PCM.Daily NFL Fantasy Football Champion: 2012 PCM.Daily NHL Prediction Game Champion: 2013 PCM.Daily NFL Prediction Game Champion: 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2021
-Fabio Aru wins the Giro d'Italia
-Kelderman finishes Top 5 in a GT
-Contador wins the Vuelta a Espana
-Valverde becomes World Champion
-Vanmarcke wins either Paris Roubaix or Ronde van Vlaanderen
- Contador will crash out in the Giro, and Aru takes a ''shock'' Giro win.
- After recovering in-time, Contador proceeds to take the TdF win, in an entertaining GT with a strong field.
- Vuelta will be for Quintana, who wants to revenge on a disappointing TdF.
- Ardennes will be fairly open. Gilbert will not win AGR this time and will have a very disappointing Ardennes.
- LBL will have a surprising winner, like Bardet or Arredondo.
- Vanmarcke will have a very strong cobbles campeign, winning either Roubaix or Rvv, but not both
- Cance shows some signs of weakening, but will still be up there
- Boonen is not a contender.
- Some new cobbled guys will stand up and do well, like Van Keirsbulck or Senechal
- Valverde will be everywhere, but will not have a big win.
- Sagan will not have a great season this time
- Kelderman will set another step in his development, Top 3ing a big race and around 7th in a strong starting field of Le Tour.
- Demare will have a lot of wins.
- No French rider will ride a great GC in Le Tour, but the French will have a good cycling year with quite some nice wins.
- We willl get sick of TMM's flood of womens cycling related posts. Nobody cares, TMM!
- No big doping case in 2015.
- WC will not have a favourite winning, but an outsider who decides it with a late attack and wins solo.
- Simon Yates will show us some great results, Adam, however, somehow does not have a great year.
- Gesink will actually do better this year, but fails to do great in GTs. He will have some nice results in other WT races.
2014:
Was spot on quite a few times. I'm impressed. Sorry for the colours
Spoiler
Jesleyh wrote: GT's: Quintana takes his first GT win in the Giro. Purito disappoints a bit.Meh, dropping out counts as disappointing Tour again turns into the Sky show, but not as easy as 2013, Nibali will be a good contender and Porte disappoints as super-domestique for Froome, becuase he's tired of the Giro. Contador shows that he will never get back to the level he had before his suspension.Very, very, very wrong. Bad Jesley. Purito takes revenge on his bad Giro and wins the Vuelta in a close battle with Valverde.
Cobbles: This time, Cancellara won't dominate. Boonen won't either. Vanmarcke wins Roubaix after barely doing anything in the rest of the cobbles. RvV gets won by Cancellara though. GW & E3 will have surprising winners. arguable
Hills
Cancellara wins MsR, the added hill makes a hell of a difference. (Yes I count MsR as hills now) doesn't count, there was no hill. Sagan wins AGR, Betancur wins Flèche and Valverde manages to win LBL.nope nope nope
Other The WC will be won by Nibali. As seen, there won't really be a dominating rider in 2014. Though Sagan will again grab a lot of victories and Froome some GCs.depends what you call a lot and some
This year will also be the serious breakthrough of both Aru & Kelderman, both grabbing a Top 10 Giro and some good climbing results in other races.BOOM! Now who's the guy who said Aru came out of nothing? Kelderman also takes some nice TT results.Nah but he got a lot better in the mountains Kittel will be the best sprinter this year. Cavendish is getting worse and Demare gets closer to the 3 best sprinters. Contador will be the disappointment this year. Jungels will break through with great TT results, and Tom Dumoulin takes the first Dutch TdF stage-win in (too) many years. Gesink won't do anything more than last year.
- Navardauskas wins Milano - Sanremo ahead of Cancellara.
- Wiggins podiums in Paris - Roubaix.
- Contador wins a close Giro ahead of Aru.
- Quintana dominates the Tour, wins ahead of Nibali and Froome.
