Fair enough - like I said, working without actually seeing any of this and seeking opinions of others.
Froome won two days before the ITT, not one. But he did more work on that climb than Evans and Wiggins, not the same or less. That’s what has eyebrows raised - this relative unknown blows the likes of Samu Sanchez and Denis Menchov off the back in a Cat 1 climb, easily outsprints Evans at the line, then two days later puts 20 seconds into Fabian Cancellara in an ITT. That would be a remarkable performance for Alberto Contador, never mind Froome.
Maybe he’s just a late bloomer who’s struggled with health issues that are finally cleared up, but this is a sudden burst of greatness akin to Jeremy “Linsanity” Lin’s run of games when he started starting for the Knicks. Given cycling’s history, it’s naive not to raise an eyebrow. Because unlike basketball where creative passing and exploiting defensive schemes not designed for you don’t require doping, these cycling achievements require a body to suddenly output way more aerobic power than it has before, and that’s to a significant extent a straight physiological thing.
I hope he’s not cheating, because it would be a great story. But I’ve been burned before by these guys, so my judgement is withheld pending further data.
I hope he’s not as well. It’s not uncommon for young sportsman to have sporadic performance. Could be his body is capable but he doesn’t yet have the experience to be able to produce consistent results. Could also be that he’s drugged to his eyeballs but only at strategic times.
He has been ( what, 4 times maybe?) but IIRC the current TT World Champ is Tony Martin.
Fabian’s record in mid-Tour ITT’s isn’t actually particularly amazing. He’s of course always near the top of the field, but usually the top GC riders who are strong time triallers beat him by a bit. Plus he’s getting a bit old. And Tony Martin has a broken wrist and then had a flat tire - he’s pulled out of the Tour now to try to heal for the Olympics.
The Olympics complicates things significantly. The Tour de France is THE Tour de France, but the Olympics only happen once every four years and it’s only a matter of days after the tour. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Olympics is more important to some of he riders.
Sean Kelly was chatting a bit about TTs with David Harmon yesterday on the Tour commentary - he was saying it’s a totally different race when you focus, prepare and train for a one-off TT like the World Championships or the Olympics, than when you have to pull a TT performance from your legs mid-race. Cancellara won the prologue (with fresh legs) and had a pretty good TT in Stage 9, but was outpaced by a few other TT specialists. I don’t see it as remarkable that he was beaten, and it wasn’t by that much over the distance. In fact, Tony Martin, even with his broken wrist, was ahead of Fabian in the splits until he punctured for the second time, so it’s hard to say precisely who was actually above or below their normal par.
Also hard to say what the priority should be this year; I think wearing yellow in Paris will be bigger than a gold medal for Wiggins, but Cav seems to have slimmed down and potentially sacrificed a few stage wins (well, the gods of crashes, and Greipal, may have taken them from him regardless) in order to get himself up Box Hill 9 times and still be there to challenge in a bunch sprint in the Olympic Road race.
The dope police got themselves a minnow in Rémy Di Grégorio.
Concentrating on Froome gapping Martin and Cancellara in the ITT misses the point. Martin had a broken bone and Cancellara doesn’t always shine. If Froome was someone who was reliably top ten in ITT’s and happened to beat Martin and Cancellara on Monday I wouldn’t have raised half an eyebrow.
Never mind worrying about how Froome beat Martin and Cancellara; worry about how he beat anyone in the top thirty, and by a very solid margin at that.
Well he was second in the Brittish TT champs in 2010, is being in the top thirty of the TDF two years later that surprising? As I said before its not unusual for young athletes to have sporadic performance. One of the differences between the really good guys and the pretty good guys is not so much that the pretty good guys never have good performances, but that they don’t have the consistency of the top guys. See Bernard Tomic for a non cycling example. Sometimes he looks like Australia’s next big tennis star, other times you wonder why they bothered seeding him.
You are familiar with the expression “damning with faint praise”, right? 
Not much competition eh? 
