Andy Schleck Discussion thread.

[Christian]

He finished 10th but everyone finishing behind him were amateurs. Plus he finished 3 minutes down from the 9th rider. Basically he finished dead last.

It is difficult to find an explanation for this. If he worked for Jungels all the race maybe I could understand it. But the report doesn't say anything. From what I read he was simply dropped with three laps to go. It was chilly and raining apparantly, but still. He also refused to give interviews after the race.

To finish 1 minute down from the leaders on the queen stage of Tour de Suisse and then one week later get smashed by semi-professional continental and U23 riders on an easy 170km is inexplicable

 

[karlboss]

He finished 10th but everyone finishing behind him were amateurs. Plus he finished 3 minutes down from the 9th rider. Basically he finished dead last.

It is difficult to find an explanation for this. If he worked for Jungels all the race maybe I could understand it. But the report doesn't say anything. From what I read he was simply dropped with three laps to go. It was chilly and raining apparantly, but still. He also refused to give interviews after the race.

To finish 1 minute down from the leaders on the queen stage of Tour de Suisse and then one week later get smashed by semi-professional continental and U23 riders on an easy 170km is inexplicable

There's really only 1 answer. He didn't try.

 

[nick101]

i fear the worst is gonna happen and andy performs ok and sneaks into the top 10, i want him to crush everybody or to bomb completely.

if he bombs completely his confidence would utterly be destroyed and he'd probably be stuffed for next years tdf also. so no old andy for next years tdf either if that happened. If he were to make top ten it'd massively improve his confidence and we'd certainly see a insanely strong andy next year. the best thing for andy is to make top ten, maybe as a spectator seeing the old andy would be better, but that's not gna happen this year. Realising that he still has a way to go in his journey to returning to his old self is important. Andy has to take things step by step. Top ten is one of those steps, bombing out would put him back to square one and make everything pointless. I really hope he can make top ten this year

 

[Angliru]

He finished 10th but everyone finishing behind him were amateurs. Plus he finished 3 minutes down from the 9th rider. Basically he finished dead last.

It is difficult to find an explanation for this. If he worked for Jungels all the race maybe I could understand it. But the report doesn't say anything. From what I read he was simply dropped with three laps to go. It was chilly and raining apparantly, but still. He also refused to give interviews after the race.

To finish 1 minute down from the leaders on the queen stage of Tour de Suisse and then one week later get smashed by semi-professional continental and U23 riders on an easy 170km is inexplicable

If he were happy with his performance I would think he would have had a word or two for the media.

 

[Afrank]

I wouldn't read too much into his placing today. The Lux champs I doubt are too a big priority for him. Probably just raced them to get a little more racing miles in the legs before the Tour and didn't try too hard.

It would be nice to know if he did work for Jungels earlier though, anyone find some video?

 

[nick101]

Quick question about the luxemborg champs: How far back from Jungels did andy finish?? How far back did he finish from the front bunch also (if there was one)???

 

[Afrank]

4:14 back from Jungels.
http://www.cqranking.com/men/asp/gen/race.asp?raceid=24606

 

[Angliru]

Quick question about the luxemborg champs: How far back from Jungels did andy finish?? How far back did he finish from the front bunch also (if there was one)???

According to Christian, Andy finished 10th, 3 minutes behind the 9th place rider.

 

[nick101]

So there was a bunch finish and Jungels just broke away. not good for andy at all, he'd be wanting to stay in the bunch like at the tds. That's another set back for him imo.

 

[Dedelou]

There's really only 1 answer. He didn't try.

Bizarre. Why would anybody, nevermind a big name like Schleckl, would bother to attend the National Championship, a week from the TDF and not try? His poor showing cannot be good for his moral, which is shaky at best. Unless he is systematically working at lowering expectations in order to get a huge fan response by doing a one time wonder move on one of the tour stage. At this point, even his presence on a break at TDF would be sure to attract pages of Newspaper coverage. Perhaps that is all he can do to repay the big money he gets.

