VeloHuman

Tag: Nathan Haas

  • Giro d’Italia 2014: Stage 5 Preview

    Giro d’Italia 2014: Stage 5 Preview

    Stage 5 Profile

    Stage 5: Taranto > Viggiano – 203 km

    Stage 4 of the Giro d’Italia was a strange one. The abandonment of Marcel Kittel was the first big news event of the day. A fever laid the German fast man low, opening the Giro’s sprint stages up to a number of other contenders who had been relegated to also-rans by his presence early in this race. The loss of Kittel wouldn’t be the only big story of Stage 4: nasty weather hit Southern Italy as the contest kicked off, and the peloton decided that the roads were just too dangerous. The riders themselves decided to neutralize the early racing, and eventually the commissaires made the official ruling: times for GC would be settled at the penultimate lap of the finishing circuit, and then the sprinters would get their opportunity to fight for a win, albeit without any bonus seconds on offer. All of the major contenders made it safely to the new finish line, and then it was a mad final lap around Bari for the fast men. Nacer Bouhanni suffered a late mechanical but made his way (albeit with some moto-pacing) back to the bunch. Cannondale looked well-placed as the finish line neared, but most of their leadout went down in a sudden crash on the wet roads. From the carnage, Giant-Shimano seemed to emerge in the best shape, but Luka Mezgec dropped a chain in the final moments. Tom Veelers made a strong effort to pick up the slack on his own, but he was passed in the last few meters. Nacer Bouhanni took his first Grand Tour stage win, with Nizzolo just behind.

    After three straight flat sprint finishes, Stage 5 will finally offer a venue for a new show. There are three categorized climbs on the course: the first, a Cat. 3, comes at the end of a very long stretch of uphill road, and is crested 138.4 kilometers into the race. It’s not a steep journey but it will inject a bit of tiredness into heavier legs. A little over 40 kilometers from the top of that ascent, the peloton will start the climb toward Viggiano. It’s a Category 4 affair into town and the first passage of the finish line, and then a circuit around Viggiano that involves a technical descent and a Cat. 4 climb to the line for the second and final time. The uphill finish is not an overly demanding one, but it’s likely to bring a mostly different cast of players to contest the victory than we’ve seen so far. From the bottom of the aforementioned descent it’s about 6.5 uphill kilometers to the finish line. The majority of the way up is taken at around 3%, but the final kilometer rises to 7%, which practically guarantees the Vivianis and Nizzolos will be outgunned by lighter types.

    Not many of the sprinters who have been active on the opening stages have any real shot here. OGE’s Michael Matthews is an exception. He has had this stage on his mind from the outset. He is at his strongest in a sprint with a bit of a gradient when his heavier rivals are unable to match his pace. The big question for Stage 5 is whether the late 7% might be too steep. Past results would suggest that Bling excels in the realm of 4% and even 5%, but it’s hard to say whether he’s built for this steep a finish. The Sky duo of Ben Swift and Edvald Boasson Hagen are the other possible exceptions. Sky has backed Swift so far in this race and he, too, will love the chance to charge for the line without the likes of Viviani and Bouhanni alongside. However, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the team behind EBH on this gradient.

    While even the most versatile sprinters will be hard-pressed on the slope, it will be a welcoming challenge for a number of riders who specialize in finishing fast uphill. Lampre-Merida’s Diego Ulissi is the name that stands out the most. He will love the profile. He outmatched Liege-Bastogne-Liege winner Simon Gerrans in an uphill drag at the Tour Down Under earlier this year, and after a disappointing running in the Ardennes, I think he’s hungry for another win in his home country. The form is definitely a question mark, as he hasn’t picked up any big results in a while, but the skillset is almost perfectly matched for the finish here. Garmin-Sharp’s Nathan Haas is a real outsider with the bookmakers, but he is another rider I like for this stage. He also made quite a splash at the Tour Down Under, showing on a number of occasions a faster finish than most expected, especially when hills were involved. Unfortunately, he went down in Garmin’s nasty Stage 1 crash and seemed a bit banged up, making his health the biggest unknown; however, he’s been finishing with the pack in the stages since, and he’s also had a rest day and then mostly neutralized stage to recover. If he is indeed close to 100%, I think he’ll be very dangerous against some better known names for Stage 5. Other specialists who will be targeting this opportunity for an uphill sprint include Astana’s Enrico Gasparotto, Bardiani’s Enrico Battaglin, Trek’s Fabio Felline, Giant’s Simon Geschke, Cannondale’s Oscar Gatto and Moreno Moser, and Neri Sottoli’s Simone Ponzi (who has looked great this year and will love a chance to show Astana that they made a mistake by letting him go in the offseason).

