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Riding a third GT this year will definitely compromise Pogacar’s preparation for next year.
I have trouble buying this. Could you explain to someone who doesn't understand training or racing? He'd have 4 months between the Vuelta and the 2025 races. Or 5 months if he skipped the Australia races.
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No chat on Guillaume Martin and The Curious Case of The Fat Look? Or have I missed it?!
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A rider's season is carefully planned, especially a leaders like Pogacar. His training is tailored to meet his objectives for the season, so at the start of the year the team would've planned that he'd be in good form for his first racing block in March (Strade Bianche, Milan-San Remo and the Volta a Catalunya), eased back on his April training a little so he was race fit and fresh for Liege-Bastogne-Liege, then carefully built his form for the Giro and the Tour. Between the two races he was at altitude in Isola 2000, so he's spent a lot of time away from home training and racing.
His plan for the rest of the season was to extend this racing block by a fortnight to do the Olympics (which he's now withdrawn from) then probably have a holiday before training for the Worlds and Lombardy (his end of season goals). That's a lot of peaks for a rider, even one as talented as Pogacar, and it requires a solid base (which he'll have worked on through most of the winter and early spring).
He probably only has a break at the end of the season of a few weeks, definitely no more than a month, which means his body is always being stressed by training and racing. There is a chance he could do the Vuelta and win, but what is more likely, given that he's not planned to do it, is that his form will just fall of a cliff as his body struggles with the additional load of an unplanned race.
It is possible to ride three GTs in a season, and plenty of riders have, but no one has ever come close to winning all three in one year. Chris Froome won all three consecutively (the Tour and Vuelta in 2017 and the Giro in 2018) then did the Tour, where he finished third, and he has talked about how much he struggled after that as the load over a 12 month period was so high.
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The article claims an argon 18 electron pro frameset can be had for €2.500. Really?
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You seem to think we care about physiology or any of that shit here.
I couldn't give two shits about his carefully planned season and his performance markers and his fatigue metrics and blah blah blah. I just want to see someone do something no one else has done.
We all understand why he wouldn't do it but I still want him to do it.
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Was it the Japanese track team bumping the brakeless hoods thread? Those nubbins look familiar:
https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/356910/?offset=150#comment16784847 -
sartorial choice
That t-shirt is kinda cool though.
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The only reason Pog has given for not doing the Vuelta is that he'd lose friends in the team. Which isn't much of a denial. And it's the sensible thing to say if you're waiting for management to negotiate with Kuss etc. Kuss has already won the Vuelta, just tell him he can be team leader in some other big race and bung him some money.
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Pog'll tell em have I got three hands.
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https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jul/24/tadej-pogacar-says-decision-not-to-select-girlfriend-helped-sway-olympic-no-show