Vincenzo Nibali ended his 2017 season on a high on Saturday, with his solo victory at Il Lombardia marking the 50th success of a 13-year career.
Nibali is part of the exclusive club of riders who have won all three Grand Tours and he has ten top three finishes in Grand Tours, confirming his consistency. However, he has proven time and time again that he is more than just a Grand Tour rider. He loves a hard race, which includes long climbs and technical descents. He enjoys targeting the hilly Classics as much as he does a Grand Tour.
In a time of hyper-specialisation and carefully chosen race programmes, Nibali stands out for the breadth of his talent and ambition.
ADVERTISEMENT
Nibali has ridden Milan-San Remo, Liege-Bastogne-Liege and Il Lombardia almost every season for the last decade. He has now won Il Lombardia twice but has also finished third in the 2012 edition of Milan-San Remo and second at the 2012 Liege-Bastogne-Liege after Maxim Iglinsky caught and passed him just a kilometre from the finish.
Tuesday's edition of La Gazzetta dello Sport dug deep into Nibali’s palmares and race data, revealing the Sicilian’s consistency in a piece titled ‘50 shades of Vincenzo – A look at his victories’. The Italian sports newspaper reveals, via his coach Paolo Slongo, that Nibali has finished 301 times in the top ten in the 963 days he has raced, for a strike rate of 31 per cent.
Nibali has won four Grand Tours: the Giro d’Italia in 2013 and 2016, the Tour de France in 2014 and the Vuelta a Espana in 2010. He won Il Lombardia in 2015 and 2017 and has also won 10 other one-day races, including the GP Plouay way back in 2006. He has won nine stage races, including Tirreno-Adriatico twice, plus two Italian national road race titles.
His race statistics also include 57 days in Grand Tour leader’s jerseys, 12 Grand Tour stage wins and at least 70 days of racing per season for the last decade for a total of 150,000km of racing.
My dream? To win the Giro and Paris-Roubaix
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest Interviews and Features http://ift.tt/2gaO5BG
No comments:
Post a Comment