airstream said:
Only don't boil down this to talent pls. Talent is ...only a bit of a help, a part of success. There are no untalented riders in top-5 of GTs.
I treat Contador and Froome as 2 equal units. They are equally entitle to win and their wins are equally legitimate. Arguing my opinion, you simply go against this equality. It's cycling, not despotism. Any cyclist sooner or later faces a stronger cyclist. The law of life.
Ok, just a question, why do you think that a better than Contador rider (let's assume they use the same doping) can not hit the scene?
For sure, but I think Contador has the edge on Froome in the gifted department. Whether that is down to more years training and racing on a program or not.
Froome grew up at altitude and undoubtedly has a good VO2 Max, although we'll probably never know what it is (correct me if the numbers are out there).
He was fairly dominant in SA - The Jock is our hilliest, probably toughest stage race, won the Tour of Mauritius, 2nd at Giro del Capo - but didn't do much in Europe at Barloworld - almost had a Giro stage win in 2009 - but then he was always a domestique on the pro tour until he got to Sky. At Barloworld he probably wasn't on the orange juice like a few of his teammates were.
Froome has obviously been a top notch responder to the Sky invincible stick-man program - probably GW and AICAR if I had to bet on it. But it looks very much to me like this program has come to the end of the road, just like the rampant use of CERA did a few years back.
My feeling is Sky are in for a bit of a thumping at the tour. Contador for the win, no doubt, barring a crash or positive.