Why Heras Has Not Done Well

musette

Are there Spanish-speaking members who have followed, say, AS coverage of the Tour and who can give insight on why Heras is performing so poorly (including during Stages 12 and 13)?

The Liberty Seguros website contains little snippets:

-- July 18. "They’d already announced they’d be battling for the stages after the team had bid farewell to its GC aspirations.... The race resumes its activity on Tuesday with arrival in the Alps.... after the beating the riders and team managers suffered... A shock, from which the team is still recovering, and **for which, they have no explanation**. 'Nothing like this has ever happened to us in the Tour. The closest to this; but under different circumstances because we didn’t have the leader; Zülle, who’d fallen and broken his collarbone. Then Manolo relaxed the pressure on the riders, encouraging them to think about the Vuelta a España. But the circumstances were different, we didn’t have a rider disputing the title and on reaching our terrain, we suffered a beating like today’s. We can’t find an explanation for it, so we’re trying to analyse the data to see what could’ve been the reason for it.' This is what Pablo Antón, Liberty Seguros manager told us, regarding the team’s performance on reaching the Pyrenees."

-- Earlier: "On descending Col de Core, the first 1º cat. climb on the parcours, Liberty Seguros team leader, saw how his bike slithered along the road causing him to fall off. Despite the fall he managed to pick himself up quickly and rejoin the race. However, Heras’ slip up has hung over his head for the rest of the stage. He had problems rejoining the peloton although he managed in the end on crossing the finishing line with a difference of 21’35” in relation to the winner, i.e. the American intent on winning his 6th consecutive Tour, Lance Armstrong."

flysolo1

the reason is that one thing is to be a domistique and the other is being a leader.

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Procycling contains an interesting interview in which Saiz dishes on Bruyneel for being disrespectful of Heras:

"Saiz was only rendered speechless when asked to explain Roberto Heras’ wretched performance in the Pyrenees on Friday and Saturday... 'I have no answers,' Saiz admitted. 'Roberto doesn’t have any physical problems that we know of. His preparation was almost the same as the one which took Joseba Beloki onto the podium of the Tour in 2000, 2001 and 2002. The only difference was that Roberto had one more week to rest in June. Now it’s my job to keep my team’s morale up until the end of the Tour.'"

http://www.procycling.com/news.aspx?ID=299

musette

OK. I've used online translations of AS articles to see what has been said about Heras.

-- On Plateau de Beille: "Heras Robert suffered multiple contusions after undergoing a fall in the descent from Core, but that was not the reason, at least the only reason, for his significant collapse in the Stage of yesterday [Stage 13], in which it lost 21:35 minutes"

gntlmn

But Heras cracked before he crashed. The crash lent insult to injury.

philoakley

Heras has a very patcht TDF record. He was good in 2000 and 2002 but has been indifferent to poor this year and 2001. I think that the very heavy pace on the flat stages during the first two weeks combined with the bad weather has sapped Heras' strength.

thugpreacha

Yeah the pace was intense, but if Heras had been on U.S. Postal, he would have hung back and let the other teams do the work,eh? BTW, who is the best climber among Heras, Acevedo, and Rubiera?

philoakley

In this year's Tour, Azevedo is the undoubtedly the best climber of these three

musette

Rubiera has a lot of admirable qualities, including high level of reliability that Heras didn't have during his time at USPS.

Heras or Azevedo are probably better climbers than Rubiera, when one doesn't take into account reliability (but reliability is very important). Heras may be a better climber than Azevedo overall, but not according to USPS' strategy. USPS only needs Heras/Azevedo (depending on the year) to get rid of all except for one or two competitors, after which LA can handle things himself. It doesn't matter if Heras could have followed LA up to La Mongie with Beloki, if LA/Heras couldn't get rid of Beloki, whereas Ace was spent after it was just LA/Basso/Ace left. Either way, LA couldn't get rid of Beloki/Basso.

Miguel_garcia83

heras hasnt done bad, he has been in his level, thats what we expected of him. does he think that he can face armstrong just because he won la vuelta to the great rider called isidro nozal last year??
heras lost his chances to do something important in this sport at selling himself to usp and serve armstrong

musette

Why is Heras being dropped on every mountain stage? Quite strange.

Miguel_garcia83

did you really expect anything from heras???

flysolo1

i think erik zabel is going to beat him with out having to sprint it out
he needs to realize who his daddy was

musette

"Roberto Heras (Liberty) hasn't done anything special today, finishing in 45'19, 24th fastest and certainly not the best of his team." (Alpe d'Huez)