Ya está aquí el #TDF y nos ponen desde ya los dientes largos con esta presentación. ¿Será el tercero de Pogačar? ¿El segundo de Vingegaard? ¿El primero de Landa? 😜 ¡Pase lo que pase, disfrutadlo familia! 🎥 @LeTour
Opinion: UAE does not bring the team Tadej Pogacar deserves to the Tour de France
CyclingWednesday, 28 June 2023 at 22:49
Tadej Pogacar will arrive at the Tour de France 2023 after having competed in the last two months only 2 days in the Slovenian national championships. The wrist fracture he suffered in Liège kept him out of training for a few weeks and makes his form for the very tough first week of the Grande Boucle an unknown.
Considering also that his great rival for the yellow, Jonas Vingegaard, has made a much more exclusive preparation to try to win in Paris, it is logical to say that the current defending champion, the Dane, is the favorite to repeat victory.
This favoritism is increased if we compare their teams. Jumbo-Visma arrives with an '8' far superior to the Emirates team. We can compare rider by rider, as Javier Ramirez, the director of Sobre Ciclismo, does on Twitter, and it becomes clear:
- Adam Yates < Wout van Aert
- Marc Soler < Wilco Kelderman
- Rafal Majka > Sepp Kuss
- Matteo Trentin < Christophe Laporte
- Vegard Stake Laengen < Nathan van Hooydonck
- Mikkel Bjerg < Dylan van Baarle
- Felix Grossschartner < Tiesj Benoot
The UAE's strategy
We know that for some seasons the idea of Joxean Fernandez Matxin and the rest of UAE strategists is to take a great leader per Grand Tour and that none of them repeats. Thus, João Almeida went to the Giro d'Italia and Juan Ayuso will go to the Vuelta a España (it is not ruled out that the Portuguese will also go to the Spanish race).
I, however, don't understand why he doesn't try to accompany Pogacar (even more in these circumstances when he's in poor shape) in the best possible way. Ayuso is looking sharp after several months of sick leave and Almeida comes from finishing the Giro in third place and surely he could bring a lot to the Slovenian.
Important riders like Jay Vine or Tim Wellens have fallen due to injury and the replacements don't seem to be reliable. Adam Yates has never been a reliable rider in 3-week races and INEOS was not an exceptional domestique. Marc Soler showed at the Spanish Championships that he is not in shape, Rafal Majka is getting on in years and in 2023 he has shown very little. With all these, the most reliable domestique for Pogacar seems to be Felix Grossschartner.
We've seen UAE riders lately in great form like Marc Hirschi who has also been left out (it was in 2022 when he was dragging and now that he's on a roll he's not going). Brandon McNulty helped Pogacar a lot last year, and also stays home. Like Davide Formolo, another riders who could help in the mountains.
Primoz Roglic was key for Jonas Vingegaard to win the Tour in 2022 just by imposing his presence. This year at Jumbo they leave him out, but include climbers like Benoot, Kuss or Kelderman and a van Aert who has more than proved he can be the best domestique in the world.
Let's be clear that we are not saying that UAE has a bad team, just that they could have a much better one considering the riders they have in their squad and the form Pogacar is in compared to Vingegaard.
Vingegaard arrives much better than Pogacar and Jumbo arrives much better than UAE. Everything would seem decided if we were not talking about cycling. If we were not talking about the Tour de France....
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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