Wiggo

gabriel959

To be honest, if he really prepared for the Vuelta or Giro he could probably win it.

FJS

Homer J wrote:

Europe would hate a brit to ever win the tour, probably more than they hate it when a yank wins. :roll:

Yes, that's Europe for you. It's all the garlic and olive oil they eat I say.

Anonymous

I just wish he'd transferred from track to road proper a few years earlier.

That said, the peloton appears to be cleaner these days so... Maybe not.

andrew_s

Blonde wrote:

No-one seems to have expected such great things from the man, so he's caught them all napping!! Hurrah for Wiggo!

"caught them napping" implies that he's gained some advantage from his good form being so unexpected to everyone else, which isn't really the case.
Would he have been allowed to join the break on the way to Arcalis? If he'd done so, that would have been catching them napping.

Or do you mean the press?

Garmin will have an interesting problem with team selection for next year. It's not going to be easy to come up with a team that can both properly support a top GC contender and provide a good lead out for Farrar

deal

NapoleonD wrote:

I just wish he'd transferred from track to road proper a few years earlier.

That said, the peloton appears to be cleaner these days so... Maybe not.

or just a year earlier, could he have won the tour last year ?

andrew_s

NapoleonD wrote:

I just wish he'd transferred from track to road proper a few years earlier.

That said, the peloton appears to be cleaner these days so... Maybe not.

On the other hand, with fewer world and olympic medals, and even more of a sprint bias, would we still be looking forward to Team Sky?

ms_tree

I'm exhausted! What with shouting at Brad, shouting for Carlos, jumping up and down when TheTwit cracked. What a brilliant 8 kms! and I didn't get out of the chair!!

Anonymous

andrew_s wrote:

NapoleonD wrote:

I just wish he'd transferred from track to road proper a few years earlier.

That said, the peloton appears to be cleaner these days so... Maybe not.

On the other hand, with fewer world and olympic medals, and even more of a sprint bias, would we still be looking forward to Team Sky?

Heh heh, with a high TdF placing and still quite a haul of golds, quite possibly!

Anonymous

OOhh turkeytickler, I was comparing the attitude, manners and good form of Wiggo's personality and how it all comes across to Cavendish's whinging and bad attitude. Cavendish is excellent at what he does but is so unlikeable he is hard to take seriously against Wiggo. :roll:

Eurostar

fyak1 wrote:

Not sure about his attitude in the post race interview on ES. Ok, journalists ask incredibly banal and obvious questions (so Bradley you rode a bicycle today, up a hill?), and it's great to show them up, but I thought he could at least have showed some little bit of pleasure in his achievement so far.
Came over like he was embarrassed by his situation and coverroming it with a quite forced 'who cares' facade.
Why?

Could be that David Harmon was rude about his wife the other day. His interview with ITV was really upbeat, brimming with confidence, really pleased with himself. A new Wiggo.

finchy

Maybe he won't win the Tour, but any of the shorter stage races must be within his grasp now.

Paris-Nice, Basque Country, Dauphine... it'd be brilliant to see a Brit getting major GC wins again.

Go Bradley!

Peakraider

squired wrote:

The sad thing is that in a couple of other forums I frequent, which are far more popular with people from central Europe, all the talk is about how Bradley must be doping. Depsite people saying how he has lost weight, is training properly and always had the pedigree, they simply won't believe it. I guess that is how cycling has gone these days - no results are trusted.

Yes, coz no one else has ever used the "lost weight" line to hide doping....

fast as fupp

andrew_s wrote:

NapoleonD wrote:

I just wish he'd transferred from track to road proper a few years earlier.

That said, the peloton appears to be cleaner these days so... Maybe not.

On the other hand, with fewer world and olympic medals, and even more of a sprint bias, would we still be looking forward to Team Sky?

i wouldnt say everyone is looking forward to team sky?

finchy

Peakraider wrote:

squired wrote:

The sad thing is that in a couple of other forums I frequent, which are far more popular with people from central Europe, all the talk is about how Bradley must be doping. Depsite people saying how he has lost weight, is training properly and always had the pedigree, they simply won't believe it. I guess that is how cycling has gone these days - no results are trusted.

Yes, coz no one else has ever used the "lost weight" line to hide doping....

But did these other people ride for a team that allowed Paul Kimmage to as good as share a bed with the star riders?

Mettan

Brad's certainly improved from a couple of weeks ago when part-time domestic riders where keeping up wth him in the British Road race champs. Must have been the weight loss and a great training camp.

Gazzetta67

Does this mean Brad will be called English if he makes the top 3

Unlike Millar who was called british when he got 4th and won the K.O.M

Brilliant Ride by the way - why did Kloeden up the pace with Armstrong when Contador was up the road ?????

Le Commentateur

My guess is he had no intention of winning the nationals and it was nothing other than a training race for him. If you're planning on being a dark horse contender why flag up your form to rivals at the beginning of a 3 week tour by turning up wearing a national champion's jersey?

afx237vi

Le Commentateur wrote:

My guess is he had no intention of winning the nationals and it was nothing other than a training race for him. If you're planning on being a dark horse contender why flag up your form to rivals at the beginning of a 3 week tour by turning up wearing a national champion's jersey?

Unless you're a Schleck, where it's actually more of a challenge to not win the nationals, when 2/3rds of the field is made up of your family.

deal

Peakraider wrote:

squired wrote:

The sad thing is that in a couple of other forums I frequent, which are far more popular with people from central Europe, all the talk is about how Bradley must be doping. Depsite people saying how he has lost weight, is training properly and always had the pedigree, they simply won't believe it. I guess that is how cycling has gone these days - no results are trusted.

