Mathieu van der Poel shares his view on some of the favourites for Sunday road race: "Evenepoel can ride away on all parts of this course"
Cycling
Mathieu van der Poel, as is already becoming a tradition, is once again one of the hot favourites to claim the rainbow jersey on punchy course in Glasgow. To Dutchman's advantage, he has experience with Scottish roads from European Championship 2018, where he came second behind Matteo Trentin.
Van der Poel is ready for the upcoming World Championships, but does not feel as fresh as for the classics. "It's new for me to keep training after a grand tour," he told WielerFlits. Van der Poel also spoke extensively about one of the top favorites, Remco Evenepoel.
"It seems as if there are now even more corners than at the European Championship. It really is racing from corner to corner," says Van der Poel after the route. "I expect a similar scenario to that of the European Championship in 2018. A big war of attrition all day long and the door that is constantly open at the back. The climbs are not very long, but due to the accumulation of them, they are long enough to make a difference. But it can also be done in other places. On the intermediate parts, for example, it also happened there at the European Championships."
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Van der Poel sees a rider who is very dangerous on those parts: "Tadej Pogacar and Remco Evenepoel may indeed have a slightly less advantage on these short climbs, but those two are two of the best riders in the world. They can anyway. And Evenpoel can ride away on all parts of this course. Perhaps he is even more dangerous on the intermediate sections than on the climbs. Everyone also knows that once he's gone, it's hard to get him back."
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- Mas... Challenge Pogi!!! Ha Ha Haabstractengineer20-12-2024
- They (USA Cycling) raised their permit fee from from $95 to $125 and the minimum insurance charge went from $300 to $400.JoeyB20-12-2024
- 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