USAZorro

The list of what he can't do on his bike if he puts his mind to it is an awfully short one. One gripe though, NBCSN interviewers need to ask him better questions.

09box

Is he a TDF winner/GC guy? Probably not but he is a strong climber and can moonlight as a sprinter too. Good rider and fun to watch also.

Giacomo 1 

No, he's not a GC guy, at least not yet. He'd have to do some real slimming down to climb with the best.

I'm not sure if he knows what he is yet. He seems to be 80% in all the disciplines, but not 100% in any of them. For sure, he is a lock on the green jersey in any tour he competes in, because he is the only rider that can get in the breaks day after day and grab the intermediate points and then still score high in the bunch sprints for the big points. The sprinters can't do that.

With his unique skills and physique, I see him more as a classics guy, but for some reason, that hasn't materialized...

Leinster

He hasn't won a monument, but he has won Ghent-Wevelgem, Brabantse Pijl and E3, which is a respectable haul for a 25 year old.

sprince

That 80% makes him a 120% better all around rider that anyone else. I don't see why he should have to choose to be any one particular type of rider. He's only 25, let's just see what happens.

DropBarFan

They have the phrase, "Rubbin's racin'!". Ole' Dale Earnhardt was notorious for blatantly clouting other cars out of the way but he was a superstar that could get away with stuff other drivers couldn't. On most tracks drivers have an incentive to minimize contact since it risks messing up the aero. That's why fans love the few short tracks like Richmond: drivers can race hard & not worry about a couple of dents. But the top drivers usually pass pretty clean, incidents are often among middle-running cars where drivers get frustrated or lack skill/experience.

Cavendish seems to have lost some speed/fitness, this year losing to same guys he regularly beat before. In a previous year I remember a sprint where he had his head buried in some guy's armpit in the middle of a sprint, heh.

DropBarFan

Freddy Maertens still looks pretty intimidating, heh. After Coca-Cola took over from Perrier as a major TdF sponsor they used to hand out Coke cans to the riders: supposedly Kelly (puckish humor) would lean over with an empty Coke can & scrape it on the road--it sounded sort of like spokes breaking & other riders would think there was a crash & slam on the brakes.

Garfield Cat

What if there was a sprint race like in track and field where there are lane assignments? Of course, it would have to be modified for cycling. In track cycling you have this velodrome but its still tactics combined with speed. But for sprinters like Usain Bolt, Gatlin, Tyson Gay, its a pure straight away.

I would imagine the race can be done on a long straight road like the kind you find on Arizona's highways. Let them ramp up a few miles till they reach a mark like 30mph and then let the sprint begin for 400 meters.

They will have their lane assignments and the only tactic would be their peripheral vision. Would you pay to see that? I mean sponsors on cable.

Giacomo 1 

Not sure he is up there with the likes of Phillipe Gilbert, Thor Hushvold, Fabian Cancellara, or a few other big motor riders.

In order for him to reach his full potential and to really start winning races and stages, he will eventually have to get it figured out. He is definitely fun to watch and he does do some incredible things on a bike in a race, but winning should trump that IMHO. That's what riders get remembered for...

sprince

Not sure I follow. In their first 4 years Gilbert had 13 wins, Hushvold 12, Cancellara 17, Sagan 22. So far this year Gilbert has 4, Cancellara 2, Sagan 7.

Giacomo 1 

Not to get to deep in the weeds over this, because I'm not trying to denigrate Sagan in anyway, but Gilbert has won many monument races, including 3 in one season, along with the World Championships and stage wins in all of the GT's. A true, dominant performance for sure. Hushvold has over 10 stage wins in the TDF, some of the most remembered ever, along with several TT and road championships and some spring classics. And Cancellara, well, the list is long, TT and road championships, 8 TDF stages, plenty of monuments etc..

As for this season, Cancellara is banged-up, and Gilbert is coming back form injuries.

These riders have accomplished an awful lot on there careers, and maybe Sagan will to, but I think he will continue to be the champion of second place if he doesn't specialize...

