thehammerdog

why is it the best single day guys are pretty dam big dudes over 6 feet and 170 plus lbs?
None of the TDF best guys ever come close to winning a classic.
Why?

thump55

tdf winners are climbers. climbers aren't 170 pounds.

merlinextraligh

Incorrect. Armstrong won Fleche Wallone, and the World Championship; Andy Schleck won LBL, Cadel Evans won Fleche Wallone and the World Championshipjust as 3 recent examples. Lemond won the World Championship, and was competitive in the Classics.

Further back Merckx dominated the classics.

Just because, Tour favorites aren't winning the Ronde, and Paris Roubaix doesn't mean they can't win Classics, or major one day races.

That said, you've got a couple of things at work. It's horse for courses, The hell that is Flanders, and Roubaix favors bigger stronger riders.

Second,, specialization. If your focusing on winning the TDF, your likely not going to risk injury in a cobbled classic, and your going to put together a Classics schedule that is focused more on tour prep than winning Classics.

Clipped_in

Especially this^^^^^^^

That's one of the things that makes what Merckx did so incredible. Ride and win everything!

Additionally, I think it's good for teams because it provides the opportunity for more racers to shine. Hincapie, Boonen, Et al. being good examples.

Recreate.me

Every rider is different, and the guys above nailed it.

I think that if your a bigger guy you would generate more power in shorter bursts. So you can do well in a day of riding, but not a week of riding because your size takes more energy to maintain.

Usually big muscles are for strength and power, not endurance. Something about fast and slow twitch, but i forget which does what lol

carpediemracing 

There's power:weight ratio - you need to be good with that to climb. Critical for a Grand Tour. Based on what Vaughters said recently it's about 5.75 w/kg. At the height of the EPO days in the 90s it was more like 6.25-7w/kg.

There's sustainable power in an outright fashion, i.e. you have to be able to go 28-30 mph in a mainly flat time trial. DOn't know what the power number is but it's in the 350-375w range. Also very important for a Grand Tour.

Then there's the 1-5 minute peak power. This is critical for Classics riders. Guys who do well on the punchy climbs and the short sections of cobbles are guys that can put down massive amounts of power for 1-5 minutes. Based on some numbers I've seen I think it's in the 600-800w range for a few minutes (which is crazy high).

The guys that can do it all are genetic freaks. Before EPO/oxygen-doping there wasn't a good way to improve your sustainable power, i.e. your aerobic system. You were redlined genetically to a given amount of power over a period of time. You could hopefully recover quicker off the bike (steroids, testosterone), you could hold your redline longer (stimulants), but you couldn't really outride your genetic aerobic ceiling.

In that kind of era a rider that had immense aerobic capacity could do well in most stage races. Add to that the ability to do massive 1-5 minute efforts and you have a rider that can win one day events as well as stage races.

Lemond fell under that category - he could climb well (power:weight), he could time trial (outright power), and he had good short term power (his sprint was one step below the best in a field, and in a "tough" race he could win sprints). Watching Lemond do his big attacks on the climbs... it's amazing the huge gears he turns over and the gaps he gets right away.

Merckx couldn't sprint well - hence he never won Paris Tours, a flat sprinter race - but he could do everything else.

baj32161

Hinault won Roubaix. It seems to me that he was a pretty good Grand Tour rider.

thehammerdog

fellas let us focus on modern day riders...I know about the golden ages Eddy M and all I owned a Eddy frame and loved it.But todays classic favorites are so much larger is it simply the TDF leaders just stayaway from these races ? Why would not a Alberto Contador who is very strong and fast do well? of Cadel

Wilfred Laurier

Don't forget Indurain - over 6'2" tall, ~180 lbs and won 5 straight TDF GCs. And Jan Ulrich, who had to keep pulling his jersey down to cover his gut, and he won one TDF and got multiple podiums.

I think the real reason why there are classics riders and grand tour riders is because certain people have natural abilities and attributes that might make them more apt to succeed in one or the other and so they focus on one to the detriment of their performance in the other. A rider planning to challenge for the GC in the TdF will use the spring classics as training and not risk anything for a win if it does not fit into the training plan.
If they changed their focus I am sure many of the great riders could have been successful in whatever discipline they choose.

Jed19

Time moves on. Modern/contemporary pro cycling favors specialization. Sprinters are not gonna win grand tours nor the classics specialists like Spartacus, Boonen etc. And I don't think Contador nor Andy Schleck are strong enough to place in the top 10 at a Paris-Roubaix or the Ronde Van Vlaanderen. It makes sense to focus on the things you have natural abilities at. We'll never see another rider like a Merckx, that won everything again.

And modern careers are also gonna last longer as a result of specialization.

And one more thing, both Indurain and Ulrich were exceptional climbers for their size, and that, plus the doping was what was at work in their wins.

rpenmanparker 

All the above is true and correct. But also don't forget that these are teams, and all the team members have to be given a chance for some glory. So the sprinters and endurance guys are allowed to win those races which are all they have a chance at. Just like the flat stages of the Tour. The non-climbers would be really pissed (these days, not so much in Eddy's and Bernard's times) if their team leader came up and beat them at the line.

merlinextraligh

oK modern day. Your ignoring Cadel , and A Shleck, and Armstrong is not that ancient.

The heavily cobbled races, the Ronde and Roubaix, are unique, but they aren't the only classics.