Tag: Tom Dumoulin

The Upcoming Tour de France Gets More Interesting by the Day

On By Spencer MartinIn Cycling2 Comments

Back in January, I wrote that the Giro d’Italia had the potential to outshine the Tour de France in 2019. With a large field of exciting young talent and the (in)famously chaotic and unpredictable Italian terrain, the Giro seemed poised to topple the Tour, which has become a bit of a snoozefest in recent years.

When that original piece was written, the 2018 Tour de France runner-up Tom Dumoulin and 21-year old Egan Bernal were both targeting the Giro d’Italia. However, Dumoulin was forced to leave the Giro following a crash on stage 4. While this seriously dampened the fight for the general classification in Italy,  it adds fuel to the Tour’s GC fire.

Meanwhile, Egan Bernal ‘broke’ his collarbone a week before the start of the Giro. This means he will likely line up as a legitimate leader of Team INEOS’, who are already struggling to balance the ambitious of last year’s winner Geraint Thomas and 4-time winner Chris Froome.

There were mummers that the Colombian sensation would be lining up at the Tour all the way back in March. I believe this was the INEOS team brass sending up a trial balloon as they looked for an insurance policy as their aging superstar duo struggled through their worst spring campaigns in years.

Since Bernal is already back on the bike and setting PRs on training climbs less than two weeks after breaking his collarbone, it is safe to assume he is going to line up at the Tour de France (which features a route perfect for Bernal with a high-altitude, numerous climbs and a mere 27km of TTs).

I personally subscribe to the fringe conspiracy theory that Bernal and INEOS faked the collarbone break as cover to duck the Giro and get their best climber at the Tour without seriously damaging Thomas’ and Froome’s egos (who have both been quietly struggling to find form in recent months). Bernal’s incredibly quick recovery could potentially support this crackpot idea (release the x-rays!).

All of this combines to give us a fantastically dramatic backdrop for this summer’s Tour. Having three legitimate contenders on one team will be thrilling to watch and could potentially dull the team’s unmatchable strength. The INEOS riders give all the right answers through gritted smiles, but the tension will simmer under the surface and they will have to make due will fewer domestiques and team organization in critical moments (see: Froome’s lack of a full team while chasing after his crash on stage 1 of the 2018 Tour).

The addition of fresh (and hopefully healthy) Dumoulin, the best GC rider under the age of 30, makes this even more interesting. Dumoulin’s focus on the Giro was always a strange fit since he won the race back in 2017 and seems poised to take the title of the best grand tour rider on the planet from Froome. His preparation for the Giro seemed off and it felt like he was hedging to leave something for the Tour, while Primoz Roglic came in red, red, hot, and looks impossible to beat at the moment. The only way he can advance his career and raise his profile is a Tour de France title, so as sad as it is to see him drop off of the Giro, this short-term loss could pay major dividends in July.

Which Grand Tour Should Tom Dumoulin Target in 2019?

On By Spencer MartinIn Cycling1 Comment

When the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France, the sport’s two biggest Grand Tours, release their respective routes for the following season, there is always chatter about which race each favorite will choose to target. Chris Froome’s failed attempt at the Giro/Tour double in 2018 has likely put serious attempts to bag both to rest for the near future. This means each major favorite will be forced to choose a Grand Tour to target. While we know that Froome, the defending Giro champion, will mostly skip his title defense in an attempt to join the five Tour club, and Geraint Thomas, the defending Tour champion, will most certainly show up to the Tour to defend his 2018 title. While the path looks set for the two Sky stars, the 2017 Giro champion and rising star Tom Dumoulin is faced with an incredibly difficult decision in the 2019 season. Does the time trial crushing Dutchman head to a climb-heavy, TT-light Tour de France, or play it safe at the more suitable, but less prestigious Giro d’Italia?

