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Who has the best palmares: Valverde vs. Nibali

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Who has the best palmares?

  • Alejandro Valverde

    Votes: 51 34.2%

  • Vincenzo Nibali

    Votes: 98 65.8%
  • Total voters
    149
R

rallybanana

Apr 27, 2022
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movingtarget said:
Most fans would pick the stronger GT rider over the superior classics rider but I think there valid arguments for both.
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I can understand GT specialists being more popular than classics specialists. However, the magnitude of the difference surprises me. On this forum, the official Contador thread is 280 times longer than the Boonen thread. How did that happen?
 
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Tonton

Tonton

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rallybanana said:
I can understand GT specialists being more popular than classics specialists. However, the magnitude of the difference surprises me. On this forum, the official Contador thread is 280 times longer than the Boonen thread. How did that happen?
Click to expand...
LaFlo...that's what happened.

And that was and is great for our forum. Boonen fans are many, some in a generic form, if LaFlo loved Boonen instead of Bertie, Tom's thread would be 280 pages long...

Come on La Florecita, give me a like :)
 
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SHAD0W93

SHAD0W93

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rallybanana said:
I can understand GT specialists being more popular than classics specialists. However, the magnitude of the difference surprises me. On this forum, the official Contador thread is 280 times longer than the Boonen thread. How did that happen?
Click to expand...
On top of the Contador vs Armstrong, Schleck, Nibali, and especially Froome posts. Then you’d get Froome flames starting stuff with Contador fans and vice versa. And yes, LaFlo is probably responsible for about 1/4 of the posts in the thread. I’m sure if the forum was around in 2004 he’d have gotten a lot more hits compared to whenever it started.
 
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gregrowlerson

gregrowlerson

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rallybanana said:
I can understand GT specialists being more popular than classics specialists. However, the magnitude of the difference surprises me. On this forum, the official Contador thread is 280 times longer than the Boonen thread. How did that happen?
Click to expand...

Only one way that this is going to change.

Remco becomes a classics specialist.
 
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gregrowlerson

gregrowlerson

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I'm not that familiar with Boonen's career, but there also wasn't as much to discuss as with Contador. Tom burst onto the scene, immediately being a superstar in the cobbled classics season. Every year we knew what Tom should focus on, and he did, and he always rode for the same team? The only change seemed to be an early ability to win bunch sprints, soon evaporated, probably leading to even greater April focus. Whereas with Contador he had multiple team changes, the suspension controversy, should he ride Tour or Giro debates, the Armstrong beef, the feeling that he could 'make the race' and save people from Sky.....Boonen always focused on RVV and PR and those races were rarely controlled in the way that grand tours could be, whether Tom was in them and attacking long range, or not.
 
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gregrowlerson

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SHAD0W93 said:
He also somehow had the Nizzolo treatment of a thread being made for him, and nobody commentated in it for 6 years despite having really good results. How the heck did that happen. Especially how little traffic he got compared to like Cancellara.
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Yeah there was a forum period where not many members were passionate about classics (appears to have changed in recent years, possibly helped by GT riders being more prominent in them). It was BE and AE (Before Echoes/After Echoes).
 
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tobydawq

tobydawq

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There was a week each year where it was relevant to talk about Boonen, especially after the birth of the forum (2009) after which he didn't feature in the Tour again.

Cancellara was a bit more visible throughout the year.

I think that if the forum had been five years older, there would have been much more hype for Boonen when he burst onto the scene.
 
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Red Rick

Red Rick

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rallybanana said:
I can understand GT specialists being more popular than classics specialists. However, the magnitude of the difference surprises me. On this forum, the official Contador thread is 280 times longer than the Boonen thread. How did that happen?
Click to expand...
gregrowlerson said:
I'm not that familiar with Boonen's career, but there also wasn't as much to discuss as with Contador. Tom burst onto the scene, immediately being a superstar in the cobbled classics season. Every year we knew what Tom should focus on, and he did, and he always rode for the same team? The only change seemed to be an early ability to win bunch sprints, soon evaporated, probably leading to even greater April focus. Whereas with Contador he had multiple team changes, the suspension controversy, should he ride Tour or Giro debates, the Armstrong beef, the feeling that he could 'make the race' and save people from Sky.....Boonen always focused on RVV and PR and those races were rarely controlled in the way that grand tours could be, whether Tom was in them and attacking long range, or not.
Click to expand...
I think it's much more that Boonen peaked before CN forum rider threads became a really big thing. Rider threads pretty much started after Boonens last massive season. And I'm not sure there weren't at one point multiple Boonen threads that got forgotten about.

Also I don't really think thread size reflects popularity that well, but it's more about having a handful of posters that systematically talk in a riders thread, even if they're not even fans. Even now Nibalis thread has that much more so than Pogacar.

Stage races are also much more effective in generating engagement in forum threads, and in the last 5 years of his career Boonen only had like 5 race days a year that really mattered a lot to him, and by the end it was literally only Roubaix.
 
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