Teams & Riders Tom Dumoulin discussion thread

[Red Rick]

Re:

Why argue about TT length? It is what it is. Tom knew what's the challenge and took it. With Froome in Zonc mode all this Giro he would've been 3 minutes down by now with a TT where he could've taken back a handful of seconds. Nobody guessed Froome will be crap and Yates would be Purito and Basso rolled in one.

And look at the choices he got for challenges.

A Giro with 44 kms of ITT.

A Tour with 31 kms of ITT

A Vuelta with 40km of ITT.

The one commendable thing about the Vuelta is that they at least have consistenly had at least the mid/long ITT.

 

[Rollthedice]

Re: Re:

Why argue about TT length? It is what it is. Tom knew what's the challenge and took it. With Froome in Zonc mode all this Giro he would've been 3 minutes down by now with a TT where he could've taken back a handful of seconds. Nobody guessed Froome will be crap and Yates would be Purito and Basso rolled in one.

And look at the choices he got for challenges.

A Giro with 44 kms of ITT.

A Tour with 31 kms of ITT

A Vuelta with 40km of ITT.

The one commendable thing about the Vuelta is that they at least have consistenly had at least the mid/long ITT.

For Tour you can add 35km for TTT, not the same but nevertheless Sunweb is WC if I'm not mistaken. Anyway, the time when they put 100 km in Le Tour for Wiggo are probably gone so in order to win Tom has to get more creative and Sunweb has to send a better team for support.

 

[skippo12]

Re: Re:

I'd like to see one Grand Tour where they would forgo the high mountains but that is never going to happen.

Interesting. How would you suggest they make the race hard? More "classics" like stages? RVV, PR, MSR...? Strade Bianche even? Longer flat stages (250+k's)? More ITT? I'd be all for that. But not if it turns into a snorefest with more sprinting stages.

Completly ignoring the high mountains would be bad as well. In fact I really don`t like that they have reduced the number of high altitude stages in the last few years. They just need to reduce the number of mono climb mountain finishes. Watching them is similar to watching sprint stages. No action and on the final km the climber with the best punch gains 5-10 seconds at best.

 

[Salvarani]

Tom has pretty much raced this to perfection so far... it is just that Yates been so strong. If not for Yates with the current standings he would have had the lead with probably 3 minutes after ITT. Now the best he can hope for is at least being leveled with Yates.

And with Yates being in the form of his life right now I wonder how much time Dumoulin can really take... maybe 1-2 min? Or will this be Yates first bad day? 2-3 min?

 

[luckyboy]

Re: Re:

I'd like to see one Grand Tour where they would forgo the high mountains but that is never going to happen.

Interesting. How would you suggest they make the race hard? More "classics" like stages? RVV, PR, MSR...? Strade Bianche even? Longer flat stages (250+k's)? More ITT? I'd be all for that. But not if it turns into a snorefest with more sprinting stages.

Completly ignoring the high mountains would be bad as well. In fact I really don`t like that they have reduced the number of high altitude stages in the last few years. They just need to reduce the number of mono climb mountain finishes. Watching them is similar to watching sprint stages. No action and on the final km the climber with the best punch gains 5-10 seconds at best.

I guess the Giro 2009 was the closest we've seen to a GT without big mountain stages, at least with an emphasis away from the big Dolomite/Alpine monsters. All the mountains here - only two times over 2000m.

 

[SafeBet]

The Giro had actually done a pretty good job in having at least a long TT or two medium TTs in the past 5-6 years. 2018 is the worst we've seen in a while and I can't say I like it.

 

[DFA123]

Re: Re:

Boni's aside (they do make it worse yeah), it's been going on for at least 6/7 years already that organisers are doing everything possible to have a climber win a Grand Tour.
Especially Giro/Vuelta, but lately TDF is going the same way. They've already cut back from 50km TT to 40/30km ones. That wasn't enough. Then they decided to cut 1 prologue or TT out. That still wasn't enough, now they but a ridicolous amount of TT in (~30-40km). And every hill top or mountain top finish you can find. That seems to be enough.

I don't understand why people are arguing against the reduction of TT kilometres.

In the past, the differences between riders were bigger, and it was possible to gain huge amounts of times in the mountains because riders were more liable to crack because they didn't ride as smartly as they do now (these days, everybody knows which wattages they can be putting out for a given amount of time and this makes it less likely for someone to dig too deep early on a climb).

Nowadays, you don't see these differences on the mountain stages - especially not in the first couple of weeks in Grand Tours.

