King Boonen said:
Only person to beat Sky "the super dopers" procycling at their own game, twice, walked a massively difficult Giro making everyone else look like a chump and almost doubles up with a second GT at the Vuelta, only getting beaten because a fresh doper is quicker than a tired doper. Yet hardly gets a mention in here from people who claim they just want to discuss doping performances, not attack certain riders. That was funny. He'll close the show with a standing ovation if he wins the world's.
The question is "who made you lol
the most. this season"
Key words there,
the most.
So on the one hand you have Nibali, who i myself have made enemies arguing is dirty, and therefore always get a little annoyed at the accusations that he gets a free ride.
But you have Nibali, who is the same age as Froome, who for what is still the majority of his career was, quite literally, 10 times the rider of Chris Froome.
And he is now, performing quite a bit below Froome. I mean they have met 2 times in gts, both time Froome was a domestique and beat Nibali. In the 2012 Tour Froome lost a minute and a half on a puncture, spent large sections on the front and was not allowed to put any time into Nibali on the mountain stages unless Wiggins put time in as well, still in the end comfortably crushed Nibali for 2nd place.
To illustrate the comparison we have Nibali
0
___________ ----------------
___________100
Froome
0
___------------------------------------
___ 100
Now you may say performance is more important than improvement.
Well Nibali's ascent up Tre Cime did not match Di Lucas and riccos. His performance up Angliru while better than his previous attempt was still only about 15th or something all time. Same with Pena Cabarga.
Froome meanwhile put hisself right up there in the all time lists of 2 major Tour de France climbs. Just behind Armstrong both times rather than 2 minutes down on Heras like Nibali.
Froome also while performing noticibly better than Nibali in the mountains performed significantly better than Nibali in the tts. 5th fastest tt in Tour history was it, the one in Mont San Michelle .Something like that considering Tony Martins was the 3rd fastest and Froome was 15 seconds down.
Then he won of course the other one, and won a tt Romandie, 2nd in Criterium etc.
Nibali finished top 5 in 2 tts that suited him in gt's. yes he won one but it was the mountain tt where they rode road bikes.
And finally Nibali unlike Froome, did not manage to hold peak for 6 straight months or whatever it was, which for the second year running proves to be perhaps the most amazing part of Sky's TDF winner's performance for the season.
So really its apples and oranges. Is Nibali suspicious yes. But that is not the question. And I don't see how you can possibly chide anyone for choosing Froome as the bigger lol of the season over Nibali. In absolutely every comparison we have he beats Nibali quite easy.
He simply was the bigger lol of the season, over Nibali anyway, by quite some margin. There is no 2 ways about it. And thats why Froome is getting mentioned in this thread and not Nibali.
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I wanted to finish the post here but I noticed you said it was a massively difficult Giro, which leads me to question whether you are serious about anything you post. It was almost certainly the least race days and kilometers a GT has had in quite a while.
And as far as mountains go I count that it had 8, including one they finished half way up and one they started half way up.
I don't know how many mountains the 2004 giro had but if it was more than 8, then we might have to go back to the April Vuelta's to find a gt with less climbing.
It doesn't matter so much to the wider point - is Nibali as suspicious as Froome, but, by recent standards this was the easiest Giro by far, and only "massively difficult" if one goes by the mantra that all stage races are by definition massively difficult.