- Boasson Hagen wins a stage in the Tour.
- Betancur manages to stay fit and finishes top 3 in the Vuelta.
- Cancellara wins the RR World Championships.
"It's very hard to work with other guys because nobody wants to work with me so it's better to drop everybody." - Peter Sagan
- Quintana wins the Tour, finishing at least a minute clear of several strong competitors
- Contador wins one of the Giro and Vuelta, also gets a top 5 in another GT
- Nibali finishes top 3 in at least one GT, but will not win a World Tour race all year
- Froome will have one top 3 and one top 5 finish in GTs, one of these will be at the Tour.
- Uran will finish podium in one GT, and top 10 in another
- One of Dan Martin or Ryder Hesjedal will also achieve a podium in a GT, but won't win
- The 3rd GT winner will be most likely one of Froome, Uran, or Aru. If not, then Pinot, Bardet, Van Garderen, Pozzovivo or Rolland.
- 2015 will mark the return to form of Van Garderen
- Cancellara will win one monument, and only one
- Tony Martin will not return to being as dominant in time-trials as he has in the past few years
- Valverde will have a largely disappointing start to the year, before suddenly putting in an excellent performance. This will end when either a) he is caught for doping or b) he crashes out and does not return for at least a month due to injuries
- Kittel will miss most of the Tour through injury, Degenkolb steps up and wins 2-3 stages but Sagan again takes the green jersey. Kittel will then dominate the Vuelta sprints.
- Simon Gerrans will not win a WT race, at most he will win one stage in a WT stage-race all year
- Cadel Evans will fade quietly into retirement with no major results, but his Great Ocean Road Race will be lauded as a big success
- Richie Porte will continue to struggle as a leader in major races after a promising Tour Down Under where he finishes on the podium
- Australian men's road cycling will have a very poor year overall, but track and women's cycling will be far more successful.
The only Australians with above average results will be
- Michael Matthews
- Simon Clarke (who achieves a top 10 place in a monument)
- Matthew Goss (who will have his best year since 2011)
That's all I can think of for now.
EDIT: One more
- Rodriguez will have a largely disappointing year showing that the end is nigh, but will have one fantastic performance in a big race only to agonisingly finish 2nd.
Edited by OZrocker on 06-01-2015 02:30
- Tour:
Scenario 1: 1. Froome 2. Quintana 3. Nibali
Marginal gains are back and better than before. Quintana tries, and beats the rest of his competitors through his sheer strength in the mountains, but he's powerless to stop the Dawgjuggernaut.
Scenario 2: 1. Nibali 2. Quintana 3. Contador
Froome gets scared on the cobbles/has his TUE refused/comes down with ebola and Nibbles powers away for a second consecutive Tour victory showing the astonishing form he showed on Hautacam (amongst others) last year. Contador will try some big attacks, but the course just doesn't quite suit him and he's too tired after the Giro.
- Giro: 1. Contador 2. Aru 3. Uran
- It will either be one of the most exciting Giri for several years or a complete borefest. The course is well-designed to allow early attacks to happen, but in keeping with modern cycling we'll probably see everyone softpedal Mortirolo/Finestre and wait until Aprica/Sestriere. All depends on Contador.
- Vuelta: don't have a clue/don't care
- Don't know who's participating and don't even know what the parcours is like so can't make any sort of prediction really.
- MSR: Might be Sagan's year this year with improved support?
- RVV: Spartacus
- P-R: Vanmarcke!
