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Vuelta a España Who Will Win the Vuelta 2019?

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Who will win the Vuelta 2019?


  • Total voters
    145
  • Poll closed .
the f*ck? Vallverde never worked for anybody

Riiight... Maybe rewatch the 2016 Tour. It was embarrassing how much better he was than Quintana but had to support him because the little egotist couldn't handle not being considered the top guy.

Also the 2014 stage where Valverde was in front of the peloton working for Quintana the entire last climb but still won the stage. That was glorious.
 
Voted Lopez, even though I hope Quintana puts in a decent performance. Nothing like my favorite GT of the year to get back into cycling. Grew tired with /desillusioned from cycling because of the historic injustice, I felt that injury of Pinot was and later Lambrecht's passing.
 
Carapaz is getting very little respect in this thread, how come?
  1. He already won a GT this year. This tends to not be followed up with another.
  2. Is there maybe a feeling that even the Giro he won was due to a combination of factors; Roglic and Nibali watched each other instead of him, Roglic’s crash, he was allowed more leeway than his teammate Landa, etc. Also the factor that the Giro version of Movistar rode with structure, purpose, and some tactical focus, whereas they will have more of the Tour Movistar squad along this time.
 
Jumbo have the strongest team, I think, just about, although it's possible that having the jersey from stage one will hurt them. And the form of the tour guys like Bennet and Kruiswijk may not be there.

Will Movistar support Carapaz fully? Not sure anyone can predict that :)

I voted Rogla, just ahead of MAL and Carapaz for me. Mostly for team reasons.
 
Carapaz is getting very little respect in this thread, how come?
Others have named some factors that might account for his not being the out-and-out favorite: already rode hard this season in winning a GT, uncertainty about form coming into the Vuelta, thoughts about Roglic maybe learning from his Giro preparation and making adjustments, Jumbo coming in with a very strong team, etc. But I wouldn't be surprised if Carapaz wins this Vuelta. It is very plausible. I would be quite surprised if he finishes outside the top 5 (barring injury or illness).
 
Valverde had come up through the ranks today I think he would have been pushed toward being purely a GT hopeful. He's got incredible punch to win stages at the end, can handle really long races/stages, and has always been at fighting weight. The knock against him in GTs has been long climbs at altitude, or something like that, but training methods have advanced since the last century and I could see him winning all 3 tours in a career with a WC RR or two, but fewer one-day victories.

He's also been something of a lone wolf, but he might have been reined in under a structured team like Ineos. Fun to speculate either way. For this Vuelta his time may have passed but certainly a podium is possible if the chips fall his way.


It's actually more likely they'd have tried to push him towards the classics than being a GT rider due to his skill set. It's also unlikely he would have allowed that and would have found a team willing to let him be who he is and be the all rounder that he truly is. It's also highly unlikely that new training methods would do anything for his issues of high altitude as you can't force a body to adjust if it's just not willing to. As he's said several times: He was born, raised and still lives as sea level. His body doesn't adjust to high altitude and he's actually prone to altitude sickness. Actually he's said that a structured team would have destroyed him. He can't function in that type of setting. He's talked about the fact that he trains 2-4 hours a day and that doing training riders over 4 hours is over training. A team like Ineos wouldn't understand that and would have him over training majorly because he doesn't need the type of training they require. He's flat out said that because he rarely trains 4 hours a day it's a big part of why he's had as long of a career as he's said. He can do short training rides, spend a lot of time at home with his family and still race at a level he wants to be at. It's not something most riders can do.
 
I don't think that Valverde had the pure GT talent to win a Tour de France. He might have picked off a weak Giro with some luck if he'd peaked at exactly the right moment. Consistent as he's been he's also consistently been not good enough to win them.

He's 39. I think hyping him up as a favorite is silly. But that doesn't detract from his legacy.
I believe if he took the same approach as many of his grand tour/stage race opponents, by not competing at a high level throughout the season and focusing on a select few events, then his palmares in grand tours would be more impressive. Early in his career, there was a very short period where he was seen as the next threat to topple Armstrong from his throne. This was before he had consecutive years of crashing out of the Tour. His entire career he has raced pretty much flat out in all the events he took part, be they one day classics, week long stage races or grand tours. It could be argued that, as far as his approach to the Tour and grand tours in general, he is his own worst enemy. And yet he has still had a very impressive career and will eventually end his career as his country's greatest one day racer and one of their greatest overall racers of all time.
 
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Riiight... Maybe rewatch the 2016 Tour. It was embarrassing how much better he was than Quintana but had to support him because the little egotist couldn't handle not being considered the top guy.

Also the 2014 stage where Valverde was in front of the peloton working for Quintana the entire last climb but still won the stage. That was glorious.

I keep reading how Valverde was miles better than Quintana in the 2016, but I don't remember it being actually the case.

Maybe you can remind me what I missed about the 2016 Tour in the Valverde thread?
 