    A number of General Classification contenders could be on the hunt for stage glory and bonus seconds, and I expect to see some of them at the front in the final moments. Daniel Moreno is perfectly suited for this finish, but Katusha has already had a number of struggles early in the Giro, so it could be all hands on deck for Joaquim Rodriguez. He prefers steeper, but he’s got a nice uphill sprint no matter the gradient. The same is true for Rigoberto Uran of OPQS. BMC’s Cadel Evans is surprisingly quick to the line even at lower grades, and he loves to fight for bonus seconds. Teammate Samuel Sanchez is a dangerous uphill charger as well. Haas’s teammate Ryder Hesjedal and Ulissi’s teammate Damiano Cunego could feature. Trek’s Julian Arredondo is another climber who shows a nice burst of speed when necessary.

    VeloHuman Stage Favorites

    1. Diego Ulissi | 2. Cadel Evans | 3. Michael Matthews
    Outsider to Watch: Nathan Haas

    The preview of Giro d’Italia Stage 6 will be up not long after the Stage 5 finish. If you missed it, the overall Giro d’Italia preview can be found here. Also, be sure follow @VeloHuman on Twitter for more analysis of the Giro, and of the Tour of California as well. Rohan Dennis won an important Stage 3 in that race today and took back some time against Bradley Wiggins on GC. I’m not previewing California but I will be tweeting plenty of pre-race thoughts and picks for the stages to come.

    -Dane Cash

  • Tour Down Under 2014 Post-race Impressions: Big Names Battle for the Year’s First Big Win

    BehindCadel

    Recapping 2014’s First WorldTour Race

    When the season is in high gear I’ll only be recapping the bigger races or the blocks of bigger races (ie., the Ardennes week), but there are over thirty WorldTour-less days ahead and the six day race that finished in Adelaide on Sunday is more than worthy of some analysis. As such, I’ve compiled a few takeaways from the big January event.

    Any sort of retrospective on the Tour Down Under that aims to draw conclusions with meaningful predictive power ought to make a clear disclaimer before offering any emphatic endorsements of this rider or that for the new year: due to its position on the calendar, more than a month before the next race at the highest level of the sport, the Tour Down Under is not always a reliable test of rider form for a new season. Cameron Meyer, who won the 2011 edition, and Tom-Jelte Slagter, winner of the 2013 TDU, proceeded to have anonymous seasons after their bright victories in Australia to start the season. Simon Gerrans, on the other hand, went on to nab his first career Monument classic victory after he won the 2012 edition of the race. In other words, perhaps the top form exhibited again by Gerrans this week is a sign of future success (and he is targeting Milano-San Remo again this year), or perhaps it is a poor indicator of probable form months from now: the point is simply that one ought to be careful drawing too many conclusions from this race.

    The Narrative, and Takeaways from the Race

    Caveats made, on with the analysis. The GC-leading quartet of Simon Gerrans, Cadel Evans, Diego Ulissi, and Richie Porte were all particularly impressive in their 2014 WorldTour debuts. Only one second separated 1st and 2nd place, and only ten seconds separated 1st and 4th; all four won stages. Gerrans was a big favorite coming into the race (tipped by yours truly to win), and the other three were also included in VeloHuman’s pre-race top 10, so it can’t be said that there was all that much surprising at the very top of the General Classification. For what it’s worth, Gerrans looked on top form and displayed his trademark versatility, climbing with the best and sprinting for every possible second; should he maintain that form into the spring, the rest of the peloton had better watch out. Said versatility nabbed him the bonus seconds necessary to get the tiniest of legs up on Cadel Evans for the overall victory. Evans and Richie Porte both put in strong performances showing their own high level of form. Both are targeting later season Grand Tour success, and this certainly looks to have been a fine start; Porte looks to be aiming for success at the Giro this year, and after seeing potential main Giro Nairo Quintana take an emphatic win in the Tour de San Luis this week, the Sky rider will be happy to have had some success of his own in the meantime.

    PorteWinning

    Of the foursome that quickly become the group of real contenders in this race, Diego Ulissi stands out to me as the rider whose performance is most worthy of a place in any analysis of this race’s “takeaways.” In 2011, the Italian put himself on the map with a Giro stage win, and he went on to pick up a number of smaller Italian races over the next year or so. Last year, he appeared to reach another level with a good showing in Paris-Nice and a stage win in the Tour of Poland before a hot October that saw him nab three Italian one-day race victories, including prestigious semi-classic Milano-Torino. However, so many of his successes have come either against weaker competition or at just one step below the highest level of the sport–and while his combination of explosive climbing and fast finishing have marked him out as one to watch, but he’s also disappeared on some of the larger stages. When he was not lighting up the Italian semi-classics, he was a DNF in the World Championship race and an also-ran at Il Lombardia. In the 2014 Tour Down Under, however, he went up against some of the sport’s very best and consistently performed at the elite level. He blew past Evans and Gerrans in Stage 2 after timing his sprint perfectly, and held onto his high place all the way through to the end, managing his podium spot with a total of four top 5 finishes in Australia, and it is that day-in, day-out consistency that he has been lacking. After this, I know I’ll be more confident tipping Ulissi to hold his own for more than a flash of brilliance in future races.

