
he also nearly crashed Ganna in one of the Hammer series, i made a gif of that actually.
We have no evidence of him improving though. And it's not like he underperformed in that race because he was out of shape. He went on a spectacular solo two days later and won with a 2 minutes advantage. That was already a very good Remco who would dominate San Sebastian a week later.
He did come straight from his first ever altitude camp the week earlier, so his form might have been inconsistent at that moment.
I see a looot of assumptions and extrapolations that confuse me. I think it's wishful thinking to question him on a climb like the Zoncolan when he's literally never done a climb like that in a big race and when Bernal is probably one of the 3 best climbers in the world. Yet some see him not losing time on a cat 2 climb with a headwind and then imply Pogacar should be scared? I see assumptions that longer, steeper climbs suit him better when his previous results indicate otherwise. I see people assuming he'll take 2 minutes out of his opponents in the ITT when even his Algarve ITT, while winning, had him taking under 40s out of MAL. It's like he's simulataneously not recovered to his 2020 standard, while being much better than 2020 while still having to get a huge lot better.
Yet you are making assumptions as well. He only took 40s out of MAL who rode the best ITT of his career, after having trained on his TT bike a lot more during the winter than he had before. MAL finished in the same second as Schachmann. Evenepoel did finish over a minute ahead of Almeida, Van Wilder, Leknessund... all "pretty good" ITT'ers and far better than Bernal, over 20k, wouldn't you say? He finished 55 seconds ahead of Bjerg and Thomas. But let's focus on the one-off performance of MAL ;-)
As for Zoncolan, it's hard to imagine why a 60kg guy, with insane w/kg, and who is known for crazy long efforts in pain-mode, would do well on such a climb. Crazy assumption.
That's just confirmation bias based on 1 Tour where he was best in the third week. There's nothing to suggest Bernal underperforms on steep climbs. But he has very consistently performed with the best in the world at climbs >20 minutes.
Evenepoel meanwhile has had his best results in ITTs and hard hilly stages where he can beat small groups on his own on the flats inbetween the hard hills. He's pulled off big solos in hilly stages in stage races where he got dropped on the big MTF. Then there's Burgos where he won the first MTF after a bunch of echelon action which benefits him because of his rouleur abilities. He did get dropped on the 2nd MTF.
He got dropped on the 2nd MTF? Not sure we saw the same race. He foolishly attacked and got countered 500m from the finish by a guy that had been sucking wheels all climb. He lost a whopping 11s, while he knew the GC was already in the bag, of the final stage. he only had to keep Landa within 30s and he lost 2s to Landa. I'd also like to point that on such single climbs in short easy stages, Sosa is probably one of the best in the world. In fact, i think what happened there is why he refused to take over from Bernal yesterday, or try something himself.
It's hard to claim his best results have been on climbs like Zoncolan when he never rode any like that (in race). It's not hard to see why he could potentially do very well, considering his weight, w/kg and knack for 1 hour efforts.
Because of Evenepoels characteristic of being able to produce power while staying aerodynamic. The less aerodynamics play a role the bigger the disadvantage in relative terms.
His aero plays a bigger role throughout the stage, conserving energy, than on the actual climb itself. Regardless of air resistance on a climb (which is always much less crucial at lower speeds), he still is a guy for longer sustained efforts and he still pushes elite w/kg's.