Pure Climbers

Garry H

frenchfighter wrote:

Yes I read that quote yesterday and was quite surprised. With regard to Pure Climbers, it has nothing to do with not doping.

Agree with that. Pantani was a pure climber in the sense that it was his only weapon. Contador is much more than a pure climber, closer to LA in that respect than to Pantani.

Garry H

disgruntledgoat wrote:

andyp wrote:

Chiappucci had the heart of a lion, the tactical sense of a giraffe and a well stocked medicine chest.

Summed up pretty nicely there. He did do that ride to Sestriere in the '92 Tour though, so I'll let him off.

He was a briefly burning, mountain specialist version of Jacky Durand.

Aye, stage 13 of 92 Tour. I have every single stage of every tour from 90 to 96 on VHS somewhere. The stage to Sestriere was the one I watched more that any other (before I became wiser and a lot more cynical )

frenchfighter

One definition I have read: Riders who win many mountain stages off the front and who rarely win a grand Tour; not caring about the complicated goals of overall placings they simply want to win mountain stages with style and panache.

This however isn't entirely representative of all riders that can be put under the banner as there are numerous examples of Pure Climbers who have won Grand Tours (although they are mostly from another era).

disgruntledgoat

frenchfighter wrote:

One definition I have read: Riders who win many mountain stages off the front and who rarely win a grand Tour; not caring about the complicated goals of overall placings they simply want to win mountain stages with style and panache.

This however isn't entirely representative of all riders that can be put under the banner as there are numerous examples of Pure Climbers who have won Grand Tours (although they are mostly from another era).

I don't think it's that they don't care about overall placings, more that that is what they have to do to gain sufficient time to compete for the overall. Attacking on one climb is, unless the race is already reasonably close a la Sastre, not going ot garner gains such as can be maintained in a TT.

Witness Pantani on the Galibier (and his attempt to fo the same to Armstrong in 2000), Simoni in his second Giro win, Chiapucchi in 92, Van Impe in his Tour win and for some old school kicks, Charley Gaul pummeling himself through raina dn snow to gain enough time on Anquetil.

frenchfighter

Fabiana Luperini

36 year old Italian who has won the Giro Femminile a record five times and the Grand Boucle Feminine three, leaving her mark on the climbs. These titles have been won over a 13 year period which is quite unheard of in cycling. She lives near Monte Serra which she climbs at least three times a week. She has four Italian Road Race titles to her name.

Having not seen her in action, I have only what I have read to go on, but apparently she climbs with apparent ease, always arriving looking fresh at the finish.

Kléber

frenchfighter wrote:

she climbs with apparent ease, always arriving looking fresh at the finish.

I'd climb with apparent ease and arrive looking fresh if I was coached by Luigi Cecchini too

rick_chasey

Kléber wrote:

frenchfighter wrote:

she climbs with apparent ease, always arriving looking fresh at the finish.

I'd climb with apparent ease and arrive looking fresh if I was coached by Luigi Cecchini too

Pure climbers by no means need pure blood

takethehighroad

All this talk makes me want to revisit Matt Rendell's book about Il Pirata. Not Manuela Ronchi's though

jerry3571

I'm pretty sure El Diablo kissed my sister on the cheek when the TDF came to Portsmouth.
She had Jesper Skibby do the same too. My sister did like the men in tights though.

I think Chiappucci did attack anywhere he liked. I'm sure it was Indurain who didn't go much on descending and having the little Italian attacking in tunnel. Entertaining chap though.
Is he another ex pro who has had trouble with retiring?? (I thought I read somewhere that he wasn't a happy bunny).

-Jerry

Monty Dog

El Diablo was pretty well forced to retire having returned one too many HCT tests over 50%

Another 'pure' climber tragically cut short was Jose Maria 'Chava' Jiminez - his win on Angrilu where he dropped everyone in the rain in 99 to catch Tonkov near the line was pretty impressive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RsddUPq-nc

frenchfighter

Monty Dog wrote:

El Diablo was pretty well forced to retire having returned one too many HCT tests over 50%

Another 'pure' climber tragically cut short was Jose Maria 'Chava' Jiminez - his win on Angrilu where he dropped everyone in the rain in 99 to catch Tonkov near the line was pretty impressive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RsddUPq-nc

Great video. In the rain and with visibility limited to about 30m. A fair while since I've watched a video that has a rider in that classic Mapei strip.

luckao

Ricco? There's always a sting in the tail when he's on the mountain.

