wasted talents

[ak-zaaf]

there have been a lot of riders who made a very promising start, but got lost along the way for various reasons.

the obvious names are riviere, ullrich, vandenbroucke... maybe berzin


what riders do you think could have gotten a massive palmares if it didn't go wrong somewhere down the line?

 

[Digger]

there have been a lot of riders who made a very promising start, but got lost along the way for various reasons.

the obvious names are riviere, ullrich, vandenbroucke... maybe berzin


what riders do you think could have gotten a massive palmares if it didn't go wrong somewhere down the line?

Jean Francois Bernard
Eric Caritoux

 

[ak-zaaf]

Jean Francois Bernard
Eric Caritoux

thnx, had to read up on caritoux and it seems contador wasn't the first to win a gt straight off the beach:

The story of Caritoux's victory in the 1984 Vuelta a España is quite extraordinary in that he won a Grand Tour as a second year professional which is quite unusual. However, even more unusual is that, one week before the start, neither Caritoux or his team had any intention of actually riding the race. At that time the Vuelta started in the second half of April and the Skil manager Jean de Gribaldy had made a promise at the start of the year to the Vuelta organisers that his team would be on the start line. A promise he had forgotten about but the organisers had not, de Gribaldy was threatened with a £50,000 fine if the team did not ride, he had to scrape together a squad for the Vuelta at the last minute, this included the holidaying Caritoux, who was told to get to Geneva and then fly to Jerez de la Frontera in the south of Spain where the Vuelta was starting.

 

[BroDeal]

Do I need to even post the name "Tommy D." or is it just somethign that is understood without being mentioned?

I still have hopes for him at the Vuelta... He did manage to finish the Giro this year, so he is hitting a high note.

 

[Indurain]

Probably one of the biggest was Beloki after his accident. I guess he gave up the dope after that.

Jose Rujano: 3rd in Giro 2005. Good for nothing since then

Aitor Gonzalez: Vuelta winner 2002. Good for nothing since then

Jose Enrique Gutierrez Giro 2nd Place 2006. What's has he done since?

Damiano Cunego: 2004 Winner: Almost unbeatable then. Unable to compete in any Grand tour since.

The amount of talent you would need to achieve a podium in any of these races would be immense. So why haven't they done much since then? Perhaps they are one of the good one's who actually gave up or reduced doping. What other explaination is there? You don't lose that talent (other than through accident like Beloki).

 

[ak-zaaf]

Do I need to even post the name "Tommy D." or is it just somethign that is understood without being mentioned?

I still have hopes for him at the Vuelta... He did manage to finish the Giro this year, so he is hitting a high note.

that's pretty much american, i guess.
i don't know anybody here who expected him to be a real giant.

it's probably comparable to the dutch 'pieter weening is going to win the 2008 tour de france' started by a journalist a couple of years ago.

 

[marinoni]

Gilles Delion. As for more current riders Popovych comes to mind. He was regarded as a once in a generation talent as an U23 rider and absolutely stomped Boonen in the U23 world rankings his last year. After a couple impressive Giros it's all gone kind of flat.

 

[ilillillli]

popovych for sure.

sylvan chavanel. i know he's done alright, but people used to talk about him like he was the second coming of jacques anquetil.

 

[BroDeal]

Damiano Cunego: 2004 Winner: Almost unbeatable then. Unable to compete in any Grand tour since.

Three Giro di Lombardia wins
Amstel Gold win
2nd in the 2008 world champion road race
2nd in the 2008 UCI ProTour
Very high placings at a number of classics

His career has turned out different than it looked like it would in 2004, but he has had a very successful career. He has become a threat at hilly one day Classics, including LBL, Fleche-Wallonne, Amstel Gold, and Lombardia.

He is my pick for the WC RR this year.

 

[mr. tibbs]

I thought Ullrich did pretty well...

 

[ilillillli]

christophe moreau never won the tour he was supposed to.
bradley mcgee was never as good as i wanted him to be.
bobby jullich never took it all the way

 

[Epicycle]

 

[ak-zaaf]

I thought Ullrich did pretty well...

oh come on

it's hard to get all cycling journalists in the same direction, but after the '97 tour there was one thing everybody agreed on: ullrich was going to dominate cycling for the next 10 years.
even during his career the consensus was that he was physically more talented than armstrong but his lazyness, love for cupcakes and wine and lack of love for the sport stopped him from achieving more than one tour win.

 

[marinoni]

oh come on

it's hard to get all cycling journalists in the same direction, but after the '97 tour there was one thing everybody agreed on: ullrich was going to dominate cycling for the next 10 years.
even during his career the consensus was that he was physically more talented than armstrong but his lazyness, love for cupcakes and wine and lack of love for the sport stopped him from achieving more than one tour win.

I've never completely bought that whole thing about Ullrich's superhuman talent. For sure winning a Tour at age 23 is impressive but that wasn't the strongest field that year. When the biggest obstacle to winning the Tour is beating Ricky Virenque, life is pretty sweet. Armstrong constantly billed Ullrich as being more talented but there are pretty obvious competitive/mind game reasons for saying that.

