Anything like last year's NQ and movistar needs to back Landa all the way! TD should concern himself with the Giro imho, I think that after one more grand tour and he'll be ready for TDF.

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Speed kills unless you have speed skills!!!

Keep in mind that NQ was much stronger than Landa at the Giro 2017 when they were head to head team leaders. Now they will be fighting for team leadership inside their team. I bet NQ comes out on top and Landa chokes when he actually has to win it vs when he has the excuse of being held back. He's awesome when he gets told to hold back and relatively is a "no show" when he gets an entire team backing him. I predict "no show" Landa and NQ takes the team lead....and then you have the wildcard Valverde.

Can you imagine a newbie coming into Nairo's team saying stuff like this lol. Balsy and imo disrespectful to what the team has already built to this point. Regardless if he is there to kick ass. Would be better if he was quiet about it and just took it the way Froome took it from Wiggins :)

Ballsy approach over the backstabbing approach any day.

At least Quintana knows where the knife is coming from.

+1

The difference obviously is that Wiggins was done racing grands tours after his win in 2012, and Froome slotted in seamlessly. There was no real challenge; Froome showed he was ready while supporting Wiggins making it easy for Wiggins to retire from stage racing and for Brailsford to accept that retirement.

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Citizen of the world, former drunkard. Resident Traumatic Brain Injury advocate.

Bala has said many times that he ain't about that team captain life anymore so you scrap him off of that as he's happy doing what he has been doing the last few years!

I really want NQ to win but as of recently he's on a slight decline in performance... Maybe being overworked/bit outta shape/sick/combination of all things but i didn't see him as his usual self in the Giro and even less at tdf.

Hopefully this coming year is the year he get a a tdf win but I don't tho k it will truly count if C.F. is banned, dope or no dope!

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Speed kills unless you have speed skills!!!

Except the Giro in 2013 (which he DNFed).

Landa should have picked a different team. There are only 3-4 legitimate TdF contenders and 18 World Tour teams. Teams like Trek and Astana would be 100% behind him for any Grand Tour he wanted to ride, but once again he goes to a team where his ambitions will only cause internal strife. What a dumb ass.

While that's certainly a possibility, Movistar had to have a reason for hiring Landa They made the offer... What I don't understand is Quintana trying to pull off the double before having won the Tour.

The whole Wiggo-Froome saga was not as smooth as we now tend to remember it. Even after 2012 was over. According to Froomes book, during the Tour 12 he was given the guarantee to be the leader for 2013. I mean he accelerated at exactly the point when Wiggins was showing weakness for the first and only time during the whole tour. So they needed to calm everything down and make sure everyone played by the Sky script. But, in the next winter, Wiggins mentioned that he might want to defend his title. So it never was that clear. And wasn't there something with Wiggins not paying Froome his share of prize money? And of course there was the twitter fight between Mrs. Wiggins and Mrs. Froome.

Everything turned out well for everyone I guess. Wiggins got his hour record and retired and Froome went on to become the biggest force in stage racing. But imagine what happened if Wiggins would have continued.

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10k - 30:48 / half - 1:06:40

I think Landa made the right move to pick Movistar because they (along with Sky and Astana) are one of the few teams that completely build around the grand tour GC (especially for the TdF). They don't bring sprinters, and even the guys that they send into the break are doing so knowing they could get pulled back. You also have a higher probability of having a teammate with you on the final climb to give you a wheel swap in case you flat.

The difference with Sky and why Landa needed to leave them is that they are always the one setting the tempo. So Landa is expected to bury himself before the final move is made. On Movistar, even with Quintana there, Landa isn't expected to do that. He's going to sit behind the Sky train along with Quintana and wait for the decisive moves. And if Quintana gets dropped, Movistar isn't going to tell him to wait for him (unless Landa had already lost significant time to Quintana). They would be idiots if they did.

Now if we could draw up a situation where both Landa and Quintana drop the entire Sky train (other than Froome) with say 5-6 km to go, the question is if Landa would then set tempo for Quintana. That's a valid question, but I'm sure Landa is thinking...we'll cross that bridge *if* it ever comes and I'll take my chances.

All of this talk about who is going to be the lead rider is super premature anyway. These things tend to take care of themselves on the road in the months leading up to each GT and in the first week and a half of the GT in question. The main thing is that Landa picked a team that is all in for the GC at grand tours and that he isn't expected to be part of the Sky train and sacrifice himself before the decisive moves are made.

Of course Landa needs to prove that he is able to captain a team in a grand tour. To live with all the pressure, to handle media responsibilities when in yellow and to never have a day off. That is something you also need experience for and I am not sure if the Tour is the best starting point to accumulate those skills. Even Wiggins spent the first part of his grand tour campain leading a squad in smaller races like Romandie or Dauphiné and learnt how to deal with it.

