Monday, April 19, 2010

The Wildcard Of The Mountains


Here's what I think.

Alberto Contador is the best stage racer in the world...but the rest of his Astana team is awful by comparison. If there is anything that this Spring has shown us, it's that if Contador wins the Tour de France this year, he'll do it pretty much alone.

Radio Shack, Saxo Bank, Caisse d'Epargne, Liquigas, Sky, and Garmin, are all much better teams than Astana with their own legitimate GC contenders...but none of them have Contador! If "El Pistolero" was on any of these teams, you could pencil in the win right now. That's why I've said before that if AC can win with this horrible team, he should be considered one of the greatest champions of all time.

That being said, Mongo was happy to see a strong performance by Juan Mauricio Soler at the Vuelta a Castilla y Leon. Though he finished sixteenth on GC, Soler was one of the few who marked eventual winner, Contador, stroke for stroke in the mountains. Before his string of injuries, Soler was a legitimate threat on any tough mountain stage. Now that he's on a world class team like Caisse d'Epargne instead of his old minor league team, Barloworld, Mongo is looking for big things out of JMS this Summer.

(Photo:CyclingNews)

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