 

[Taxus4a]

Bizarre. Why would anybody, nevermind a big name like Schleckl, would bother to attend the National Championship, a week from the TDF and not try? His poor showing cannot be good for his moral, which is shaky at best. Unless he is systematically working at lowering expectations in order to get a huge fan response by doing a one time wonder move on one of the tour stage. At this point, even his presence on a break at TDF would be sure to attract pages of Newspaper coverage. Perhaps that is all he can do to repay the big money he gets.

That use to be his modus-operandi. Look for the surprise and not be favourite.
He is very dangerous in a breakaway at Madeleine.

This year Jungels wanted the national, the same team than Andy, Andy did his train and let it go...

 

[TheEnoculator]

Bizarre. Why would anybody, nevermind a big name like Schleckl, would bother to attend the National Championship, a week from the TDF and not try? His poor showing cannot be good for his moral, which is shaky at best. Unless he is systematically working at lowering expectations in order to get a huge fan response by doing a one time wonder move on one of the tour stage. At this point, even his presence on a break at TDF would be sure to attract pages of Newspaper coverage. Perhaps that is all he can do to repay the big money he gets.

Andy is at a stage in his career now that he needs to attend as many races as he can so people don't think he's a wash-up. Never mind the form, as long as he finishes, that's good enough.

 

[Jelantik]

Bizarre. Why would anybody, nevermind a big name like Schleckl, would bother to attend the National Championship, a week from the TDF and not try? His poor showing cannot be good for his moral, which is shaky at best. Unless he is systematically working at lowering expectations in order to get a huge fan response by doing a one time wonder move on one of the tour stage. At this point, even his presence on a break at TDF would be sure to attract pages of Newspaper coverage. Perhaps that is all he can do to repay the big money he gets.

I think the question will be "why are you surprise?" this is andy we are talking about. He never takes any race seriously other than TDF or LBL. I don't hate andy, and I'm sure he has his reason doing his build up this way, but we are all know, so far his palmares doesn't really show what his talent can actually do. And he is not getting younger either. For that, it won't surprise me, if he just floundering around and never actually surface to the top.

 

[Christian]

I don't quite agree with those who say he didn't care. It could well be of course but I am more inclined to believe that he just had a colossally terrible day. First of all he has competed in this race before and won it, so it's not like he never cared about it.

Second this could have been a gifted win for him, seeing as there virtually was no competition. Surely that would have boosted his morale to finally be on the top step of the podium again, and to wear the national champion's jersey for the next year. There was never any talk of him working hard for Jungels, neither is this a race where you can lose out due to bad placement since there are only around 10 riders who are more or less at a similar level. On TV they said that when the professionals attacked, he quickly found himself in the third group.

Finally even if he did only use this race for training, the level is so low compared to the TdS for example that just staying with the lead group for 170 km should have been easy training (remember that these are semi-professionals and U23 riders that we are talking about). He finished 2 seconds ahead of the guy who won the title for "élite sans contrat" - so a club rider. If there are any club riders reading this, this could have been you if you were licensed in Luxembourg.

Here is the report from TV, but it doesn't say much about Andy. They interviewed him before the race, where he says he doesn't count himself as a favourite and that a stage win would be great. He also says he lobbied to get Laurent Didier on the team... I didn't know he still had a lobby!

http://tele.rtl.lu/waatleeft/replay/v/20130623/0/2994809/

 

[Christian]

Here is the report from Alex Kirsch, winner of the U23 title:

The National Championship is always a special race as U23, Elite and Professionals all start together. Because there was no real difficulty on the circuit we decided to ride from the beginning to make the 170km as hard as possible. With three laps to go I attacked to make a selection and get rid of the other U23 riders and concentrate on the professional race. We were represented in the break with all 4 riders from Leopard Trek, together with two Radioshack Bob Jungels and Laurent Didier, Jempy Drucker from Accent-Jobs and Ben Gastauer from Ag2r.