The Dutch contender won his first and only Grand Tour to date when he took the 2017 Giro d’Italia title and has been tipped as a ‘star of the future’ since. But at 28, Dumoulin is rapidly entering his prime and needs to start winning Grand Tours on a semi-regular basis if he wants to be considered a true star. His runner-up placings at the 2018 Giro and Tour was a truly impressive feat, but the fact remains that Dumoulin needs to start winning on the sport’s biggest stage sooner rather than later. Another Giro title would certainly be a worthy feat, but if Dumoulin wants to ascend to the level of Froome, Nibali, and Thomas, he needs to Tour de France win.

Putting his Giro ambitions aside to go all in for a Tour de France title would the standard move for an ascendent Grand Tour star. However, Dumoulin, who thrives in time trials, must be concerned by the recently released Tour route that features a mere 27km of individual time trials.

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This is the second fewest amount of TT kilometers in any recent edition, behind only the paltry 15km in 2015. The lack of TTs is compounded by a course so laden with climbing that Tour director Christian Prudhomme has deemed it the ‘highest’ route of all time. If Geraint Thomas shows up in 2019 with the climbing form he sported in 2018, he would be close to unbeatable on the five mountaintop finishes.

In contrast to the Tour’s route, the 2019 Giro d’Italia route features a whopping three individual time trials that add up to a total of 56 kilometers. On the surface, this is a route designed to easily serve Dumoulin up his second Giro title, but if we dig a little deeper, a few cracks in this theory appear. The opening 8km time trial on stage one features the steep 1.8km climb to the San Luca basilica in Bologna (in recent years, the 10.8% average climb has been used as the finish for the Giro dell’Emilia race).

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The 34.7km TT on stage 9 features close 3,000 feet of climbing, with the entire second half of the course climbing at a 5-7% grade to the microstate of San Marino.

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Even the ‘flat’ final 15.6km TT on the final stage in Verona features a 4km-long climb right in the middle of the course that features close to 700 feet of vertical gain.

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These climb-heavy TTs are paired with an extremely mountainous final half of the race. Stage 20 features four brutal climbs deep in the Dolomites and will ensure the eventual winner of the race is a legitimate climber.

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While Dumoulin isn’t thought of the climber on par with Chris Froome, Simon Yates, Vincenzo Nibali or even Geraint Thomas, the results speak otherwise. The chiseled Dutchman was present in the lead group at every mountain top finish in the 2018 Tour, and showed up to the World Championships looking leaner than ever. The new physique likely cost him some raw power, which was evident when he surrender his World TT title to Rohan Dennis, but saw him hang with the absurdly steep climb specialist on the final Höttinger Höll climb. The 3.2km climb had an average gradient of 11.5%, and even hit grades up to 28% in sections. If Dumoulin, who traditionally just looked to hang with the best on the long climbs in the Grand Tours, was able to stay within seconds of the lightest and punchiest climbers in the world at the end of a long, brutal race, then it seems likely to expect him to be able to stay with the lead group on any climb the Tour and Giro can serve up.

Dumoulin’s 2018 season, in which he finished 2nd in both the Giro and Tour, in addition to a 4th place at the World Road Race Championships, was a spectacular feat of endurance and versatility but saw him fail to get a single mass-start victory. This means that he needs a statement win more than ever if he wants to continue to advance his star power. He most certainly would prefer that win to come at the Tour de France, but the lack of any significant time trial kilometers means he would need to take time on the mountains, versus simply limit his losses as he’s done in the past. With its lumpy TTs and mountainous last half, the Giro d’Italia presents challenges, but surely represents his best chance to get his bank his second Grand Tour victory.

If Dumoulin wants to play it safe and pad his palmares with a second Grand Tour title, he should focus solely on the Giro. But if he feels like rolling the dice and face steep odds in exchange for a massive payoff in the unlikely event of success, he should go all in for a highly unfriendly Tour route. If he goes in with the ultra-slim physique he had at World’s, he could upset the pure climbers on the supposedly shorter, punchier climbs spread throughout the Tour.

Giro Notebok: What Happened to EF-Drapac’s Climbers, Dumoulin’s Mistake and Where Does Simon Yates Go From Here?

