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Teams & Riders Vincenzo Nibali discussion thread

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Re:

Red Rick said:
Still has the record on San Luca.
As far we know is only the best time of the ones registered on Strava and was after 220 kms and an hard race, if you put the San Luca after a 150/170 kms easy stage i'm pretty sure Nibali would be way weaker. That day he joked with Moscon that during the Vuelta did damage to him on similar climbs while pulling for Froome, on Ermita de Santa Lucia after 170 kms there were more than 30 riders in the peloton when he was dropped and 17 (excluding break) finished in front of him and is a very similar climb.

I think that after a very long hard stage Nibali would have been able to drop everyone even on a very extreme murito like Mirador de Ezaro on which after an easy and pretty short stage he's likely to finish 30th.
 
Nibali in the 3rd week is usually more than adequate on climbs like this. He was strong on Los Muchachos in 2017 which suits him even less. He just had a bad day.

If Carapaz doesn't break down, only a multi team effort can beat him on Saturday and that's like 1% chance, maybe.
 
An attack on Manghen is impossible. It will be 3 and a half Bahrain riders including Nibali against some six Movistar and he also needs some men up the road, nevermind that Movi has the strongest climber at this point in the race (Landa). Plus he will have no allies, Roglic himself doesn't look too good and has no teammates whatsoever, Yates is bad and Astana will most likely try something later, Lopez added a whole new dimension to yo-yoing. Not all is lost, depends who will be in the break, how the break is formed and what happens next and then there's Passo Rolle, if not Croce D'Aune but it all depends on whether Carapaz is running out of steam or not.
 
Re:

Red Rick said:
Nibali in the 3rd week is usually more than adequate on climbs like this. He was strong on Los Muchachos in 2017 which suits him even less. He just had a bad day.

If Carapaz doesn't break down, only a multi team effort can beat him on Saturday and that's like 1% chance, maybe.
He has a bad day everytime there are pretty easy and not long stages?

In that Vuelta we could add to Ermita de Santa Lucia and Santo Toribio also Cumbre del Sol, Oropa and Blockhaus at the Giro the same year, the Mur de Bretagne and La Pierre Saint Martin at the 2015 Tour, Aramon Formigal and Estepona at the 2013 Vuelta. The only races in which he was in a similar level everywhere were the 2016 Giro in which was bad everytime bar the last two days his glorious Giro 2013 and Tour 2014 but against lesser opposition.
 
I think it's worse when he's in suboptimal form. Blockhaus and Oropa were another level of bad compared to today.

2015 Pyrenees I think he suffered from crashing earlier. He was actually good at the Mur despite the restart after Cherave, so he rightfully should've done absotely horrible following his own patterns. PSM was his worst mountain stage, but he managed to get dropped the day after on a super easy climb after the Tourmalet. Later still that year he was actually perfectly fine on Mende, only losing time to Froome/Quintana and Valverde and a second to Contador.

I'm obviously not denying this pattern exists, but yesterday should have been fine with a few climbs before the finish, etc.

The main annoyance for me is that Nibali's lack of explosivity makes his options for crazy attacks in GTs a lot less than Contador's. Contador would be everywhere and then just run out of gas, whereas Nibali basically doesn't kick into gear at the moment Conti would run out of gas.
 
The question is what to do tomorrow? Attack or not? If he attacks, he'll very unlikely gain any time because the climb is too easy and Movistar is too strong, and he even risks a counter attack from Landa/Carapaz. But then again you never know when your opponent will have a bad day, and he's running out on opportunities.
 
Re: Re:

Nirvana said:
Red Rick said:
Still has the record on San Luca.
As far we know is only the best time of the ones registered on Strava and was after 220 kms and an hard race, if you put the San Luca after a 150/170 kms easy stage i'm pretty sure Nibali would be way weaker. That day he joked with Moscon that during the Vuelta did damage to him on similar climbs while pulling for Froome, on Ermita de Santa Lucia after 170 kms there were more than 30 riders in the peloton when he was dropped and 17 (excluding break) finished in front of him and is a very similar climb.

I think that after a very long hard stage Nibali would have been able to drop everyone even on a very extreme murito like Mirador de Ezaro on which after an easy and pretty short stage he's likely to finish 30th.

I think his third place in the prologue of the very San Luca climb proves otherwise.
 
Re:

Climbing said:
It's not a surprise that Nibali isn't strong on these type of stages, it's only disappointing that Carapaz doesn't show any sign of fatigue or weakness, quite the opposite.
I think many people, including Nibali himself and Roglic, kinda forgot that Carapaz was really strong in the 3rd week of last years Giro as well. He's not really the type to get weaker.
 
Re: Re:

Dekker_Tifosi said:
Climbing said:
It's not a surprise that Nibali isn't strong on these type of stages, it's only disappointing that Carapaz doesn't show any sign of fatigue or weakness, quite the opposite.
I think many people, including Nibali himself and Roglic, kinda forgot that Carapaz was really strong in the 3rd week of last years Giro as well. He's not really the type to get weaker.
/r/freefolk is leaking.

Nah but really they should have realised how strong Carapaz was after he beat Ewan and Ullisi in an uphill sprint and after he lost less than a minute to Nibali in the ITT.

Really don't understand why they don't have people who analyse all that stuff.
 
