Tom Meeusen

Latest comments

• Jumpyjohn25-10-2026
  It’s not only that, it’s this obsession with running after money, whether it be teams, riders, sponsors, broadcasters. As soon as one player gets ahead, others feel obliged to match their moves with increases for fear of losing out and for fear of someone else following in your place instead without looking at the long-term consequences of blindly following. Other sports ahead (or behind depending on how you look at it) in such matters should serve as a warning but humanity has a habit of heading straight into walls even when the writing is on it. When financial objectives and limits aren’t clear, it’s impossible to manage any organisation, you can’t even recruit the right riders or tell them what is needed to make sure they’re a good fit because you can’t clearly explain what they can expect. Not all riders are motivated by money alone and some of the teams are proof of that.
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  Rafionain-Glas25-10-2026
  To be honest, their signings weren't actually too bad. Oscar and Kevin had great 2025 seasons. Most of the top leaders were signed. But Red Bull, Lidl-Trek and Pinarello showed that that's not actually the coast. So team culture is probably the foremost reason. Whether there's a bad sporting culture now is debatable, but certainly there's the past. 2024 was the end of the old Ineos (it was not actually transition, it was slow decline)
• Santiago25-10-2026
  FYI. Pogi made his World Tour debut at the TDU in 2019. I remember it well because someone said watch out for Pogi as he did a good time up Corkscrew during training. Who would have thought he'd end up as the GOAT.
• Santiago25-10-2026
  FYI. Pogi's first World Tour race was at the TDU in 2019. I remember it well because someone said watch out for Pogi as he did a good time up Corkscrew during training. Who would have thought he end up as the GOAT.
• abstractengineer25-10-2026
  50 million isnt low. But if you hire super domestiques for a million and 3rd rung leaders for 3-5 million, natural you dont have money left not the results expected. Most monuments and TDF are out of reach due to Pogi. But there were a promising 2nd rung leaders on the market and they went for broke to get Onley and Kevin. I put their entire troubles due to mismanagement
• Jumpyjohn25-10-2026
  I think it’s becoming clear that cycling got way ahead of itself for a few reasons and is now coming to the realisation that some rider salaries just exploded without justification and it snowballed until sponsors started pulling money out because THEY did not see any return on increased costs. Cycling is still a dying sport (that never moved out of the niche family) and will remain so if it doesn’t embrace and promote new ventures or manage to attract new markets. Even within cycling, fans are basically compartimentalised, (almost nobody here follows track for example), and the multiplication of possibilities hasn’t grown the sport, it has just split it into a larger number of smaller branches. If it weren’t for nation state sponsors (far too numerous already) other teams would never have (had to resort to) raised bigger budgets that are now leading to sponsor abandonment. That’s the difference between long-term steady growth and financial doping, the latter can also just blow up in your face. I will venture to wager that apart from one or two exceptional cases, rider salaries will no longer go up and are quite likely to actually drop over the next decade.
• Jumpyjohn25-10-2026
  You know you can post all this on idlprocycling too with your account(s) don’t you? There’s a whole bunch more articles and people there to inform.
• Jumpyjohn25-10-2026
  That’s the kind of word my foreign grandma would have rendered fashionable again, like flabbergasted (at her time) ;-) Perhaps he should get a pro to fill out his papers and pack his bag too, customs have become keen on controlling anyone from the balkans.
• Jumpyjohn25-10-2026
  Alternatively, just call Rod Steward
• Searider25-10-2026
  I will be in Adelaide in a shot if Pogi comes to the Tour Down Under. Fingers and toes crossed that this will eventuate, he has just got to remember to stay aware of kangaroo’s, as Jay Vine can attest to. Though can’t be any worse than some of the passionate fans in Europe