Teams & Riders Vincenzo Nibali discussion thread

[Red Rick]

Re:

Nibali will be making Redoute great again along with his old partner in crime. Tomorrow is relatively short as well and the stage haven't been long in this race, but after 5 days that has been raced aggressively, is one day enough to fully recover?

Don't see why anyone would initiate an attack there. All eggs in RaF basket is what I say.

 

[Alexandre B.]

Re: Re:

Nibali will be making Redoute great again along with his old partner in crime. Tomorrow is relatively short as well and the stage haven't been long in this race, but after 5 days that has been raced aggressively, is one day enough to fully recover?

Don't see why anyone would initiate an attack there. All eggs in RaF basket is what I say.

Why would anyone try to tire Alaphilippe, I wonder.

 

[Rollthedice]

Re: Re:

Nibali will be making Redoute great again along with his old partner in crime. Tomorrow is relatively short as well and the stage haven't been long in this race, but after 5 days that has been raced aggressively, is one day enough to fully recover?

Don't see why anyone would initiate an attack there. All eggs in RaF basket is what I say.

By the way he attacked today one hundred fifteen times he can go on Redoute, get caught and attack again at the base of RaF just to outsprint whoever catches him before the line.

 

[Valv.Piti]

Re: Re:

Nibali will be making Redoute great again along with his old partner in crime. Tomorrow is relatively short as well and the stage haven't been long in this race, but after 5 days that has been raced aggressively, is one day enough to fully recover?

Don't see why anyone would initiate an attack there. All eggs in RaF basket is what I say.

Because Julian most probably can follow attacks on Faucons by himself to anyone, including Fuglsang, who does have the best chances of dropping him there. No chance Nibz is doing that or any other, well, I dont know about Adam Yates, but thats that.

The race depends on how Astana will want to race it since they have the best team and the strongest rider in the peloton. Do they want to set a high pace on the early climbs like Saxo/CSC used to back in the days and make the race incredibly hard early, do they want to send Izagirre x2 + Lutsenko up the road, a mix between the two and most importantly, when Fuglsang decides to move (obviously depends on which tactics they emply, but its possible to go very hard (and likely) on the first short, but extremely hard climbs climbs with around 100k to go which hopefully would tire Alaphilippe. But I wont rule out a Redoute attack from Fuglsang and Nibali at all, they are kinda allied but Im almost positive that Nibz wont drop the best on Faucons. But theres obviously also the false flat which always is super important on that climb where you can sneak away if youre there.

 

[Red Rick]

Re: Re:

Nibali will be making Redoute great again along with his old partner in crime. Tomorrow is relatively short as well and the stage haven't been long in this race, but after 5 days that has been raced aggressively, is one day enough to fully recover?

Don't see why anyone would initiate an attack there. All eggs in RaF basket is what I say.

Because Julian most probably can follow attacks on Faucons by himself to anyone, including Fuglsang, who does have the best chances of dropping him there. No chance Nibz is doing that or any other, well, I dont know about Adam Yates, but thats that.

The race depends on how Astana will want to race it since they have the best team and the strongest rider in the peloton. Do they want to set a high pace on the early climbs like Saxo/CSC used to back in the days and make the race incredibly hard early, do they want to send Izagirre x2 + Lutsenko up the road, a mix between the two and most importantly, when Fuglsang decides to move (obviously depends on which tactics they emply, but its possible to go very hard (and likely) on the first short, but extremely hard climbs climbs with around 100k to go which hopefully would tire Alaphilippe. But I wont rule out a Redoute attack from Fuglsang and Nibali at all, they are kinda allied but Im almost positive that Nibz wont drop the best on Faucons. But theres obviously also the false flat which always is super important on that climb where you can sneak away if youre there.

Nobody is gonna just let Nibali ride away. Solo from the Redoute is impossible. Not all domstiques are gone after La Redoute, and Astana and EQS will have the firepower on the part before the RaF. RaF and subsequent false flat is the place to put the hurt on Alaphilippe.

 

[Gigs_98]

It really depends on how the race has developed once they start la redoute. If there is a 100 men peloton at that point he is more likely to win in a sprint than with an attack there, if the race has been really hard and there are only 20 riders left, go for it. I don't see him winning by being the outright strongest anyway.

What I'm most afraid of right now is really that he'll arrive on sunday tired and won't really be able to do anything.

 

[Laplaz]

Nibali's best ally could be Astana (if they make the race hard). Hopefully he can recover until Sunday, this Tour of the Alps is really ridden hard.

 

[Rollthedice]

Even today, Antonio Nibali has long been on the break: “We left the peloton after 35km with the idea of forcing the other teams to work as much as possible. I am very happy with my condition after the altitude training camp and it will be even better in two weeks when the Giro d’Italia will start ”.

In other less important news, Vincenzo is happy that his condition improves and Delfino says Nibs will try again tomorrow.