On By Spencer MartinIn CyclingLeave a comment

The 2018 Giro d’Italia featured one of the most dramatic comebacks, and meltdowns, in modern cycling history. After a slow-burn GC picture over the first two weeks, the race exploded on the 19th stage, with Chris Froome attacking solo from 80 kilometers out to win the stage and take the race lead after being all but written off as a potential winner. This historic comeback (we won’t get into the believability of the performance or the ethics of Froome’s participation at this time) capped off an already thrilling race that leaves me with a few burning questions.

I’m sure I was the only person thinking “what the hell happened to EF Education First-Drapac’s lineup of supposed up and coming climbers” during the most thrilling GC comeback in the modern history of the sport. But seriously, what happened? The “American” team came into the race touting a collection of potential stage (and even possibly overall) winners with Joe Dombrowski, Hugh Carthy, and Michael Woods, only to go home empty-handed on all fronts.

Dombrowski signed with Team Sky in 2013 and was hailed as the next great American climber. He turned in a few promising climbing performances at the 2016 Giro d’Italia but has failed to show the same form since. He is often cited as a young rider and given quite a bit of leeway for his sub-par performances, but he is 27, which is two years older than Simon Yates and the same age as 2017 Giro winner Tom Dumoulin. With an incredibly narrow set up skills, time is running out for Drombrowski to show himself a viable grand tour stage winner.

Carthy is still a legitimate young rider at the age of 23. While he got into a few long-range breakaways on mountains stages, these moves seemed oddly timed and slightly desperate. A pure-bred climber like himself should be tucked in the group when the GC contenders are certainly going to pull the early breakaway back and race all-out for the stage win. Carthy also has a concerning trend of coming into races below an optimal performance weight. He would most likely be better off putting on a few kilograms to produce a little bit more power and strengthen his immune system.

Woods came into the Giro touted as an outside contender for the overall win and probable stage winner. He came close to a stage win on stage 4, but that proved to be the high water mark of his race. His EF team displayed odd tactics by burning significant energy to launch him 70km from the finish line (Sky must have been taking notes). That move obviously didn’t work and Woods was dropped soon after he was caught 30km later and the team was left with nothing to show for their huge energy expenditure. I can’t help but feel there was a better use of Woods’ talents than using the entire team to launch a doomed-to-fail desperation move. A high GC finish seemed to be in the cards early on, but an illness in the final week tanked his overall standing. Woods came into the Giro looking extremely skinny, which paid off on the steep uphill finishes, but likely contributed to his late-race illness.

Speaking of long-range attacks, what was Tom Dumoulin thinking when Froome attacked from 80km out? He certainly thought it would be impossible for a single rider to stay away for the rest of the stage, but he picked the absolute worst composition of riders to attempt to chase back to Froome with.

Froome attacked with 80km left in the stage and quickly established a large, but manageable gap.

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By the time he crested the summit of the Finestre 7km later, he had a lead of 37 seconds over a group of chasers that included Dumoulin, Thibaut Pinot, Miguel Angel Lopez and Richard Carapaz.

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When Froome hit the bottom of the descent 20km later, his lead was at 1:23. Pulling out close to a minute on Dumoulin during this descent would prove to be the difference that would eventually allow him to win the overall.

How did Dumoulin, a rider with immense descending skills, let Froome get so much? His first grave mistake was sitting up to wait for Pinot when he was suffered a mechanical on the Finestre. Distancing Pinot over the top of the climb would have incentivized Lopez and Carapaz to work with Dumoulin in an attempt to push Pinot off the podium. His second mistake was waiting for Pinot’s teammate, Sebastien Reichenbach on the descent. Reichenbach added valuable horsepower to the group, but the time it cost to wait for him on the descent likely cost Dumoulin a second Giro title.

