Recent content by Medvind

Remco will smash Pog in Lombardy, showing that this GOAT talk is premature!!!

Hence Visama must have some strong rouleurs, but have they beside van Aert and Benoot? Jorgenson could play that role but is needed on the tougher climbs. Laporte is a shell of 2023 Laporte. Van Baarle hasn't looked especially good this year. They will probably not even make the team...

AGR: 12t FW: 8th LBL: 5th Not to shabby!!! Future looking quite bright in the Ardennes. Sure, 5th place in LBL don't tell the whole story. But good to hear Nys himself saying that LBL suits him better than he thought. And he actually found AGR tougher than LBL...

Crazy *** we are witnessing. In his last race during a tough spring campaign he won in dominant fashion and made the others look like juniors. And he didn't look tired one bit in the end. He must really have amazing genes...

So record on La Redoute and it wasn't even a full on attack. Absolutely sure he could have gone at least 5s faster if he wanted, but he had a good gap and didn't need to. Pog plays in another division.

I actually agree because I see no weaknesses in Pog any more. After the loss against Vinge in 2023, Pog realized he must up his game to actually win the tour again. And the improvement he made was, well, extraordinary to say the least.

Vinge will not take time on Pog in a 33k flat tt, he will lose time and then he must take it back somewhere. Vinge is a good timetrialist but a 59 kilo Vinge won't take time on Pog in a flat tt. So the fatigue thesis on hard mountain stages with long climbs and at altitude late in the tour...

You are probably right, but I still think it's the best gamble. Still believing that a hard tour can set Pog down a notch in the 3rd week. Maybe it's a doomed strategy nowdays when Pog have improved further. But what strategy is better? I'm curious to know.

Mentally? If you don't try to get Pog tired before the climbs how in the hell is Vinge going to beat him on the climbs? I'm confident strong rouleurs is a necessary ingredient for Visma to give Vinge even the slighest chance of winning.

Having good mountain doms is of course crucial for Visma, but I actually think it's also important they have some real strong riders to set a high pace on climbs with shallower gradients. As when they had Van Baarle, van Hooydonck, and Laporte in super shape. Add also a good van Aert to that...

Believing Kuss can put Pog in red again before Vinge attacks is a fantasy.

S Yates and Kuss, bit unknown how strong they are going to be. Matteo is good. Almeida, A Yates and Sivakov feels more reliable.

Maybe we should criticize Remco some, but to be honest we should have known this could happen. It was probably wrong to hype him up as much as some of us did. He "baited" us to do so with his solid performances in BP and AGR. We know that a fully prepared Remco perfomes better than this, he...

Other teams never really believed they could win, they rode for 2nd and 3rd even if they won't admit it. UAE completely dictated the race, no other team tried to change what was going to be the inevitable. Maybe Soudal Quick-Step had some hope, but that wanished brutally.

Vinge is damn good, don't get me wrong, but Pog took a step up last year and he seems even stronger this year, especially regarding attacking hard on steep sections. If Vinge can reach Pog's level in the tour I will be surprised. And even if he can I don't know how he actually wins over Pog...