But on the other hand, I think Landa gets a bit too much of smack. You don't just come in 4th at the Tour while being a domestique. He certainly has talent and potential and he was very strong last July. His prospects are not all too bad. And for Moviestar it makes sense to have two high caliber guys. We don't know how long Valverde stays in the game. Imagine two riders like Landa and Quintana taking turns of attacking Sky.

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10k - 30:48 / half - 1:06:40

OK....Movistar is saying they will sort out the 2018 TdF leadership on the road!

http://www.velonews.com/...ar-team-landa_455174

As I said on the other thread, that theory is not supported by what actually happened. The only stage we can actually say Landa didn't go full throttle was the prologue. Oh, and those three stages he actually stopped pedalling in order to haul Froome up the cols. Other than those stages, give me/us the times Landa worked less and not the same or more than Froome.

It's simple math to anyone who watched the Tour: Landa could have went to the final ITT with 1:30 minutes on Froome easily. That's also why several people (including Lemond) were mad that Sky was holding Landa back while Froome was clearly struggling.

With that said, Landa might never again find himself in the same position. Or he might kick ass all the way in 2018. We'll see.

I guess it is all conjecture from all sides at this point. What we do know is Movistar is going to go into the TdF with no leader, pre-fracturing the team into a Landa vs Quintana camp. This almost NEVER works out (OK we had Lemond vs Hinault, Lance vs Contador which kind of worked). Even if Froome is fried from the Giro, they will have to deal with Richie Porte and we don't know if Sunweb will pull Dumoulin from the Giro to focus on LeTour if Froome does the Giro opening up better chances of a TdF win....plus you have all the climber guys like Aru-Bardet. This might be Movistar's best chance to actually win the TdF since they were Banesto with Miguel Indurain, but they will probably blow it by not designating either Quintana or Landa. I'd go with Quintana, since he has actually won grand tours and almost always podiums. Landa has never proved he can close the deal in a Grand tour. It's one thing to be pushing the team leader to the point people are questioning him, it's' another thing to actually be team leader or take over team leadership and close. We could say that he would have closed if not held back by Sky. He got plenty of chances in the Giro, but ended up with bad luck, but Froome manages to pull himself out of bad luck and close many wins.

Completely agree. Movistar again show they have the worst people management skills in the tour.

If nothing else between the Movistar internal house battle and the conjecture around Froome, the rest of us should have decent entertainment value....and then Richie Porte will peak again by Paris Nice or some early season race and then have at least one bad day in July (I hope it is not a bad day like last year). If I am Sunweb, I'm pushing for Dumoulin at the TdF. He has won the Giro and this may be an excellent chance at the TdF.

Agreed again. Dumoulin should go all in on the Tour this year, maybe then - afterwards - add the Vuelta.

ABF for me. Hopefully is he is out of the mix it will be a more exciting, wide open race.

OK, so adding to the Movistar internal battle mix, our man Valverde is on fire this spring and is making an awesome comeback.

He just won the Grand Prix Miguel Indurain: http://www.cyclingnews.com/...el-indurain-triumph/

So who does Valverde ride for? I really hope that Movistar can line up at the TdF with all these guys healthy....then we can see how their people management skills play out! In any case, regardless, Valverde is a money racer with 9 wins already this year!

Well, nice article from velonews:

http://www.velonews.com/...s-at-movistar_464519


excerpt:






Rivalries typically play out between opponents on different teams. For 2018, there’s a rivalry in the making that could make a Brazilian soap opera seem tame.
Team Movistar is planning the unthinkable for July and will bring all three of its GC aces to the Tour de France. Rather than spread the wealth around the grand tours, the Spanish outfit is going all-in on the Tour.
Instead of Movistar against Sky and BMC, it could be Mikel Landa versus Nairo Quintana versus Alejandro Valverde.
What is Movistar thinking?
“We’ve won the Giro, and the Tour,” says Movistar manager Eusebio Unzué. “We’ve been four times the WorldTour’s top team. Now we want to win the Tour [again].”
Read more at http://www.velonews.com/...#ZuTWRxhG9r3VPLI9.99

There's a rich history of intra-team GC tension

Froome-Wiggins
Contador-Armstrong
LeMond-Hinault

Oh, I am keenly aware...except in all of your above cases, the team that had the rivalry won the race and took second or third. This is not the case for Movistar. They are not the team to beat. Sky is.

Here are the results:

Froome 2 -Wiggins 1
Contador 1 -Armstrong 3
LeMond 2 -Hinault 1

I am going out on a limb and I think Movistar gets 3rd place, and 10th. Having said that, in Vuelta 2016 with Froome on tired legs, the ambush of Sky working with Contador worked and they put Froome on the ropes, but Froome was tired, and really Valverde was working for Quintana. Landa will be another animal. But Froome will be on tired legs riding his 4th Grand Tour in 13 months.