Simon Yates rode an incredible 18 stages, only to stumble and lose the race in fantastic fashion on the 19th stage. He exhibited a stunning meltdown on the race’s penultimate mountain stage and ended up losing 38 minutes by the end of the stage. The Briton wasn’t able to recover the following day and was relegated to the groupetto the following day. His collapsed mirrored that of his teammate, Esteban Chaves, who lost 25 minutes on stage 10, a transition stage that only featured mild climbs. Both of these stunning meltdowns were written off the Mitchelton-Scott team as “bad days,” but neither Chaves or Yates was able to recover and couldn’t hold pace on the climbs for the rest of the race. These weren’t mere stumbles, but extremely concerning trends that raise questions about their abilities to compete for wins in three-week races in the future.

Dumoulin cracked on stage 20 of the 2015 Vuelta a Espana, and fell out of the overall lead with one day left to race. He was able to recover from the late-race collapse by going on to win the 2017 Giro d’Italia.  However, there are major differences between Dumoulin’s bumble and Yates’ epic loss. Dumoulin only lost 3:52 to eventual winner Fabio Aru and went on to finish 6th place overall. This stands in stark difference to the historical fumble that befell Yates. His Mitchelton-Scott team is saying all the rights things to the press, but it will be interesting to see how much they hedge their chances during the Briton’s GC campaigns going forward. Another big talent, Richie Porte, suffered from the same type of inconsistency in grand tours and was never able to string together a successful campaign. With the new reduced team sizes, teams won’t have the luxury of taking chances on unproven entities year after year, which raises the stakes for the mid-race bobbles.

 

Can Simon Yates Win the Giro? It Depends on His Ability to Limit His Losses In The Time Trial.

On By Spencer MartinIn Cycling1 Comment

Simon Yates heads into the second week of the Giro d’Italia with a 38-second lead over 2017 champion Tom Dumoulin. While Yates currently has the pleasure of wearing the Maglia Rosa of the race leader, if he wants to be crowned the overall winner in Rome on stage 21, he needs to race every mountain stage as if he had time to make up. The looming 34.2km individual time trial on stage 16 rips down the Adige valley in the Dolomites and will serve as an opportunity for Dumoulin to pull back significant time. We all know that Dumoulin will get time back on Yates, but the million dollar question is exactly how much time Yates will concede. If he can survive the barrage from the big time trial specialist, he will likely emerge victorious at the end of the three-weeks.

Triangulating an accurate estimate is difficult, because like two ships passing in the night, Yates and Dumoulin haven’t met head-to-head in many individual time trials. A cursory glance will show us that since 2015, they have faced off on six occasions, with Dumoulin taking an average of 2.68 seconds per kilometer out of Yates. However, this sample is somewhat tainted by the time trial from at 2018 Abu Dhabi Tour, where Dumoulin suffered a mechanical and was forced to change bikes mid-race. If we take this race out of our sample, Dumoulin has taken 2.89 seconds per kilometer out of Yates.

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When we extrapolate this average per-kilometer difference out to 34.2km, the distance of the final time trial at the 2018 Giro, Yates stands to lose 92-seconds in the race against the clock. Keep in mind that none of these previous meetings feature a course longer than 18km, and the longer, straighter and flatter the course, the more time per kilometer the stronger time trialist will be able to take.

Yates has seen mild improvement in his time trialing ability in recent seasons and managed to limit his loses in the opening time trial of the 2018 Giro d’Italia to 2.06 seconds. This course featured technical corners and downhill sections, so it isn’t a one-to-one comparison to the wide-open course the race will see on stage 16. But, if we use the most recent data we have and stick to the 2.06-second difference from the opening stage, Yates could feasibly limit his losses to 70-seconds.

Yates has said that Dumoulin could easily take two to three minutes out of him, and while that statement feels when you first hear it, the limited numbers we access have to don’t back it up. If Yates can limit his losses to between one and two minutes, he certainly has a legitimate chance of winning the overall if he can continue to take precious seconds on the remaining uphill finishes. Even if he losses 90 seconds to Dumoulin in the TT, he is likely to take time from Dumoulin on the brutally steep Monte Zoncolan, and stages 15, 19, 20 all feature multiple climbs leading into an uphill finish, which present great opportunities for Yates to slip away and put time into the big Dutchman.

