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I would argue that there is one aspect of cycling in which he's clearly top notch: climbing in 230+ km races (Firenze, Rio, Lombardia x2, MSR). Sadly for him, there are very few of those races in the calendar. That's another good reason why he should focus on Monuments.
That's a really good assessment of Nibali as a rider.Zinoviev Letter said:ColonelKidneyBeans said:While i agree that he has surpassed his talent many times, i think you are underselling him saying that he isn't on the top half dozen in anything, his climbing on hard mountain stages is a bit underrated, his TT in the third week of a GT is very very good and his stamina has gotten incredible as he got older, who else could do what he's done today or at lombardia last year? He is a machine even on the flat after a long day in the saddleZinoviev Letter said:He has at this point displaced Simon Gerrans as the greatest overperformer of his physical talent in the peloton. He is very good at a lot of things, but is not in the top half dozen riders at anything, including descending. In this age of specialists, he really shouldn’t be able to win as much as he has. Yet look at his palmares. One of the most cunning and canny riders we’ve seen in modern cycling. There’s something truly admirable about that.
I think he’s quite close to the top half dozen in a few things. When I say he has hugely over performed his talent, that doesn’t mean that he has a small talent. In climbing for instance, his best is very good, just not Froome, Quintana or even Landa very good. Where he surpasses them all though is in turning his talents into big wins. That’s what he has in common with Gerrans, a rider that in most ways is very dissimilar but has also earned a palmares that is much better than would be expected from a guy with his physical level. One of the weird things about cycling is that this seems like it’s a dismissal, but it really shouldn’t. Nibali has the tactical brain and the mentality of an all time great.
If you put his brain in Valverde’s body, you’d have the biggest winner since Merckx. Or if not quite that you’d at least have someone with the palmares level of a Kelly, which should otherwise be impossible nowadays.
I would argue that there is one aspect of cycling in which he's clearly top notch: climbing in 230+ km races (Firenze, Rio, Lombardia x2, MSR). Sadly for him, there are very few of those races in the calendar. That's another good reason why he should focus on Monuments.