Giro 2015 Stage 18

dastardly00

manwithaplan wrote: »

How does he ride continually out of the saddle like that? He must have quads of steel.

In one of the earlier races this season the Eurosport commentators mentioned that Contador was riding up climbs completely out of the saddle as a specific form of training*


*At least I think I remember them saying that or else I've dreamt it up!

oconnpad

dastardly00 wrote: »

In one of the earlier races this season the Eurosport commentators mentioned that Contador was riding up climbs completely out of the saddle as a specific form of training*


*At least I think I remember them saying that or else I've dreamt it up!

I'm sure i heard in the gcn interview they did with him that he does sessions of 20 mins out of the saddle climbing

Brian?

manwithaplan wrote: »

How does he ride continually out of the saddle like that? He must have quads of steel.

Riding out of the saddle puts more pressure in the hamstrings and glutes an takes a little off the quads actually. /pedantry.

Try it next time you climb. Stay out of the saddle as long as you can, your hams and glutes will be on fire. Also your upper body and lungs .

Brian?

MPFG wrote: »

Well I am not blind !!!!!....by the top he was tired and in 75 days he will be very tired

there was no need to attack...his lead is very big...and if there was a little less worship you could see that too...and he was going full gas as he kept lead to Landa (& full top 10) who has been as good if not a better climber in this Giro

But we can revisit this in last week of Tour de France if you like

He wasn't at full gas. If he was, there's no way a Diesel engine like Hesjedal would have caught him.

Brian?

Darkglasses wrote: »

Just comes very naturally to some people. I've always ridden like that too, and I'm rubbish, even for a leisure cyclist.

I used to. But that was back when everyone had a lowest gear of 39x25 or worse. Now I have a compact I sit down and spin more.

Daroxtar

Lads, Ye're gas. In a months time ye'll be giving out about Contador bouncing up and down all over the shop and swooning over Nibali and his sexy snake hips swaying over and back

Talib Fiasco

Daroxtar wrote: »

Lads, Ye're gas. In a months time ye'll be giving out about Contador bouncing up and down all over the shop and swooning over Nibali and his sexy snake hips swaying over and back

Na only one I'll be complaining about is Froome with his ridiculously ugly riding style and looking like Bambi on ice on cobbles and wet descents :mad:

pelevin

Daroxtar wrote: »

Lads, Ye're gas. In a months time ye'll be giving out about Contador bouncing up and down all over the shop and swooning over Nibali and his sexy snake hips swaying over and back

No, everyone will be oohing & aahing about how unnervingly beautiful Chris Froome looks on a bike.

edit: Beaten to the punch I see, though with a strangely different viewpoint.

Darkglasses

I honestly don't have a problem with Chris Froome's style, I like any distinctive riding style really. All adds to the narrative. I find Nibbles's fairly dull, don't see myself ever being a fan of his for many reasons.

MPFG

Darkglasses wrote: »

I honestly don't have a problem with Chris Froome's style, I like any distinctive riding style really. All adds to the narrative. I find Nibbles's fairly dull, don't see myself ever being a fan of his for many reasons.

I am fine with Froome also and I think he will win the Tour wit Quintana not far behind

oconnpad

checking for motors again

Hesjedal must think they have it in for him:D

http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/racing/giro-ditalia/alberto-contadors-bike-among-those-checked-for-hidden-motors-at-giro-ditalia-174168

Dr. Bre

I love hesjedal style ha never looks comfy but its effective

ThisRegard

oconnpad wrote: »

checking for motors again

Hesjedal must think they have it in for him:D

http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/racing/giro-ditalia/alberto-contadors-bike-among-those-checked-for-hidden-motors-at-giro-ditalia-174168

Wasn't it a team that raised the issue of hidden motors and hence the additional checks?

Eamonnator

oconnpad wrote: »

checking for motors again

Hesjedal must think they have it in for him:D

http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/racing/giro-ditalia/alberto-contadors-bike-among-those-checked-for-hidden-motors-at-giro-ditalia-174168

Suppose a bike had a motor:
1) How heavy would it be?
2) How much extra power would it provide?
3) How long would the charge last?
4) How quiet would it be?

pelevin

Darkglasses wrote: »

I honestly don't have a problem with Chris Froome's style, I like any distinctive riding style really. All adds to the narrative. I find Nibbles's fairly dull, don't see myself ever being a fan of his for many reasons.