Of course, Dumoulin was in a similar position during last year’s Giro, and most expected the time trial specialist to lose serious time to the climbers once the race hit the mountains. Instead, he stuck with the best climbers and even put time into them on the Oropa summit finish on his way to a definitive victory. Lurking outsiders like Thibaut Pinot and Domenico Pozzovivo can’t be ruled out, but the final week appears to be on track for a Dumoulin/Yates head-on-head collision. Part 2 of this piece will attempt to estimate how much time Yates stands to take from Dumoulin the Giro’s mountainous final week and if the Dutchman has a chance of holding on to the jersey if he ends up taking it back on the stage 16 time trial.

Chris Froome’s Deficit Is a Really Big Deal

On By Spencer MartinIn Cycling1 Comment

Chris Froome lost 37-seconds to Tom Dumoulin in the opening time trial of the 2018 Giro d’Italia on Friday. Conventional wisdom tells us this is no big deal.

“There is plenty of time for Froome to make up this margin. The race is 21 stages long, and we still have the mountains! It’s way too early to count anybody out! Anything can happen!”

However, after taking a deeper look at trends from the recent past, conventional wisdom proves to be incredibly wrong, and this time loss seems much more significant than appears at first glance.

Citing the fact that we are three stages into a 21-stage race is a bit misleading. Time gained or lost on the first stage is equally significant to time gained or lost in the first week. I’m of the belief that both fans and teams tend to overvalue potential time gaps in the third week of a grand tour, while greatly undervaluing the chances to gain time in the first week. A second on day one is equal to a second on day 21.

Since 2015, five out of nine grand tours have been decided by less than a minute. In last year’s Giro d’Italia, a gap of 40 seconds separated the entire podium. While casual observers assume that even though margins are tight in the opening stages and we’ll see major gaps open up in the mountains, these stages rarely serve up the time gaps they would expect.

Below is a graph showing the winning margin in every grand tour since 2015. A quick glance will tell you that 40-seconds is a significant margin of separation.

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If Froome’s loses this year’s Giro d’Italia by his current deficit, it wouldn’t be the first time a recent grand tour was decided by an opening time trial. The 2016 Tour de France opened and closed with the opening time trial in Dusseldorf. Eventual second-place finisher Rigoberto Uran ceded 51 seconds to Froome over the 14-kilometer course. After three weeks and 21 stages of racing, the Colombian rolled into Paris 51 seconds behind Froome.

Furthering the seriousness of this time gap is that the Giro organizers dialed back the number of traditional climbing stages in the Dolomites and placed a greater significance on the time trials in an attempt to court Froome and Dumoulin. The irony of this is that a course tailor-made for Froome could end up being his undoing.  We’ve seen he hasn’t been on the same level as Dumoulin in the race against the clock since the Dutchman absolutely crushed him at the 2016 World Time Trial championships.

It may seem counter-intuitive, but in a three-week grand tour, every second counts. The spontaneity and ample time gaps that so many fans expect simply aren’t that common, and the opening time trial is proving to be just as, if not more, important than a 7-hour, 6 categorized climb, queen mountain stage. Whatever happens, don’t be surprised if the top two places in the Giro ride into Rome in three weeks with less than a minute between them.

Forget the Pretenders, The Giro d’Italia will be Froome Versus Dumoulin

On By Spencer MartinIn CyclingLeave a comment

The Giro d’Italia starts tomorrow and a pu pu platter of contenders will line in an attempt to take home the Maglia Rosa at the end of the 3-week race. Despite the plethora of talented up-and-comers, the 3-week long race will likely come down to a duel between Tom Dumoulin and Chris Froome.

Dumoulin will be the only former winner to start, while Froome and Fabio Aru are the only other riders in the race with grand tour wins to their names. There is a sea of young pretenders like Miguel Ángel López, Esteban Chaves, Simon Yates, and Thibaut Pinot, that will attempt to finally close the gap from also-rans to champions, but to win a Grand Tour, it helps to have already won one, along with an ability to post a good time trial.