By the way, whilst looking at his ride of the Passa Fedaia, I must have found the most over-zealous crowd in the history of the Giro. I know somebody brought it up earlier in the thread. Wasn't Valverde penalised during last year's Vuelta? No wonder they hate it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMvgbNFA ... re=related - Go to 9:03.

When telling non-cycling fans about cycling, I refer them to Alberto's climb of the Angliru. The gradients on that border on immoral. The fact that he left two riders like Valverde and Rodriguez trailing is a testament to his ability.

frenchfighter

The following text is taken from an article entitled 'Grimpeurs' in Issue Six of Rouleur magazine. It is a superb article for someone keen on these guys. This particular section on Charly Gaul I found very interesting.

Then of course there is Charly Gaul, the little Luxembourgian who won the 1958 Tour de France and was known as the Angel of the Mountains. Gaul's reputation as a climber - and a quirky personality - was forged with one performance in particular, when on stage 21 of the 1958 Tour de France he took on Louison Bobet, the three-time Tour winner, with panache and no little arrogance. "You're ready, Monsieur Bobet?" Gaul is reported to have said. "I'll attack on the Luitel climb. I'll even tell you which hairpin. You want to win the Tour? Easy. I've told you what you need to know."

Then, of course, Gaul did just that: he attacked at the precise spot, riding alone for much of the 219km stage to Aix-Les-Bains, run off in the kind of terrible weather that the Angel seemed to relish, and clawing back most of his 15-minute deficit on the race leader Raphael Geminiani. He won the stage by 14 minsutes, 35 seconds, moved up to third overall, and was within pouncing distance of the yellow jersey - which he seized in the final time trial for his only Tour win.

That is an outstanding rider.

Gaul was so complicated and erratic: like so many climbers, he could be brilliant or awful. Some have said that he appeared haunted. "A sad, timid look on his face, marked with an unfathomable melancholy, he gives the impression that an evil deity has forced him into a cursed profession admist powerful, implacable rivals," as one writer put it. Yet - piling on another contradiction - he was also something of a heartthrob: famously, he received as many as 60 letters a day during the Tour from female admirer.

As his taunting of Bobet suggests, Gaul was temperamental - chippy, you might say. His hostility towards Bobet and Geminiani, could have owed something to his other nickname, the less than flattering "Monsieur Pipi". It has been said that this owed to his mastering of the ability to urinate while on the move, which he might have been rather proud of. But, in fact, its origins were in the 1957 Giro d'Italia. He stopped to pee in a hedge, and Bobet and Geminiani attacked. Gaul never regained contact and lost a race he seemed certain to win.

Shameful behaviour by Bobet and Geminiani.

When he retired in 1965, Gaul opted for the same kind of project that Claveyrolat would pursue three decades later. He opened a bar beside the main railway station in Luxembourg Ciy but six months later abandoned it, along with his wife, and disappeared into the Ardennes forest. For nearly two decades he lived in a remote spot, in a hut filled with Christian symbols and trinkets, without piped water or electricity. When journalists or fans tracked him down Gaul waved them away. With his long beard and thousand-yard stare, he had grown distant. But in 1983 he re-emerged.

Gaul offered no explanation, and never talked publicly about his years in exile. One journalist said that he simply wanted to "get back to his roots, back to nature, to find out what sort of person he was", although he did re-marry, had a daughter, and began to follow cycling again. Marco Pantani might have been key to Gaul's falling in love with cycling again. When the Italian was a young amateur, he looked Gaul up on a racing trip to Luxembourg. He knew all about the legend of the Angel of the Mountains and wanted to meet him.

The two became friends. They had a special affinity - perhaps Gaul, by now looking like an elder statesman with his white beard and paunch, recognised Pantani's demons. Gaul died in December 2005, two days before his 73rd birthday, after falling in his homein Itzig, Luxembourg.

rick_chasey

Speaking of Pantani, above ^^ I think he gets a bad rep.

Sure the guy was on the jungle juice, (though, let's be honest, do we really think he was racing people who weren't?), but in terms of a pure climber, a guy who puts all his energy into going uphill fast since that's the only weapon he has, he's got to be it.


None of this Andy Schleck or Sastre getting 10% better at TTing for a 2% decrease in climbing capability*

He lived for the mountains, and would not compromise at all in that respect and for me, he's the only genuinely pure climber in my living memory.

To me, he didn't hold interest in anything other than the mountains.

Thinking of it, maybe Rasmussen was, but then again, he was so dog ugly on the bike, and couldn't really accelerate in the way I'd like a pure climber to.


