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Merijn Zeeman doesn't blame Tadej Poagacar for wanting to win in Isola 2000: "We don't want any gifts either"
CyclingSaturday, 20 July 2024 at 10:35
Visma | Lease a Bike saw Matteo Jorgenson's Tour de France stage victory disappear in the final kilometers of Friday's stage to Isola 2000. The young American was clearly the strongest in the breakaways, but he simply didn't have enough advantage over peloton as Tadej Pogacar flew past Jorgenson with two kilometers to go.
Many believe that the Slovenian should occasionally let other teams have some leftovers too, but it's clear "that he really likes winning", laughed Merijn Zeeman at WielerFlits. "We don't want any gifts either. If he wants to win, he has to win. I would have really liked Matteo and the team to win, it would have been a nice reward. But he wanted to win himself."
In an interview with the Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws, Zeeman went even further into the 'cannibalism' of the Slovenian from UAE Team Emirates. "We were among the lucky ones who could also take a stage, because otherwise he doesn't leave much for the rest. That's his/their choice, of course. But I don't know if it benefits your popularity as a rider," he wonders.
Fellow team manager Frans Maassen could still laugh about it, that Pogacar and UAE were 'not his friends' on Friday. "But nobody says that they have to make friends, right? It is his right to attack. Bad for us, and for the other escapees. But that is top sport. He also rode hard. And deservedly won," he is clear.
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- 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
- This has been stated repeatedly, MVDP for CX, road and if it already counts, gravel. Lavreysen for track. I expect as a cycling fan you’ve heard of them?Mistermaumau19-12-2024
- The same thing was said when Tadej announced that he would ride the Giro: "he goes to Il Giro because he knows he can't win the Tour". Always negative speculations. Maybe Primoz, near to the final of his career, simply wants to try this experience.
maria2024202419-12-2024 - If Valentino Rossi could never win during his period of dominance, and massive personality, then Pogacar not winning isn't a massive surprise. Cycling isn't a Premier League global sport......only one event reaches the mainstream every year - and that's not good enough.wipperman9519-12-2024