 

[Bolder]

He attacked relentlessly today -- just to get out dueled at the very end by 2 Sky pups. While it was great to see, I don't think it was a net positive for someone hoping to do well in perhaps the hardest one-day race, just a few days away. After he dropped Froome, I think he made his point. He could have ridden tempo to the finish after that. I saw a LOT of energy being expended on a B-level stage race. If he wasn't doing LBL, then sure, it's good Giro training,

 

[Summoned]

Yeah, I can't see how this bodes well for the Giro. Particularly with the second half of the Giro being pretty much the only part where significant differences can be made. If he is testing his shape now, then I don't see him sustaining it for a month. And there is not any time to do more preparation.

 

[Gigs_98]

Re:

Yeah, I can't see how this bodes well for the Giro. Particularly with the second half of the Giro being pretty much the only part where significant differences can be made. If he is testing his shape now, then I don't see him sustaining it for a month. And there is not any time to do more preparation.

Again, when has Nibali ever faded in a GT? Whenever He was good in preperation races that has been a sign that he'll be good in the race he was preparing for as well. I mean the last two times he had a comparable shape in his last preperation race for a gt were in the 2014 Dauphine and the 2013 giro del Trentino and I wouldn't exactly use those years as examples for him messing up his preperation.

 

[Red Rick]

Nibali has somewhat inconsistent GTs when the top shape isn't quite there. He's only faded badly once, and that was in the 2011 Vuelta when he was nowhere in Poland 2 weeks before the Vuelta and he went from 3rd in GC 11s down after stage 11 to being like 15th on the last few mountain stages, which happened in the 2nd week.

 

[Rollthedice]

He can keep a peak for whatever it takes, the hardest part is to reach it but usually he hits it at the right time, Slongo magic included. What we witness at Tour of the Alps is not yet peak Nibali. My only concern is that he goes loco again tomorrow and he'll be a bit wasted in Liege.

 

[Mayomaniac]

I wouldn't be surprised if he and Slongo decided to go for a LBL and Giro peak, just because he hates the fact that the team is pretty much forcing him to ride the double and he has no real intention to peak for the Tour.

 

[Red Rick]

You mean the Tour i reckon.

 

[Summoned]

My thinking on this could well be wrong, but if his current condition is not sufficient to drop Sivakov and Hart, I don't seem him improving enough to be able to drop Roglic, Dumoulin, Yates, and Bernal in a few weeks. Again, I am often wrong, but I just can't see where he is right now being an indication that we should be optimistic about results in the Giro.

 

[topcat]

TotA is training for Nibs. He will peak on Sunday and again in the Giro. He will fight for the win in both.

 

[Rollthedice]

The numbers are in, courtesy of @ammattipyoraily:

#TotA, Stage 4. Passo Predaia (steepest 3.35 km, 9.28 %, 311 m)

Nibali, Majka, Geoghegan Hart, Sivakov

9:52, 20.37 Kph, VAM 1891 m/h, ~6.4 W/kg (est.)

It was remarkable how Nibali was able to do strong accelerations at that speed. https://t.co/dz1RtGHTkf

 

[JosephK]

Re:

Yeah, I can't see how this bodes well for the Giro. Particularly with the second half of the Giro being pretty much the only part where significant differences can be made. If he is testing his shape now, then I don't see him sustaining it for a month. And there is not any time to do more preparation.

Indeed. Vincenzo pulled out all stops today, but is getting beaten by Sky neo-pros. :lol:
Not that anyone else would have fared any better.

 

[Oliver]

Nibs just need a harder and longer stage to make the difference.

 

[Mayomaniac]

Pozzovivo will miss Romandie, but he should be ok for the Giro.
Good news for Nibali, him and Caruso really make a difference.

 

[SafeBet]

It's not easy to assess Nibali's shape at the moment. Yes, he has looked better than in any prep race since forever but there was nobody remotely close to a Top5 GT candidate in this race. I would use Mattia Cattaneo as an indicator of how weak the competition was.

Liegi will tell us more.

 

[fauniera]

Re:

but there was nobody remotely close to a Top5 GT candidate in this race.

Just kidding.

 

[Red Rick]

Sky doms can hit levels quite close to top 5 levels in GTs in shorter stage races.

 

[Rollthedice]

Re:

It's not easy to assess Nibali's shape at the moment. Yes, he has looked better than in any prep race since forever but there was nobody remotely close to a Top5 GT candidate in this race. I would use Mattia Cattaneo as an indicator of how weak the competition was.

Liegi will tell us more.

He'll be tired in Liege and then he'll win the Giro and we still can't asses his shape. On a more serious note, the numbers posted above prove that those Sky dudes were at a very high level. They will thin the peloton in Giro until there's only a few left and on short stages/stage races they are dynamite. Again, Nibali is in a proper shape, some fine Slongo tuning still missing. Personally I don't think he'll get dropped by anybody in the hard stages of the Giro. Question is if he can drop them and where he can surprise the TT specialists to claw back time.