Thijs Zonneveld calls for more boldness from his colleagues-analysts: "They often start to protect people from the cycling world - that's wrong. They must not give a sh*t"

Thijs Zonneveld has been one of the leading Dutch journalists for quite some time now. Unlike many of his colleagues, the man who still actively competes (for example at the Gravel Worlds last month), isn't shy to speak out his mind. Be it in his columns or podcast. And Zonneveld admits that it's the latter platform that has been providing him with more joy lately.

"Journalism has changed enormously in the past ten years. When I started, I wrote and occasionally joined De Avondetappe to talk about cycling, but in 2017 we started the podcast In het Wiel. Journalism has become very fragmented and if I'm honest, I currently find the podcast the best part of my job," he admits in WielerRevue.

"It's different from talking about cycling on television. It's part of it on television, but I think it's too much of a column-by-column thing. While writing columns and articles is a lot more laborious. The power of the podcast is that you can elaborate as much as you want."

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Independence

But you can't just let anyone fill a podcast with talk, says Zonneveld. He sees a lot of people with a double agenda in the cycling analyst world. "An analyst must be well-informed, articulate and, above all, independent. Analysts often fail on that last point. They start to protect people from the cycling world, while you really don't want that. They must not give a shit."

"From the current peloton, I would think it would be super cool if Bauke Mollema would go into the analyst side, but I actually don't think he will. We did a theater show with him in Carré and he told wonderful stories. A completely different Bauke than the one you see in the summer. He simply doesn't care what others think. When he talked about his difficult relationship with Robert Gesink, you really got the real picture of how that went."

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