"Being at the start of a race with Tadej will of course be special" - Rune Herregodts on debut for UAE Team Emirates and scheduled race with Pogacar
Cycling
UAE Team Emirates looked to sign a few riders this winter who specialize on racing in the classics and are true powerhouse figures, who can control races on the flat but also be key in positioning battles. Amongst them is Rune Herregodts who comes in from Intermarché - Wanty to fill in a new role, but one he is quite happy with.
"At Intermarché-Wanty they had to weigh up whether or not to invest in something. They did that really well, by the way. But at UAE they have to make those choices much less often. That's a big difference," Herregodts shared with Sporza. "For me it was no big surprise that they offered me a contract, because I knew that the team had been following me for a while, before 2024 I had already been in contact with UAE manager Matxin. The first real conversations took place during the Tour".
The Belgian, winner of the ZLM Tour this year, enjoyed the freedom and chances he had in Intermarché but ultimately the chance to race for the top team in the cycling world doesn't come often. He signed a two-year deal and may well have his chances too taking into consideration the team's extended calendar - which allowed for over 20 riders to win this year, two thirds of the team.
"I had a great time there and did not absolutely want to leave. So I had to think about the offer from UAE. But when the best team in the world comes knocking with a great project, it is logical that you want to seize that opportunity," he explains.
He shares that he will race the UAE Tour in February and here will team up with the World Champion already. "I will try to help Pogacar to the final victory there. The flat time trial in that race is my first personal goal. In the races below the top races I will also occasionally be allowed to take my chance, if the legs are there of course."
On the Slovenian, leader of the UCI ranking and winner of many races this year, he commeted: "I think the journalists and the outside world are more concerned with that than we, the riders. The first time I met him here, it was perhaps a bit special. But after a few times, he is just "one of the guys. But being at the start of a race with Tadej will of course be special. Because you know that Tadej has a good chance of winning that race."
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- Exactly who, Joey, is "they"? Flimsy, illogical conspiracy theories aside, it is in no one's interest (financial or otherwise) to "drive away small local events." Major cultural and macroeconomic factors are reducing ridership, but there is no "they" in this context.verve82520-12-2024
- And our virtual platforms allow us to "ride" famous place that we can't get to in person, which is a pretty fabulous aspect of this weird weird sport.RidesHills19-12-2024
- Which off-season are you referring to? The one after he won the Tour of California? The one after he won 3 stages and was on the podium of the Vuelta? The one after TJV screwed up, never put him away, and lost the Tour on the time trial? We've seen the guy hit the wall, lose energy, nearly fail, and lose races ("I'm dead") more than once. He's got a visible threshold and his fueling regimen is a clear weak spot. You'll need more detail to make this more than under defined insinuations .RidesHills19-12-2024
- Interesting analysis. And yet, I'm in the US, and at a recent wedding reception as a group of us older folks had to stand at a certain place to keep track of a thing, we got to talking, and every single one of us had a favorite rider, a favorite circuit of races, a moment when we fell in love with the sport, and a joy in the complexities of it all. None of us knew about the other's fandom until that moment. It's wonderful that these are my brothers-in-law, and we now know to talk about this when the spouses aren't listening. Point being: there are fans all over, and for US folks, the loss of GCN+ has been huge. As so often, it's the media bottleneck that matters more than anything else. Look at F1 in the US before Netflix, as an example.RidesHills19-12-2024
- On the one hand, what he says is trivial. Of course it's genetics. It always is, in any sport. That's just obvious. Look at Mondo Duplantis, whose sprinting speed is key to his pole vaulting, for example - he's just plain faster than other vaulters and good at the rest of the event as well. In cycling, even when you take the most genetically weird group of people and give them amazing training, some will be better than others, as well. Distributions are distributions and there are outliers and that's just that. Pogacar's body is built for this kind of thing, it seems, with him only recently having had to pick up skills that others have used all along. I'm still inclined to believe that these folks are using entirely legal means to arrive at their shockingly good performance, given how more senior riders kinda complain about (or at least comment on) the regimens and control over the nutrition and exercise and all that. And in every population, there are edge cases of truly exceptional behavior.RidesHills19-12-2024
- And it’s likely going to get worse. They are going all-out to drive away small local events which are where a lot of new riders come from. They want fee income and Olympic medals. That’s all.JoeyB19-12-2024
- Oh Lordspock12319-12-2024
- Interesting suggestion, fo you think testing Tadej’s (or Bolts’ or so many others’) parents would have given us a preview of his potential then or what criteria do you have to pick parents with?Mistermaumau19-12-2024
- Even amateur teams suffer this sort. But this is also largely due to the precarious sponsorship, in very few sports do you find kit with so many sponsors having to be integrated and changing so regularly.Mistermaumau19-12-2024
- I think it’s pretty obvious what was responsible for destroying interest that used to be there.Mistermaumau19-12-2024