I honestly think Froome is incomparably the ugliest looking phenomenon on a bike I've ever seen in terms of style. And it's not just cos he's tall as for instance Pierre Rolland is of similar height & doesn't look awful. Just shows I suppose in these different responses how wildly varied the human race is.

RobFowl

Darkglasses wrote: »

I honestly don't have a problem with Chris Froome's style,

Style !!

He's like an octopus riding a bike......

drogdub

I Don't think Contador is racing anymore, I think he is training. He is so much stronger than the others, he doesn't have to worry about them. I could easily see a scenario where he has adjusted his training plan that he is now training for the Tour. He could be looking at each climb and saying to himself I'll climb this with x average wattage the next at y average wattage. He honestly looks like he is doing his own thing, to his own agenda and everyone else is irrelevant.

Dr. Bre

contador will do the double

Subpopulus

I can't find it now, but about a year back I read an online article about a long-running series of tests done on cyclists to measure performance levels. Cyclists had to sit on a stationary bike while hooked up to monitors and cycle at a very high tempo for as long as possible. Usually when they were close to breaking point, they got up out of the saddle, and cycled on desperately for another minute or two before cracking. One of the people who was tested was a teenage Alberto Contador. When he seemed to be approaching breaking point, he got up out of the saddle. But instead of cracking a few minutes later, he carried on for another 25 minutes, all out of the saddle.

Hang on, I've just found the article - http://www.bicycling.com/training/fitness/transcendent-pain

TheBlaaMan

drogdub wrote: »

I Don't think Contador is racing anymore, I think he is training. He is so much stronger than the others, he doesn't have to worry about them. I could easily see a scenario where he has adjusted his training plan that he is now training for the Tour. He could be looking at each climb and saying to himself I'll climb this with x average wattage the next at y average wattage. He honestly looks like he is doing his own thing, to his own agenda and everyone else is irrelevant.

There is no way he is just 'training', IMO. He desperately wants to win this Giro by winning a stage - he had already marked out yesterday as one he wanted to win - he even indicated about a month ago that the Mortirolo was going to be decisive and I think his performance yesterday was an attempt to crown the three weeks with an epic win. I think that he will go for it on Saturday......

I want to hate him for the clenbuterol thing, I can't anymore..........he is just too exciting a rider to ignore ......I hope he is off beef these days.......

drogdub

TheBlaaMan wrote: »

There is no way he is just 'training', IMO. He desperately wants to win this Giro by winning a stage - he had already marked out yesterday as one he wanted to win - he even indicated about a month ago that the Mortirolo was going to be decisive and I think his performance yesterday was an attempt to crown the three weeks with an epic win. I think that he will go for it on Saturday......

I want to hate him for the clenbuterol thing, I can't anymore..........he is just too exciting a rider to ignore ......I hope he is off beef these days.......

Ye maybe not just training, he attacked today when the break was too far away to be caught. So the stage win wasn't vgoing to happen. It just looked to me today that he was climbing to his own plan.

MPFG

Cycling fans make me laugh...

So Contador is flying at the moment against a B rate field and he is invincible & he will win everything ??

If he loses the next race then he will passed it as people said in 2013

ha ha ...totally insane ..

ThisRegard

Wut?

VR46

Dr. Bre wrote: »

contador will do the double

Treble

No chance he skips the Vuelta if when he wins the Tour.

letape

Koobcam wrote: »

Convicted drug cheat, yes. However, I would look at it like this: Pantani did the double in 98 and he as we all know was not clean. Indurain had two doubles to his name in the most drugged up era in cycling (1990s). Eddy Merckx has doubles, trebles, and everything else to his name and was once booted out of the Giro for failing a dope test. Pantani, Indurain and Mercks get to keep all of their victories, which makes Contador's removed titles kind of silly. Interesting thing is, if we ignore the fact that Bertie had his double of 2010 taken away from him, he is about to become the first rider in history to win all three grand tours three times-greatest stage race rider of all-time possibly?

Contador (rightly) had the 2010 Tour taken off him - he didn't win any other GT that year. The only double he has won are the Vuelta and Giro in 2008.

He is the best GT rider of his generation but I wouldn't rate him as the greatest of all time.

letape

MPFG wrote: »

Cycling fans make me laugh...

So Contador is flying at the moment against a B rate field and he is invincible & he will win everything ??

If he loses the next race then he will passed it as people said in 2013

ha ha ...totally insane ..

