"We had expected more from guys like Sepp Kuss and Wilco Kelderman" - Visma coach on mixed Algarve, injuries and classics
Cycling
Mathieu Heijboer is the head of performance at Team Visma | Lease a Bike and over the past week, much of the team was out to race. The leader of the Dutch team has had positive signs in a winning Jonas Vingegaard and Wout van Aert at the Volta ao Algarve, but little else as the team struggled through
Regarding the Portuguese race, the headliner of the week: "Yes, I had expected a little more. In the mountain stage in the Algarve where Jonas finished sixth, we had expected more from guys like Sepp Kuss and Wilco Kelderman. They didn't show what we saw in training at that time," Heijboer said in the WielerOrakel podcast. Vingegaard was almost isolated in the climb to the Alto da Fóia, a rare instance, and only a brilliant time-trial awarded him with the GC win. The team was not at the expected level as a whole, and the same happened at the UAE Tour
Illness plowed through the team, leaving several riders out of the race, and with no riders finishing high on GC. "In the UAE Tour too, things didn't go the way we wanted. Our main goal was to win stages with Olav Kooij, but that didn't happen at all due to illness. We also expected more from Bart Lemmen and Thomas Gloag. Just like them."
Outside of the results sheet things have not been going perfectly either, with Christophe Laporte having his preparation for the classics delayed due to illness and missing the Opening Weekend, whilst Niklas Behrens has suffered a fractured collarbone. Dylan van Baarle, who has been swarmed by injuries ever since joining Visma, is also skipping Omloop het Nieuwsblad and Kuurne - Bruxelles - Kuurne due to injury.
"He has so much class and it is not that he started without condition," he said of Wout van Aert who will lead the team at Omloop. "He is good enough to play a role in Omloop, but at the same time there are more important races, where he starts lighter and has completed an altitude training camp. There is still room for improvement in his condition."
The team's classics block is having some issues, but it will be hard to have more bad luck than the previous spring. "The original plan for Omloop Het Nieuwsblad has changed, because we had counted on Laporte. He had been the shadow leader. And Niklas broke his collarbone, but with Wout and Matteo the leaders are at the start."
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- Just like Dwars door Vlaanderen, the Ronde van Vlaanderen was/is NOT on MAX. Get your facts straight.Ben04-04-2025
- You might bounce more for the same power, but not the same speed. Sending 20 kgs over a jump at 20 kph will fly just as far as 10 kgs at the same speed. Again, Galileo demonstrated this.acem8204-04-2025
- So, you're saying that doing a bunch of small hops on a bike is easier if you're heavier? Why do people buy lighter bikes, then? Why do they generally feel better and faster? An appeal to "rhythm" is not helpful either, as the right "rhythm" might be on the lighter or heavier side of things, and as it varies, it's likely a wash either way. Then we are left with the physics truth that it takes less power to lift lighter things than heavier things.acem8204-04-2025
- No, weight doesn't affect the ability to go into the wind at all. It's all CdA vs power at that point. For example, it's "obvious" that a heavier object falls faster than a lighter one. But, absent wind resistance, it's not true (Galileo demonstrated this). An appeal to "obviousness" doesn't matter when the physics is clear. And yes, you have to be able to hold everything else constant, or you can't determine anything! So, imagine a 300 watt rider at 80 kgs with a CdA of 2.0, then imagine that same rider at 70 kgs with a CdA of 2.0. (Assume ideal tire pressure for both, same bike.) Which one can ride over a bumpy road fastest? The lighter one, as he doesn't have to lift as much. That's also why when they test bikes on 5 star cobbled sectors, the MTB goes faster than even a cobble-build road bike. Even though rolling resistance is higher on a flat road, and the CdA is junk, it smooths out the cobbles, allowing the person to not lift as much as they otherwise would.acem8204-04-2025
- I disagree. If you have lower weight, you will bounce more at the same speed, meaning that you will spend more time in the air and shorter time on the ground, as a consequence, when you are on the ground you have to produce more force for the same speedvappaxbipmv04-04-2025
- That’s not quite true, even steep climbs and sudden gradient changes can be considered as remaining tangential to the wheel whereas the occasional dip between cobbles a wheel drops into cannot, as such riding over cobbles can become like a permanent surmounting of small obstacles that hit back into your wheel slowing you drastically if you don’t have the right rhythm to “fly” on the mounds, here again the greater the momentum the less these obstacles reduce your speed. But, it is but one factor, you cannot decide on this alone. Like with natural surface ripple formation on desert tracks used by vehicles, there is an optimal speed range to efficiently pass over such surfaces, too fast or slow and your car gets shaken to pieces from the “harmonics” in the vibrations caused. Pretty sure the same applies to riding on cobbles.Mistermaumau04-04-2025
- I am saying I have an open mind at the moment for your cobbles theory but cannot agree with your wind statement (and by extrapolation sprinting since that implies speeds where wind is by far the limiting factor). Had you argued all things not being equal I could have agreed with you but if we thus assume 2 objets of the same size and speed but with differing weights, it is completely obvious that the lighter one will suffer faster in the wind. Extrapolate to the extreme, drop stuff off cliffs or just remember your momentum equations to verify. Now, obviously in real life we have to assume riders of different weights won’t have the same wind hitting surface but you cannot generalise at all then as you can have very unaerodynamic light riders and very aerodynamic heavy ones because it isn’t weight that defines CdA, Teslas have an incredible CdA and are ridiculously heavy, and someone like Harry Levreyssen is a Tesla in cycling.Mistermaumau04-04-2025
- When Roglic beat Geraint Thomas on the last day's TT at the Giro, I remember just how unbelievably emotional his team was. One guy, I forget who, German rider I think, was interviewed and was nearly speechless with a really drawn out "fuuuuuuuuuck it's incredible" comment. And then something even more amazing happened. Geraint Thomas came through the ranks of the Jumbo Visma riders and congratulated them all. True, honest, sincere, sportsmanlike, and celebratory of what had been achieved. Here he was, getting second, and he meant it. And cycling these days is like that, as you say - the way Pogacar hugged Matthews in Quebec, the way Matthews congratulated Pogacar in Montreal, on and on they honor and respect each other. It's pretty great.RidesHills04-04-2025
- Not sure exactly what you are saying, but if you're implying that being heavier is helpful if you're going against the wind or sprinting, then no, it isn't. Ceteris paribus (all else held equal) being a lighter cyclist is always better, save downhill. The reason why heavier cyclists do relatively better than lighter ones on flatter courses is because they will have to have a higher power than the lighter cyclist in order to have any chance at all against them, and flatter courses mean that the lighter cyclist has nowhere to display the better power to weight ratio, meaning that significant ratio is power to CdA, which is usually an advantage to the heavier cyclist.acem8204-04-2025
- Going over bumps is equivalent to going over many small climbs. Lower weight is always a good thing (ceteris paribus) except when going downhill, and even then it's not that advantageous if the downhill is at all technical.acem8204-04-2025