3 stage wins, 1 white jersey and the Maglia Rosa 🩷👑 What a week in Italy it has been 🥇 Jarno Widar has become the first Belgian ever to win the Giro Next Gen and can take the Maglia Rosa home! What a team ✨
Jarno Widar's teammate compares the U23 Giro champion to Giro winner Tadej Pogacar: "He's even more explosive than Tadej"
CyclingTuesday, 18 June 2024 at 02:30
Aleksandr Vlasov. Tom Pidcock. Juan Ayuso. The list of former winners of the U23 version of Giro d'Italia (currently called 'Giro Next Gen') is brimming with stars of the professional peloton and Jarno Widar is the latest addition to the exclusive club. At the age of 18! The Belgian won both decisive mountain stages which was enough to secure an overall triumph.
Most of his predecessors went on to have great careers afterwards. Whether Widar can also follow that example remains to be seen. "But this still makes us hope for the very best for the future," says Lotto Dstny sports director Kurt Van de Wouwer to Sporza.
"We knew that the Giro Next Gen was within its potential," said Van de Wouwer. "But as a first-year promise, we thought he would lack experience. He has enormous potential. The honors list of the Giro Next Gen also includes many big names. Will he follow them? The level is even higher among the pros. So it is important to keep your feet on the ground and keep working."
What does the Baby Giro say about Jarno Widar's future? Can the Limburg climber ever follow in the footsteps of the recent big Giro winner Tadej Pogacar? In any case, it is not the first time that the Belgian promise is mentioned in the same breath as the Slovenian. "It is the rider that Jarno comes closest to," his teammate and close friend Milan Donie even said. "I'm sure he's even more explosive than Tadej."
Not a small comparison, but not completely blown away either. On the climb of La Redoute, according to Strava, the difference is barely one second... Yet the Lotto talent is horrified by the comparison. "But Pogacar is a good example that the combination of classics and stage races is possible," he said at Het Nieuwsblad.
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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