Recent content by theyoungest

Home Alone wins the women's race in Overijse! It's an unusually open field in the women's races so far. Van Alphen has consistenly been close, but no cigar.

Van Empel has done it before, if the planks aren't too high and it actually makes a difference. For instance in Antwerp where she won because she could hop the planks and Brand couldn't. Most of the time she's just as fast running them though.

Usually the choice of which nation to represent depends more on the chances they have of making the Dutch team at championships. You have the Kopecky siblings, who represent the Czech Republic but are as Dutch as Gouda cheese (albeit with a Czech father). They don't make that choice because the...

Her top-10 on GC in the Tour was just last year... I haven't read anything about this year, but last winter she had surgery on her iliac artery. I would assume now she's back to full fitness she'll want to race cyclocross again.

I don't think it's hostility on the part of Dutch drivers. It's indifference. They just don't care that there's a cycling race going on.

There's a certain intellectual laziness that comes with being a native English speaker. There's just not the need nor the will to learn any foreign languages. That's why when people actually try to pronounce words correctly they come off as pretentious snobs. Conversely when they pretend to do...

Younger riders already are better than Brand. In a head to head battle Van Empel usually beats her. Similarly on the more technical courses Puck Pieterse is clearly better... when she's on form, that is. Shirin van Anrooij should be back at a good level this year as well. Also, calling Brand...

Your say your surname is originally French, but who tells you the original bearer of that name pronounced it the same way you do? Do you have any recordings? Your arguments simply don't stand the test of any logical or linguistic scrutiny. Julia Kopecky pronounces her name the Czech way for a...

Men's cyclocross is fairly competitive until Van der Poel shows up, then it's Pogacar-type domination. Nobody even comes close. In women's cross you have no such rider... but if you had to name one it's certainly not Brand.

But clearly Kopecky wasn't riding for herself. She was riding for her SD Worx teammate Wiebes. I thought the race was fairly entertaining, but the course was ridiculous. It looked more like my regular commute to work than like a gravel race. Too many bike paths, too many towns. You can't do a...

Probably a better choice than Lars Boom, although Sanne Cant doesn't exactly strike me as the biggest motivational speaker either.

Maybe lots of people do it or can explain what it is (the concept is also rather simple, and it can be done everywhere) but I'm talking about the general public watching it on the sidelines or on tv. I don't know if cyclocross will become an Olympic sport on the coattails of cross country...

Is it? I suppose it's more global because athletes from more countries participate, but is it really that popular? I doubt a lot of people could tell you who the current world champion is in cross-country running... Men's cyclocross really is an all-Belgian affair with the odd Dutch, British...

The Dutch have won 9 out of 10 editions of the women's Euros, so Rabofail doesn't quite apply here :) It was the first ever win of Demi Vollering in orange though.

That's not entirely true, but the culture around it is just totally different. The average person in Flanders knows much more about the sport than the average Dutchman. Ask someone in the Netherlands about Olav Kooij, I bet 90% of people don't know who that is.