Exactly this. In 2013 the year after he had come back from his ban and after his fantastic win in the 2012 Vuelta when he beat Rodriquez with that agressive stage win he was pretty crap in 2013. Everyone said he was passed it. He could do nothing against Froome in the Tour, no matter what he tried.

Now he is about to win the Giro and people expect him to go for the triple. If he wins the Tour there is no way he will ride the Vuelta.

And while Contador is the best GT rider of his generation, he hasn't won the Tour in his last three attempts. For sure he is a better rider than Nibali but I wouldn't bet against Froome or Quintana getting the better of him this July.

Talib Fiasco

Also the level of clen in his system would have had no effect on his performance. He would have had to have consumed something like 100 times that to have any benefit from it. Is he clean now? I doubt, nor is any other top level cyclist. You cannot just single out Contador. Nibali, Aru and Landa are part of the dirtiest team in cycling who're about to lose their license soon and the less said about the disgrace that is Sky cycling the better.

letape

Talib Fiasco wrote: »

Also the level of clen in his system would have had no effect on his performance. He would have had to have consumed something like 100 times that to have any benefit from it.

It is not that simple. Clearly he wasn't taking that level of clenbuterol in isolation as a form of doping. Except for AC, no one knows how the clenbuterol got into his system. The CAS issued a 96 page report of its findings and even in that there is nothing definitive as to how it got there. There are many theories though:
- contaminated beef
- ingested through blood transfusion
- supplement contamination (deemed to be the most likely)

It is also unclear as to how he only tested positive once on the Tour when the clenbuterol would have stayed in his system for a number of days.

death1234567

VR46 wrote: »

No chance he skips the Vuelta if when he wins the Tour.

He won't win the tour.

It is also unclear as to how he only tested positive once on the Tour when the clenbuterol would have stayed in his system for a number of days.

AFAIK It wouldn't have stayed in his system for a number of days if he was micro-dosing.

Chips Lovell

Please remember that the forum charter does not allow you to say or imply that someone is doping. Some posts have been removed and a few more have been removed since they're responding to/quoting deleted posts.

Thanks

bazermc

If Alberto goes on to win TDF he will have effectively won 3 GT's in a row, albeit Spain in the prior year

Leroy42

MPFG wrote: »

Cycling fans make me laugh...

So Contador is flying at the moment against a B rate field and he is invincible & he will win everything ??

If he loses the next race then he will passed it as people said in 2013

ha ha ...totally insane ..

This is tue. Who is Bertie up against? Aru, a 24 year old with great potential but nowhere near the level of Bertie at this stage. Landa? Well, not even his team thought he was capable of taking him on. Porte? Had a terrible Giro and based on his previous he needed everything to go perfect to have any chance.

It is a B level field, no doubt about it. It is Contador who is lighting up the race. Otherwise, in terms of GC, this Giro would actually be pretty mudane so far.

And looking back at yesterdays stage, whilst it was impressive for Contador to be so agressive, his climb time wasn't exactly great. He only put 2 or 3 minutes into the break, and hardly any time into Landa and Aru. So to say that this Giro performance puts him into 1st place for the tour is crazy.

Yes his ride on Mortirolo was impressive, but must be set against the level of the opposition. On a climb like that you would expect Quintana, Froome, and to a certain extend Nibali to be much quicker than what was done.

I think Froome still holds the aces in the Tour. He showed at the early season race that he can distance Contador and the only uncertainty is what for Froome will come into the tour and exactly what state the Sky team are in, this Giro doesn't paint a good picture, but then as in previous years they may simply be there and be totally focused on the Tour.

Also, Tinkoff have shown themselves to be less than the top team, and they really only had to worry about Aru. In the tour Contador can possibly hope to contain each of the others on his own.

Brian?

Leroy42 wrote: »

This is tue. Who is Bertie up against? Aru, a 24 year old with great potential but nowhere near the level of Bertie at this stage. Landa? Well, not even his team thought he was capable of taking him on. Porte? Had a terrible Giro and based on his previous he needed everything to go perfect to have any chance.

It is a B level field, no doubt about it. It is Contador who is lighting up the race. Otherwise, in terms of GC, this Giro would actually be pretty mudane so far.

And looking back at yesterdays stage, whilst it was impressive for Contador to be so agressive, his climb time wasn't exactly great. He only put 2 or 3 minutes into the break, and hardly any time into Landa and Aru. So to say that this Giro performance puts him into 1st place for the tour is crazy.

Yes his ride on Mortirolo was impressive, but must be set against the level of the opposition. On a climb like that you would expect Quintana, Froome, and to a certain extend Nibali to be much quicker than what was done.

