Alberto Contador's former teammate, on the difficulty of what Lance Armstrong did in the Tour de France: "That's why I give so much value to what Lance did. As much as it was said, to win seven in a row..."
Cycling
EOLO-KOMETA's sports director, Jesús Hernández, known for having been a gregario of the iconic Alberto Contador, has shared his thoughts on the keys to success in the Tour de France in the Marca newspaper. Hernández highlights the importance of having a solid team, a winning mentality and a dose of luck to take victory in this legendary competition.
"The Tour man has to have everything. He can be good, but if he doesn't have equipment or a good mentality... he doesn't win. The one who wins is the one who has all the qualities and, in addition, is lucky," Hernandez emphasizes. His words highlight the complexity of winning the Tour and how factors in addition to mere physical strength play a crucial role in achieving victory.
In this regard, Hernandez points out that the rider who dominates the competition must possess a perfect combination of skills and characteristics. We have often seen situations where the strongest rider fails to win the yellow jersey. It is necessary to have all the necessary qualities and, at the same time, to have that bit of luck that can make the difference.
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The sports director compares the luck of winning the Tour to that of winning the Euromillón, emphasizing that all the carambolas must align in favor of the cyclist to achieve success. Hernández mentions riders such as Contador, Sastre and Pereiro, who, he says, have not been sufficiently valued despite having all the necessary characteristics to win the race.
Hernández also reflects on the future of cycling and mentions promising young riders such as Carlos Rodríguez or Juan Ayuso, who could inherit the legacy of the great champions. However, he stresses the importance of luck in not meeting exceptional riders like Tadej Pogacar. An example of this is what happened with Primoz Roglic, who, despite having all the necessary qualities, was deprived of the triumph due to circumstances.
In this context, Jesús Hernández especially values the achievements of Lance Armstrong and Miguel Indurain, two riders who were able to dominate the competition for several consecutive years without anything standing in their way of victory. Hernández recognizes Armstrong's merit in winning seven consecutive Tours de France, overcoming all the adverse circumstances that arose. Similarly, he highlights Indurain's ability to align the stars in his favor and triumph in the race for five consecutive years.
In conclusion, Jesús Hernández's words reveal that winning the Tour de France goes beyond mere talent and physical strength. It requires a solid team, a winning mentality and, of course, a dose of luck. Through the examples of Lance Armstrong and Miguel Indurain, Hernandez highlights how these riders were able to overcome all circumstances and dominate the competition for several consecutive years. The future of cycling is in the hands of the new generations, who will have to bring together all these qualities and hope that the stars align in their favor in their quest to conquer the coveted yellow jersey of the Tour de France.
I am pretty sure the entire peloton is doping today. I am pretty sure the doping starts in the juniors so they arrive in the pro circuit already developed. It is unbelievable they are not doping. There has never been a year since the Armstrong era where the average pace dropped by a significant amount, in fact the average pace continues to increase year after years by more than can be accounted for by 'nutrition' and 'equipment'. It is a joke that they are clean.
Like everyone else in his time, meaning his opinions today are just as valid as anyone else's of his age
Dopers commenting on non-dopers …I don’t value their opinions ! Doper are just trying to stay relevant.
If you dope, it is much easier since you are no longer cross eyed with enormous effort and you can think straight, dodge crashes
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- I wouldn't be so sure of that.....our latest model runs have light patchy rain across du Nord into the early evening. Rain isn't overly heavy overnight but enough to possibly cause utter chaosslappers6612-04-2025
- Apart from a few outliers, in athletics, premature developers who held age group records didn’t get very far later and most athletes who became world stars never had early age records, I’d be surprised if in cycling it was any different.Mistermaumau12-04-2025
- You can enjoy it by all means but will you also take responsibility for the consequences of encouraging it through that? Because we all pay the price of the way it affects people, moods, behaviour, illness, violence, crime, social degeneration, etc, no real good comes of it or what do you feel there is to gain from it other than experiencing a momentary emotional high some might not be able to achieve any other way?Mistermaumau12-04-2025
- There's no reason we can't live in the real world while enjoying the doped up sport.Veganpotter12-04-2025
- Tadej definitely wasn't terribly out of the ordinary as a junior. Just goes to show what great coaching and a proper "supplement" regiment can turn someone into.Veganpotter12-04-2025
- Nice one. Not 100% officially a placebo but in my early days of group training in Mallorca I and another guy were reputed to ride without food (and once I paid the price for it having to be pushed back to base). On one particularly long outing things started getting difficult and the other guy mentioned he could really do with something to eat, one of the jokers offered him a home-wrapped snack, the latest nutritional supplement on the market and he started flying, showing and boasting all the way home how good he was feeling. At dinner, in front of 40 or so of his mates it was then revealed it had simply been a premeditated prank with a cheap doggy biscuit. Don’t know if anyone later ever considered experimenting with dogfood doping, was just happy not to have been selected as the victim.Mistermaumau12-04-2025
- Veganpotter, I’d take that as a compliment, like not knowing how to manufacture a bomb :-)Mistermaumau12-04-2025
- Most of us really overlook the reality of what happens physically when a bike tire goes over cobbles, we are too focused on experience, feeling and intuition to actually look at what should be a microscopic slow-motion analysis. I think it would help many to better imagine what is happening by comparing the situation to differing boat types advancing on wavy waters. You start with typical boats and play around with wave height and amplitude and then you progress onto more advanced designs, motorboats, catamarans, hovercraft, jetskis, gliders on different types of waves. Nce you can eliminate most of the wave and just skim the tops, the wave topography reduces to something minimal, this is the grail of bike design for cobbles, tough because no cobbled sector has exactly the same pattern. Does anyone know if wheel size is UCI regulated or is there a margin?Mistermaumau12-04-2025
- Alsene, I tend to agree but it’s incredibly complicated to calculate who has what advantage in which particular situation as the variables are largely interrelated. As you note, the rolling resistance alone is affected by numerous criteria, all things equal it is easy to change one variable to determine whether the heavier or lighter rider has an advantage, however, when EVERY rider is free to play with ALL variables (tire pressure, bike stiffness, wheel seperation and dozens more), many of the advantages/disadvantages melt into a smaller overall a/d much harder to determine when there is not an enormous weight difference (we have riders from mid 50 - mid 90kg but most are much closer together). In the meantime each team has optimised the set-up for each rider so differences are nowhere near what they used to be 30-40 years ago but obviously there is and always will be some but without highly advanced scientific research (which no-one is likely to provide for free and investing teams will keep for themselves) I feel there is now little point in people like us trying to make any factor or point the determining one, none will ever outweigh the gains from drafting and strategy :-)Mistermaumau12-04-2025
- Firstly, it’s not them, it’s their doctors and consultants and people contacting them trying to sell their wares. Secondly, now that there’s money in the sport, they can afford it, and peddlers see lucrative opportunities to separate them from their earnings, not very complicated to follow, in fact, wasn’t the whole modern thing started by someone having access to an oversized sponsor budget as there was a good marketing alignment of nationalistic and feelgood stories?Mistermaumau12-04-2025