Bike Racing

[Marco]

No I wouldn't say I've made my mind up - that seems to be you. I was intrigued that you jumped to the conclusion you did due to a 1-2-3 on a Stage.

And this is what I wrote on the 19th of September 2023, please read it as it looks like you've only read the first 13 words of the second paragraph and then stopped

Where do you want me to start?

Should I start with the 1-2-3 from a team on a road stage, something that I've never seen before in a grand tour? Or should I mention the second 1-2-3 from the same team a few days later?

Maybe I should mention the first 1-2-3 overall by a team in a grand tour since the 1928 Tour de France (I'm discounting the dodgy 1966 Vuelta, where only the Spanish Kas squad finished a full team amongst the 55 finishers, and put six riders in the top seven. [General Franco was still running a dictatorship at this time.]) Even Armstrong's Trek squad, who were doped up to their eyeballs, couldn't do a team 1-2-3.

It was probably the way three of their team waltzed off the front at will, making Evenepoel and Thomas (both grand tour winners), plus Ayuso, Landa, Mas and Vlasov, look like rubbish. Again and again.

They say it takes about two months to recover from a grand tour, so it is rare that a rider rides all three as the accumulated fatigue is so great. Kuss, however, rode all three and finished 14th, 12th and then 1st. Again, you can add that to the 'never seen before' list.

And then there is consistency. In clean racing riders have bad days, and in 2023 we've seen bad days from Pogačar, Evenepoel and Thomas (all grand tour winners). But one team doesn't seem to get bad days anymore

All in all, we have been seeing superhuman feats from the yellow and black team for two years. Not just one rider, but four with van Aert. And then you start to cast your mind to the last time you saw superhuman feats on a bike, and how that ended ...

That 1-2-3 didn't surprise me in the context of the Tourmalet stage because the depth wasn't there at this Vuelta with Evanepoel out of the picture.
I look through the rest and they are just not up to the job of team leader and only seem capable of winning a proper mountain stage from a breakaway.

That is deeply disrespectful to the likes of Ayuso, Landa, Mas and Vlasov, who all finished within 8 minutes of the leader after almost 77 hours of racing. In a previous era one, two, or even three of them would have finished on the podium. The likes of Merckx, Hinault and Fignon won grant tours with winning margins of over 10 minutes.