I think Froome still holds the aces in the Tour. He showed at the early season race that he can distance Contador and the only uncertainty is what for Froome will come into the tour and exactly what state the Sky team are in, this Giro doesn't paint a good picture, but then as in previous years they may simply be there and be totally focused on the Tour.

Also, Tinkoff have shown themselves to be less than the top team, and they really only had to worry about Aru. In the tour Contador can possibly hope to contain each of the others on his own.

I agree for the most part. But Tinkoff Saxo will be stronger at the Tour with Majka included.

Sky will be stronger with Deignan and Roche as well as Porte to support Froome. It's Froome's to lose.

pelevin

I think it's overall been a beautiful & majestic performance by Contador (including a brilliant TT performance) but most shown on the Mortirola, far more than having the physical capability to do what he did, having the mental composure to calmly ride himself back on when it seemed everything was on the line. I thought his ride yesterday was also the ride of a champion - the kind of thing we might see from a Hinault. He didn't make any verbal fuss about Astana attacking him but when chance fortuitously presented the opportunity, he ruthlessly asserted himself. I think this showed the inner steel and anger if roused a true champion should have, whilst also it was a private affair - in a Twitter, etc age he didn't need to broadcast his feelings, searching for the high moral ground or sympathy as plenty others might.
And such an attack, far more than the time gained, also asserted him to the peloton as set apart. He didn't need to indulge in polemics, the act spoke for itself. Obviously an increase in one's aura of power in any sport is a potent advantage in itself.

On the other hand, as other have said it is clear that this year perhaps more than others of late, the cream of the cycling crop are far more stacked at the TdF at the Giro's expense, so I wouldn't be reading invincibility into the Giro performance.

MPFG

Contador couldn't do the double in 2011 when he was much younger but the main reasons I doubt his double this year are as stated

1) his team

If you look at the SKY/ASTANA/MOVISTAR line ups and compare these to TCS well there is no competition... Contador has a major handicap right there...For those who say he can follow and doesn't need a team.....of course you need a team in case of emergencies in the mountains, to help you chase back, to control the race, for food/drink/mechanicals and to protect you

SKY possible team is
Froome
Porte
Roche
Serg Henao
Poels
Thomas
Stannard

AND 2 from Kennaugh, Rowe, Konig, Nieve,Lopez,Deignan

MOVISTAR
Quintana
Valverde
Anacona
Izagirre, Gorka
Moreno
Lastras
Capecchi
Herrada, J
Gadret

With back up form Castrovejio, Amador, Inuxasti ,Ion Izagirre, Visconti depending on how they survived the Giro

ASTANA
Niblai
Fuglsang
Scarponi
Taaramae
Boom
Grivko
Westra
Tiralongo
Kangert


TCS HAVE Majka, Rogers & Kiserloski only for the mountains ???... rest of the team are gone before any mountain is seen and this Tour de France is a climbers Tour...Plus so far Rogers has not looked in great shape & the other 2 are unknowns

2) Froome when in form I think can climb faster than Alberto now ...his turn of speed is better ...

level of clen in his system would have had no effect on his performance

I thought Clen is not a performance enhancer but a masking agent for other PEDs so the level is not conclusive

MPFG

Contador served his ban so happy to assume he is clean now but to say the ban he received was ridiculous is not on...the ban was correct ...especially as he was hardly off the bike that long


and don't agree

<snip>

and that frankly is used by Contador excusers all the time...esp in regard to SKY ..I mean what is

2013 Froome is long gone (thank f*ck for the sake of Cycling)

supposed to mean except a direct implication about Froome ...
Froome cannot provide a great performance without this 'allegation' but Contador can be found guilty of doping but it is somehow unfair ???

Please ...can you not be an apologist for someone caught doping ...

Also you are obviously a very big Tinkov fan because statement like Majka being the best mountain Dom in the Tour ???
There is no basis for this statement given performances provided by Porte ,Fuglsang ,etc in the past....

I guess there is none so blind as those who will not see

velo.2010

Where is the bleedin' stage?:(

MPFG

gordongekko wrote: »

Just checked the start list . None of them are due to start tomorrow. Hes better off racing against his competition in this race rather than worrying about something that may or may not happen in a months time.

Well if the double is your main aim and you are leading a GT by an unassailable lead ..then if you are wise you have to think of those rivals and your overall aim
And not waste energy teaching Astana a lesson ....