Leinster

Gilbert has 3 Monument wins total (Lombardy twice and Liege once), not 3 in one season. Amstel and Fleche Wallonne are not Monuments. His first Monument win came when he was 27, 2 years older than Sagan is now. As far as specialising, Sagan's classics focus has always been on cobbled or sprinter classics, not hilly ones; he's never ridden Liege, has one DNF in Lombardy, but (not counting his rookie season) has 8 top 10 finishes from his last 10 starts in San Remo, Flanders and Roubaix. Cancellara has a better record over a similar period (always on the podium from 2011 to 2014), but at a much more advanced age.


Sagan needs a stronger team around him, he's always isolated and heavily marked in the closing stages of classics, but if he had a Luca Paolini-type who could get on the front and drive a group to the finish, he could take advantage of his sprint that way. When he gets into a group nowadays, he has to drive it on himself and nobody will work with him.

jeirvine 

Unlike most riders looking for stage wins, Sagan doesn't seem to pick and target particular stages. He seems to be going for all of them. I suppose part of that is required for going after the Green Jersey. If he saved himself for a few carefully chosen stages, he'd have more wins.

Leinster

Yes and no. For the first week it was his job to be near the front all the time as Contador's no1 helper. He also had the freedom to go for stage wins once Bertie was under the 3k to go flag, but once he'd done that there weren't many stages where it didn't make sense for him to go for the win.

I think if he'd been a bit further clear in the green jersey, or had already picked up a stage win, he might not have tried for the win into Gap, for example. It was only after the Pyrenees that he was trying to get into breaks, because with not many sprinter stages left, his chances for a stage win were getting less and less.

DropBarFan

I think the same guy(s) would tend to win w/o the normal complicating factors in road sprints where the speediest rider doesn't always win. With your idea even if the fastest guy is not in 1st position at the 400 meter mark he would have ample space to make up that distance & win, esp since he would have saved a bit of gas by initial drafting.

But this brings up the unfortunate decline of track cycling. TdF is super-popular but track events are exciting (usually fairly brief so attention spans aren't taxed) & the different events give different types of riders (except climbers I guess) opportunities to shine.

Garfield Cat

I would imagine that there would be high speed cameras that are spaced every 10 meters even before the beginning of the 400 meter mark. So any "advantage" can be adjusted. To make it even more interesting, all racers would have the same bikes, same inflation of tires, same helmets, same kits.

It could be done like track and field. Qualifying heats and quarterfinals, semi's, etc. And yes, its like an "open" so that anyone can do this, even those crossfit people.

Garfield Cat

All those spin instructors can now do their thing to see who is the best real spinner.

DropBarFan

Heh, some of those spinning classes $30 or more per session, seems like a lot of dough to pay to ride inside. OTOH at least they don't crash into each other. Saw some CrossFit folks on the bike path next to their building--they were toting these huge tractor tires, pretty intense work! Anyway in velodrome racing they have individual standing-start 1 kilometer races, 3-4 km pursuit races where racers start on opposite sides etc. Also the exotic Keirin races (created in Japan): it's a track bunch sprint except that first few laps everyone rides behind a motorcycle who pulls over with ~2 laps to go. While they don't have assigned lanes they have pretty strict rules against cutting off riders etc. In Japan the Keirin tracks have betting & funds go to hospitals or something.

HardyWeinberg

My wife reads Contador's facebook page, he posted this:

Garfield Cat

As riders like Sagan get accustomed to the limelight, he gets bolder. There's a certain type of bullying that goes on. Racing is just one of them.

DropBarFan

Ouch, he shoulda used a motorcycle-racing back protector. In Philly race I saw an Italian pro doing effortless wheelies up the Manayunk wall to the delight of the spectators. I had prev assumed wheelies on road bikes fairly impossible. Another time at Philly a moto cop escort did side-wheelies with his Harley trike.

jyl

Sounds boring. Why bother with the road, just put them on stationary bikes and measure the watts.

sprince

Didn't Sky do that at the TDF this year? Or maybe I nodded off again and mistook the warm downs for racing, hard to tell.

DropBarFan

Power meters are an interesting development in bike racing. Teams can measure watts & know just how long a rider can maintain x-effort. Surely such tech helped Froome avoid having to chase down climbing attacks, knowing that a certain pace was likely to succeed by the finish.