2017 'PRO' cycling discussion.

Questions about bike hire abroad and everything light bike related. No off-topic chat please

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Norregard
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Joined: Sat May 17, 2014 7:40 am

by Norregard

petepeterson wrote:
Norregard wrote:VDP is a once in a generation natural talent, that's for sure. The Peter Sagan of CX.


man pro cycling more than any other sport is so what have you done for me lately.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sven_Nys#Major_results


Not sure how you've come to that post. Sven Nys was the once in a generation natural talent of his generation. (At first I was even going to post 'VDP is the Sven Nys of his generation but I couldn't find a good counterpart for WVA in the older generation, perhaps Wellens of Albert).

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Norregard
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by Norregard

wingguy wrote:
Norregard wrote:VDP is a once in a generation natural talent, that's for sure. The Peter Sagan of CX.

I dunno. Road racing is so powerful right now that the only way to find out if someone is the "Peter Sagan of XYZ" is for them to switch to road and compete against Peter Sagan. Seems like money and competition-wise everything on track*, CX and XC is secondary to the road for drawing in the very top talent. And I say that as a huge fan of Nino Schurter, but I wonder what his record would be like if riders like Sagan hadn't ditched XC early on to get a guaranteed payday on the road.

* Apart from the pure match sprinters.


Oh, I didn't mean it in a literal head-to-head way. I was referring to VDPs happy go lucky, little bit extravagant on the bike, making everything look so easy style and attitude.

jorryt
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Joined: Tue Jul 11, 2017 10:37 am

by jorryt

I don't know if you are dutch, but if you hear VDP talking he is besides the having fun bit not like Sagan.

Swannie
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by Swannie

No, indeed. You can see/hear that vdp comes from a good family, well educated, has good manners.
Sagan is the total opposite, only thing he can, is ride a bike, real good.

dereksmalls
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Location: New Zealand

by dereksmalls

Feeling for Katie Compton, damn asthma attacks during the race.

Rudi
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Joined: Tue Apr 08, 2014 6:43 pm

by Rudi

Sam Bennett was looking impressive in Turkey. Maybe not against top tier sprinters, but I'm wondering if he is going to "step up" his performance next year. Shame about his tumble on that last corner.
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Rondje
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by Rondje

Think it's safe to say we won't see Dumoulin fighting Froome this year. With only 30 TT km's he might look elsewhere. It looks like the ASO keeps their faith in Bardet, Pinot and Barguil while they are never going to beat Froome. Quintana got a good shot at it (if he's rested) but I got no idea how he is going to survive the 21,7km of cobbles on stage 9.

Great course tho, I'm already looking forward to stage 9 and there are some really great mountain stages, lets hope stage 17 going to be fireworks as a 65km mountain stage.

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Kjetil
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by Kjetil

A couple of big alpine days in there. The Col du Pré - Cormet de Roselend - La Rosiére triple fascinates me. I love the Roselend downhill to Bourg.
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maquisard
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by maquisard

If only Contador was still racing, not so much to win, but to animate the race

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tymon_tm
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by tymon_tm

65 km stage? 21 km of pave? I'd say ASO's trying desperately to open this race up a little bit, which is a good thing, but if other contenders come unprepared (again) we already know who's gonna win it.

as for Big Tom, I wouldn't be so sure he's gonna skip it. how much does he lose in the mountains? how much he can gain on stages like st.9 and the ITT? would be nice to see him in that race.
kkibbler wrote: WW remembers.

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Kjetil
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by Kjetil

8 riders/team too. Could be a quite open Tour, maybe Vueltaesque even, but we saw how that went this year.
The flattish first week looks promising too.
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jorryt
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by jorryt

Tom can go to the tour. At the Giro he lost nothing on the mountains (besides the poo but he did one of the fastest climbs). And with his TT he can make up at least 30s at Froome who also gets weaker at the end of every Tour.

basilic
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by basilic

Looking forward to stage 10, Annecy-Grand Bornand. The climbs to Glières and to Romme are probably the hardest in Haute-Savoie.
Hopefully they'll fix the upper surfaced section of the Glières climb, it's now full of holes. The crossing of the plateau is rocky dirt, but flattish, it shouldn't cause poblems.

Also stage 17 - the climb to col de Portet is very unusual, alternating surfaced and dirt sections.

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MattSoutherden
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by MattSoutherden

basilic wrote:Also stage 17 - the climb to col de Portet is very unusual, alternating surfaced and dirt sections.


Apparently they are surfacing all up to last 2k
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micky
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by micky

It will be interesting to see what the Movistar duo Quintana/Landa could do.

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