What next for Froome?

[Crackle]

I think I look on the Indurain era as the first real EPO wins, so therefore discredited in many ways. Indurain has sensibly kept his head down and himself out of the media attention.

 

[KneesUp]

I think I look on the Indurain era as the first real EPO wins, so therefore discredited in many ways. Indurain has sensibly kept his head down and himself out of the media attention.

Sadly I assume all winners are taking something, although I feel terrible saying so in case I'm wrong. I suppose that is part of the tragedy of cheating - it makes you suspect everyone.

I just can quite square the conondrum of:

we know for a fact that winners in the recent past took EPO
we know for a fact that EPO improves athletic performance hugely
we know that the performance of the elite level cyclists is on a par with those known to have used EPO

So we have to conclude that the improvements in training, nutrition and so on have - in just 10 years - have produced about the same gains as EPO did.

It makes you wonder how fast the doped riders would have gone if they'd trained properly.

 

[Pro Tour Punditry]

It makes you wonder how fast the doped riders would have gone if they'd trained properly.

 

[smutchin]

Indurain took time in time trials and then generally maintained that lead in the other stages.

My recollection is that he used to ride every stage like it was a time trial, including the big mountains. And apart from the pure climbers like Pantani, Chiappucci and Virenque, he would ride away from pretty much everyone with his Big Diesel Engine (another one from the big book of cycling clichés). At least, that's how I remember it anyway. May not be entirely accurate.

Never saw Anquetil race but he was supposedly much the same by all accounts. The difference, perhaps, is that EPO wasn't available in Anquetil's era, but wasn't it Anquetil who famously said you couldn't win the Tour on bread and water?

 

[Dogtrousers]

Even his nickname isn't as good.

I was reading an article on nicknames a while ago and the best nickname listed was "The Squirrel of the Canals". Can't for the life of me remember who he really was.
The Cannibal, the Badger, the Angel of the Mountains. Those are good nicknames. Froome-dawg emphatically is not.
Does anyone have a decent nickname these days?
I suppose "The Manx Missile" is in the same bracket as "The Tashkent Express", but it's not as good.

 

[Aravis]

I'd like to see him turn that into a more diverse palmarès.

I couldn't agree more. The assumption that the Tour is more important than anything else by several orders of magnitude - is this a British thing, like tennis and Wimbledon?

For Froome, I don't think churning out Tour after Tour would prove a great deal. The Olympic TT, World TT, Vuelta and Lombardy are surely all realistic targets this year; winning all would need a lot of luck, but if he could his career would be pretty much complete.

 

[smutchin]

Indurain vs Bugno, steaming up Alpe d'Huez at incredible speed without getting out of the saddle...

View: https://youtu.be/FPng3I7cuOM

 

[smutchin]

I couldn't agree more. The assumption that the Tour is more important than anything else by several orders of magnitude - is this a British thing, like tennis and Wimbledon?

No, it actually is by far the biggest event in the sport. It's just that the true greats of the sport won the other GTs, World Championships and Monuments as well, so it would be nice to see Froome add some of those to his Tour wins.

 

[Aravis]

The Squirrel of the Canals.

Carlo Galetti, apparently.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_Galetti

 

[Pro Tour Punditry]

I was reading an article on nicknames a while ago and the best nickname listed was "The Squirrel of the Canals". Can't for the life of me remember who he really was.

Carlo Galetti, apparently.
http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/latest-news/13-of-the-strangest-nicknames-in-cycling-196995

 

[Pro Tour Punditry]

Carlo Galetti, apparently.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_Galetti

Snap.

 

[Tin Pot]

Personally I see no reason to target anything other than the next TDF win. His achievements are phenomenal, but they don't reduce taking the win in 2017.

 

[Crackle]

we know that the performance of the elite level cyclists is on a par with those known to have used EPO

So we have to conclude that the improvements in training, nutrition and so on have - in just 10 years - have produced about the same gains as EPO did.

I'm not sure we do know that. There is much argument around it and times on climbs will be heavily influenced by weather and tactics. I don't think that people race the same way today as they did a decade ago or two decades ago. Even amongst the EPO era there are a few performances done by clean athletes which were comparable. There's some debate over Sastre's win but everything I've read points to him being clean.

 

[smutchin]

we know that the performance of the elite level cyclists is on a par with those known to have used EPO

I'm not sure we do know that.

Look at the stage from 1991 I posted earlier. The differences look pretty obvious to me, and that's not even the height of the EPO era.

 

[Aravis]

No, it actually is by far the biggest event in the sport. It's just that the true greats of the sport won the other GTs, World Championships and Monuments as well, so it would be nice to see Froome add some of those to his Tour wins.

I'd guess there are a lot of armchair Tour fans in Britain who'd struggle to name another top-ranking event, but I couldn't imagine that being the case on the continent. If that's right, it would follow that Britain puts the Tour on a higher pedestal than the rest of Europe.

If you take Anquetil as being the first rider of the modern age (reasonable?) then disregarding all that went before, I don't think many would dispute that the two greatest riders are Merckx and Hinault. Who's third? I'd say De Vlaeminck, yet he barely had a relationship with the Tour at all.