With 15 km to go Bob attacked strong and soon it was clear that we were riding for 2nd place, since Leopard was not going to pull behind him! When it was clear that he was going to win, we tried to get a podium place in the Pro race. I attacked several times in the last lap, but the climb was simply to short and to not hard enough. In the end we prepared the sprint for Pit, who managed to finish 2nd!

http://www.alex-kirsch.com/

 

[ILovecycling]

here is an interview with Andy before Tour

http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/video/tdf-2013-profile-andy-schleck-083712642.html

 

[Afrank]

here is an interview with Andy before Tour

http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/video/tdf-2013-profile-andy-schleck-083712642.html

"We're sorry... this video is currently not available."

Did he say anything new or interesting?

 

[Zam_Olyas]

"We're sorry... this video is currently not available."

Did he say anything new or interesting?

That is exactly what he said and then drops the mic on the ground

 

[ILovecycling]

"We're sorry... this video is currently not available."

Did he say anything new or interesting?

Interesting,it works for me.

to bolded: not really,talked about motivation and that he likes that he isnt favourite

 

[Taxus4a]

I don't quite agree with those who say he didn't care.
http://tele.rtl.lu/waatleeft/replay/v/20130623/0/2994809/

I agree now with you.

I guees this is in english, I didnt see it at a first glance:

http://www.biciciclismo.com/cas/site/noticias-ficha.asp?id=63297
It says Andersen is worried, they dont understand what happend in Championship, the did the race hard for Andy, and Andy told them he didnt have the legs...so they are worried.

They dont understand becouse he was doing "tras moto" very powerfull these days...

 

[nick101]

Pretty worrying if Andy, as designated leader of Leopard-Trek for the Luxemborg champs, gets beaten by amateurs and one of his domestiques wins. Doesn't bode well for the TDF.

Maybe Andy would have been better off doing the Vuelta instead of the Tour??
He would've had a better build up with the Tour of Poland, Tour of Austria, Vuelta Burgos and a few other races, so could've done better there as he would have more time to prepare and reach a better level of form. His fixation with winning the Tour and ignoring any other races is certainly a bad idea. Imho he needs to move on and do the giro and vuelta in a year before attempting the tour again. He seems to be surrounded by yes men; someone needs to give him the hard word and tell him to cut his losses and shelve his dream of winning the tour for the time being and try win one or two of the other gts and some other races (apart from the Ardennes classics also) and then return to the tour in a few years. His mentality of soft pedalling in all races, then only trying in the Ardennes classics and the Tour is his downfall. In order to reach good form, he actually needs to try in more races and if winning is a result then that's a good bonus. His best chances for a tour win have been and gone now that Froome is here..

 

[Dazed and Confused]

Bruyneel tried the "hard" way with Andy. Perhaps other factors played into this, but it wasn't successful. Not convinced Andy can handle serious "discipline", but if he wants to try it out, he could talk to Sky about his next contract.

 

[nick101]

Bruyneel tried the "hard" way with Andy. Perhaps other factors played into this, but it wasn't successful. Not convinced Andy can handle serious "discipline", but if he wants to try it out, he could talk to Sky about his next contract.

Sky have too many GC riders, so Andy would have to go as a domestique. Due to his pride, he would never be a domestique, especially at Sky. Hhhhmmmm what other factors??

 

[Dazed and Confused]

Sky have too many GC riders, so Andy would have to go as a domestique. Due to his pride, he would never be a domestique, especially at Sky. Hhhhmmmm what other factors??

Factors such as close friendship with Andersen who still played a role on the team when Bruyneel came in etc. I think changing such an approach would require getting rid of the likes of Andersen.

Agree, Sky would have too many options GC wise. Anyway lets see what happens with the Shack team by the end of the season.

 

[nick101]

Factors such as close friendship with Andersen who still played a role on the team when Bruyneel came in etc. I think changing such an approach would require getting rid of the likes of Andersen.

Agree, Sky would have too many options GC wise. Anyway lets see what happens with the Shack team by the end of the season.

Or Bruyneel could've convinced Andersen to take a hard approach on Andy also. I've always wondered whether Bruyneel's approach to Clinic related matters with Andy were the reason why Andy never got on with Bruyneel