Re: Cannondale-Drapac
perico said:
I like Vaughters. I met him a few times when Slipstream was riding only smaller races before they signed Vande Vende and Zabriskie . He was a pretty humble guy in person.
I don't know Vaughters personally. I find that in the press he might sound a bit hypocritical and tends to overhype his team just a bit too much. Dunno, maybe that's a cultural thing. My nation seems to be much more pessimistic than Americans, so I judge by my culture's standards.
So as the thread has been rejuvenated, here are my couple of recent thoughts:
Vaughters about re-signing Vanmarcke and Langeveld.
"These re-signings mark the first time since 2012 that we’ve had the fiscal stability to think about the future beyond one or two seasons."
I hope then that EF will sign some interesting riders for 2019 and beyond, because the potential of current team seems to have shrinked at bit since last year. I find their 2018 roster a tad weakish. They could never count on hiring big names who would let the wins flowing. What they were doing in recent years was to base on collective strength of many decentish riders from which one or another would hit a surprising result from time to time. Now there seems to be not enough depth for that to work often enough.
The next step should be to re-sign Dani Martinez, who was reportedly signed just on one-year deal. I have never understood that, unless it was Martinez himself who wanted just one year (which would also be strange: if he doesn't have enough trust in that team: why to sign with them at all?). I hope he gets well soon enough because with the injuries of S. Clarke and Moreno, it would be hard to bring a decent team with options/support for Ardennes.
There was also a talk from the team about Vanmarcke changing approach to how he races the cobbled classics. I had a thought during Dwars door Vlaanderen that he seems to be underestimating his abilities to do well in the final kilometers so he tries too many pointless attacks and is indeed left with empty tank for the end of the race. I feel he could have gotten a win or two if he just saved more for a sprint or one proper attack attempt within last 10 kilometers, when others would hesitate. His sprint cannot be that bad. He beat Boonen in Omloop in 2012 and last year, he got a couple of top5's in big group sprints at WT level, even beating some proper sprinters there. It seems like head and not legs are his problem, especially if he gets away in a group with many big names missing, like the last race or that PR which was won by Hayman.
His consistency is excellent. I don't think there has been a rider who was at the right part of the split in cobbled classics more often than him in recent years. Sometimes to win a race you need to be ready to lose it. Riders are often criticised for being too passive, but in this case, Sep just tries to get away from the rest of the group maybe a bit too hard. Maybe a win will come if he is ready to risk going into the final kilometers in a group with some riders theoretically faster than him, if you know what I mean.
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