Patrick Lefevere calls Visma "sore losers" after comments about Tadej Pogacar's greediness
CyclingTuesday, 23 July 2024 at 13:02
Tadej Pogacar's Tour de France can be characterized with number 5 as we enter the final time trial today. Fifth Tour de France participation, fifth podium, five minutes of lead in GC and five stage victories. The latter doesn't sit well with his opponents, who openly speak about greediness. But ironically it's quite often Visma | Lease a Bike who're the loudest critics, almost as if they'd forgot about last year's Vuelta a Espana...
"I didn't hear them say that last year. It's a bit of the language of the sore loser," Patrick Lefevere says in HLN, when confronted with quotes from his Visma | Lease a Bike counterpart Merijn Zeeman. The sports director openly asked himself whether Pogacar wasn't too greedy in this Tour.
On the other end of the wire, Thijs Zonneveld calls Pogacar 'a bit arrogant' in his column in the AD, about the fact that he actually wanted to give away stage 20. In the end, Zonneveld believes it was for everyone's good that Pogacar took the stage. Gifting a stage to Vingegeaard would've been "arrogant and humiliating" according to the journalist.
He further explains: "Giving your biggest competitor a stage as if you don't give a damn: ugly. As if you let your 5-year-old nephew win a game of Stratego because otherwise he'll start crying again. Giving a stage to someone with whom you've been fighting a life-and-death battle for every second for four years, that's a turd wrapped in gift paper. But criticizing a multiple winner because he wins a lot, that hits like a tuna on a drum kit."
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- Too much pressure. This poor, super-talented boy can't "just" be Top 5 in a TT stage without the "experts" starting to question him. What he won in the spring races would be the dream of any pro-cyclist to consider his ENTIRE career successful... Let him alone.
maria2024202412-06-2025 - I can imagine this take, simply because it's so common in other forms of racing, like auto racing outside F1. The water bottle is the one that made no sense to me. The rest could be what UAE said, but a water bottle on a 20km TT? Huh.RidesHills12-06-2025
- For me shorter cranks (165) feel better on the knees. Maybe it's a placebo effect, but it feels realmobk12-06-2025
- exactly. Or Simply, he didn't have a good day.maria2024202412-06-2025
- I prefer Occam's Razor. He said he didn't train in TT much due to the spring campaign. It's a good and simple explanation. He's Tadej, why should he resort to this sort of scheme?
KerisVroom12-06-2025 - Enric Mas?? and Bardetpopkip12-06-2025
- Flat-earthers have come to cycling: everyone tries to fabricate the most intricate plot/conspiracy to appear intelligent.maria2024202412-06-2025
- The peloton needs to move past LA Doper and its hordes. Why is UCI not doing enough to sanction the whole lot of LA Doper hordes from even indirectly in the sports that they tarnished?KerisVroom12-06-2025
- Good spot that, won't make Jonas happy 😁
leedorney12-06-2025 - For me, I was able to open up the hip angle allowing me to get a good bit more aero, not so much on the road bike, but some. Mainly you'll see the aero benefits on the TT bike. It took some time to get used to them as well, feels like you are pedaling a kids bike at first, and then they just look odd. I'm 5'11" and ran 172.5 and then 165's until I bit the bullet and went to 155. It took me about 500 miles to really get used to them. Now I wouldn't trade them for anything.awp12-06-2025
"Radekwilkanowski" said it perfectly. Think it's more than a touch of bad form to see Pogacar's competitors talking about greediness, all they need do is look at recent tours with other winners like last year's TDF and Vuelta to see how hypocritical such comments are. Talk about "gentlemanly racing" when this sport is as cutthroat as it gets🙄. It's conflating one thing — cooperation in the dynamics of pro cycling races amongst riders/teams, i.e. good cycling strategy — with another — seeking to win "only just enough" so as to "allow" others to win their share. When you think about it objectively, it's quite ridiculous and doesn't match up whatsoever with the sport (in modern times, at least...although Merckx winning 8 stages in a TDF *twice* suggests it wasn't about "tasteful winning" back then, either🤣).