- LBL: Kwiatek/Betancur
- Lombardia: too far away
General wild predictions (in descending order of seriousness):
- Contador will not win the Tour
- Sagan will probably win the green jersey, although I think they're changing the points system this year iirc? So it might be more favoured towards Kittel
- Cav will win fewer GT stages than Kittel, his days are numbered
- Oscar Soliz will win the Vuelta a Colombia
- The Rojas brothers will finally get busted after another round of thermonuclear attacks and unbelievable winning margins
- It will be a breakthrough year for [insert name of talent who has already broken through and then claim to have foretold their coming]
- Froome will either win everything by 5+ mins or have a terrible season - horse steroids are sooo last year
- Froome new record time up Alpe d'Huez
- The entire Giro gets cancelled due to snow
- Oleg Tinkov gets eaten by the bear he keeps in his living room
A serious observation:
I've been doing a project lately looking at climbing times and W/kg and all that stuff which I might post sometime here (it's all amateurish pseudo-science really but I think it's quite a useful model). Basically it looks at W/kg and compares it to climb length and gradient and then factors in lots of other things to give a score - a percentage of what a 'normal' effort should look like. I've found that the average score has been rising fairly steadily for the last 3 consecutive years (2014, barring 2009, where all 3 GTs were won by convicted dopers, is the highest since 2006), the only time that this has happened since 1998 which is about as far back as the data I'm using goes (I attribute this, btw, to what I like to call 'Sky Arms Race Theory'. I think we're at a point now where something has to give - either times will increase noticeably even more, or they will decrease noticeably. I'm not quite sure which, but I feel fairly certain that they won't stay the same.
Last year:
- Froome will win the Tour, although his gap to Nibali in 2nd will not be massive. Valverde will round off the podium, atoning for his disappointment in 2013. Van den Broeck will finish fourth (again), and Contador will show clear signs of his decline in finishing fifth. Well I predicted Nibali to do better than most others but apart from that...
- The Giro will be a dull affair to start, as everyone sits there waiting for that ridiculous final week, where all hell will break loose and we'll finally see a good Giro (only been four years). Quintana will it, with Rodriguez (is he doing the Giro?) finishing second, and someone like Uran finishing third. Spot on apart from Purito abandoned
- Continuing the trend that Chris Horner started last year, Jens Voigt will win the Vuelta. It was worth a shot...
- Either L-B-L or Lombardia will be won by a Colombian Nope
- Sagan will win one, but only one, of M-SR, RvV and Amstel. Nope again
- Cancellara will win Paris-Roubaix, but RvV will be won by someone other than Cancellara or Boonen Wrong
- With the addition of the new climb in M-SR, the race will be not be won by a sprinter (Sagan doesn't count), someone like Nibali or even Ulissi as an outside shot Wrong again
- Can't see the TdF green jersey being much different from last year, though Kittel won't win as many stages as he did in 2013.Kittel won one too many stages for this to be true
- Gilbert will win one of the Ardennes classics
- Froome will win every stage race he participates in Far from it
- Costa will win two week-long stage races but fail in his aim to do a good Tour GC Very close
- Wiggins will do absolutely nothing this season. Basically correct
I've left loads of stuff out but I didn't want too much of an excessively long post
-Tour Down Under will have a suprising winner. Evans wins a stage, and will finish in the top 5 of the final GC. Dumoulin will finish in top 5 to! Marcel Kittel will dissapoint in the sprints, but Ewan will be very good!
-MSR Will be a long boring race. At the Poggio, some people try to attack, but they won't succeed. In the top 5 will be Degenkolb, Sagan, Kristoff, and Cancellara.
-In the flamish classics there won't be a rider who dominates all races. Degenkolb, Sagan, and Vanmarcke will win at least one. Boonen will finish top 3 in RvV or P-R. Cancellara will dissapoint. Terpstra will finish at podium of RvV. And one big name will crash and will break something. Wiggins will finish podium at Paris-Roubaix.
-In the Hill Classics, each race will get a different winner. Daniel Martin will finish at the podium in LBL, and Pozzovivo will suprise with a podium place in one of the three classics!
-Contador and Aru will fight for the win. LL Sanchez will win a stage, and Hesjedal realises he won't never ride a top 15 in a GT anymore, and will DNF. Uran will DNF to! I expect 5 or more stage wins of the Italians.