Yes, coz no one else has ever used the "lost weight" line to hide doping....

this is true but the usual pattern is as follows: they explain there new found climbing prowess by claiming a lose of weight while showing no appreciable difference in appearance and simultaneously show a similar performance boost in time trials - suggesting that a large increase in sustainable power is the true cause.

Wiggins doesnt fit this pattern.

Le Commentateur

afx237vi wrote:

Le Commentateur wrote:

My guess is he had no intention of winning the nationals and it was nothing other than a training race for him. If you're planning on being a dark horse contender why flag up your form to rivals at the beginning of a 3 week tour by turning up wearing a national champion's jersey?

Unless you're a Schleck, where it's actually more of a challenge to not win the nationals, when 2/3rds of the field is made up of your family.

Yes, sibling rivalry probably with a bit of competitive dad syndrome in the mix.

But he's a known contender in the Tour, so no chance of slipping under the radar by being underestimated for the first half of the race.

simon_e

squired wrote:

The sad thing is that in a couple of other forums I frequent, which are far more popular with people from central Europe, all the talk is about how Bradley must be doping.

These people are the type to believe alien abduction stories and claim X-Men are running the US government.

Brad was up there with the greats today. Well, OK, with all but one - the man that rides like he must be playing Mozart on his iPod. What a great stage! Contador's rhythm, and his graphic 'statement' atop the podium; Sastre coming back later on the climb; Cancellara's big pull after working so hard all day; and of course Wiggins' ride. He's surely no. 1 at Garmin now. Good to see the microphone aimed at Wegelius and Millar post-stage. Aah, so there are other Brits in the Tour after all!

Not sure how many times Paul Sherwen mentioned LA's age in the last 20 minutes (he's 37 in case you had missed it) but it was tiresome and irrelevant. Cadel Evans, finishing behind Sastre and ahead of LA, barely gets a mention on air or in reports.

Peakraider

johnfinch wrote:

Peakraider wrote:

squired wrote:

The sad thing is that in a couple of other forums I frequent, which are far more popular with people from central Europe, all the talk is about how Bradley must be doping. Depsite people saying how he has lost weight, is training properly and always had the pedigree, they simply won't believe it. I guess that is how cycling has gone these days - no results are trusted.

Yes, coz no one else has ever used the "lost weight" line to hide doping....

But did these other people ride for a team that allowed Paul Kimmage to as good as share a bed with the star riders?

Good point.

attica

Just a random anecdote but possibly relevant:

Last summer I was lucky enough to holiday in Mallorca and got chatting to the English chaps in the bike shop in Puerte Pollenca, the subject of the climb up to the first pass on Cap Formentor came up and they happened to mention that Brad had set a PB up it of 7 minutes, I've nothing to measure it by but the fact that they knew that little nugget may mean that Brad was starting to think about hill climbing at least as far back as last June, OK that was two months before the olympics but he was setting markers.

stagehopper

I'm not the greatest fan of power to wight ratios in comparing performance. If you listen to some, it's the only measure of how good a cyclist is (ignoring health, confidence, form, desire, team mates, training etc). However it is a tool frequently used to point out suspicious improvements in performance by those working towards a cleaner sport. i.e.

"How can rider A keep pace with rider B up the climb - his P/W ratio would have to be near 7 W/kg which is physiologicaly impossible."

or

"How has rider X improved him P/W ratio so much on last year when he weighs the same - such improvemnts can not be attributed to pedalling efficiency."

So now we have cyclist whose efficiency on the bike has never been questioned, is more confident, focussed, concentrating on a road-specific programme, in an excellent team, and has clearly lost a large chunk of excess weight thus improving his P/W ratio considerably.

Yet the most frequent Salemists when it comes to sniffing out drug cheats using P/W rations as their measurement of guilt seem to want to avoid P/W rations when discussing Wiggins's improvement.

squired

It just so happens that Pezcycling has an article about the effect of losing weight on power to weight ratio:

http://www.pezcyclingnews.com/?pg=fulls ... ame=Latest News

deal

Performances at the Tour 2009
By: Michele Ferrari
Published: 19 Jul 2009

On the ascent to Verbier (638m of difference in height at 7.5%) Alberto Contador (62kg) climbed at 1852 m/h, equal to 6.73 w/kg, developing an average of 417w.

Lance Armstrong (72 kg) climbed at 1720 m/h, equal to 6.25 w/kg, developing 450w.

The difference between their VAM's is 7.4% in favor of Alberto, while Lance, whose body weight is 16% heavier, pushed 8% more watts: a suggestion that in the upcoming time trial in Annecy it could be a very close and uncertain duel.

In Arcalis (751m of ascent at 7.1%) Contador climbed at 1671 m/h, equal to 6.18 w/kg, with Armstrong and all the other best riders at 1649 m/h (6.10 w/kg); but in the last couple of km Alberto had already showed a power that was 7.2% superior to his rivals'.

Interesting comment about the TT. Presumably Wiggins at just 1kg lighter than Armstrong but considerably faster than him today was putting out a higher raw wattage than the pair of them (assuming Ferrari's weights and the reported 71kg for wiggins is correct)

iainf72

417w isn't terribly outrageous, is it?

JohnWilky

at 62kg it is......

robmanic1

Amazing performance, whatever happens between now and Paris!

Really can't see him holding on to a podium spot though, he looked fried after yesterday's stage, but you never know.

GO BRADDERS!

mididoctors

JohnWilky wrote:

at 62kg it is......

this ultra weight loss thing has got to e damaging in the long run.... I suppose looking at east african runners it must be reasonably sustainable..?

I find the whole thing somewhat freakish.


amazing performance hard to see how he could improve in grand tour terms.... bit more of a jump perhaps?

I mean he can't get any lighter..can he?