Post
by Cerro Torre RT » Mon Jan 10, 2011 7:36 pm
If you just pay a little, only a little attention of the downhill value of the riders you buy, you will nearly never face problems with following somebody on a downhill. But if you are not patient enough or want to save that money, it is ok that you have to live with some problems (and the cost for it are not giant, but quite notable, especially in the salary of flat riders).
Looking to reality, downhill is not very selective. Only in a very few cases riders get away in important situations, so you can assume they would have wanted to follow but couldn't. Last year it happend once in 3 GT's (Nibali from Monte Grappa).
But the real problem is that the selectivity of downhills does only depend a little bit on the steepness. The important factors are the turns and the road conditions. You can have 10% of descent where the weekest downhill rider can follow with easy because of a wide rode with only slight turns. In opposite, you can have 5% descents with very narrow roads with bad asphalt where attacks may be possible if there are big differences in downhill skill. But even considering that, think about the Poggio downhill? Does there ever happen an attack with at least some success? I can't remember. So I really don't think that this should get more selective.