Roude Leiw said:
Sepulveda.... Or Benny Gastauer to stay in Betancurs team
Lol super good pick Roude Leiw you should have put money on that, I wonder what the odds would have been. Especially considering Gastauer has been a pro since 2009 and never won anything. Even his one win, Luxembourg TT champion, Bob Jungels was faster than him, but was competing in the U23 category.
I am incredibly happy for him because I've followed his results and his performances closely for years. His dad runs a really good website where he writes detailed reports about his races. Gastauer seems like a really, really nice guy and Vincent Lavenu has often called him "too nice". His test results always put him among the best of his team but then he could never use it to his advantage in the races. Plus, once you have the domestique role in your team, it's easy to get stuck in it. And you get more and more used to driving the peloton as a diesel and lose your punch.
But last year during the Tour Gastauer finally showed his true capabilities. It was a freak result of circumstance that both Froome and Contador crashed out, otherwise their teams would have done all the work and Gastauer would have passed unnoticed yet again. Plus Riblon was in bad shape, so all of these things coming together meant that Gastauer got to step up to the plate and boy did he deliver. His pace making was impressive, but then he was also the most important "3rd man" for the team competition, so after the pace making he still continued his effort and usually came in around 20th or so. That way he assured AG2R the team competition victory.
Gastauer won a lot of races, high level, hard mountain races, in the U23 category. He beat Tejay Van Garderen in one race for example, Tour de Haute Savoie IINM. I think that shows the power he has. But he has a big frame (over 1.90m) so once among the pros, he couldn't excell in the mountains anymore. Though if you look at his performances he has some top-20 results in MTFs in the Giro, including a Mountain ITT two years ago IIRC. He is a classic "passe partout" rider and his main strength seems to be is durability. His main specialty are GT's (did Giro-Vuelta double for a few years in a row), where he holds up well in the third week.
Finally, it looks like he has remarkable placement skills in the peloton, he rarely ever crashes, and finished his entire season last year without a single DNF.
Sorry for the long write-up. Congratulations Ben!