The race only features 43km of time trials, but recent grand tours have seen an inverse relationship between the amount of TT kilometers and how decisive those kilometers are to the final result. Dumoulin and Froome are the only two riders in the field that can climb with the best while putting serious time into the competition the time trial.

Aru has a grand tour win, but he has struggled to find the consistency that propelled him to that 2015 Vuelta a Espana win. He has shown flashes of brilliance, best exemplified by his performance on stage 5 of the 2017 Tour de France. Aru rode away from feared SkyTrain like they were standing still and went on to win the stage and take the overall lead.

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These sublime performances are tempered by the fact that you never quite know what you are going to get from the Sardinian. He could ride away for an impressive mountain stage victory constantly or crack to lose significant time. This lack of consistency and his weakness in the time trial make it difficult to imagine Aru wearing the Maglia Rosa in Rome.

Thibaut Pinot looked fantastic at the recent Tour of the Alps, but the Frenchman is infamous for his erratic performances. He is in the rare club of riders who can climb with the best and put in a solid time trial and I would love to see Pinot break through and take a Giro win, but I certainly wouldn’t put any money on it happening.

Miguel Ángel López is being touted as a contender. He is a fantastic rider who appears to be riding an upswing of form, but as is the rule in modern grand tours, the fewer number of overall TT kilometers means the importance of those kilometers is magnified. The 2018 Giro will be decided by the gaps seen in the time trials on stage 1 and 16, and Lopez doesn’t have the ability to hang with the contenders in the race against the clock.

With gaps in climbing stages getting slimmer, the time trials are likely to decide the fight for the GC. This means Froome and Dumoulin have to be considered the top two favorites since they are simply at another level against the clock. Even though Froome’s powers appear to be waning and he hasn’t displayed great form so far in 2018, his first win in 2017 didn’t come until the final day of the Tour de France, when he took the overall victory. However, he is a year older, his form hasn’t had the same sparkle as in pre-Tour 2017, and he has been forced to put an immense amount of energy into the defense of his Adverse Analytical Finding. His lack of form and ongoing legal battle makes it difficult to imagine him winning a third consecutive grand tour.

Even taking the above into account, Froome still has to be considered a safer bet than anyone not named Tom Dumoulin.

Dumoulin rode to an emphatic victory in the 2017 Giro despite spotting his competition over two minutes due to an ill-timed bathroom break during the most decisive stage. His win appeared to be the coronation of a future star, but his buildup to the 2018 Giro has been a disaster, which saw the Dutchman struggle to finish the majority of his early-season races for a plethora of reasons. However, his impressive 15th place at the recent Liège – Bastogne – Liège showed his form could be coming around just in time for the Grande Partenza in Jeruselum.

With Dumoulin throwing verbal jabs at Froome in the days leading up to the start, the 2018 Giro is shaping up to be a fantastic showdown between riders at opposing ends of their careers.

Tuesday Morning Power Rankings: Three Riders Trending Up and Down This Spring

On By Spencer MartinIn Cycling2 Comments

The early season racing in Australia and the Persian Gulf is behind us which means the “real” professional cycling season is finally underway. We are less than a week away from Milan Sanremo, or “La Classicissima,” the first monument of the season, so it is time to finally take stock of where we are and who are the riders to watch for the coming weeks.

First up on the roll call are three riders whose futures are trending down as we head into one of the most critical points of the spring season.

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Tom Dumoulin
Dumoulin may be feeling a slight hangover from his dream 2017 that saw him win the World Time Trial Championship, become the first ever Dutch winner of the Giro d’Italia and a media darling in the process. However, his 2018 hasn’t been as kind. The best way to describe his 2018 so far is that the pressure of being a newfound star appears to be getting in the head of the usually charismatic Dutchman. On top of his Abu Dhabi Tour meltdown, he recently crashed out of Tirreno-Adriatico on stage 5 and he is doubtful to appear at Saturday’s Milan Sanremo. This is certainly not the preparation he was hoping for heading into an attempt to defend his Giro d’Italia crown in May. A successful defense of the Italian Grand Tour looks like a longer and longer shot with every passing race and if the Dutchman doesn’t turn it around soon, he may be forced to write off the spring and turn his focus to the Tour in July.