I believe if he took the same approach as many of the grand tour/stage race opponents, by not competing at a high level throughout the season and focusing on a select few events then his palmares in grand tours would be more impressive. Early in his career, there was very short period where he was seen as the next threat to topple Armstrong from his throne. This was before he had consecutive years of crashing out of the Tour. His entire career he has raced pretty much flat out in all the events he took part, be they one day classics, week long stage races or grand tours. It could be argued that, as far as his approach to the Tour and grand tours in general, he is his own worst enemy. And yet he has still had a very impressive career and will eventually end his career as his countries greatest one day racer and one of their greatest overall racers of all time.

Add to that he is tied with Indurain for most ever Grand Tour podiums by a Spaniard at 8 officially. Contador has officially 7 (unofficially 8). Granted Contador's are all victories, while 7 of Indurian's are victories and only 1 of Valverde's is a win.
 
Add to that he is tied with Indurain for most ever Grand Tour podiums by a Spaniard at 8 officially. Contador has officially 7 (unofficially 8). Granted Contador's are all victories, while 7 of Indurian's are victories and only 1 of Valverde's is a win.
Contador has 9 wins in gt's but he could have more podiums if he would have raced like quintana. 2013 tour comes to my mind, he was exploding, in every single mountain finish, trying to follow froome or attacking on descents.
 
Contador has 9 wins in gt's but he could have more podiums if he would have raced like quintana. 2013 tour comes to my mind, he was exploding, in every single mountain finish, trying to follow froome or attacking on descents.

Unofficially Contador has 9 wins. 2 were stripped from him thus officially he has 7 and thus 7 podiums and is 1 behind Indurain and Valverde in that respect. Yes he could have, but it wasn't his style of racing. That's something I think many of us love and miss about Contador. He was and all or nothing rider. I remember him saying at the 2015 Tour that a podium would mean a lot more to other riders that it would to him.
 
It's actually more likely they'd have tried to push him towards the classics than being a GT rider due to his skill set. It's also unlikely he would have allowed that and would have found a team willing to let him be who he is and be the all rounder that he truly is. It's also highly unlikely that new training methods would do anything for his issues of high altitude as you can't force a body to adjust if it's just not willing to. As he's said several times: He was born, raised and still lives as sea level. His body doesn't adjust to high altitude and he's actually prone to altitude sickness. Actually he's said that a structured team would have destroyed him. He can't function in that type of setting. He's talked about the fact that he trains 2-4 hours a day and that doing training riders over 4 hours is over training. A team like Ineos wouldn't understand that and would have him over training majorly because he doesn't need the type of training they require. He's flat out said that because he rarely trains 4 hours a day it's a big part of why he's had as long of a career as he's said. He can do short training rides, spend a lot of time at home with his family and still race at a level he wants to be at. It's not something most riders can do.
I think you do Ineos a disservice to suggest that they wouldn’t structure their training schedule to get the most out of a rider like Valverde. Let’s not forget that Sky have a handy enough classics record (Thomas, Stannard, Poels, Kwiat) to go with their very impressive Grand Tour output, and other riders have tended to go off the boil after leaving. It suggests that their training programs are at the very least composed with some feedback from the riders themselves; Kwiatkowski actually had a pretty poor first year with them, they tweaked his training and his program, and the following season he won MSR, Donostia, and a rake of other things, as well as a MOTM performance helping Froome to Tour win #4 (iirc).
 
It's a great name, a young one to watch for sure. Not sure if this is his time, yet.

His early season injury means that he has less racing behind him this year than other contenders which might be advantage at this point. However at this point of his career, his peak performance can't match others' peak performance, but then other question is how many riders find their peak for this race.
 
I think you do Ineos a disservice to suggest that they wouldn’t structure their training schedule to get the most out of a rider like Valverde. Let’s not forget that Sky have a handy enough classics record (Thomas, Stannard, Poels, Kwiat) to go with their very impressive Grand Tour output, and other riders have tended to go off the boil after leaving. It suggests that their training programs are at the very least composed with some feedback from the riders themselves; Kwiatkowski actually had a pretty poor first year with them, they tweaked his training and his program, and the following season he won MSR, Donostia, and a rake of other things, as well as a MOTM performance helping Froome to Tour win #4 (iirc).

The problem is they are very, very structured and they aren't going to change that while Valverde has said he could never survive in a structured envirnment like Ineos/Sky has. He does not do well if he has to train away from home. Even when he does "training camps" and those are usually with a few of his friends they still aren't that far away from home. A couple years ago Sky went away from pasta and pasties. Something about their riders weren't allowed to eat those things. (possible that's changed since then as that was a few years ago now). I remember Valverde being one of the more vocal riders saying that's fine for them but that he would never ride for a team that tried to tell him what he isn't allowed to eat. That comment was accompanied by a photo of him with a huge bowl of pasta with seafood in it. He loves both pasta and pastries.
 

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