JoeOxfordCT

As I watched Contador attack late in yesterday's final stage I had two thoughts.....

1 As a pure cyclist, Alberto Contador has no peers when it comes to climbing.....

2 Alberto does not always make the best decisions on the road and the support he gets from his team is dubious at best.

....and I say these things as a fan.....
I could not help but agree with Bob Roll & Paul Sherwen when they commented that some of the little bad decisions that Alberto makes could cost him a Grand Tour win.....must like last year's Paris-Nice.

Can't a guy with his talent get better coaching/teammates ? Is some of this his own fault ?

$ick3nin.vend3t

Hes just won the Paris-Nice, Won all 3 Grand Tours & is the reigning TDF champion.

JoeOxfordCT

I get that but sometimes I think his talent has allowed him to get away with tactical errors that would have cost lesser riders more severely. It's going to be an interesting TDF....you'll see Lance & Radio Shack coming from the opposite end of the team perspective....with no one as strong as Alberto but together as a team focused like a laser on beating Astana......and notice I didn't say Lance winning....I believe by the time the Tour rolls around The Shack will have a leader who they feel represents their best chance at beating Alberto....whether that's Lance or not we'll see. Levi had a pretty sluggish Paris-Nice.

hipcheck5

Contador makes some terrible tactical decisions and, eventually, it will bite him in the butt.

Romans8:28

His team was not strong enough to cover the most critical breaks yesterday... When it was J. Rodriguez that took off as far as I am concerned he had no choice but to go it alone so to speak and close it down. What do you propose that he should have done?

Keith99

What bad decisions? Jsut because comentators who think Lance and Johan are Gods think he made bad choices does not make it true.

For example, they commented that he was too far back in the group on the final climb. Yet when there was an attack he had the legs to cover. By coming from a little ways back he had the chance to catch the break and NOT drag his real competition up to that break. It did not work, but then not everything Lance the god did worked either. This may also have lured others into attacking, considering the support situation it was to Contidor's comparitive advantage to heve the race broken into pieces.

Then there was the last sprint point on the course. If Lance had managed to grab the single second it would have been brilliant, when Alberto does it, it is all but ignored.

Nimitz87

the decision to work at the front of that pack to bring back the chase group was a HUGE error...and he was hurting at that point.

and they said that contador was going for that last sprint point, hardly ignored.

Chad

Keith99

Is it the Col d'Eze you are talking about? I think he could have done better. But his work did 2 things. The first seems very bad, he brought a few riders closer to the 2 man break and a second group was chasing his small group. But it also did something very good for him, it kept those chasing to 2 groups one very small the other about 15 riders. Even when they came back it was aa chase group of about 20 that never could get organized. What we saw was one attack after another off the front of that 20 man group getting pulled back. At no time did the chase group make up significant time. A larger group even 30 seconds father back would have been more likely to have enough domestiques left to make a much better run at the 2 riders.

aloysius

I'd be surprised if "the shack" put a rider on the podium. Lance is aging and the climbs on this year's course will expose him. Leipheimer and Kloden are each past their prime. This may be a long year for that team.

aloysius

As for Contador, he missed a bidon and bonked out of last Year's Paris-Nice. Know how many times Lance won Paris-Nice? Precisely Zero. I find it peculiar that people around here choose to focus on the one race that he didn't excel in in the last three years.

OrionKhan

This is complete nonsense. Or rather fantasy and wishful thinking. Contador isn't a lesser rider. He's a very strong rider going INTO his prime. So talking about what would happen if he were one doesn't make sense. In the end, someone is going to have to out climb and out TT Contador at the TdF. It won't come down to team. It will come down to the strongest rider. It doesn't matter how strong Radio Shack is when they're all dropped going up the steepest climbs. And someone is going to have to beat him one on one in the TT.

This team crap is way overplayed. Its important, but its not the "end all" to winning. People keep blithering on about the tactical errors that AC makes and poor team support, but all he does is keep winning. And in dominating fashion. He's a great rider. Get off the guy. Realistically, he'll probably have a better season this year, because the JB/LA factor will be gone. The team will be focused on him winning.

OrionKhan

That's coincidentally the same number of times Lance won the Vuelta and the Giro, too. Let alone winning them in the same season.

