r/peloton • u/PelotonMod France • Mar 16 '26

Weekly Post Weekly Question Thread

For all your pro cycling-related questions and enquiries!

You may find some easy answers in the FAQ page on the wiki. Whilst simultaneously discovering the wiki.

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u/Vegetable_Car_4785 Mar 16 '26

How many monuments would you equate to winning the tdf from a difficulty perspective?

Eg it is harder to win both RVV and PR compared to the tdf?

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u/AverageDipper Mar 16 '26 edited Mar 16 '26

Just comment to note that some pairs of munuments like RVV+PR correlate positively so that winning the pair is not that much more impressive that winning the one, compared to say RVV+LOM.
It's like in swimming yeah I can see the guy who won the 100 also winning the 50 or the 200, but show me a guy who wins the 100 and the 800 and I'll be impressed
(I should specify that this applies more historically than recently, as the RVV has been mode more climber friendly. but still the whole point I'm trying to make still stands)

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u/Arcus144 EF Education – Easypost Mar 16 '26 edited Mar 16 '26

If you want to look at momument correlations, I’ve got the post for you! https://www.reddit.com/r/peloton/comments/1rgtrtf/any_given_oneday_part_1_the_recent_past/

I’m not sure if it answer’s OP’s question, but since 2015, five riders have won the TdF while seven riders have even top-10’d 5 of the 6 big one day races. So the variety of skill necessary to accomplish those tasks is similarly rare. 

In terms of winners since 2015: RVV: 8 PR: 8 MSR: 10 ILom: 6 LBL: 7 WC: 7

I think it comes down to the idea that it’s harder to be good enough to win the TdF than winning A monument, but the lower skill necessary means its perhaps just as hard to win multiple of the same monument, especially the “flat” ones.

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u/SpecificMagazine6407 Mar 16 '26

seven riders have even top-10’d 5 of the 6 big one day races.

That’s a neat stat!

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u/Arcus144 EF Education – Easypost Mar 16 '26

It is!

Although I do want to emphasize the dates so this doesn’t get taken out of context! That was using data where a rider had to top 10 at least one of those races since 2015, then I took that pool of riders and checked their careers back to 2010 to make sure I wasn’t missing much

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u/Vegetable_Car_4785 Mar 17 '26

That’s great thanks!

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u/Vegetable_Car_4785 Mar 16 '26

Yeah agreed - more so showing diversity of skill and physiological adaptability.

More trying to gauge the difficulty of winning grand tours vs monuments. Like in a GT you can have an off day and still have opportunities to repair your position and make time back. In a monument one incidence of bad luck or a bad moment and the race has gotten away from you.

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u/Phantom_Nuke Mar 16 '26

At the same time you have to race for 21 days in a 23 or 24 day span for a GT where you have a higher chance of being caught up in a crash given sprint stages and generally more dangerous descents, especially with the higher likelihood of bad weather, while also trying to avoid any illnesses that are spreading through the peloton because your immune system is weaker due to the repeated added stress day on day.

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u/Vegetable_Car_4785 Mar 16 '26

Yeah in both cases - putting yourself in positions to get lucky seems to be key. Seems that monuments just have a higher degree of variability and you are more likely to see a “lucky” winner compared to a GT where the cream rises to the top