Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana 2025, Spain, February 5-9

[Cookster15]

Another ordinary result for Jai Hindley. I am beginning to wonder how he managed to win the 2022 Giro? He was superb then, now seems relatively ordinary. I know its early February but I would expect him to finish ahead of riders like Bilbao, Arensman and McKnulty.

 

[KZD]

Heroic effort from Vacek to hold on to the lead and a great performance from Buitrago.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

The adjusted results have Blackmore finishing 35th, 03:25 behind Buitrago, so like Freire's his disappearance too was greatly exaggerated.

 

[Escarabajo]

Another ordinary result for Jai Hindley. I am beginning to wonder how he managed to win the 2022 Giro? He was superb then, now seems relatively ordinary. I know its early February but I would expect him to finish ahead of riders like Bilbao, Arensman and McKnulty.

It is Frebruary!
We just can't read too much into some riders results. Who knows what he did during his break!

 

[tobydawq]

Shame Kern-Pharma are so bad at TTT for this race. He could earn them a lot of points in those asian unipuerto races though.

If it had been an ITT, he would likely have missed the timecut, so at least there's some solace to take there.

 

[Escarabajo]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1887595153457881400

Hmm surely not, that would make it one of the best 10-15 minute efforts of all time and other randomers weren't far behind, think the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

I've been thinking there must be some kind of mistake in a lot of these estimates since Plateau de Beille, because it's like there are 10 Contador level riders tipping up to every 2.1 all of a sudden.

Well, it's simple with Plateau de Beille—we had Pantani's numbers, and he completely shattered them. I didn’t even need to check the data to know he had beaten them by a wide margin.

 

[Rockestar_33]

It is Frebruary!
We just can't read too much into some riders results. Who knows what he did during his break!

He wasn't great at our Nats either tbf.

 

[Peyroteo94]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1887595153457881400

Hmm surely not, that would make it one of the best 10-15 minute efforts of all time and other randomers weren't far behind, think the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

I've been thinking there must be some kind of mistake in a lot of these estimates since Plateau de Beille, because it's like there are 10 Contador level riders tipping up to every 2.1 all of a sudden.

So he did 7,3 w/kg for 12 minutes. Lequack put an image of Buitrago doing 6,78 w/kg. Huge difference. I don't believe 7,3 w/kg, is too high.

 

[Rou]

So he did 7,3 w/kg for 12 minutes. Lequack put an image of Buitrago doing 6,78 w/kg. Huge difference. I don't believe 7,3 w/kg, is too high.

You are right to not believe these numbers because they are inflated. Watts2win have Buitrago's performance at 6.94W/Kg for 11:20 which is believable and still very impressive. 7.3 W/kg for 12+ minutes are Vingegaard level numbers.

 

[YavorD]

Another ordinary result for Jai Hindley. I am beginning to wonder how he managed to win the 2022 Giro? He was superb then, now seems relatively ordinary. I know its early February but I would expect him to finish ahead of riders like Bilbao, Arensman and McKnulty.

Well all of Hindley, Vlasov and Higuita had their best season when they joined Bora in 2022 and then they regressed..

 

[Unchained]

Don't know if races are the same when you don't get the Spanish speaking version for Mexico, Central and South America!! Don't need to understand a word to get excited!!

View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=c-9UkPobutU&pp=ygUNY2ljbGlzbW8gbmV3cw%3D%3D

 

[Unchained]

This is every race, every move a Colombian makes a move the world shifts.. It's important.. At least to the commentary team!!

 

[Landeirovic]

Vacek crashed hard

 

[RedheadDane]

1		93	MUÑOZ Francisco	26:06
2		106	SCALCO Matteo	9:09
3		144	IRIBAR Unai	11:02
4		153	CALZONI Walter	14:33
5		176	RIDOLFO Filippo	24:14
6		217	PRIETO Jose Juan	21:14

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Another ordinary result for Jai Hindley. I am beginning to wonder how he managed to win the 2022 Giro? He was superb then, now seems relatively ordinary. I know its early February but I would expect him to finish ahead of riders like Bilbao, Arensman and McKnulty.

