DFA123 said:
The Hegelian said:
The thing that is so striking is that he, Astana, everyone in the peloton, Chaves and all of us knew that he would do what he did. Everyone knew he had something extra, and when it was unleashed it had such a sense of inevitability about it. Scarponi drilling on the front, then ye olde super-high-rev attack that demonstrates you're on a different level to everyone.
But that something extra was not there for the whole race; it hasn't been there for the whole season. His attacks have been shite, he's had to ride defensively after been dropped, lost time even without the mechanical during the tt......there's no way a big package of Giro winning power just suddenly drops from the sky at the precise time when it's most needed.
Such a dirty win.
Not sure about that at all. I didn't see anyone predicting a Nibali win four days ago - the bookmakers certainly had him at pretty long odds.
The extra thing that he had was his recovery, which was much better than Chaves and Kruijswijk. GT winners generally have great recovery - because you have to last the three weeks to win. His form wasn't amazing in the last two days, but it just dropped off nowhere near as much as other riders.
Of course, the recovery is most probably enhanced by a lot of dodgy things - but Nibali is certainly not alone in that respect.
Hello everyone,I'm an Italian and I've been reading your forum since a big time - I don't writ so much for reason you will undestand soon. I'm posting this because I'm disappointed in seeing Astana-like things, also if it involves Italian riders. This a little surge, sorry for my bad english, I hope you can understand me (I'm getting trained by reading your forum, thanks
)
Maybe you won't trust me, but I can assure you I was expecting that "exploit": I'm not a farseer, I was simply remembering last year Giro. Aru did a similar thing, getting a suspicious resurrection in the last stages after having been dropped quite hard on Mortirolo and a bit in Verbania stage; then he showed two fantastic climbing performaces litteraly demolishing Contador, who had to resist and manage his previous advantage. Astana can apply this "tecnhique"; it seems that others cannot, actually.
Kruijswijk would have done the same of Contador without crashing, Nibali would have dropped him anyway. The crash itself has some relation to that, because Kruijswijk said he was on his limits on the top of Colle dell'Agnello - but I don't want to push on that, I has been simply unlucky.
I want to reject the "better recovery theory". It's obviously possible to see a rider progressively outrunning rivals because of his recovery abilities, but that's not the case. I'm saying this because Nibali was having a WORST recovery than rivals: he got slightly dropped on Giau, then he lost a lot of time in the mTT (so he struggled to recover from the effort of the previous day), then he fell in a quite deep difficulty in Andalo stage (on the last short uphill before Andalo he dropped also from Pozzovivo, he got a really bad stage).
Finally he did what we have just seen. Who says that his climbing performaces are not so extreme is right, but that's not the point: thinking relatively, he totally reversed the performance situation in 48h. Previously he had never dropped rivals and he was rebouncing after a single attack, yesterday he was able to do multiple attacks easily dropping Chaves and Valverde. My point is: the reason cannot be a better recover, because his performances were DECREASING; it's also impossible to claim the fading of temporary illness, because he was weaker than rivals since the race start (he was alreading losing time from Kruijswijk, Chaves and co on Roccaraso!).
If you read a good amount of anti-doping litterature you simply cannot trust things like this (fresh BB is the first thought). Sure, I don't know the reason for Nibali's previous bad performances (but history showed us many situations of sudden reversal of performance due to "medical" explanation - I remember Festina sudden explosion narrated by Voet in his book, thanks to the 54-hematocryt trick) and I don't know why his opponents cannot do the same, but it cannot change the fact that it's unbelievable.
Italian medias and spectators are totally closing their eyes, not because they aren't thinking that VN is not clean - maybe I'm totally wrong - but because they sistematically avoid the question: "How is it possible? What happened in those 48 hours?". Italian TV simply avoid to speak about that until now and when he have to they speak about "mental reaction", "motivations" and ridicolous things like that, and it sounds like a joke.
"Cycling experts" working in these "medias" simply know it. Last saturday Cipollini was very relaxed about Nibali's defaillance (Vinokourov like) and he said litterally this: "after tuesday what is lacking to him now will arrive": quite brilliant. (The Hegelian wrote: "everyone knew he had something extra, and when it was unleashed it had such a sense of inevitability about it". That's it.)
And Cipollini was a notorious doper, if you want to read about his doping you don't have to be a The Clinic poster or an expert of Conconi's files: an average spectator can read his doping schedule in 2002 season published by Gazzetta dello Spor, but noone seems to have some puzzlement seeing him on air during Rai's afterstage broadcast saying what I reported (Processo alla Tappa).
Everyone needs to believe in these exploits: we want them, they offer them to us. Pantani is hypocritically celebrated with Giro stages and dedicated climbs, victories like Lillehammer 1994 in cross country skiing are remembered like big events, Conconi doesn't exist (except for a small minority) and last week a big mayoral candidate in Rome said that Manuela Di Centa will be a member of his team for a "cleaner sport".
Sorry for my big post, but I'm very disappointed after seeing things like that. Thanks for your forum, I found a lot of information and interesting discussion.
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