"I can't remember ever seeing him standing so sharply" - Thijs Zonneveld analyzes Mathieu van der Poel's form ahead of Worlds
Cycling
The current world champion Mathieu van der Poel will be faced with one hell of a task to defend the rainbow stripes at the climby circuit in Zurich. And although he's trying to keep his chances alive, he'll be up against the likes of Tadej Pogacar and Remco Evenepoel, who won't wait to get outsprinter by the Dutchman.
"He has visibly, and successfully, tried to lose weight," Thijs Zonneveld analyzes the Van der Poel's preparation in Algemeen Dagblad in his column. "Thin cheeks, a slender neck, legs on which you can see the muscles and veins running. I can't remember ever seeing him standing so sharply."
Although Van der Poel indicated that the road race is a bit too hard for him, Zonneveld clearly believes in his chances. "Otherwise he wouldn't starve himself to lose an extra half kilo," says Zonneveld. That is also because the course is not as hard as some may have anticipated
"It is a 26-kilometre circuit with three hills; only the first one has a few hundrers of metres with a gradient of more than 10 percent. Most of the elevation metres are in slopes of about 5 percent. That is something different from the steep hills in Liège," Zonneveld explains.
By taking a closer look at the course, the AD columnist himself has changed his mind. "I think I agree with Van der Poel: that it might be possible. If he has a really good day and if the way of racing works out in his favor. That is to say: a relatively tame race, in which it only happens in the last lap."
Zonneveld sees a pitfall for the 29-year-old Van der Poel. "That also means that he has to keep his powder dry. That he has to save and wait, that he has to ride economically. Not attacking for as long as possible, even when his legs are itching. And knowing him, that may be the biggest challenge."
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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