Re: Re:

Dekker_Tifosi said:
Climbing said:
It's not a surprise that Nibali isn't strong on these type of stages, it's only disappointing that Carapaz doesn't show any sign of fatigue or weakness, quite the opposite.
I think many people, including Nibali himself and Roglic, kinda forgot that Carapaz was really strong in the 3rd week of last years Giro as well. He's not really the type to get weaker.

They hope he gets weaker, I'm sure they know Carapaz was in fact stronger in week 3. Unfortunately for Nibali it is the third time when he is about to lose a GT because he completely missed his evaluation on who is the real danger man, each time for various reasons.

In Vuelta 2013, mainly because he was riding against Purito and Valverde while Horner kept riding away. In the end he couldn't drop him even at the very end. Can't blame him to much here because nobody in his right mind would've thought that Horner was going to be faster than Contador on Angliru and than Froome on Pena Cabarga.

In the Giro 2017 he is riding against Quintana, blowing up on Blockhaus, miscalculating the time deficit he'll have to Dumoulin after the TTs while basically he wasn't able to drop Tom consistently in the end. Compared to Horner, Dumoulin had the ingredients to be dangerous especially with the fairly long TTs.

Both those GTs were lost for seconds.

We already know what happened until today in this Giro, remains to be seen if it will be the same story.
 
Re: Re:

Rollthedice said:
Dekker_Tifosi said:
Climbing said:
It's not a surprise that Nibali isn't strong on these type of stages, it's only disappointing that Carapaz doesn't show any sign of fatigue or weakness, quite the opposite.
I think many people, including Nibali himself and Roglic, kinda forgot that Carapaz was really strong in the 3rd week of last years Giro as well. He's not really the type to get weaker.

They hope he gets weaker, I'm sure they know Carapaz was in fact stronger in week 3. Unfortunately for Nibali it is the third time when he is about to lose a GT because he completely missed his evaluation on who is the real danger man, each time for various reasons.

In Vuelta 2013, mainly because he was riding against Purito and Valverde while Horner kept riding away. In the end he couldn't drop him even at the very end. Can't blame him to much here because nobody in his right mind would've thought that Horner was going to be faster than Contador on Angliru and than Froome on Pena Cabarga.

In the Giro 2017 he is riding against Quintana, blowing up on Blockhaus, miscalculating the time deficit he'll have to Dumoulin after the TTs while basically he wasn't able to drop Tom consistently in the end. Compared to Horner, Dumoulin had the ingredients to be dangerous especially with the fairly long TTs.

Both those GTs were lost for seconds.

We already know what happened until today in this Giro, remains to be seen if it will be the same story.
He was also there when Arroyo almost won the Giro and when Dawg first magically appeared.

But really the Nibali luck meme needs to die.
 
Re: Re:

Red Rick said:
Rollthedice said:
Dekker_Tifosi said:
Climbing said:
It's not a surprise that Nibali isn't strong on these type of stages, it's only disappointing that Carapaz doesn't show any sign of fatigue or weakness, quite the opposite.
I think many people, including Nibali himself and Roglic, kinda forgot that Carapaz was really strong in the 3rd week of last years Giro as well. He's not really the type to get weaker.

They hope he gets weaker, I'm sure they know Carapaz was in fact stronger in week 3. Unfortunately for Nibali it is the third time when he is about to lose a GT because he completely missed his evaluation on who is the real danger man, each time for various reasons.

In Vuelta 2013, mainly because he was riding against Purito and Valverde while Horner kept riding away. In the end he couldn't drop him even at the very end. Can't blame him to much here because nobody in his right mind would've thought that Horner was going to be faster than Contador on Angliru and than Froome on Pena Cabarga.

In the Giro 2017 he is riding against Quintana, blowing up on Blockhaus, miscalculating the time deficit he'll have to Dumoulin after the TTs while basically he wasn't able to drop Tom consistently in the end. Compared to Horner, Dumoulin had the ingredients to be dangerous especially with the fairly long TTs.

Both those GTs were lost for seconds.

We already know what happened until today in this Giro, remains to be seen if it will be the same story.
He was also there when Arroyo almost won the Giro and when Dawg first magically appeared.

But really the Nibali luck meme needs to die.

And, I know it isn't quite fair but 2011 Contador's name is erased from the Trofeo Senza Fine and Scarponi wins it by 46 seconds and then Froome skates away with the Vuelta 2017 while in 99% of the cases he's stripped of the title. What all these and aforementioned examples show is that it's damn hard to win a GT, some you lose and some you win. He has a truly exceptional track record in Grand Tours.
 
Re:

Red Rick said:
I think most top riders have about 8-10 years between first and last GT podium level rides.
Poulidor is remarkable in this respect, does anyone else come close? 62 was his first and 76 was his last.

edit, just checked and Coppi did one year more, but his time off for the war probably helped in this regard.
 
Re: Re:

Singer01 said:
Red Rick said:
I think most top riders have about 8-10 years between first and last GT podium level rides.
Poulidor is remarkable in this respect, does anyone else come close? 62 was his first and 76 was his last.

edit, just checked and Coppi did one year more, but his time off for the war probably helped in this regard.
Valverde had 13 years between 2003 and 2016 though. But these are exceptions. Will be interesting how long Nibs, Froome and Quintana can keep it up