*statistics made up, but they did/do put a lot more effort into TTing than Pantani ever did.

frenchfighter

I agree. I couldn't care that Pantani was doped. He was still had qualities and strengths that made him a very exciting and admired rider.

I like your line a lot:
'He lived for the mountains, and would not compromise at all in that respect '

I think Rasmussen has a pretty good acceleration, but agree that he is hard to like.

frenchfighter

A good few lines on Pantani from the same article

Pantani could be attention seeking, but never brash - even in the flamboyant guise of Il Pirata, with earring and bandana, there was an awkwardness about Pantani. Even at his swashbuckling pomp, he would rarely look you in the eye. He was the actor who needed to assume a role before he could express himself - or not himself, but the character he was pretending to be, the guise he was hiding behind.

By the way, the article is written by Richard Moore.

frenchfighter

frenchfighter

rick_chasey

Ya, you forget how exciting he was uphill.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FsaN9uMo10



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2FQqHF8x5I
&
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkAlb8A5B2E


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVCrBMNi1Vw

and of course, up that Alpe

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hxuw4YL3Pw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGoXMpSrrSY

frenchfighter

Haha, quite a lot of watching to do there!

rick_chasey

Pantani makes him look like he's pedalling in cheese. ^^

gabriel959

As Miguelon said...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_s ... 489929.stm

frenchfighter

Gilberto Simoni

Two Giro overalls, one second and four thirds. One Baby Giro. 8 stage wins of the Giro, including two Zoncolans, one of the Tour, and two in the Vuleta, one of which was on the slopes of the Angliru, a climb for the best ascendeurs.

The Tour win was a sprint from the four surviving riders of a 17 man long breakaway, who crested 6 climbs including le Col de Peyresourde and resisted the US Postal train.



He may have one the World Champs in 2001 if his last lap attack hadn't been chased down by his 'teammate' Lanfranchi, allowing Freire to catch back on and win (Lanf's Mapei teammate).

He has been denied other victories, finishing 2nd behind proven dopers, most recently behind Sella on stage 20 of the 2008 Giro.



“There are races that I’ll miss. My victories are made of hard work; not by finishing in a 200 metre sprint, but after hours of climbing thousands of metres of altitude."

“The Angliru is the toughest. There are six terrible kilometres on that mountain. What suffering! The Mortirolo is also hard and long, but it’s not the Angliru. The fatigue you feel there is terrible. The Gavia is very long and has a lot of history, but it is not so hard.” - Simoni

A very good summing up of his career:
http://www.podiumcafe.com/2010/5/12/146 ... -his-final

I would be keen to hear any good quotes on Simoni if anyone has some?

disgruntledgoat

There's plenty of good quotes from Simoni FF... The man has a classic short-man-syndrome. You'd have loved to have been on that Gondola in Venice at the start of last years Giro when they shoved Gibo, Armstrong, Basso and Di Luca together!

frenchfighter

Haha, I remember the expressions in a lot of those photos were quite telling:

Kléber

Going... going... gondola: Armstrong used Ferrari, Di Luca had Santuccione, Basso used Cecchini/Fuentes. Who was Simoni's preparatore in the past 15 years?

iainf72

Kléber wrote:

Going... going... gondola: Armstrong used Ferrari, Di Luca had Santuccione, Basso used Cecchini/Fuentes. Who was Simoni's preparatore in the past 15 years?

The only person I can link him with is Ferrari. But that was very much in his yoof.

frenchfighter

A story from 1999 when the mountain was used fore the first time in a stage:
Angliru - an epic stage of road racing

More on that brutal climb to Alto de la Angliru, stage 8, Vuelta e Espana, by Martin Hardie, cyclingnews.com correspondent.

"Alpine stages are a race within themselves. You only have to watch such stages of the Tour de France, Alpe D'Huez, Galibier, Tourmalet to get the feeling. Nothing seems to stir the imagination like the combat between cyclists ascending a giant climb. Even on the flat television screen the climbs are daunting. The real thing so much more.

Stage 8 of the Vuelta promised to expand the concept. It promised to be one of the epic stages. Even before a crank was turned in anger, the Alto de el Angliru, in Spain's northern Asturias region, was to a cycling legend. In February, seven months before the race, eventual stage winner Jose Maria Jimenez described the classic climbs of the cycling world as "child's play in comparison". Of el Angliru Fernando Escartin said "if you stay sitting down, your front wheel goes up in the air. If you stand up, the back wheel slides".