Geraint Thomas
When Geraint Thomas found himself ensconced in the Maglia Azzurra during stage 5 at Tirreno-Adriatico, he must have felt like something wasn’t quite right and disaster was around the corner. Since the Welshman has abandoned his promising one-day Classics career to chase the stage racing dragon, everything that could go wrong has gone wrong (see here, here, and here). His Team Sky teammates literally had the wheels fall off at the Tirreno team time trial last year. This fiasco ended up costing him the overall win. He then went on to crash out of both the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France. Not to be deterred, Thomas set his sights on winning the 2018 Giro d’Italia, only to have his superstar teammate Chris Froome wave him off and declare now that he had thought about it, he was going to be the leader at both the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France (this means that for four straight Grand Tours no other Team Sky rider was given their own chance to win. THIS IS INSANE! Froome was  basically asking for a mutiny at that point.)

Thomas had put all of this behind him and actually out-ridden his team leader Froome at the summit finish on stage 4 to declare himself the new alpha at Sky. Unfortunately, this all came crashing down around him with one kilometer to go as his chain inexplicably slipped off his chainring and he was left yelling on the side of the road, waiting for a new bike as his rivals disappeared up the road. His Team Sky leadership was over almost as quickly as it had arrived and Thomas is now left to emotionally pick up the pieces of an almost comically cursed stage-racing career.

I don’t in any way doubt Thomas’ physical ability as a Grand Tour rider, but he is 31 years old, on the most talented stage racing team ever assembled and has never finished higher than 15th in a Grand Tour. One can’t but feel like time is running out on his ill-fated stage racing career and wonder what may have been had he had remained on promising Classics trajectory. Even if Froome’s adverse analytical finding sees him unable to race the Giro and Tour this season, the stable of talented young riders on Sky is lining up to push out Thomas. Exhibit A: Earlier this season, Thomas’ “teammate” Michal Kwiatkowski jumped up the road on the final stage Volta Algarve to take the leader’s jersey right off the Welshman’s back.

Chris Froome
The only rider having a worse week than Geraint Thomas is Chris Froome. Froome came into the season with many questioning whether he should even be lining up due to his ongoing case from his adverse analytical finding (aka he had too much of an allowed drug in his system and has to explain how so much of it got there) during last year’s Vuelta a Espana.

Putting all of that aside, right now Froome’s biggest problem is that he has stunk on the bike so far this season. He was 10th at the Ruta del Sol, a race that he had won the last time he attended in 2013, and has been consistently off the pace of the top group at Tirreno-Adriatico, a race where he previously finished 2nd overall. To add insult to injury, members of the media are questioning if his flat at the end of stage 5 was legitimate, or if he was attempting to hide how much he was struggling to stay in the group. Whether it is true or not is irrelevant, the fact that we are even asking that question about a rider who was discussed as a possible winner of the near impossible Giro/Tour double mere months ago shows how far and quickly his star has fallen.

Now let’s take a look at three riders trending up coming off the first big block of serious racing.

Trending Up

Peter Sagan
The three-time world champion missed the standard early season tune-ups, Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Kuurne–Brussels–Kuurne, where he usually announces himself and/or hones his form. However, if anyone thought that the birth of his first child and a late start to the European season would hamper his Classics campaign, they were proven wrong this week. Sagan looked strong but maybe missing the top gear at Strade Bianche last Saturday. While not at his best, he still managed to finish 8th at the absurdly hard race. And while he hasn’t won a stage at Tirreno this year, he has three 2nd place finishes, two to Marcel Kittel and one to Adam Yates. Kittell, a 190-pound monster, was created in a lab to be the fastest road cyclist in the world on a flat, straight finish, while Yates is a 125-pound climber who floats away on the steepest pitches. It is likely that these two riders have never even ridden next to each other in the group and possibly don’t even know the other exists. The fact that Sagan finished behind each on back-to-back days is a testament to his otherworldly versatility. Most importantly for Sagan, on stage 5 he showed a willingness to sit in the group and force other riders/teams to chase, even if it meant having his bluff called and the lone rider staying away. The Slovak is showing his competitors that the days of relying on him to chase back every move in the finale of the race are over. These tough lessons could pay major dividends at the upcoming Monuments, where patience is arguably more important than physical form.

