3.142
Striker
I think Van Aert has been even more unbelievable. Winning bunch sprint stages, could have won mountain stages and almost the time trial.
Tour de France 2020
- Thread starter Liverpool Beachball
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Far Tibetan Mountain
Striker
Oh, Van Aert is almost certainly juiced going off his performances in this tour, and it was quite nice to see how gutted he looked at the end there, but Pogacar has been setting climbibg records all tour and finished a minute clear of the rest of the field today. He was also on his own without really having a team to speak of.
Because Team sky didn't dominate from start to finish?
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Dave Herbal
Striker
Oooh. Well that’s taken as read. I just assumed sky could afford to buy the best riders
admwil
Striker
shades of Lance Armstrong
Thurston
Winger
Ineos as they’re now called and Jumbo-Visma are by far the strongest teams in terms of the collection of riders they have, and, all the ‘infrastructure’ if you like, that goes with it. For analogies sake, they’re Barcelona and Real Madrid. Which only makes Pogacar’s victory yesterday all the more absurd.
The cynic in me would likely think anyway that there’s riders who will have taken advantage of the lax testing during the first half of the year as a result of Covid. But yesterday was ridiculous.
Looking at yesterday’s results, I would use Remi Cavagna’s time (113th overall) - who ultimately ended up in sixth place in the stage - as a baseline for roughly the time you’d expect a particularly strong time-triallist to come in at. Dumoulin, Porte, Van Aert and Roglic all finished within 38 seconds of his time, and the four below to round out the top ten on the stage were within 54 seconds of him.
This gives you an idea how anomalous Pogacar’s time was. He finished 1 minute 59 ahead of Cavagna.
Even in their masks, the picture of Van Aert and Dumoulin’s reaction was worth a million words, I thought. If I was going to do a tl;dr version I would say their expression were along the lines of “what the f***ing fuck is this shit?”
I watched the ITV4 coverage and the commentary on him was ridiculous. “Is he a sprinter who can climb really well? Or is he a climber who can sprint and time-trial really well...” I was thinking errr mate, do you watch the same sport I do? Have you noticed the not so subtle differences between sprinters and climbers?
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3.142
Striker
Laurent Jalabert springs to mind, who of course was far from clean. He won the green and polka dot jerseys iirc.Ineos as they’re now called and Jumbo-Visma are by far the strongest teams in terms of the collection of riders they have, and, all the ‘infrastructure’ if you like, that goes with it. For analogies sake, they’re Barcelona and Real Madrid. Which only makes Pogacar’s victory yesterday all the more absurd.
The cynic in me would likely think anyway that there’s riders who will have taken advantage of the lax testing during the first half of the year as a result of Covid. But yesterday was ridiculous.
Looking at yesterday’s results, I would use Remi Cavagna’s time (113th overall) - who ultimately ended up in sixth place in the stage - as a baseline for roughly the time you’d expect a particularly strong time-triallist to come in at. Dumoulin, Porte, Van Aert and Roglic all finished within 38 seconds of his time, and the four below to round out the top ten on the stage were within 54 seconds of him.
This gives you an idea how anomalous Pogacar’s time was. He finished 1 minute 59 ahead of Cavagna.
Even in their masks, the picture of Van Aert and Dumoulin’s reaction was worth a million words, I thought. If I was going to do a tl;dr version I would say their expression were along the lines of “what the f***ing fuck is this shit?”
I watched the ITV4 coverage and the commentary on him was ridiculous. “Is he a sprinter who can climb really well? Or is he a climber who can sprint and time-trial really well...” I was thinking errr mate, do you watch the same sport I do? Have you noticed the not so subtle differences between sprinters and climbers?
Far Tibetan Mountain
Striker
Shades of floyd landis!
Captain Slackbladder
Winger
Thurston
Winger
I loved Jalabert, but far from clean is putting it mildly, to be fair.
Far Tibetan Mountain
Striker
One of the biggest white washes in sport that. Fuentes told them he could identify tennis players, football teams, olympians... and the Spanish courts decided that the other bags had to be destroyed. Bent as fuck.
Spanish football and Rafa Nadal should all have an astrix next to their name for that period.
Also Contador, one of the notes said as good as "This Bag Belongs to: Alberto" but the spanish magistrates whitewashed that as well.
Thurston
Winger
Absolutely. The whole thing coincided with Spain’s greatest ever era for sport. Real Madrid and Barcelona players who made up the bulk of the Spanish national team, Nadal winning Grand Slams for fun, and Contador who at the time looked like he was going to go on to be one of the most dominant stage racers in history.
On the latter, for what it’s worth, I still think Contador was the most naturally gifted stage racer of his generation, but he never looked the same after his doping ban. This is not the same as saying, I think Contador was actually completely clean after his ban, but I think it was enough to take the proverbial wind out of his sails. This is also why I was always so skeptical of Team Sky. In terms of stage racing, the likes of Wiggins and Froome were never in his league.
Captain Slackbladder
Winger
Just realised that ITVs coverage is an hour or so late for the darts ffs...
Fuck all be happening....but haway man.
Fuck all be happening....but haway man.
NodsNeph
Winger
Ugh no, not a sky fan boy, although I was pleased as punch when Geraint Thomas won, always more of a Cav fan really in more recent times.
No the reason this year has stood out is the smashing of climbing times up the mountains paired with JV's domestiques also still being up there in the run ins.
As someone else has pointed out sky's doms were virtually always burned out well before the top, and that despite most of them being riders who could well have been team leaders and challengers in another team.
dixonsafc
Striker
I think the suspicion is less about the time trial and more that he smashed the record for climbing La PDBF including the time it took for him to swap his bike after going full gas for 30km before hitting the foot of it.
After knocking 2 minutes off the climb up the Peyresourde as well.
Bennett wins it with no fuss, wasn't even a challenge in the last few hundred metres.
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