-In the Tour de France, a Dutch rider and a Belgian rider will win a stage. One GC rider will crash out at the cobbles. A young rider will suprise in the mountains, wins a stage and finish in the top 20 of the final GC. Froome won't win the Tour, but Quintana will do. Sagan won't win the Green Yersery because he will be used to much as domenestique for Contador. Mollema will finish top 7, Gesink and Kelderman in the top 15. France will win 3 stages.
-In the Vuelta Purito will finish in the top 5. A Colombian rider will finish at the podium, and the GC will be won by a rider who never won the GC before. Spain will be good as usual and 4 spain riders will finish in the top 10.
-At the Worlds. Orica GreenEdge will win the TTT. Etixx-Quickstep 2nd, BMC 3rd. Alcepin-Shimano will finish in the top 5. A CT team will finish in the top 20. At the ITT it will be a big fight against Martin and Dumoulin. Dumoulin will win, second Martin and Quaade, Phinney and Kiriyenka will finish in the top 5. At the RR a Belgian rider will finish in the top 5. Most likely Van Avermaet, Wellens or Gilbert. But a Spanish rider will win the race.
-Il Lombardia will be won by a breakaway.
Futher: Wiggins will set a good time at the Hour Record, Dumoulin will win 7 or more TT's, A dutch rider will wear the Yellow Yersey at the TDF. Sagan will win >10 races, Kittel will be the topsprinter again, and it will be exit cavendish. One big name will be suspendend for doping. And one Dutch rider will finish top 5 in a GT. Futher Wellens and Dumoulin will win a classic.
TDU will have a surprising winner.
In Andalucia Froome will beat Contador with a small gap(thanks to the prologue)
MSR will be won by Degenkolb
E3 for Vanmarcke
GW for Kristoff
RVV for Van Avermaet ahead of Cancellara and Vanmarcke
P-R for Vanmarcke easily
AGR for Gerrans
FW for D.Martin
LBL for Kwiatkowski
Valverde will finish in top 3 in both of them but will short of win.
Romandie for Froomebot easily
Giro will be a great battle because of the lack of demanding summit finishes and after attacking Uran in Finestre Contador will win Giro ahead of Uran and Aru
Dauphine for Froomebot
Tour will be for Quintana ahead of Contador and Froome
Vuelta for Quintana as well
WCH for Vanmarcke or Van Avermaet
Lombardia for Valverde
Edited by Forever the Best on 28-10-2015 20:51
EDIT: Also, Boonen will win all cobbled classics because he needs the money since he's facing trial for tax evasion...
Edited by MartijnVDD on 06-01-2015 18:09
- Betancur will redeem himself, either by winning races in the spring or doing well in the Tour.
- The frenchmen will do great once again in July, 3 men in top 10, but none of them will end on the podium.
- Bardet will show he is the more talented rider than Pinot and indeed is able to win the Tour at some point of his career.
- Nairo Quintana emerges as the best GC-rider in the peloton, winning the Tour and winning at least 2 WT stage races.
- Contador will win the Giro, but with or without dope, it shouldn't be possible to win the Tour. Id say top-5. 1. Contador, 2. Pozzovivo and 3. Aru for the Giro Podium
- Tejay Van Garderen will disappoint in the Tour, Rui Costa as well as it becomes clear he isn't a GC-rider. Same goes for Mollema.
- Valverde will show signs of weakness and won't be as dominant through the season anymore, however he will will WC and help Quintana.
- Kristoff becomes the best classics/sprinter of the peloton.
- Froome isn't Froome of the 2013, but Sky will still have a somewhat decent year due to ALOT of top-10 in big stage races.
- Dayer Quintana attends the Vuelta for a potential double for Nairo after the Tour. He won't win tho
- Aru doesn't breakthrough by winning a GC, he will still be rather successful, but not quite live up to expectations
- Fuglsang will have a disappointing season due to Astana's many GC-riders, but will redeem himself in the Vuelta with a good result
- Valggen will be selected for the Tour!
