Sean Kelly ?

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Wester

Wester

Guru
Sean Kelly was ranked as the No1 cyclist in the world for a number of years yet he never won or to the best of my knowledge never came close to winning the world's No1 race the Tour De France why did he never win the De Tour ?
 
D

Deleted member 26715

Guest
Wester said:
Sean Kelly was ranked as the No1 cyclist in the world for a number of years yet he never won or to the best of my knowledge never came close to winning the world's No1 race the Tour De France why did he never win the De Tour ?
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Because somebody always completed it in a quicker time on each occasion he competed in it
 
Adam4868

Adam4868

Guru
Sean Kelly never won the tour De France because he rode everything else ! He was full on classics then grand tours.He won quite a few stages though.id guess you'd have him down as more of a sprinter.
 
jarlrmai

jarlrmai

Veteran
Wester said:
Sean Kelly was ranked as the No1 cyclist in the world for a number of years yet he never won or to the best of my knowledge never came close to winning the world's No1 race the Tour De France why did he never win the De Tour ?
Click to expand...

Cycling doesn't work that way, a lot of people would argue Peter Sagan is the current individual greatest cyclist, but there's no way he's going to win the Tour de France, GT's like the TDF are a generally team event built around a climbing specialist with all round ability and a lot of strong domestiques.
 
Adam4868

Adam4868

Guru
Four green jerseys in the Tour, multiple stage wins, multiple Monuments won multiple times, not to mention a grand tour win in the Vuelta. Kelly was also the World number 1 for 5 years running (1984-1988).

The only races to really escape him were the Tour of Flanders, where he was 2nd on 3 occasions, and the Tour de France, where his highest overall position was 4th in 1985
Pretty impressive to say the least,I think I remember reading the only time he found he suffered was in the high mountains
 
mjr

mjr

Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
Location
mostly Norfolk, sometimes Somerset
Seems like he didn't enjoy the Alps and rarely had a strong time trial team, both of which are important for the Tour de France:

In 1982 he lost time in the time trials and seemed to relax in the last few mountains; 1983 he took yellow on the stage into Pau and then lost 6 minutes the next day, clawing back time in the next ITT and then losing big in the Alps and a little more in the last ITT; 1984 he lost time early on and never recovered it like Fignon and others did; 1985 he lost nearly 3min in the team time trial, recovered some in northern France, lost more to Hinault in the ITT and Alps, recovered a bit in the Pyrenees, then lost more in the last ITT; 1986 he was injured after the Tour de Suisse; 1987 retired from race after a crash; 1988 he lost time in the Alps again and didn't recover enough AFAICT; 1989 he lost time in the team time trial and a bit more in the Pyrenees, then again in the Alps; 1990 lost time in the team time trial and dropped out of the top ten in the Alps never to return; 1991 entire PDM team retired "sick" (now there's an interesting story if you want to search...); 1992 lost 5 minutes on the second stage; 1993 Festina seem to have preferred van Poppel to him as their green jersey hope; 1994 his new team was not invited; then he retired.
 
Ian H

Ian H

Ancient randonneur
Kelly was one of the hardest of hard riders, and also a really nice guy—he'd be stood at the barriers chatting and signing autographs after all the other riders had retired to their hotels.
 
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