Ken Brown

What's with Cobo? Last year he beat Froome and Wiggins to win the Vueletta and this year he is off the radar in the Tour. He is an hour and two minutes behind Wiggins and has never been prominent on any mountain stages. Has anyone heard a reason?

ultraman6970

As practically any spanish rider (but contador). he is unreliable and inconsistent... I think he got in the accidents but in general cobo is not consistent at all as a rider, the guy is pretty good not doubt about it but the problem is his head. When he won the vuelta he was ready to give up cycling and basically after a brainwash they got him back in the bike and he won the vuelta. My best guess is that he can't handle pressure because after the vuelta nobody heard about him no more.

Just look at the spanish teams, the phone company one did pretty bad and if it wasnt for valverde they would have done worse (they won other races tho), then you have the only team i know that is composed by only climbers or flat lander climbers, Euskatel. Well the team pretty much can't climb the stairs, i know they had a bad season, accidents and the team almost was wiped off but either way, you have a team with climbers that did nothing in the climbs Not bad riders, but the same than cobo, really inconsistent riders.

ramuntxo

Euskaltel needs to drop their "Basques only" recruitment (besides Samu of course) and open up to other nationalities to make them a more diverse team. As far as I know, Euskaltel has sponsorship for next year but to keep relevance, they need to open the doors to just Basques.

ultraman6970

If they do that the ETA will start putting bombs in the races so they put vasks back in the team hehehe

YMCA

As 6970 said above, Cobo is unreliable and inconsistent. He has come close to quitting the sport numerous times.

His brilliance shines nicely when he wants to though. Much like P Fedrigo.

letitsnow

This might be a dumb question, but that has never stopped me in the past - LL Sanchez seems like he is good at climbing, ITT, and sprinting. Why isn't he a GC threat?

chasm54

Not really a good enough climber. Good all-round rider, often in a break, I've always liked his style. But not quite up with the very best in any discipline.

ultraman6970

If you looks at record tables spaniards have great riders. for example oscar freire, 3 times world champion... that's hard to beat. Probably not even Cav is going to be able to do that good because the route of the world cups is hard as it gets and clearly always suit better to 1 day race or classics riders. Cav got lucky last year because the finish neither the route was that tough as the australian WC or remember back in 80s the route in swiss i believe, with like 3 hard ass climbs that basically was going to cut the group to the strongest ones in the final 10 or 15 km, cav in a route like that has no chance to even dare to finish. Coming back to the subject, spaniards are good riders but their inconsistency is just legendary (to me). South americans have the same problem (probably passed genetically to them,) some wins are legendary and next race they just suck, for example haedo from argentina, that SOB sprint is maybe as fast as cav's, panamerican champion in sprint when he was junior, argentinians have excellent trackers even just to mention a couple, the Curuchet brothers who's achievements in the madison are just legendary at world level. For the record I'm not argentinian ok? Last years (i believe) per point competition in one of the 4 anual track WC was won by a spaniard, the guy was like 45 y/o and kicked everybody's ass... the guy was just amazing... if im not wrong even kirienka raced that one too and he couldn't with the old man and kirienka is not handicaped at all.

Never been able to pin point the problem, so far LL-sanchez is one of the most consistant spanish riders I know but as chasm says, the guy does ok in everything but he is not quite close to win big races like the tour or the giro, LLS has not raced the giro ever, and probably is because of the mountain stages, are harder IMO than in the tour. He is a stage seeker, that's all he does, good nose for that

Ken Brown

Sagan will probably fit this description too, unless he can improve in the big mountains. Which he might, given his surprise performance a few stages ago.

canam73

You're probably right, but I would like to see him ride a stage race for GC sometime to see how he does. With the right drugs it could work.