Re: Re:
Põhja Konn said:
yaco said:
Red Rick said:
For Tom Dumoulin to podium a GT his climbing level would at least be as important as the amount of TT'ing in the race. Even in the 2015 Vuelta, he got dropped every time climbers attacked apart from climbs under 5km long. In the Giro he actually did some damage on a climb that suited his huge engine until he got saddle sores and stuff like that. Anyway, unless his climbing improves drastically, the likes of Quintana should be able to put minutes into him in the Serre Chevalier stage or the Mont du Chat stage alone, no biggie. Dumoulin has never specifically prepared for a GC before, so I expect him to be a big unkown. He's also not deciding which GT he'll ride for GC until January.
Reckon the Giro route will be tough for Dumoulin even with the 67kms of TT - There is also a bit of altitude climbing which is an unknown for Dumoulin - Vuelta could be a possibility depending on the route, though the TDF must be appealing.
All of which is the reason, why he should ride the Giro. It may take him farther out of his comfort zone, but he will learn much more about his abilities as a GC rider that way. Also, the lack of the extra press attention and preceding hype that would come with doing the Tour, can only be a good thing for a guy, who is not yet established GT GC rider and could easily fail in his quest to become one.
I really think that unless you expect similar competition and depending on what you aim for, parcours is kind of overrated. Climbing level of a race(which you can anticipate a bit) and agressiveness of the race, and the pace that is set by the trains is more important for a guy like Dumoulin. The Vuelta parcours he raced in, wasn't suited to him at all, but the climbing level wasn't on the moon, and it was raced very passively, so he could hang on until the last 2km almost every climb. If you look at the Giro and the Tour that year, both were raced with a very high pace set by one team, and Dumoulin would've lost minutes on almost every mountain stage. Even if the 2015 Tour would've had 100km of ITT, he coudn't have gotten close. Now, this does change when people specifically are looking to put time into you. That happens when the climbing level pretty even in a race and where there's a somewhat larger group looking at each other.
I think the route mostly matters when it puts you at a slight advantage or disadvantage against the riders who you compete against for your desired result (going for Giro top 3/ Tour top 5). Or look at Quintana, Froome and Contador for that matter (for the sake of the argument, lets assume he still has it). Their climbing levels are pretty close, but all three have different charactersitics and different routes that would suit them best.
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