📊 Seuls représentants hongrois en cyclisme sur route, Attila Valter et Blanka Vas terminent tous les deux 4ème de leur course en ligne 🇭🇺 #Paris2024 #CyclingRoad
Attila Valter explains Olympic Games fourth place celebration: "Some foreign journalists may have misunderstood this"
CyclingMonday, 05 August 2024 at 12:00
The Olympic Games is one of the few races where minor places are celebrated. Valentin Madouas was over the moon with his silver medal behind Remco Evenepoel but most notably was Attila Valter's celebration for fourth place. It was unclear if the Hungarian rider believed he was actually sprinting for third place, but he has now cleared out the interesting question.
Valter was, all throughout the race, very much under the radar and racing by himself; but that didn't prevent him from coming through in the final kilometers to make it into the front groups. “I was in a good position the whole time and distributed my strength well. I made good decisions from the start, but the last hour was tough," he said in words to Eurosport. "If I look at my average power, it was not an incredibly tough race. But 272 kilometers is a long way.”
Evenepoel took a strong solo win with over a minute of advantage over his rivals. Such a chaotic race and without radios, some riders (such as third place Christophe Laporte) did not know what place they were fighting for. Madouas, right in front of the chasing group, celebrated the second place as if it was a victory. Some speculated that Valter could've believed Madouas was in fact taking the win and instead of fourth, the Visma rider thought he was sprinting for third.
But that was not the case, he assures: “Some foreign journalists may have misunderstood this a little. The joy was because of my performance, the fourth place that I took. I am of course very happy with that.” It is in fact one of the biggest results of his career, without a doubt.
“I saw the two Frenchmen and felt that I still had so much power in the sprint that no one in the group would be able to catch up with me. But the clenched fist and the joy when I crossed the line did not mean that I thought I was third and had won a medal,” he concluded.
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- yeah, that’s a more fair assessment. “reaching mathieu’s level” doesn’t mean you’re planning to replicate his whole career. the former IS doable, potentially. it’s just the latter that likely is not.OCexile25-12-2024
- That’s not entirely true. Every person follows their own development path and peaks differently. Remco and Primoz had hardly started cycling before elite level. Jonas was pretty much under the radzr until he unexpectedly had to take over responsibility at JV. Some guys only get real good in their thirties others have peaked mid-twenties. You can’t tell in advance how and upto what level they will progress, obviously his career might not have MVDPs length but nothing says he could not end up doing a few seasons at his level.Mistermaumau25-12-2024
- well, del grosso is 21 right now. when mathieu was a year younger than that, he was already winning elite level world championships, not U23. i think del grosso will be a very good pro for years, but if he was really going to be the next van der poel someday, he’d already have to be at that level right NOW. van der poel was showing signs of true greatness when he was 15-16. THAT’S what generational talent looks like.OCexile25-12-2024
- Yeah.... gear 😅.mikolajjj24-12-2024
- It shouldn’t be about expectations in the first place should it? Besides, if you look at everyone’s calculations as a whole they don’t add up in the first place. There’ll be 2-3 riders with a 50% chance, a dozen with 10 or 20% and dozens more with a 5% so we’re expecting at least 2 if not 3 winners. Remind me again who won before her? Says it all about using data to decide on participation.Mistermaumau24-12-2024
- Ok, happy I’m not too interested in this team coz’ the account of what happened is really hard to follow.Mistermaumau24-12-2024
- The UCI is worse than USA CyclingVeganpotter24-12-2024
- It's not like they wanted her to not win😅 She had an outstanding Olympics. But there's a reason why she wasn't expected to win the road race and that's ok. Things like this happen and it's great...better than seeing expected winners win.Veganpotter24-12-2024
- Bruyneel ? The man with a lifetime ban from cycling...why do you keep giving him and his doper mate, Armstrong, a platform?DJ24-12-2024
- yeah, agree. on the subject of being a “complete rider,” i do think that’s getting more interesting. mathieu seems to have decided he wants to get much better at climbing the the high mountain passes. he appears to be looking for new challenges, which should be interesting to watch. in most cases you’d dismiss a goal like that at age 30, but it’s mvdp. he’s never going to climb with the real climbers, but if he can improve enough it could open up stage wins when the parcours isnt just purely toothy and punchy.OCexile24-12-2024