If this impressive consistency still had us asking questions about his form going into Sanremo, the means in which he clawed himself back into the pack on stage 6 at Tirreno should leave no doubt. With 8km to go, Fernando Gaviria crashed directly in front of Sagan. For every other ride on the planet, this would have meant they were going down as well. However, Sagan reminded us that he isn’t every other rider. He somehow managed to hop over the fallen Colombian, stop, get a new bike from his team car, chase back on to the full-speed peloton, and still nearly beat Kittel in the sprint to the line. This highly impressive chase forced Sagan to tip his hand more than he would have liked, but it could end up being a mere teaser for a truly dominant Classics run from Sagan.

Tiesj Benoot
The young Belgian finally made good on his vast reserves of potential by winning Strade Bianche in highly impressive fashion. Benoot has been tipped so heavily as the star of the future, that it was shocking to learn his Strade victory was the first in his professional career. Certainly not a bad way to announce to arrival. However, the most impressive thing about Benoot isn’t his ability to win races, it’s his ability to compete for the win in almost every race on the calendar. In the age of specialists, it’s shocking to see a rider win a one-day classic and finish top-ten at three conservative climbing stages the following week. Benoot’s top ten finishes at the Tirreno-Adriatico summit finishes are arguably more impressive than his win at Strade. The only issue facing him at the moment is having to decide if he wants to be a stage racing specialist or a one-day Classics star. While leaving the one-days for the promise of Grand Tour success can be a gamble (see above: Geraint Thomas), Benoot’s lack of finishing punch could leave him an also-ran throughout his Classics career. He would be wise to consider taking his immense talents to the Tour de France in an attempt to become the first Belgian to win since  Lucien Van Impe in 1976. This is certainly a tall order that comes with substantial risk, but Benoot is the real deal with the talent to take on this challenge.

Michal Kwiatkowski
Kwiatkowski is one of the most underrated riders in the professional peloton. The former World Champion has an impressive palmares despite spending most of his career on crowded teams that don’t always let him race for the win. He is a rare rider that can regularly win one-day Classics (Milan-Sanremo, 2x Strade Bianche, E3 Harelbeke, Classica San Sebastian, Amstel Gold, World Road Race Championship) while climbing with the best in the high Alps of the Tour de France. He won Volta ao Algarve by taking the lead from his teammate Geraint Thomas on the final stage and wrestled team leadership away from Froome and Thomas at a stacked Tirreno-Adriatico. His usurping of teammate Geraint Thomas on the final stage of Algarve earlier this season signaled that he finally might be ready to shrug off the yoke of Team Sky domestiqueness (these crude images violate my number 1 rule: an on-form World Champion should never be relegated to set pace for teammates) and ride for himself. The looming suspension of his team leader Chris Froome has thrown the traditional rote hierarchy of Sky into disarray as the other riders sense that Froome either won’t be able to compete at the upcoming Grand Tour or won’t be on his best form due to the stress of his ongoing legal battle. This means that everyone is auditioning to be the new Alpha at every day of every race between now and the Tour. Kwiatkowski will most certainly show up ready to defend his Milan Sanremo title on Saturday. However, I wouldn’t be on him to take the victory, only because winning this race is hard, and winning it twice in a row is nearly impossible. But if he continues his impressive run of form, my money is on the young Pole to come out of the Sky scrum as their Tour de France leader. If that happens, the dynamic 2018 Tour route could play right into Kwiato’s hands and we could see the emergence of a new Grand Tour contender.