    24 year old Nathan Haas proved to be perhaps the biggest surprise of the race. Although he won the 2011 Japan Cup Cycle Road Race with his impressive finishing kick and claimed 2nd in the 2012 Tour of Britain to Jonathan Tiernan-Locke, Haas has not had many chances to shine at the WorldTour level against the biggest names around. Not until this past week, at least. When pain from a pre-race injury proved to be the end of GC hopes for Rohan Dennis, Garmin-Sharp didn’t miss a beat, and Nathan Haas stepped right up to the plate. While he’s obviously showed ability in the past, I think it’s safe to say that not many people expected him to finish in the top 20 of every stage in the Tour Down Under, including a second place finish at the head of the bunch sprint behind Cadel Evans on stage 3. His consistent performance landed him 5th overall in the Tour. It will be interesting to see if Garmin quickly gives him another opportunity to follow up on his stellar trip home to Australia. Hopefully, we will have a chance to watch Haas building on this week again soon.

    Geraint Thomas wasn’t really a surprise in the top 10, but it was nice to see him climbing at such a high level. As I said in the initial preview, I feel that much is said about Geraint Thomas despite a general lack of data, but his 8th place here, only a few seconds behind proven climber Robert Gesink, is another positive showing, especially given the fact the Sky was clearly riding for Richie Porte in this race. Daryl Impey, as well, wasn’t a big surprise in the top 10, but to land in that company while also riding in such successful support for Simon Gerrans is no small feat–Impey has really put together a fine last twelve months, and Orica-GreenEdge has surely taken note. Look to see Impey feature more as the main man for the Australian squad in races to come this year.

    Though his legend has grown as he has built an amazing streak of consecutive Grand Tour appearances, Adam Hansen has only claimed a few major successes in his career (most notably, a Giro stage last year). However, the Australian nabbed the King of the Mountains jersey and a spot in the top 10 overall in the Tour Down Under with a noteworthy combination of the aggressive style necessary to pick up mountain points in a break and the endurance necessary to hang on in the bunch after being swept back into the peloton. His Lotto-Belisol squad, so often a sprint-first team, has got to be pleased with the showing, and they must be looking forward to the next race knowing that Hansen has what it takes to stay out front for the long haul, proudly displaying the Lotto-Belisol logo.

    Speaking of Lotto-Belisol and sprints, there wasn’t really any question of competition in the two flat days at this year’s TDU. Andre Greipel blew away his opponents, and he did it largely thanks to his dominant leadout train. In stage 4, his leadout man Jurgen Roelandts was so strong that he finished 2nd behind Greipel himself and ahead of the designated sprinters of every other team in the race. Greipel’s stage 6 leadout was similarly impressive; from the moment he kicked it was clear the Gorilla would claim the day. Coming into the race, the sprints in this Tour looked to be a battle royale between Marcel Kittel and Andre Greipel, but Kittel was anonymous throughout the week, his only success in Australia a victory at the warm-up prelude, the People’s Choice Classic. At age 31, Greipel is still riding high, and his leadout only gets better with time.

    Astana and Movistar both failed to land any of their very talented squads in the top 10, which must be a letdown for both teams; Francesco Gavazzi and Javier Moreno both started well only to be left in the dust when Cadel Evans forced serious selection on stage 3. Trek’s Frank Schleck also had a rather forgettable trip to Adelaide, unable to hang on when the going got tough. That Katusha’s squad of unknowns could place a man in the top 10 (chapeau to Egor Silin, by the way!) must not sit well with any of those teams.

    Fortunately, everyone gets another shot at glory relatively soon, as, even with a fair bit of time until the next big race, the 2014 season is officially underway. The Tour Down Under gave us a first glimpse at many of the big names in the pro peloton and the early classics should be a good opportunity for guys like Simon Gerrans and Diego Ulissi to show of continued form. Don’t forget about races like the Volta ao Algarve and the Tour Méditerranéen Cycliste Professionnel during the month and a half long drought before the next WorldTour race, Paris-Nice.

    -Dane Cash

    Photos by Kym Della-Torre.