At a time when cycling has gone from one body blow to another we wondered whether the Vuelta hype could ever be met. Was this a cynical attempt by Unipublic, organisers of the Vuelta, to grab a few headlines? Was this stage really going to push the mountain stage further than any climb before? Were its 23% ramps really where the Spaniards would get their own back for all the crimes perceived to be committed against them in the recent past?
13.5kms of climbing, 19%, 14%, 23% and 17% with portions in between giving new meaning to the phrase false flats. All of this in the last part of a 176 km stage after already crossing 2 category 1 and a category 2 climb.

But you had to wonder would anybody live to fight el Angliru another day? The dispute was not between riders, it was the mountain against man. Some said that no one could get up if it rained. Even before el Angliru was mounted it poured. Down La Corbetoria, down El Cordal the race slid. In a ravine Olano is found with the tiny frame of Lotto's van de Wouwer, lying with his bike, Olano's on top. In the finale Escartin was not there. It was not this Spaniard's day but he was only bruised, not battered. No shattered collar bone.

Olano remounted and was dragged back into the race. Liquigas' Ivanov is somehow still upright and still up the road. Ahead still lays el Angliru. Where it has been all day, beckoning, taunting: 'I cannot be climbed, not today'.

Between Olano and Ivanov a group of five. The climb is underway and with 10 kms to go Ivanov has a minute lead over Mapei's Tonkov, Kelme's Rubiera and Heras and Telekom's Ullrich and Guerini. With Ullrich in the group, Zarrabeita works to bring his ONCE captain, Olano back up to them. But as Zarrabeita can work no more, Tonkov moves away from the other four. Soon he is past Ivanov and in no time has a 59 second lead over those he left.

The climb continues and Olano is now back with the Ullrich group. Only 6 kms remaining and Jimenez and Heras start their pursuit of Tonkov. They start to eat into Tonkov's lead and pull away from Olano and Ullrich, who seem content now only to limit their losses, reach the summit and mark each other out of el Angliru's fury. But then Tonkov increases his lead again. With 3 kms to go Jimenez leaves his teammate, Herras behind. With only the last kilometre remaining Tonkov still has 40 seconds on Jimenez. Then somehow Jimenez bridges and Tonkov is caught and passed. Jimenez crosses the line, there is no energy left for a victory salute. But a victory it is for Spain, Banesto, Jimenez and of course Alto de el Angliru.

With his victory, Jimenez gave Spain and cycling what it craved "I dedicate it to all of Spain, because I was in debt with all of it and with the team, since until now, thing have not gone the way they should have for the work I was doing in training ... It cost me a lot more than the rest, because I had a big debt with my fans and the people that prepared this climb. Before the start, I felt that I had a lot of responsibility ... I could see Tonkov a little earlier, but, even though I was feeling well, I wouldn't just take off, because I was a little afraid, maybe I didn't choose the right gearing for the rain. But once I passed the toughest section, I decided to go after him."

In somewhat of an understatement Tonkov said "It has been an incredible stage" But the gap crossed by Jimenez on the final sections of el Angliru were not without controversy. Tonkov complained : "I'm very angry because Jimenez was helped by the motorcycles which didn't allow me to sprint." Mapei also believed that a commissaire's car had acted as the rabbit for Jimenez to chase across to Tonkov. But the Russian warned that the Pyrenees were still ahead.

It seems that el Angliru may well have given cycling the type of shot in the arm it needed. The spectacle, the suffering, the falls and the epic battles on a brute of a mountain. Over 120,000 fans lining the route Ð standing in pouring rain. The joy and tears of victory and loss. As those of us who ride sit back in awe, it all comes home in a most frightening and real manner when we think of the gearing used: chainrings of 30 or 32 teeth and rear sprockets of 25 or more."

http://italiancyclingjournal.blogspot.c ... gliru.html

disgruntledgoat

iainf72 wrote:

Kléber wrote:

Going... going... gondola: Armstrong used Ferrari, Di Luca had Santuccione, Basso used Cecchini/Fuentes. Who was Simoni's preparatore in the past 15 years?

The only person I can link him with is Ferrari. But that was very much in his yoof.

Whoever it was, he seems to have got away with it, wot?

Kléber

disgruntledgoat wrote:

Whoever it was, he seems to have got away with it, wot?

Oh yes.

He rode like a climber but his build never quite looked like the pure climber, his arms were bigger and he didn't have that pure acceleration that a typical climber has.