"We kept our faith in him and now he is back" - Ineos DS happy to see Thymen Arensman back in Giro d'Italia top 10
Cycling
Things haven't always been going well for Thymen Arensman in the opening weekend of Giro d'Italia. The Ducthman lost more than four minutes in first two stages, and his even father ventiled anger with INEOS Grenadiers coaches' work on social sites. Now we're a week further down the Corsa Rosa, and Arensman is back in the top 10 (thanks to an impressive time trial) and looks strong as ever.
"We have never had any doubts about Thymen, he is a real Grand Tour rider," sports director Zak Dempster emphasizes to In de Leiderstrui. "He has never had a bad third week and we are confident he will have a good third again. He is one of the better classification men here, although he is a bit further away. I'm looking forward to what he can do in the next two weeks, the rest can try to follow him."
With Geraint Thomas in third place on the rankings, INEOS has two important cards to play in the battle for the podium. "Thymen has always been a protected rider, that has never changed. He's never lost twenty minutes, so he's still competing. This indeed gives us two cards to play, a tactical advantage. We came here for a result and Thymen is ready to do that."
"We would of course prefer to be in the pink, but we are riding against a beast here," he refers to fantastic Tadej Pogacar. "In any case, Thymen is happy again. Of course he was disappointed, but we put an arm around him and he has good friends on the bus. We kept our faith in him and now he is back. And even if he hadn't come back, we support him. This remains cycling."
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- Mas... Challenge Pogi!!! Ha Ha Haabstractengineer20-12-2024
- They (USA Cycling) raised their permit fee from from $95 to $125 and the minimum insurance charge went from $300 to $400.JoeyB20-12-2024
- Exactly who, Joey, is "they"? Flimsy, illogical conspiracy theories aside, it is in no one's interest (financial or otherwise) to "drive away small local events." Major cultural and macroeconomic factors are reducing ridership, but there is no "they" in this context.verve82520-12-2024
- And our virtual platforms allow us to "ride" famous place that we can't get to in person, which is a pretty fabulous aspect of this weird weird sport.RidesHills19-12-2024
- Which off-season are you referring to? The one after he won the Tour of California? The one after he won 3 stages and was on the podium of the Vuelta? The one after TJV screwed up, never put him away, and lost the Tour on the time trial? We've seen the guy hit the wall, lose energy, nearly fail, and lose races ("I'm dead") more than once. He's got a visible threshold and his fueling regimen is a clear weak spot. You'll need more detail to make this more than under defined insinuations .RidesHills19-12-2024
- 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