The sad thing is that we may never know if these guys are doping or not, and there will always be suspicion surrounding the sport.
Interesting stage last night. Wiggins looked very comfortable sitting behind his team mates, I don’t think I saw him stand up once, just sat there spinning. Evans had sporadic support from his team mates but then the commentators mentioned that he’s built a team to help him on the flat sections and that he doesn’t mind being isolated in the climbs and descents. I think something special is going to have to happen to break the Sky team’s composure.
I was disappointed Evans didn’t attempt anything last night. He just sat on Sky’s high tempo wheels and watched it all play out. Which is of course exactly what Sky are hoping for.
I was hoping that Evans, Nibali and Van den Broeck would mount attacks till Wiggins was isolated and then out descend him, help each other across the gap to the next climb etc. It seemed as if that was the setup. At the time Nibali had Sagan ahead in the break and Evans had Burghardt, both perfectly positioned to drop back. They would have had a group of five to go balls out for the line. Instead it seemed only Nibali had the guts. Nibali’s move didn’t work in the end but who knows what would have happened if he’d had more help. I haven’t watched the full replay but I understand Sky brought Nibali back. Evans is lucky that Sky did or he might be 3rd now.
I’m *hoping *that Evans and John Lelangue have put their heads together and have worked out where they have the best chance of a success, and had made a cool headed decision that last night’s HC climb wasn’t hard enough, and that their best opportunity is yet to come. I’m hoping. But Sky are just dominating so well, it’s getting hard to see it.
Nibali called out Wiggins for taunting him at the end of Stage 10. Hopefully hatred brings some real attacks against Wiggins and Sky.
Also, mega cheers for Jens Voigt’s old legs and this moment in the feed zone…
I heard them say that too. I think at some point he just gave up trying to get help in the mountains.
Back in his Lotto days they got him Popovych in 2008–who then promptly fell out of form–and then in preparation for 2009 they got him Kohl–who promptly got done for doping.
Elite climbing domestiques are not a dime a dozen [snide reference to Sky/USPS].
…and BMC’s big spend last year seemed more about preparing for life after Evans then helping him go back-to-back.
I was half asleep watching it, but it seemed that Porte pretty much did the job single-handed up and over that last Cat 3. They didn’t bother with Van Den Broeck.
[QUOTE=Princhester]
I’m *hoping *that Evans and John Lelangue have put their heads together and have worked out where they have the best chance of a success, and had made a cool headed decision that last night’s HC climb wasn’t hard enough, and that their best opportunity is yet to come.
[/QUOTE]
I reckon it wasn’t that the climb wasn’t hard enough, but rather that it was too far from home, and that the path home was too easy.
…but looking at the opportunities ahead… boy is it depressing.
I can only find three obvious places for an attack:
- Tonight (Stage 11) at the the top of the Cat 2 with 35km to go.
- Stage 16, anywhere after the second HC with 75km to go
- Stage 17, at the HC with 30km to go
Someone’s going to have to try something heroic.
l read something somewhere saying that tonight isn’t hard enough for an attack to work, but I would have thought that an attack on Croix de Fer (the 2nd HC) might work because there is essentially only downhill and climb from there to the finish. There is no flat on which a team would provide obvious help. Though given that the Skytrain seem capable of setting a pace uphill that even some of the best climbers around can’t attack out of, maybe not.
Yeah, for Sky a Cat 2 is pretty much flat.
Seriously, on that final Cat 3 last night they just used Porte, Rogers had punctured early on the descent and they still just held Froome in reserve.
..looking at the maps… what you read seems right about tonight. 
Both the descents from the HC and the Cat 2 only have about half-a-dozen switchbacks and plenty of long straight sections.
Evans cracketh. Menchov, too.
Yeah, that’s Evans in a certain amount of trouble. About a minute and a half he’s lost there on Wiggins.
Froome dropped Wiggins for a bit and must have got a shout to stop buggering about and waited for him. He still finished much more strongly than Wiggins.