Tag: Alberto Contador
-
Steep gravel and dehydration – together they are Alberto Contador’s kryptonite
The final stage is a flat stage, so Alberto Contador will win the 2015 Giro d’Italia. He had a bloody good go at losing it on stage 20, but he’d built up such an advantage, it simply wasn’t possible. What happened? The day was all about the Colle delle Finestre, an 18km climb that was…
-
Descending matters and moral matters
Bit pressed for time, so I’m going to have to wazz through this a bit. First, the stage winner: Philippe Gilbert. He was in the break, he was dropped on the climb, paced himself and then attacked on the descent. Descending matters (verb). Next, the overall and moral matters (noun). Alberto Contador spotted that Astana’s…
-
Contador way better than Aru – but that probably ain’t saying much at the minute
The nuts and bolts of the story are these. At the foot of the really-rather-nasty Mortirolo climb (12.4km at 10.5%) – the penultimate of the day – Alberto Contador was on his own, about a minute behind Fabio Aru’s group, having punctured. At the summit, he was two minutes ahead. Being as Aru’s Astana team…
-
Vasil Kiryienka is the man to maintain an impossible-to-maintain pace
French team FDJ have a scooter they train behind. It’s named ‘Vasil’ after Sky rider Vasil Kiryienka because of the relentlessly punishing pace it delivers. It seems that riding along behind it is almost – but not quite – as uncomfortable as trying to stay in a peloton that’s being driven along by the man…
-
Diego Ulissi briefly emerges from the inaction
It was a weird stage. Which wasn’t to say that it was exciting, because it wasn’t. It seems that 264km in the middle of a Grand Tour is enough to sap any enthusiasm for attacking. Maximum effort moves a lot closer to sustainable effort after that sort of distance until eventually the former can propel…
-
Andre Greipel engineers a win
Greipel wins. Take that, pedals! I didn’t see this. Not even the highlights. I was busy watching Prometheus for the second time in a week. Even so, I have a fair idea how it went. A wide-mouthed man emerged from behind a team-mate and punished his bike all the way to the line. After that,…
-
Alberto Contador drags everyone onto the podium
The way a Grand Tour’s supposed to work is like gravy. You mix everything up, heat it and it’s delicious, but it’s only as it cools that you see the fat slowly rise to the top. In this analogy, fat’s the good bit because fat equals flavour. The thing is, fat alone doesn’t do the…
-
Ding from Contador and dong from Froome
Which sounds a bit disgusting. Let’s gloss over that. Ding dong battles are rare in cycling. Ding ding battles are more common because if you’re fitter and faster than someone one day, that rarely changes overnight. Chris Froome and Alberto Contador seem to be prone to them however with the latest taking place last week…
-
Chris Froome reveals that the sun will rise in the morning
I should probably react to the long-since-broken news that Chris Froome will be riding the Tour de France in 2015. Maybe if it wasn’t so blindingly obvious that was going to happen, I might actually have something to say. Froome had previously floated the possibility that he might ride the Vuelta and the Giro and…
-
Alberto Contador has the legs – even if one of them’s a bit skeggy and slightly knackered
I can only presume that having prepared for the Vuelta by riding around with a fractured leg and a huge infected wound, racing Chris Froome up a mountain suddenly seems like a pain-free doddle for Alberto Contador. In the pantheon of Grand Tour suffering, it’s not quite up there with Tyler Hamilton grinding his teeth…