Landa obviously did a lot of work getting bottles and gel etc … the most important work for a super som is not pulling the train for a few 100 m on the final climb but protect the GC leader from having to spend energy
Actually I doubt this. As long as there is a third QS rider in the group that guy would go back to the car and not Landa. Maybe it happened a few times, but it was definitively not a lot of work for Landa doing this during the Tour.
Nah man. Landa wasn't on bottle duty. By the time the other teammates (who were on actual bottle duty) were gone, the race went into the final and there was no use going to the car and get bottles. Maybe it happened a few times, but Landa did not waste efforts being "domestique" more than he otherwise would have in case he was "free". The only exception, was on stage 20.
The point i was making, was that he finished behind Almeida, while Almeida actually DID work for Pogacar on a near daily basis. So i would also put an in-form Almeida ahead of Landa as a GC rider. People were discussing Landa being a top 8 GC rider. I disagreed.
Ben O Connor and G. Thomas were missing, don't disrespect!!
Although he has some talent in climbing and sprinting, he has not enough watts for climbing), not the explosiveness to become a toppuncher, not enough speed for a real sprinter. His future lies in joining (early) escapes. In a few years, he should be ready for winning stages and hilly semi-classics. In between helper in the mid-mountains during small stage races and GT's.
I don't know which Tour you have been watching ? But it is not the first time that you see things other than the cycling experts. Not learning from your mistakes.
Logic never said this wasn’t the case. You are unnecessarily trying to pick a fight.
There simply are other riders i put higher and i think if you bothered to read my reasoning, you would understand why. A top 8 GC rider who has been around for that long, and has been riding Vuelta's and Giro's, would definitely have won a GT. If you only look at his best results (top 10's of the last 5 years), you see he gets beaten time and again by riders that are not on everyone's mind when thinking about the very best. In the Tour there were 5 guys better including Almeida, in the '22 Giro there were two other guys better, Hindley and Carapaz. Last year in the Vuelta, there were two other guys better, Kuss and Ayuso. In the '19 TDF he finished behind Alaphilippe, Kruijswijk and Buchmann (and Thomas).
Yeah, but Landa has also been better than a lot of the riders who have been better than him, so that reasoning doesn't really work.
I'm not comparing top 20 to top 15 spots. I'm looking at top performances. And then i do not think you can put Landa above Yates, Carapaz, Thomas, Hindley, Almeida... and we're already beyond 8.
I also factor in the level of this year's Tour being much, much higher than anything we had ever seen before. Landa had a much higher level there than in the '22 Giro.
Sure, and it's nothing we can compare 1:1 because not everybody was there or in peak shape. So it's a feeling, that when the top 4 spots are clearly taken, that Landa isn't one of the next best "other" 4. Mind you that the discussion was about GC riders, not about climbers.
I meant that rhetorically. Like why would anyone argue with the point that Landa did crap-all. I understand why Landa is a topic of discussion. That said both of them are too inconsistent/incomplete to finish a GT in the position their best case climbing would suggest. Kind of hard to determine who's more inconsistent.
Anything past the podium is somewhat less indicative of GT ability. Not only are there helpers sacrificing themselves when they could have finished 4th, but if you are in 6th place pretty much no one is paying attention to you or ambushing your team in transition stages or in crosswinds. You're just along for the ride as the top 3 conspire against each other.
Which teammate do you supposed has more chances than him? It's a peculiar stage race. First three stages are hilly with some opportunities for gaps and offensive riding, last three stages seem boring sprinter stages. Imho he should try and go for it in the first stages, he always gets better by racing hard. I have never seen him sit in the bunch as if it were training. I guess he could always do some work in the last three stages for Magnier.
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