“I wouldn't have liked it either if my leader was allowed to cuddle with his rivals" - Nathan Van Hooydonck weighs in on viral debate started by Lance Armstrong
CyclingThursday, 21 March 2024 at 10:46
Lance Armstrong's critical and dismissive comments about brotherly love within modern-day cycling caused quite a stir. According to Team Visma | Lease a Bike rider, Nathan van Hooydonck however, the American has a point.
“I wouldn't have liked it either if my leader was allowed to cuddle with his rivals,” the recently retired Belgian admits in conversation on the 'Wuyts & Vlaeminck' podcast for HLN. “Of course I am for fair play. That goes without saying. I understand that you congratulate each other and shake hands. But it can also go too far sometimes."
In particular, images of rivals Tadej Pogacar and Michael Matthews driving to Milano-Sanremo together confused van Hooydonck. "I would never have done carpooling like Pogacar and Matthews did. And then posting photos about it?" he questions in disbelief. "Those guys have to compete against each other in the race. I still wonder about that.”
Countering that argument, Belgian cycling expert, Michel Wuyts plays devil's advocate. "That is the character of Pogacar and other riders of this generation. They want to share that 'happy feeling'. I find it acceptable, beautiful and sometimes even touching," Wuyts replies. "What I would have a much more difficult time with is the way in which Freddy Maertens and Roger De Vlaeminck interacted during the Tour of Flanders in 1977. Those two had such a big chip against each other that they did not grant each other the victory. They then let themselves down and that's how Walter Planckaert won. Then I prefer the current way of dealing with each other.”
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Probably a good thing they aren't racing like Lance's generation 🙄
Armstrong.The well known bully. It's not at all surprising that he thinks thus.
Should there even be a winner, you know, equality!!
Pogacar & Matthews are friends off the bike, nuff said..
Someone should ask Lance who his friends are, and then, also ask those people to confirm they are friends with Lance :-)
Lance's friends are guys like Hincapie, Julich, Van de Velde- you know- anyone who doped at that time. Thick as thieves.
Why do we care what the sociopathic zero times TdF winner says
Like any narcissistic sociopath, Lance doesn't understand camaraderie
Did you even listen to what he said?? He said he thinks it's cool to see and it just wasn't that way when he raced. That's just a fact he is stating. And his opinion is that racing was better back then. Of course he is allowed to have that opinion. He didn't criticize anyone.
"racing was better back then" - uh, no - not if you didn't dope.
Yeah, it took him 20 years to start finding it cool and still doesn’t have the maturity to understand HE was one of the main reasons that couldn’t happen at the time. Not only did he make it impossible for some clean guys to win or even earn a decent living, he also « managed » the atmosphere with his special ways of « controlling » the race. Considering he knew he should be way above everyone else it’s a shame he couldn’t take it more in his stride and be a bit more relaxed and friendly about things. Kudos to him for trying to do his own therapy but you need a minimum of experience and insight to resolve certain problems, just being tough with yourself through suffering won’t cut it.
What a load of bull, these guys are just as competitive as in the past there just isn’t any of the nastiness and very little machismo (except sometimes between sprinters).
Some people just can’t go with the flow, times change and have changed and it’s kind of sad to see 40 and 50 somethings already set for life. My grandparents were younger of spirit than these guys until way into their 70s.
Men have changed, relationships have changed, attitudes have changed, women are on the rise, societies have become more aware of things remote and mostly, started to understand and reflect upon what wasn’t right in the past even though it doesn’t suit a whole bunch of people engrained in the ways of it.
If you can show the past was better, by all means put up your arguments for keeping things that way or changing them back but don’t moan about how things have changed just for the sake of it.
Nicely said.
Wokeness at it's best!!!
Eh? Do you understand the meaning of woke?
My Q wasn't directed at you BlackAmira.
Most people who feel the need to introduce such terms into a discussion and limit themselves to single short sentence replies usually have it hard with GALP. Luckily for them, this is one of those words that still has a different meaning for each person as society tweaks its understanding of the meaning, which is still evolving.
I’m old enough to understand the original meaning of LOL and that was still valid when there was software on my smartphone. Amazing how quickly some meanings can change.