Pure Climbers

EKIMIKE

Rick Chasey wrote:

Cycling generally is missing the heroic typical pure climber - he who can climb a lot better than anyone else by miles but can't do anything else for toffee.

Recently the best climbers have also been pretty good all rounders.

I wonder how Esteban Chavez will fair this year at OGE? He's smaller than Quintana. Seems to have the talent but it sounds like he had an awful accident.

frenchfighter

Yeah very excited about him and Acevedo whose results according to Jonathan Vaughters were"...extraordinary. He tested better than Tom Danielson, which I thought I’d never see."

rayjay

frenchfighter wrote:

Yeah very excited about him and Acevedo whose results according to Jonathan Vaughters were"...extraordinary. He tested better than Tom Danielson, which I thought I’d never see."

We heard for a long time about how good Danielson his. His times up cols in training.

Was that before he doped?

Because he has never showed anything like the form he his supposed to be capable of on a consistent level.

A great climber and bike rider, but just maybe not a great competitor/ racer

EKIMIKE

rayjay wrote:

A great climber and bike rider, but just maybe not a great competitor/ racer

Kind of like the anti-Cav - with his famed shite-ness in the lab but delivering the business out on the road - eh?

Hopefully Acevedo turns out closer to the Cav end of the "delivering the business" spectrum!

RichN95.

Almost every year Vaughters signs someone who he says is the best he's ever tested. It was Rohan Dennis last year, Talansky before that.

Richmond Racer

RichN95 wrote:

Almost every year Vaughters signs someone who he says is the best he's ever tested. It was Rohan Dennis last year, Talansky before that.

Tis true, there is a pattern

t4tomo

rayjay wrote:

I think more than any other Pantani fits the image of a pure climber.
He was always single minded a bit edgy and you could imagine the trauma if he did not have the right socks to wear
[/quote
Completely agree. Would have been interesting to see how much more he'd have won if his era had been clean and / or his doping had been as proficient as Lance's and / or he could have concentrated on the Tour rather than always having to do the Giro beeping an Italian on an Italian team.

Most charismatic rider of his generation by far, but a troubled soul.

takethehighroad

Rujano perhaps the last "great"? He'd could lose bags of time on the flat.

Does it still count even though he only had one good season?

disgruntledgoat

rayjay wrote:

frenchfighter wrote:

Yeah very excited about him and Acevedo whose results according to Jonathan Vaughters were"...extraordinary. He tested better than Tom Danielson, which I thought I’d never see."

We heard for a long time about how good Danielson his. His times up cols in training.

Was that before he doped?

Because he has never showed anything like the form he his supposed to be capable of on a consistent level.

A great climber and bike rider, but just maybe not a great competitor/ racer

Its the Eskimo in him!

bigmat

Great article on Pantani here by - yikes - its by Lance! :shock:

http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/arm ... the-artist

Maybe a second coming as an insightful commentator is on the cards.

frenchfighter

Ha I just posted that on a separate thread but it is probably better here. Will remove mine.

bigmat

frenchfighter wrote:

Ha I just posted that on a separate thread but it is probably better here. Will remove mine.

I had a quick look to see whether already posted but must have missed yours - where best to put an article by Lance about a drug fuelled climbing great eh?!

disgruntledgoat

As it's being deleted... I quite enjoyed that article. Good read.

Richmond Racer

BigMat wrote:

Great article on Pantani here by - yikes - its by Lance! :shock:

http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/arm ... the-artist

Maybe a second coming as an insightful commentator is on the cards.

Difficult to know whether Lance is talking about Pantani or about himself, in places

ddraver

How are the twaliban taking this then?

Macaloon

That was a cracking, well-written, read. Who was the ghostwriter??

Richmond Racer

Macaloon wrote:

That was a cracking, well-written, read. Who was the ghostwriter??

Sally Jenkins...

...or Kimbo's at a loose end now...

Richmond Racer

ddraver wrote:

How are the twaliban taking this then?

Not. Best. Pleased.

ddraver

Richmond Racer wrote:

ddraver wrote:

How are the twaliban taking this then?

Not. Best. Pleased.

Hmm, it's a rare day I sympathise with Digger's strapline but this is one of them...

Richmond Racer

Daniel Benson has always been up Lance*

aaaaaand its extreme clickbait



*apologies for the crudeness and the imagery

frenchfighter

Matt Rendall's documentary: Kings of the Mountains:
http://vimeo.com/90989984

http://www.cyclinginquisition.com/2014/ ... -into.html

mroli

thanks for that Frenchie - had to turn it off for the moment - but really enjoying it so far....

frenchfighter

Was really pleased to read something like this, evoking a time when there were real men, real warriors, real legend makers. Over 50 years on and this makes the hairs on your neck stand up, 100 years on it will still be the same. Greatness never dies. Long live the romance, long live the stories, long live the suffering.

