"I don't have any cockiness at all" - Tim Merlier keeps his feet firmly on the ground despite recent successes
Cycling
Tim Merlier has emerged as arguably the best sprinter in the world in terms of pure speed in 2024. Taking 14 wins this calendar year so far, the Belgian most recently triumphed in the men's elite road race at the European Championships.
Given his immense form this year, Merlier has seen a noted rise in the media hype surrounding him. “That is a sign that my performances are noticed by the experts." the Soudal - Quick-Step sprint star says in conversation with RIDE Magazine. "But it is up to me to keep proving myself, right? Whether I can maintain that status with those people.”
Although Merlier has always been a sprinter capable of taking big wins, in 2024 the aforementioned European Championship title and three stages of the Giro d'Italia have seen a marked improvement in the Belgian's level. “I was a rider who kept growing year after year. I realized pretty quickly that I was a late bloomer," he explains, although he insists the sprints aren't getting any easier. “It is clear that the level in the races is higher every year. You can see that in the numbers that the riders ride, but you also feel it in the speeds in the race. Yes, also in the speeds in the sprint. Just look at the wide peloton that is still together 400 meters before the finish line in a mass sprint. If you look at sprints from ten, twenty years ago, everyone was spread out in the last kilometres, while now everyone rides on a handkerchief.”
"The timing of the attack and the positioning has become even more important," continues Merlier. "There’s less and less space, so there are many more factors at play that can make the difference between winning and losing.”
In himself and the rest of the sprinting contenders though, Merlier can see a notable difference. “Sometimes when I hear other sprinters chatting, I think… My card is completely different. I notice that myself, yes. I don't have any cockiness at all," he concludes.
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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