Sometimes riders who are strong on recovery and get better as long races go on will have better results in three week races than they have in one week races. Steven Kruijswijk, for example, has more top 5s in GTs (four) than he has in all other major WT stage races (three - two at the Tour de Suisse and one at the Volta a Catalunya). Enric Mas, despite actually being a decent one-day racer, has never hit the podium of a major one week race unless you count his win at the Tour of Guangxi, yet he has 4 podiums at the Vuelta. Carlos Sastre managed 15 GT top 10s including of course winning the Tour, but has next to no comparable results in one-week races.

Hindley may be similar; though he has secured a few decent stage race results in the last three years, he only has one podium, that being Tirreno-Adriatico last year, to go with his two Giro podiums (the win and the 2nd in 2020). While 2020's result could be written off as being a bit of an outlier because of the weirdness of the 2020 season and the multiple GTs being crammed into a short period of time, Hindley was demonstrably at his strongest in week 3 and, even though he won on Blockhaus on stage 9, I think a fair case could be made that given the main decisive stages coming late on and Bora being the ones at the helm to drive the very few interesting stages in the 2022 Giro, suggesting that Hindley was feeling good on those days, the same was the case in that Giro too. And he has shown that while maybe his performances were a step below 2022 the last couple of seasons, he's far from being a Tao Geogeghan Hart or a Mikayla Harvey, riders whose performances during the immediate post-pandemic season showcased a level that they simply haven't been able to replicate or even really come close to replicating in subsequent years, suggesting that the uneven impact of the pandemic on different locations and training opportunities may have meant that they were performing at a level relative to competition that they'd not be able to sustain once normalcy resumed.

With this being the first time he's realistically turned a pedal in anger this season, he may just not be up to pace yet. We're a long way from sounding the alarm. Also, with regards to that 2022 Giro - that was a pretty tamely raced edition (as seems to be the norm at the moment), with his team being the prime architects of what little action there actually was. In a conservative race where most act to preserve what they have, it may only take a couple of good days and not cracking like an egg elsewhere to get into that mix, if others do not take advantage of your bad days, which leads to closer but less interesting races. I think back to Michele Scarponi talking of seeing Ryder Hesjedal suffering on the back of the group on the bigger climbs in the first week of the 2012 Giro, but that the riders up top like himself, Basso, Rodríguez etc. didn't take action to drop him even when he had the maglia rosa after Roccà di Cambio, because they felt he would drop away over time on that basis and were saving themselves for later in the race... only for Ryder to ride himself into form, and still be in close enough contact when those big mountains did arrive, to take advantage when those others had their bad days and fell away.

 

[Tim Cahill]

Remedio isn't that bad, the hardest section is early, they might have to drop him on the 10% kilometre otherwise he can limit the damage and tt back on the plateau but his shoulder is a question mark.

 

[Coffeeplanter]

Vacek dropping.

 

[Tim Cahill]

Vacek is done, they drilled it hard early

 

[Tim Cahill]

Ghebreigzabhier is doing a good job, just gotta pray they start indulging in some serious f*cking around

 

[Tim Cahill]

Sivakov doing a bit of an Ayuso job hanging on after his pull

 

[carolina]

He did? just came home, thats awfull. Vacek along with Jan Christen was on my bingo card of riders which was gonne take shocking leaps this year. Loved the way he finished last year. Super strong rider with a perfect age

Crash hard in sense of considerable time off the bike or just hurt?

He is still in the race, but already losing time.

 

[SafeBet]

Sosa dropped?

 

[Tim Cahill]

Almeida about to do an attack of 450 watts consistent for 7 minutes with 3 guys on his wheel.

 

[Tim Cahill]

Movistar are ****ing flying here we go

 

[Netserk]

Sivakov dropped.