Charly Gaul, perhaps the best pure climber the sport of road cycling has ever produced, should have been standing at the Monte Bondone summit finish of the 2006 Giro d’Italia. But Gaul, who won an epic victory on the Bondone climb in 1956, died December, 2005, at age 72. The Giro organizers chose the Bondone as the stage 16 finish to mark the 50th anniversary of Gaul’s stage win, which was achieved in apocalyptic conditions.

Gaul was only 20 when he turned pro for a French team, Terrot, in May 1953. Within a month he was racing in the second biggest stage race in France, the Dauphiné Libéré, where he astounded the professional peloton by placing second overall and taking the King of the Mountains title. After that race, the veteran Belgian rider Pino Cerami said that Gaul “climbed even better than Coppi.” (Italian legend Fausto Coppi, of course, had won the Giro and Tour de France multiple times at that point in his career.) “Gaul pedaled a smaller gear than anyone, sitting on his saddle, [whereas] Coppi pushed a much bigger gear and had to accelerate several times before breaking away.”

Gaul’s first major victory came in May 1954 at the now defunct Circuit des Six Provinces, when he won a stage over the Croix du Chabouret climb into St. Étienne (over the same climb that Floyd Landis rode away from the Paris-Nice field this spring). Pierre About, a reporter for the French sports newspaper L’Équipe, wrote in his report that day that the 21-year-old Gaul, because of his unlined face, blue eyes and smooth climbing style, was like “the angel of the mountains.”

That moniker stuck with Gaul until his death 51 years later, even though his peers said his moods were much more complex than an angel’s. One of Gaul’s most bitter rivals — and later closest friends —Spanish climber Federico Bahamontes said, “He had a very strong character, terrible even.” Indeed, Gaul could explode into angry outbursts, but that strength of character also enabled him to make marathon solo breakaways in the mountains.

The first of these stupendous exploits was his race-winning move on the stage to Monte Bondone at the 1956 Giro. Starting what was that year’s final mountain stage, Gaul wasn’t even in the top 10 after he had flatted three times the previous day. He was lying in 24th place, a distant 16 minutes behind race leader Pasquale Fornara of Italy.

The 242km stage started from Merano in the Dolomites in cold, wet weather. Gaul made his first attack with Bahamontes on the day’s first climb, the Costalunga. They were reeled in on the descent, but Gaul attacked again on the second climb, the Passo Rolle. This time, the Angel of the Mountains really took flight and by the top of the pass race leader Fornara, suffering in the awful conditions, was four minutes behind. But Gaul then had more bad luck. Two punctures cost him six minutes and he was well behind the leaders when he reached the foot of the day’s third giant climb, the Brocon, as the rain redoubled in ferocity.

Over this third climb in a stage that would take the leaders nine hours to complete, Gaul again turned on his climbing power. He passed Fornara and set about chasing the other top Italians, Fiorenzo Magni and Nino De Filippis. The Luxembourger continued his relentless progress into a violent head wind. With about 40km to go, he had passed Magni, caught De Filippis and was only two minutes behind the leader on the road, Bruno Monti.

At this point, with Fornara almost five minutes behind, De Filippis was the virtual race leader. But once Gaul passed him, De Filippis suddenly lost all his willpower in the horrendous weather. He could barely turn the pedals and was soon re-caught by the Fornara group. De Filippis could go any further. He stopped, collapsed and was then carried into his Bianchi team car.

By the time Gaul reached the wet streets of Trento, at that foot of the 14km ascent to the ridge-like summit of Monte Bondone, the frail-looking 23-year-old climber was looking strong enough to win the stage and perhaps take over the pink jersey.

On the early slopes of the climb, where the grade was at 10 percent, the rain began turning to snow and later to a full blizzard, blown by gusting winds. The maglia rosa, Fornara, was overcome by the freezing temperatures and took refuge in a farmhouse. Others rode to a standstill, while some riders stopped to dip their freezing hands in bowls of hot water offered by spectators. Only 43 of the day’s 89 starters would reach the Bondone’s 5413-foot summit, and some of those arrived in cars (and were allowed to start the next day).

Gaul — about whom French rival Raphaël Geminiani once said, “he has the skin of a hippo” — plowed a lone furrow through the tempest. He arrived at the summit finish almost eight minutes ahead of the second man, Alessandro Fantini, and 12:15 ahead of defending champion Magni. His face a wrinkled mess, his hands and feet turned blue, Gaul had won the stage and taken the Giro lead by 3:27 over Magni. Never in the history of the Italian race had one man come from so far back to win the overall title in a single day. Gaul had to have his clothes cut from his frigid body before he was immersed in a hot bath at his hotel. Two days later he was crowned the champion of the 1956 Giro d’Italia.

meagain

Gaul. THE man. That's all.

d_o_g

Did LOADS of speed tho.

meagain

Obviously!

Garry H

Monsieur Pi-Pi!!

phreak

Trento is under-rated as a base imo. Some super climbs in the area, with the Bondone the pick of the bunch.

Pross

Really wish there was extensive footage of racing from that era. Times change, in many ways for the better but the sport does lose the romanticism of those heroic rides.

dsoutar

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be