- Kwiatkowski knows he won't ever come close to a GT-win and focuses on classics. Urán will somewhat disappoint in the GC, only getting one top-10 in the Tour or Vuelta (he doesn't attend to the Giro does he?)
- Arredondo will win at least one stage in a GT again, will do very well in the ardeness, but won't be a GC-rider
- Chavez will improve ALOT with a good spring campaign and get a top-10 in a GT
That was my bias for the day, will a an interesting season as always. However the season doesn't really start for me until the Paris-Nice, so ill wait a few months more until it all starts for me.
-A French rider to podium in a GT again.
-Uran will win a GT.
-Quintana will crash in another GT.
-Valverde won't win a monument or World champs but he will podium in 3 big races (GT, mounuments, worlds)
-Daniel Martin will top 10 in a GT.
-Froome will disappoint in the tour.
-Pinot will achieve something big.
-There will be no repeat winners of Grand tours.
-Sagan won't win a monument.
-Omega Pharma Quickstep will take 1 monument.
-Orica Greenedge will have a really good first half of the season and a not particularly good second half.
-Majka will podium in a Grand tour.
-The Schleck brothers will do something big, even though one isn't racing.
-Cadel will come 2nd, 3rd or 11th in his own race, Ewan will win.
-A GT rider will blame 'illness' for doing really badly.
-Horner to make some big attack on one stage of a GT.
-Dumolin and Malori will take a GT time trial each.
-Costa and Gilbert will take a monument or a GT stage win each.
-Zubeldia will beat Mollema in the battle for the 'most anonymous top ten at the tour de france'.
-No Dominating rider this year.
-Young riders do very well.
-A Neo-Pro top tens in a GT.
-A French sprinter take a flat stage win in the tour.
-A Belgian will wear the yellow jersey in the tour. Probably Gallopin or Gilbert, a Belgian will top ten.
-Porte will have a good season, but other Aussies will disappoint.
-Gallopin will win a world tour one day race and have a really good rest of season, including wearing yellow again in the tour and GT stage wins.
-Cycling will have more traditional countries do well than the past couple of seasons, France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, etc. will do well, taking all 3 GTs and all the monuments, maybe the worlds and have a good year in general.
-Poland will be the first non-traditional nation in the UCI rankings.
-Sagan will take green again at the tour, with no stage wins again.
-Other Stuff that I'll think of soon.
Edited by trekbmc on 11-01-2015 08:50
- Degenkolb wins Milano - Sanremo
- Vanmarcke wins E3, RVV
- Boonen wins Roubaix and annouces his retirement in a interview afterwards
- Cav wins Gent-Wevelgem
- Gilbert wins the Amstel again
- D.Martin wins Fleche and Liege
- Valverde wil podium RVV, LBL
- Kwiatkowski wil get top 5 in all the Ardennes classics
- Contador wins the Giro, Aru 2nd, Uran 3rd
- Nibali wins the tour again after riding very agressively in the first week(cobbles, Mur de Huy)
- Dumoulin beats T.Martin on some occasions, but Martin becomes World Champion TT
- Kittel remains the best sprinter, but Cav and Greipel win 1 stage each in the tour
- Quintana wins the Vuelta
- Froome wins a 1 week stage-race(like Romandie or Dauphine)
- Stybar wins the Worlds
- Rui Costa wins Lombardia
Edited by minibettini on 18-01-2015 11:09
Ooooh look at me I stole Luxemburger's avatar so that makes me avatar of the year I am lord of all bow down to me I post my predictions wherever I want thank you very much
But not skilled enough to use copy and paste
Edited by jandal7 on 12-01-2016 09:17
24/02/21 - kandesbunzler said “I don't drink famous people."
15/08/22 - SotD said "Your [jandal's] humour is overrated"
11/06/24 - knockout said "Winning is fine I guess. Truth be told this felt completely unimportant." [ICL] Santos-Euskadi | [PT] Xero Racing
