Ben Swift TDF Points Jersey
Comments
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Sky's main target it is to win the tour with Froome. They had Cav fetching bottles. Swift has potential but I don't think Sky are the best team to nurture that kind of talent. EBH looked like he would win shed loads when he arrived at Sky. I think they let him down as their focus has been on the tour. In my view Swift would struggle against the likes of Sagan and co on a day to day basis and without the full attention of the team his chances of winning the points jersey are tiny. Maybe target a stage win would be a realistic option. Sky are all about winning the tour with Froome and having riders like Thomas and Porte who have good engines helps that plan but developing riders with talent and potential like Swift and EBH is not their priority and it will be interesting to see how EBH goes when he leaves Sky.0
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tuneskyline wrote:Sky's main target it is to win the tour with Froome. They had Cav fetching bottles.
Was that really what was going on? I thought it was Cav saying 'look at how much of a team player I am' to muster a bit of support for a lead out. Clearly he got almost no support from the coach, and Cav's version at the time said it was Wiggo who stood up to support him.0 -
Mad_Malx wrote:tuneskyline wrote:Sky's main target it is to win the tour with Froome. They had Cav fetching bottles.
Was that really what was going on? I thought it was Cav saying 'look at how much of a team player I am' to muster a bit of support for a lead out. Clearly he got almost no support from the coach, and Cav's version at the time said it was Wiggo who stood up to support him.
What coach was this? His coach (at the time), Rod Ellingworth? Ellingworth had no say in how it played out - in fact, from what I've read, he wasnt exactly thrilled with how it played out for Cav and felt personally responsible for having helped persuade him to join Sky.0 -
curium wrote:
Care to elaborate?v I've not bought it.TMR wrote:Am just getting to the end of Cav's latest book; the comments he made about SKY and what it was like to ride for them were interesting. He had a shocking relationship with Sean Yates, must have made it hard.
Thing is that if you also read Yates's book, you get a different angle on his relationship with Cav during the Tour.
Fact is that anyone's autobio will be written to paint them in the best light, and Cav's account of 'Cav - the Sky Martyr Year', is slanted to generate a bit of the 'poor Cav' from the reader. Not having a pop - and much of it may be accurate - but its just how it works with autobios, even ghosted ones.
Give you an example: Cav said he never spoke to Yates again after, God, cant remember which incident during the Tour. That's made nonsense by scenes in the films and docos on Sky and Wiggins during the Tour, plus shots of Cav by the team car with Yates, after - according to Cav - he supposedly never spoke to Yates again :?0 -
Mad_Malx wrote:tuneskyline wrote:Sky's main target it is to win the tour with Froome. They had Cav fetching bottles.
Was that really what was going on? I thought it was Cav saying 'look at how much of a team player I am' to muster a bit of support for a lead out. Clearly he got almost no support from the coach, and Cav's version at the time said it was Wiggo who stood up to support him.
Cav made a mistake going to Sky in my view. He was never going to get the full support he would need to try and win the green jersey. Sky made it clear that winning the tour is priority. Cav has not been the same rider since leaving Sky. I wonder if all the head games have dampened his enthusiastic spark for racing and worn him down a bit. He has won so much on the road I am not sure he has the same hunger anymore.0 -
tuneskyline wrote:Mad_Malx wrote:tuneskyline wrote:Sky's main target it is to win the tour with Froome. They had Cav fetching bottles.
Was that really what was going on? I thought it was Cav saying 'look at how much of a team player I am' to muster a bit of support for a lead out. Clearly he got almost no support from the coach, and Cav's version at the time said it was Wiggo who stood up to support him.
Cav made a mistake going to Sky in my view. He was never going to get the full support he would need to try and win the green jersey. Sky made it clear that winning the tour is priority. Cav has not been the same rider since leaving Sky. I wonder if all the head games have dampened his enthusiastic spark for racing and worn him down a bit. He has won so much on the road I am not sure he has the same hunger anymore.
Last year was his most successful season since 2009. He also won the maglia rosso, which was the one GT points jersey he'd been missing. Financially, he managed to more than double his salary with the move to Sky, and then get another pay increase on top of that with the move to OPQS
A decent deal all round, on reflection0 -
Re Cav: After the Giro people were discussing whether he was the best sportsman in the world, but after the tour he was supposed to be finished. Opinions change quickly.
Re Swift: I was going to say that Swift doesn't have a chance to win the green because he is basically a bit like Oscar Freire, but then google reminds me that Freire did win green in 2008. I still can't see it with the new points system and Sagan though.0 -
Richmond Racer wrote:tuneskyline wrote:Mad_Malx wrote:tuneskyline wrote:Sky's main target it is to win the tour with Froome. They had Cav fetching bottles.
Was that really what was going on? I thought it was Cav saying 'look at how much of a team player I am' to muster a bit of support for a lead out. Clearly he got almost no support from the coach, and Cav's version at the time said it was Wiggo who stood up to support him.
Cav made a mistake going to Sky in my view. He was never going to get the full support he would need to try and win the green jersey. Sky made it clear that winning the tour is priority. Cav has not been the same rider since leaving Sky. I wonder if all the head games have dampened his enthusiastic spark for racing and worn him down a bit. He has won so much on the road I am not sure he has the same hunger anymore.