In the time trials, however, the same differences as in earlier times are for some reason still possible to make. These two facts combined mean that if the amount of TTing wasn't reduced, the TT's would have a relatively much bigger influence than in the past and that wouldn't be fair either.

I think the organisers have done right in rolling with the times.

Yep. In this Giro, for example, Yates is clearly the best rider in the race right now. If he wouldn't be winning because there were loads of TT kilometres it would be a travesty, and would suggest a horribly unbalanced route.

Even short TTs simply offer much easier opportunities to lose or gain time than mountain stages these days.

 

[Dekker_Tifosi]

Correction: Yates has shown he is the strongest climber

If you lose minutes even in a short TT you are a terrible one-dimensional rider

 

[Netserk]

And Sastre was the strongest rider in 2006... lol

 

[Red Rick]

A lot also depends on team dynamics, which you can't really predict. Yates has the strongest team right now, so him only having to attack on the last few kms of a stage is really bad for the race.

And while the Tour historically has had more ITTs than the Giro, they also tend to have worse mountain stages, and worse geography in general to create possibilities to have a chaotic race.

Right now I think 60km would be OK for most GTs, if you make the mountain stages big enough.

 

[Valv.Piti]

Re:

Correction: Yates has shown he is the strongest climber

If you lose minutes even in a short TT you are a terrible one-dimensional rider

And puncheur as well to the extent that, yes, it wouldn't be super balanced if he doesn't win. He has been incredible while Dumoulin simply has been riding to watts and done nothing else basically. This Giro is still too climbing oriented tho, a 55-60 km ITT had been fine on this route, especially when the long one almost is pan flat. Yates would probably win anyways.

 

[Red Rick]

Tom "just riding his watts" Dumoulin has lost basically no time to the 2nd best climber in the race. It's not like we're talking about a bottom top 10 climber who suddenly wins by winning the ITTs.

 

[DFA123]

Re: Re:

Correction: Yates has shown he is the strongest climber

If you lose minutes even in a short TT you are a terrible one-dimensional rider

And puncheur as well to the extent that, yes, it wouldn't be super balanced if he doesn't win. He has been incredible while Dumoulin simply has been riding to watts and done nothing else basically. This Giro is still too climbing oriented tho, a 55-60 km ITT had been fine on this route, especially when the long one almost is pan flat. Yates would probably win anyways.

Yep, any route which would allow this very dull version of Dumolin to beat this exciting, dyanmic version of Yates, would be the death of cycling.

 

[Red Rick]

Re: Re:

Correction: Yates has shown he is the strongest climber

If you lose minutes even in a short TT you are a terrible one-dimensional rider

And puncheur as well to the extent that, yes, it wouldn't be super balanced if he doesn't win. He has been incredible while Dumoulin simply has been riding to watts and done nothing else basically. This Giro is still too climbing oriented tho, a 55-60 km ITT had been fine on this route, especially when the long one almost is pan flat. Yates would probably win anyways.

Yep, any route which would allow this very dull version of Dumolin to beat this exciting, dyanmic version of Yates, would be the death of cycling.

A race decided after 21 days is almost invariably better than a race decided after 15 days.

 

[Valv.Piti]

Re:

Tom "just riding his watts" Dumoulin has lost basically no time to the 2nd best climber in the race. It's not like we're talking about a bottom top 10 climber who suddenly wins by winning the ITTs.

I know, he has probably been the 3rd or 4th best climber in the race, but I just find him too boring man. He is riding extremely calculated which obviously is pretty efficient tho. As long as it makes other riders need to go on the offensive its perfectly fine tho, thats basically his role this Giro.

 

[Red Rick]

Re: Re:

Tom "just riding his watts" Dumoulin has lost basically no time to the 2nd best climber in the race. It's not like we're talking about a bottom top 10 climber who suddenly wins by winning the ITTs.

I know, he has probably been the 3rd or 4th best climber in the race, but I just find him too boring man. He is riding extremely calculated which obviously is pretty efficient tho. As long as it makes other riders need to go on the offensive its perfectly fine tho, thats basically his role this Giro.

He hasn't had the legs to do anything. And this also applies to Pozzovivo, Pinot and every single rider apart from Yates, and Froome on 1 stage.

 

[Dekker_Tifosi]

Yep, everytime Yates went he just puts everybody else at the limit, there is no other choice but to ride at max effort.

