Or “What could Lance have done at the Giro?”
My planned follow up post was a lament that the best race does not attract the best riders or even riders on their best form. The Team-Swap blog points this out. So I will modify my lament to a different topic. Since Italian riders target the Giro at the expense of the Tour de France, are we missing something? Take last year’s crazy Tour de France. What would it have looked like if Danilo Di Luca passed on the Giro and came to the Tour with his best form? I believe he would have won.
Di Luca has shown that he is an all around rider by winning in classics, Pro Tour competition, and his strong showing in the 2005 Giro. His time trialling weakness would not have been exploited in the 2006 Tour as it would have been in the Lance Armstrong era.
The one blot on Lance’s otherwise stellar career as a professional cyclist is his reluctance to participate in the other “great” bike races around the world. Everything he did was in preparation for, and took a secondary role to, the TDF. That’s an easily defendable position, witness Tiger Woods, always in preparation for the next major. But I would like to have seen Lance challenge his abilities in other venues.
Agreed. While I understand the business end of cycling called for Lance to ride the Tour, I regret he never took on the Giro. What a great event that would have been!