Last year was his most successful season since 2009. He also won the maglia rosso, which was the one GT points jersey he'd been missing. Financially, he managed to more than double his salary with the move to Sky, and then get another pay increase on top of that with the move to OPQS
A decent deal all round, on reflection
I beg to differ. I would say the move to Sky and his quest for Olympic gold and the subsequent deals have had an effect on Cavs performance. I would say on reflection that money has not helped Cav become the almost unbeatable force he was before he went to Sky. He does not go in to races against the likes of Kittel as the favourite anymore. I hope he can get back his top form.0 -
tuneskyline wrote:Richmond Racer wrote:tuneskyline wrote:Mad_Malx wrote:tuneskyline wrote:Sky's main target it is to win the tour with Froome. They had Cav fetching bottles.
Was that really what was going on? I thought it was Cav saying 'look at how much of a team player I am' to muster a bit of support for a lead out. Clearly he got almost no support from the coach, and Cav's version at the time said it was Wiggo who stood up to support him.
Cav made a mistake going to Sky in my view. He was never going to get the full support he would need to try and win the green jersey. Sky made it clear that winning the tour is priority. Cav has not been the same rider since leaving Sky. I wonder if all the head games have dampened his enthusiastic spark for racing and worn him down a bit. He has won so much on the road I am not sure he has the same hunger anymore.
Last year was his most successful season since 2009. He also won the maglia rosso, which was the one GT points jersey he'd been missing. Financially, he managed to more than double his salary with the move to Sky, and then get another pay increase on top of that with the move to OPQS
A decent deal all round, on reflection
I beg to differ. I would say the move to Sky and his quest for Olympic gold and the subsequent deals have had an effect on Cavs performance. I would say on reflection that money has not helped Cav become the almost unbeatable force he was before he went to Sky. He does not go in to races against the likes of Kittel as the favourite anymore. I hope he can get back his top form.
Sorry. Still not quite getting this. He had his best season in 4 years in 2013 - and that's despite OPQS's train being on the 'dodgy' setting at various times across the season. If the Sky year had such a negative lasting effect on him, then how does that explain that fact that he had more wins in 2013 than in any other year since 2009?
You have to recognise that its not just about the rider himself, its also about the quality of his opposition. In Kittel, he's come up against his biggest rival to date in his career - and one with a far more reliable train.
No one stays King forever. That's the nature of sport. He's got a younger and very fast rival, with a more reliable team supporting him in the sprints than Cav has at OPQS, where you still never know whether they're going to get swamped in the last couple of kms, or run out of men for Cav.0 -
Your spot on, he cannot stay king forever. It still was a shock seeing Kittel beat him fair and square. Cav always had an extra gear to go. That is what is missing now in my view.0
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tuneskyline wrote:Your spot on, he cannot stay king forever. It still was a shock seeing Kittel beat him fair and square. Cav always had an extra gear to go. That is what is missing now in my view.
Yeah. You could see how he used to win by miles and over the last couple of years the wins have come with smaller margins. But like we all say...write Cav off to your peril...it seems that everything's being centred around the Tour for him this year, let's see what happens.
He needs that train to function properly more than ever.0 -
Richmond Racer wrote:tuneskyline wrote:Your spot on, he cannot stay king forever. It still was a shock seeing Kittel beat him fair and square. Cav always had an extra gear to go. That is what is missing now in my view.
Yeah. You could see how he used to win by miles and over the last couple of years the wins have come with smaller margins. But like we all say...write Cav off to your peril...it seems that everything's being centred around the Tour for him this year, let's see what happens.
He needs that train to function properly more than ever.
Spot on. 100%0 -
Richmond Racer wrote:tuneskyline wrote:Your spot on, he cannot stay king forever. It still was a shock seeing Kittel beat him fair and square. Cav always had an extra gear to go. That is what is missing now in my view.
Yeah. You could see how he used to win by miles and over the last couple of years the wins have come with smaller margins. But like we all say...write Cav off to your peril...it seems that everything's being centred around the Tour for him this year, let's see what happens.
He needs that train to function properly more than ever.
I thought you said Cav can do it without a lead out train RR?
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Giving his is racing the Giro I guess this makes his chances even less favorable of even getting to the Tour, albeit not a fait accompli.Contador is the Greatest0
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Essex Rouleur wrote:Richmond Racer wrote:tuneskyline wrote:Your spot on, he cannot stay king forever. It still was a shock seeing Kittel beat him fair and square. Cav always had an extra gear to go. That is what is missing now in my view.
Yeah. You could see how he used to win by miles and over the last couple of years the wins have come with smaller margins. But like we all say...write Cav off to your peril...it seems that everything's being centred around the Tour for him this year, let's see what happens.
He needs that train to function properly more than ever.
I thought you said Cav can do it without a lead out train RR?
do you actually read anything properly that's posted here? Or just read bits here and there, and move your goalposts each time?
Let me explain how it goes with sprints. A sprinter - be it Cav, Griepel or Kittel, to take the 3 most successful current pure sprinters - can win without a train. And each of those 3 have done so at times, including Cav (more often than the other two, it has to be said). However, the likelihood of winning a sprint increases with a well-functioning train expecially when your main rivals have that in place themselves.0 -
As FF says,
"Ben Swift @swiftybswift · 3h
Very happy to be returning to the @giroditalia this year. One of the most difficult but beautiful race in the world"
Who is Sky's GC guy for the Giro? Porte is/was ill, Uran gone to OPQS, Henao still home getting tested?
Perhaps Sky will just go stage hunting with Swift? :P0 -
Ed-tron wrote:As FF says,
"Ben Swift @swiftybswift · 3h
Very happy to be returning to the @giroditalia this year. One of the most difficult but beautiful race in the world"
Who is Sky's GC guy for the Giro? Porte is/was ill, Uran gone to OPQS, Henao still home getting tested?
Perhaps Sky will just go stage hunting with Swift? :P
I kinda think Sky are targeting the red jersey with swift.0