(For the record, I'm not a Lance Hater. I'm just an Contador fan)

gear

Don't kid yourself Lance will be the rider Radio Shack has as leader no matter who is the strongest rider on the team. There will be no more foolishness about grabbing three podium spots, or speculation over who is the leader. Without Contador they will revert to Lance support mode, the only non LA support you'll see will be using a rider as bait to try and get Contador to make a bad move.

USAZorro

I think a lot of the criticism of Contador is based on Paris-Nice last year (yes, he made a mistake), and the result of him having been shackled by ridiculous considerations for his teammates in last year's Tour which would not have been imposed upon him in any rational environment. Yes, there are some things he can still learn - who can't? Hindsight can always be 20-20 (even if it sometimes isn't here ), and it's very easy for us (who don't have to back our speculation up with execution) to find faults.

If anything, the absence of race radio will crimp Bruyneel's and Armstrong's style, than it will Contador's.

Nimitz87

didn't someone beat contador this year in TT? don't quote me I'm really asking this I haven't been following racing to much this year yet thought I heard something about it.

Chad

exhumed

Yeah Volta ao Garve I believe. He had to ride a different bike since UCI decided to ban the Shiv a day before his TT. Second place is still good considering he had about a day to get used to the new bike and he still won the overall race.

masirider80

Well if Contador wants to win his team will have to be able to cover the breaks in the mountains. It will not just be the "Shack" doing all the attacking there with different riders. Wiggins, the Schelekes and others will attack early and often because lets face Contador is the best climber, but he can't cover every break. I think one area where he will be weak is the cobble sections of Stage 3. The Shack will try to put minutes into Contador there. If there is no race radio in Stage 3 and Contador gets way behind then the contenders will work together. If the Shack and other contenders get out of Contador sight then this could be the one bad day that could cost him the Tour.

OrionKhan

Astana will be strong enough to cover breaks. Contador really only has to worry about the top contenders. How often will they break? The biggest threat is Contador going on a break on an early and building an early lead. Like on stage 8 (first mountain top finish). Then someone has to break and drop AC on a big climb. How likely is that to happen?

The big question for me is how much Andy Schleck has worked on his TT and if he's improved.

diphthong

way too much watching and waiting in the tdf. the days of bernard hinault are dead-
especially with the reliance on radios.
anyone classified as a "serious contender" is pretty much relegated to following wheels
(i.e. cadel, wiggins, vandevelde, leipheimer, kreuziger, nibali et al) until the second set of
serious mountains if they haven't had a bad tt/team tt/bonk. it usually takes a
"non-contending" climber (lately rasmussen, soler, sastre...) to shake things up by going
on some kom-esque adventure that just so happens to place them on or near the virtual podium.
the only climber going who can hope to approximate contador's violent accelerations uphill is a. schleck
and alberto has proven that he can distance andy anywhere from 20 seconds to a minute on summit finish. maybe katusha or liquigas can one-two contador with their multiple contenders but they have to start attacking and applying serious pressure before the mountains. if it comes down to
playing the waiting game (again) for contador to crack/crash/whatever, contenders will likely
continue to be disappointed. he's still young enough to cover his tactical mistakes with his legs.

still, would like to see ebh go out on a first week flyer and shake things up a bit with a breakaway
stage win, maybe gaining 3 minutes+ on the majority/rest of the field.

skyrider

No luck at all. He is head and shoulders above everybody, he proved it the last two years and his TT is excellent.

Keith99

An interesting thought, and it seems one people here are already failing to understand. Cobbles may well break the riders into several groups and if the front group has more strong riders anyone in that group may get minutes.

Any reason to thing Alberto is weak on cobbles?

I also checked the details as best I could, it may be a very interestibng stage. 7 sections for about 13km, but 4 of them totaling about 11 kms are in the last 30 KMs. That means 3 early chances to break things apart, but where the domestiques have a good chance to pull things back and 4 late sections, where it is more likely that a rider will have to depend a lot more on his own ability.

A very interesting early stage for once.

Laggard

Thankfully the TDF is three months away so we don't need to think about it now.

OrionKhan

Best post in a long time. Especially with so many race until then.