 

[yaco]

Re: Re:

Why argue about TT length? It is what it is. Tom knew what's the challenge and took it. With Froome in Zonc mode all this Giro he would've been 3 minutes down by now with a TT where he could've taken back a handful of seconds. Nobody guessed Froome will be crap and Yates would be Purito and Basso rolled in one.

And look at the choices he got for challenges.

A Giro with 44 kms of ITT.

A Tour with 31 kms of ITT

A Vuelta with 40km of ITT.

The one commendable thing about the Vuelta is that they at least have consistenly had at least the mid/long ITT.

Tom D should have ridden the TDF - Remember it has a 35km TTT in which Team Sunweb are world Champions - That's 65km of TT - Though it was a strange decision at the time - Fact is 2 or 3 of the GC contenders will be out of contention after stage 3.

 

[rehy90]

I hope that this trend of really low ITT kms in GTs will change. I think there should be at least 80 kms of ITT in every GT. Today, they are in favour of midgets and colombians. It should be won by all-rounders such as TD.

 

[DFA123]

Re:

I hope that this trend of really low ITT kms in GTs will change. I think there should be at least 80 kms of ITT in every GT. Today, they are in favour of midgets and colombians. It should be won by all-rounders such as TD.

This is oft-repeated bs. Exactly how many 'midgets and colombians' have actually won GTs in the last 10 years? By my count it's one 'midget' and one Colombian - and that is the same person.

All rounders are winning most GTs these days - so the TT balance is right given the current way GTs are raced. Any more and it would just exclude climbers completely from having any chance, given the strength of domestiques these days.

 

[Red Rick]

It depends on what climbers you want to exclude.

Chaves has never been the strongest climber in a GT, and any stronger climber is also gonna TT better.

 

[DFA123]

Re:

It depends on what climbers you want to exclude.

Chaves has never been the strongest climber in a GT, and any stronger climber is also gonna TT better.

Not sure what you mean about Chaves. He has never really been in contention for a GT win with the routes we currently have, and shouldn't be imo, unless he can improve either his climbing or TT.

The strong climbers who TT well are the all-rounders who should be winning multiple tours. And these are the guys that have been dominating the GTs in the last ten years - Froome, Contador, Nibali - even the ones with less few TT kilometres. The lightweight climbers who can't TT aren't winning. The only one is Quintana who is actually pretty good at TTs for his size and, when on form, is probably the best climber of his generation. And someone like Dumoulin is just the other side of the coin from Quintana. One of the best TTers of his generation, who is also pretty good at climbing for his size.

So the balance is good at the moment. The true all-rounders are winning most tours. Only the very best pure climber can win occasionally when on top form, and only the very best TTist also can win occasionally when on top form. The routes are fine as they are.

Adding 80km+ of flat/rolling TTs to every GT would unnecessarily skew the balance towards TTs and away from the climbers. Which would be taking GTs in a completely new direction, because the very best pure climbers have always had chances to win throughout history.

Also, more importantly, it would result in incredibly boring, one-dimensional races.

 

[Eli]

I 100% agree with the above statement. Every single word of it if I might add.

 

[burning]

It belongs to a different era but 2007 Tour was anything but boring with 100+km TTs. Contador and Rasmussen went batshit because they had to and they had strength to do that.

2012 Tour also belongs to that category but the best TTers were also the best climbers and lost 0 seconds to everyone else in the entire Tour, so that Tour was always going to be super boring, even with a 2015 Tour route.

 

[Tonton]

Re: Re:

So the balance is good at the moment. The true all-rounders are winning most tours. Only the very best pure climber can win occasionally when on top form, and only the very best TTist also can win occasionally when on top form. The routes are fine as they are.

Adding 80km+ of flat/rolling TTs to every GT would unnecessarily skew the balance towards TTs and away from the climbers. Which would be taking GTs in a completely new direction, because the very best pure climbers have always had chances to win throughout history.

Also, more importantly, it would result in incredibly boring, one-dimensional races.

This. Few here were following cycling during the Indurain years, It almost lost me. Only cheering for LeMond and later being curious about the Virenque side show made the TdF bearable for me. Chiappucci or Pantani would lose too much in ITT to be a factor, and yes, there were Zulle and Rominger, but they never delivered. A gleam of hope was Berzin after his Giro win, but he turned out to be a one-trick poney. After the first ITT, Le Tour was over, pretty much every year. And if it was not, there was another one stage 20 to annihilate the field. Never been so bored in my life. Those years really sucked.