"The spring was better than our results suggest" - A season marked by Tour de France success for Intermarché - Wanty manager
Cycling
Intermarché - Wanty can look back at a year with three Tour de France stage wins and a green jersey on top. But numbers-wise, the season was still comparable to 2023, as they ranked 15th in the world. For a second year in a row. Despite the numbers, the team manager Aike Visbeek has only words of praise for his team and expresses Little sadness over the quality the team loses into next year; either with the loss of talented Madis Mihkels (signed for EF), or retirements (Boy van Poppel) and departures (Rein Taaramae) of the team's several experienced road captains.
"It was a historic year," Visbeek tells WielerFlits about the past season. "We waited a long time for our first stage win in the Tour de France. If you then win three and take the green jersey, that is of course a dream come true for us. If you look at the dynamics of the entire season, it was a very difficult year for us until the end of May and the beginning of June. We had to work hard to get the ship going in the right direction. But in the end we showed perseverance, we stayed focused and we didn't panic through teamwork. In the end, we were rewarded for that at the Tour."
Before the season, Visbeek highlighted several goals for 2024 - a Tour stage win, top-5 in a major classic, a top-10 overall at a Grand Tour and to finish among 10 best teams in the UCI ranking. Not all of the boxes were ticked off, but does the Tour success make up for it? "If you win the green jersey and three stages, then that makes up for it."
Visbeek further highlights that it was outcome of many sacrifices, mainly from Girmay's teammates. "Hugo Page and Laurenz Rex already started working towards the 2024 Tour last season. That is why we sent Page on the road with Mike Teunissen in Veenendaal-Veenendaal and Rund um Köln in 2023 – against Page's wishes – to prepare him for the lead-outs in this year's Tour. The same goes for Rex, who had to ride the Giro last year to gain experience in a Grand Tour. You see that those boys passed their exams last summer because of that."
Classics
"We did a good job at the classics, but we were never able to put the crown on it. Together with Lidl-Trek, Visma | Lease a Bike and maybe Lotto Dstny, we were the teams that were always where they had to be at the important moments. We see that Biniam is slowly catching up with the top. Only we were not able to shoot the main bird. Especially that heavy fall in Dwars Door Vlaanderen was a spanner in the works. The spring was better than last year and also better than our results suggest."
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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