Because of his athletic build?Had he practiced something else before opting for the bicycle?
Yes, his built is fairly athletic, but something's telling me he's been trying himself out elsewhere as a kid... Before the age he's been fully eligible for cycling.Because of his athletic build?
That only came in his very late teenage years. There are images of him on World Championships CX U18 and even U23 being this really tiny almost fragile kid.
Glad to see his power and speed are back. Feared it would take longer after that horrible injury. Hopefully he can reach those last percentages for the spring classics.
I believe he did athletics when he was young.Yes, his built is fairly athletic, but something's telling me he's been trying himself out elsewhere as a kid... Before the age he's been fully eligible for cycling.
There are no "thread avatars". The small thumbnails you see in the forum list, is simply the avatar of the poster who created the topic/thread. In this case, the thread was started by a poster without an avatar.How this thread don't have an avatar yet??? Somebody need to make this right
Reading your MVP post and comparing it, we now know that van Aert is a more desirable partner
As said in the MvdP topic, the container cup, overall, wasn't a success for Wout (he did beat Mathieu's combined time in running, rowing and cycling, but faltered in shooting, golfing etc). In cycling however, Mathieu managed to outdo Bart Swings, an ice skater, by half a second and had the best time, but then Wout smashed it and took 10 seconds off Mathieu's time, a new record.Mathieu won the Container Cup. A series of 7 challenges inside a container (a Belgian TV show). Running, rowing, cycling, monkeybar, biatlon shooting, benchpress, golf. He beat the previous best time of Greg Van Avermaet by 30 seconds. Only Wout van Aert was left that could do better than Mathieu. Van Aert smashed the cycling test, outdoing Mathieu's record by 10 seconds over 3km. Wout also was the second best in rowing (10 seconds slower than bronze WC medallist rowing Tim Brys, and dozens of seconds ahead of the rest), but specifically shooting and golfing was disastrous for Wout (0 targets shot, and only 48m in golf).
At Benchpress, Mathieu showed his left elbow which has a strange "twist" in it, only after a certain point/angle, can he put pressure on it. An old injury, he broke his elbow once.
At cycling, Mathieu had a max heartrate of 195. He said the cycling had gone perfectly, and with that heartrate, it was obvious he went all out. He also said he went as deep as when he won Amstel. Before the test he said he was in very good shape, but had not done intensity training lately.
According to the infoscreen, Mathieu's heartrate at rest: 36bpm.
I have no idea if this will be georestricted or not, but the broadcast will be on youtube tomorrow: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcmPO3ZN9_3BBy0jUPRYflrylVfx152th
Let's see him on the steep climbs against the top riders first! Oops, wrong thread!I think he recovered from his crash.
They all knew this was the only spot left for him to attack. Honestly i expected him to attack on a less steep part a bit sooner.While he isn't the new Stybar, he wins the same race as Stybar has won today
Nice thing was he did it whilst being the strongest. No sneaky attack or anything. No he was just the best.
I find him to be almost like a perfect mix between Cancellara and Boonen so I see him winning more classics like De Ronde and Roubaix at least once and maybe San Remo as well.Didn't he gain like 15s on the climb to the finish anyway?
Anyway, successor to Cancellara?