 

[Gregory]

Jose Enrique Gutierrez Giro 2nd Place 2006. What's has he done since

He's more of a candidate for the Clinic section, than a "wasted talent". Talk about good timing to step back. No one will take away his 2nd place at Giro, and after 20 years no one will remeber the circumstances. Good timing...

 

[Cobber]

I thought Ullrich did pretty well...

oh come on

it's hard to get all cycling journalists in the same direction, but after the '97 tour there was one thing everybody agreed on: ullrich was going to dominate cycling for the next 10 years.
even during his career the consensus was that he was physically more talented than armstrong but his lazyness, love for cupcakes and wine and lack of love for the sport stopped him from achieving more than one tour win.

Perhaps we should move this discussion to the Lance Armstrong doping thread.

Seriously though, I agree with Mr Tibbs. Without Lance, Ullrich would have won the 2000, 2001 and 2003 Tours, and came second in 5 Tours total. He won the Vuelta, 2 world championships and the Sydney Olympic road race. His only mistake was turning up to the 1998 TdF too fat!

 

[issoisso]

Best pick so far, in my humble opinion. Too bad he loves the cupcakes more than the bike.

Anyway, no disrespect to any of the previous picks, but the biggest wasted talent by a rural kilometer (I'd say a country mile, but I'm european ) has to be Valentino China.

 

[Jonathan]

oh come on

it's hard to get all cycling journalists in the same direction, but after the '97 tour there was one thing everybody agreed on: ullrich was going to dominate cycling for the next 10 years.
even during his career the consensus was that he was physically more talented than armstrong but his lazyness, love for cupcakes and wine and lack of love for the sport stopped him from achieving more than one tour win.

Yes, if Ullrich had trained he would have won. Ofcourse we all know that Ullrich did not train; he ate cupcakes! Although you may have your BS-myths wrong here - the last time I checked, it was doughnuts.

What a loser that Ullrich was - achieving only one Tour win!

 

[Mambo95]

Andreas Kloden - a man seemingly most happy in the right hand man role. When forced by circumstances, he's made the Tour podium. But he doesn't seem to want to be number 1.

 

[harlond]

I thought Ullrich did pretty well...

+1

it's hard to get all cycling journalists in the same direction, but after the '97 tour there was one thing everybody agreed on: ullrich was going to dominate cycling for the next 10 years. even during his career the consensus was that he was physically more talented than armstrong but his lazyness, love for cupcakes and wine and lack of love for the sport stopped him from achieving more than one tour win.

How many lazy lardbutts make it onto the podium in the TdF? And do it multiple times? Every year a dozen guys target the Tour, spend their whole seasons training hard, and can't make the podium. Some spend more than one year and never make it. Ullrich succeeds multiple times where others have failed, and we take that as evidence of laziness and lack of commitment. Hard to see the sense in that.

 

[auscyclefan94]

christophe moreau never won the tour he was supposed to.
bradley mcgee was never as good as i wanted him to be.
bobby jullich never took it all the way

i disagree with about Mcgee.
Pursuit gold medalist, pursuit world champion, a part of pursuit wr team.
leaders jersey at every GT. 2x stage winner at TDF (Paris Prologue,), Won stages at Vuelta and Giro + 8th overall at Giro. I wouldn't call that a dissapointing palmares.
I do agree with you about the others.
Some others to add to the list
-Sandy Casar
-Sylvain Chavanel
-Trent Lowe ( career is fading)
-Will Walker (Tragic heart troubles to a great rider, could of been great gc rider)

 

[Timmy-loves-Rabo]

Sylvain Chavanel?
Maybe excluding this last tour he has always rode his heart out, no way is he a wasted talent. And to be fair I never heard anyone claiming he was the next best thing, if anything Chavenel has exceeded expectations.

Moreau is a good one.
Haedo should be up for nomination.
Danielson has been very average since 05/06 vuelta.

 

[Moondance]

Evgeni Petrov maybe, although all he never really showed major promise with the big boys

 

[Carl0880]

I think Kloden might be the biggest waste of talent, but it was his choice to constantly not be "the guy"

What about Danilo Hondo. Granted his got put back because of the weird suspension situation, but he looked like he was going to be Zabel's successor for Germany, but just never could quite get there.

Another wasted talent would be Rumsas. On another thread, Papp commented how gifted he was, but due to the police incident with his wife and etc, we only got 2 or 3 years out of him.

Someone personal I think we could have seen alot more from was Santiago Botero. Top TT, high quality climber but he never had a team dedicated to just him. He worked for Escartin, and co lead with Sevilla, Vinokourov (Eventhough Botero was awful in that tour), and then Landis.

 

[dsut4392]

Tom Boonen.

Sure, he has a great palmares, but how much better could it be if he wasn't a coke snorting binge drinking lying drunk driver "somebody spiked my drink" whiner off the bike?

Banned from TDF 2008, let in under protest in 2009 and seriously underperformed (and screwed up the QS roster in the process).

Fits my idea of a wasted talent.