The professional cycling thread
Discussion
NaePasaran said:
Day 2 of the Giro about to start in an hour or two and this thread is about to be relegated into page 2 of the forum.
No-one tuning in?
Absolutely, though probably highlights each evening unless I get free time to watch a stage live. No-one tuning in?
Good so far. Love Pog and his style. Energy saving for the three weeks seems out the window!
Day 3 and 40 odd second advantage is a big chuck already.
LM240 said:
Absolutely, though probably highlights each evening unless I get free time to watch a stage live.
Good so far. Love Pog and his style. Energy saving for the three weeks seems out the window!
Day 3 and 40 odd second advantage is a big chuck already.
Good to see G keeping pace with him there at the end, whether it's sustainable for the entire tour is going to be interesting to see.Good so far. Love Pog and his style. Energy saving for the three weeks seems out the window!
Day 3 and 40 odd second advantage is a big chuck already.
I hate to say it, just because someone is going well, but Pogacar beating specialists, winning at will, it all looks a bit, well, you know....
Having an explosive individual racing really brings the sport alive, rather than teams keeping check on one another, but i'm not certain one person can dominate a field of elite athletes every day, all the time, without help. Maybe he can?
Having an explosive individual racing really brings the sport alive, rather than teams keeping check on one another, but i'm not certain one person can dominate a field of elite athletes every day, all the time, without help. Maybe he can?
On the last climb, everyone gasping for air, in/out of the saddle, Pog sat down, mouth barely open. I really like Pogacar, his attitude, the way he races.
There seems to be an acceptance now that the whole pro peloton is as pure as the driven snow. Scandals are bad for business/sponsers. I don’t really care either way, I love Pro Cycling, but I’ve been a fan since the mid eighties……………..
There seems to be an acceptance now that the whole pro peloton is as pure as the driven snow. Scandals are bad for business/sponsers. I don’t really care either way, I love Pro Cycling, but I’ve been a fan since the mid eighties……………..
craigthecoupe said:
I hate to say it, just because someone is going well, but Pogacar beating specialists, winning at will, it all looks a bit, well, you know....
Having an explosive individual racing really brings the sport alive, rather than teams keeping check on one another, but i'm not certain one person can dominate a field of elite athletes every day, all the time, without help. Maybe he can?
In the same way as Pantani, Armstrong, Contador, Festina etc?Having an explosive individual racing really brings the sport alive, rather than teams keeping check on one another, but i'm not certain one person can dominate a field of elite athletes every day, all the time, without help. Maybe he can?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festina_affair
https://procyclinguk.com/flashback-to-the-mapei-19...
craigthecoupe said:
I hate to say it, just because someone is going well, but Pogacar beating specialists, winning at will, it all looks a bit, well, you know....
Having an explosive individual racing really brings the sport alive, rather than teams keeping check on one another, but i'm not certain one person can dominate a field of elite athletes every day, all the time, without help. Maybe he can?
It's not a massive surprise, normally the Tour de France winner is a top 5 time trialist. Wiggins didn't lose a long time trial for about 2 years around his 2012 victory, Having an explosive individual racing really brings the sport alive, rather than teams keeping check on one another, but i'm not certain one person can dominate a field of elite athletes every day, all the time, without help. Maybe he can?
Likewise the TDF winner also likely has the best power to weight in the peleton. There are plenty of race situations where if they employ that advantage there isn't much you can do about it unless your team employs multiple top 10 rider as a domestiques and they are willing to bury themselves and have no chance of victory.
Cycling is actually the sport with pretty much the lowest win percentage for competitors. If you look at tennis basically one person tends to win 30-50% of major competitions and another 2-4 win the other 45-65% of them.
The reason for this is because if drafting and the fact that it's a team sport with individual winners. Hence win distribution is more like goals in the premiership ergo the top scorer gets 20-30 goals out of about 1100 goals scored in total.
Also notable that the top dopers were actually quite selective about what they won, they went for a limited number of big prizes.
Talksteer said:
craigthecoupe said:
I hate to say it, just because someone is going well, but Pogacar beating specialists, winning at will, it all looks a bit, well, you know....
Having an explosive individual racing really brings the sport alive, rather than teams keeping check on one another, but i'm not certain one person can dominate a field of elite athletes every day, all the time, without help. Maybe he can?
