With three podiums in top races it is difficult to define the year Mikel Landa
This Mikel Landa, there are those who say that you can only want it, others that it deserves blind faith and some that consider it a bluff.
Who would have played the quarterfinals for their podium in the Giro de Lombardy?
Disappeared for large stretches of the campaign, after a very bad Tour of Spain, he arrives at the last monument of the year to dispute the crown, with Remco at the wedding, against the two fittest guys in the peloton.
The photo says it all, Enric Mas, Tadej Pogacar and Mikel Landa semi-hidden, after putting up with them in Civiglio, hunting them down before San Fermo and entering third.
FB The Lombardy
There was euphoria among the defenders of the Spanish in cycling on Saturday afternoonWell, four of them got into the top six, in a result that, being very good, is not significant for what Spanish cycling is right now, well, broadening the focus, if cycling has something right now on this side of the Pyrenees, it is that It is not quantity but quality.
There are few names that I see right now at the highest level, and Lombardy, without being a mirage, was also a confluence of factors.
It is also true that Pogacar, who disputes and wins sprints from Van Aert, had two excellent adventure companions to end up winning his second Lombardy.
If Enric Mas does not stand out for being fast, Mikel’s thing borders on tragedy in group arrivals
However, I think that Enric would have been interested in joining Pogacar’s wheel, letting Landa in and then we would see how the Slovenian would have managed two guys in the slipstream to the finish line.
But I return to Mikel Landa and the season that has just ended.
How do we value Mikel’s 2022?
He has returned to the podium of a great tour, third in the Giro, seven years after accompanying Contador and Aru, also in the great Italian.
Curiously, he has also been third in other “big” boots on the boot calendar, such as Tirreno and Lombardía, both won by himself, Tadej Pogacar, and in both with the feeling installed that beyond the third it was very difficult to climb,
Beyond these three results, the overall balance of Landa is poor, who in the Vuelta completed such a gray performance that I am surprised that nobody commented on anything.
Carapaz was criticized a lot, for example, for not being able to compete in the general classification, but at least the Ecuadorian changed the chip on the fly and swelled in stages until the end.
Expecting something similar from Landa would have been desirable: he caught two or three escapes, but never entered the pool to finish the break.
and look what La Vuelta is a race that if you arrive in good shape You have options to win up to several stages, because at certain times the test seems between a few names.
Look at the example of Carapaz, but also that of Mads Pedersen or Jay Vine, in the first week.
Mikel Landa still seems like a ciclistazo to uswe cannot deny that, but that value in the race is given in microdoses, so small, that it tastes little to us.
We do not see him in the Vuelta and he gets into the bid for a monument, that is the world upside down, that is pure and simple landismo.
I think that he has been aware of his limitations in big goals -like winning a big one- for a long time.
To achieve one of them, an alignment of many factors would fit, especially with the growing youth and the current rivals who show that there is always one or more better ones.
However, I am sorry that he has trusted everything to places in the general (who has a few and very good ones) and has not given a chat to that record that otherwise could have, among other things, stages in the big three and a good collection of peaks.
If you want to continue disputing generals to take note of the cycling that is coming, with more kilometers against the clocklike those that the Giro reveals.
Mikel Landa has spent very good years in the grand tours without time trials that bothered him, but now the tables can change, it won’t be what it was thirty years ago, but a great one that goes 60 kilometers between times would not be his profile.
Maybe you should look at other goals…
Imagen: @Sprintcycling @TeamBahrainVictorious