It's not a massive surprise, normally the Tour de France winner is a top 5 time trialist. Wiggins didn't lose a long time trial for about 2 years around his 2012 victory, Having an explosive individual racing really brings the sport alive, rather than teams keeping check on one another, but i'm not certain one person can dominate a field of elite athletes every day, all the time, without help. Maybe he can?
Likewise the TDF winner also likely has the best power to weight in the peleton. There are plenty of race situations where if they employ that advantage there isn't much you can do about it unless your team employs multiple top 10 rider as a domestiques and they are willing to bury themselves and have no chance of victory.
Cycling is actually the sport with pretty much the lowest win percentage for competitors. If you look at tennis basically one person tends to win 30-50% of major competitions and another 2-4 win the other 45-65% of them.
The reason for this is because if drafting and the fact that it's a team sport with individual winners. Hence win distribution is more like goals in the premiership ergo the top scorer gets 20-30 goals out of about 1100 goals scored in total.
Also notable that the top dopers were actually quite selective about what they won, they went for a limited number of big prizes.
Bilkob said:
On the last climb, everyone gasping for air, in/out of the saddle, Pog sat down, mouth barely open. I really like Pogacar, his attitude, the way he races.
There seems to be an acceptance now that the whole pro peloton is as pure as the driven snow. Scandals are bad for business/sponsers. I don’t really care either way, I love Pro Cycling, but I’ve been a fan since the mid eighties……………..
it was a 12 min climb and poggy weighs fThere seems to be an acceptance now that the whole pro peloton is as pure as the driven snow. Scandals are bad for business/sponsers. I don’t really care either way, I love Pro Cycling, but I’ve been a fan since the mid eighties……………..
k all. He prob did close to 7wkg up it. he was behind on the flat section. At that point it doesn't matter how much of a TT specialist you are, its a wkg game not a w/cda one.
andyA700 said:
Talksteer said:
craigthecoupe said:
I hate to say it, just because someone is going well, but Pogacar beating specialists, winning at will, it all looks a bit, well, you know....
Having an explosive individual racing really brings the sport alive, rather than teams keeping check on one another, but i'm not certain one person can dominate a field of elite athletes every day, all the time, without help. Maybe he can?
It's not a massive surprise, normally the Tour de France winner is a top 5 time trialist. Wiggins didn't lose a long time trial for about 2 years around his 2012 victory, Having an explosive individual racing really brings the sport alive, rather than teams keeping check on one another, but i'm not certain one person can dominate a field of elite athletes every day, all the time, without help. Maybe he can?
Likewise the TDF winner also likely has the best power to weight in the peleton. There are plenty of race situations where if they employ that advantage there isn't much you can do about it unless your team employs multiple top 10 rider as a domestiques and they are willing to bury themselves and have no chance of victory.
Cycling is actually the sport with pretty much the lowest win percentage for competitors. If you look at tennis basically one person tends to win 30-50% of major competitions and another 2-4 win the other 45-65% of them.
The reason for this is because if drafting and the fact that it's a team sport with individual winners. Hence win distribution is more like goals in the premiership ergo the top scorer gets 20-30 goals out of about 1100 goals scored in total.
Also notable that the top dopers were actually quite selective about what they won, they went for a limited number of big prizes.
In 7 out of the last 20 years one of them won 3 grand slams in another 10 years one of them won 2 in each year. The key point is that as a highly technical individual sport with lots of points per game chance plays a relatively small part of the outcome so the dominant players tend to win almost all the competitions.
The other point to consider is that cycle races have one almost unique factor there is no standard "pitch". Even in motor racing the circuits tend not to change layouts every season. This means that race organisers can influence the race outcome and who they attract to their races.
With the TdF if you look at recent history in 2011-2013 they wanted an English speaker with no doping history to win so they put plenty of long time trials in the race and lots of flat stages so Cav could get them lot's of headlines. Then after Froome started looking unbeatable they cut down the TT distance and started trying to add random stuff like cobbled stages. After the years of the SkyTrain organisers have spent years trying to craft stages where the winner wins in a Pog like manner.
Oddly enough I think the blueprint for Pog is actually Froome. Once the others started to equalise in climbing performance he started sprinting for bonuses, attacking down hill, doing a team TT in the final 4K and attacking on the penultimate climb to win the Giro. Pog just started adopting this strategy from an earlier point in his career and training sprints and bike handling when he was watching Froome on the TV as a junior.
Gassing Station | Sports | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff