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Teams & Riders Official Wout Van Aert thread

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Results are out of reach, but not because he is not in the same league. Remember how a young Vanmarcke was one of the only competitors Boonen and Cancellara had in the classics? Think about that for a moment. It says a lot about the quality of opposition both had/have to deal with.
Can't fully agree on that. Boonen and Cancellara just like Van Aert now had to face best classics riders of the world at that moment. Van Petegem, Hincapie, Flecha, Ballan, Pozzato, Hushovd, Chavanel, Gilbert, Van Avermaet, Terpstra, Kristoff, Sagan.., to name a few. Every coin has two sides, maybe those riders would be bigger champions but because of those two they wasn't.

To conclude:
Results aren't out of reach, but that will be very hard to accomplish,
and he is not in the same league as Cance, at least yet...
 
Can't fully agree on that. Boonen and Cancellara just like Van Aert now had to face best classics riders of the world at that moment. Van Petegem, Hincapie, Flecha, Ballan, Pozzato, Hushovd, Chavanel, Gilbert, Van Avermaet, Terpstra, Kristoff, Sagan.., to name a few. Every coin has two sides, maybe those riders would be bigger champions but because of those two they wasn't.

To conclude:
Results aren't out of reach, but that will be very hard to accomplish,
and he is not in the same league as Cance, at least yet...
Van Petegem & Hincapie ware a previous generation. There was very little overlap, and certainly not their best years. Sagan came when Cancellara and Boonen already were in the last years of their careers. Hushovd? Really. A third rate heavy sprinter that became a force on uphill finishes all of a sudden. Come on man.
 
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Can't fully agree on that. Boonen and Cancellara just like Van Aert now had to face best classics riders of the world at that moment. Van Petegem, Hincapie, Flecha, Ballan, Pozzato, Hushovd, Chavanel, Gilbert, Van Avermaet, Terpstra, Kristoff, Sagan.., to name a few. Every coin has two sides, maybe those riders would be bigger champions but because of those two they wasn't.

To conclude:
Results aren't out of reach, but that will be very hard to accomplish,
and he is not in the same league as Cance, at least yet...

Of course they had to contend with the best of the world at that moment... That is pretty much axiomatic.

The point is that that batch was not as good as the current.
 
And who are these superstars for classics, from the same generation as MvDP and WvA?
Nils Pollit, Kasper Asgreen?

For hills there is obviously Alaphilippe, then we have old men like Valverde and Fulsang, GVA for cobbles, and Sagan somewhere lost between generations.

We dont know if riders like Roglic, Remco or Pogocar will focus on classisc.
 
Well, for starters, van der Poel is a pretty daunting adversary for Van Aert...

I know Boonen was the same for Cancellara but somehow they only rarely competed directly against each other.

And then yeah, GVA, Sagan, Gilbert, Naesen, Vanmarcke, Valgren, Pedersen, Asgreen (I don't really know why you're snorting at him, he is pretty strong, you know), Politt, Stuyven, Lampaert, Stybar, Jungels, I guess, Bettiol, Terpstra, perhaps Degenkolb and Kristoff, Kragh, Matthews.

Don't tell me that isn't better than the subtop from ten years ago...

And maybe Schachmann will even give it a go this year. And Alaphilippe.
 
Well, for starters, van der Poel is a pretty daunting adversary for Van Aert...

I know Boonen was the same for Cancellara but somehow they only rarely competed directly against each other.

And then yeah, GVA, Sagan, Gilbert, Naesen, Vanmarcke, Valgren, Pedersen, Asgreen (I don't really know why you're snorting at him, he is pretty strong, you know), Politt, Stuyven, Lampaert, Stybar, Jungels, I guess, Bettiol, Terpstra, perhaps Degenkolb and Kristoff, Kragh, Matthews.

Don't tell me that isn't better than the subtop from ten years ago...

And maybe Schachmann will even give it a go this year. And Alaphilippe.
I don’t know if your overall point about the difference in quality is off base, but this post you use to back it up seems strange because of the riders you listed, Canc won 2 Rondes and 1 Roubaix against 7 of those riders who were already at an elite level: GVA, Sagan, Vanmarke, Stybar, Terpstra, Degenkolb, and Kristoff. Of that group, one could argue that Vanmarke, Terpstra, Degenkolb, and Kristoff were at a higher level when Cancellara beat them than they are now.
 
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the weird thing is both WvA and MvdP begin relatively late compared to nowadays road stars who often break through at 20-22, because of their CX focussed past. so in terms of pure amount of big wins it's gonna be hard either way to ever get to Cancellara/Boonen level
 
for those of you - especially fans of Van Aert - who missed it:


Yikes. Van Aert has apparently been dropping George Bennett on big climbs during JV's training camp in Tignes. Kruijswijck could. not. drop. him, either. Petit St. Bernard is one thing, but Iseran (assuming they climbed both sides and why the **** wouldn't they) is another.

Could Wout "jack of none" Van Aert be Belgium's next GC rider?
 
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for those of you - especially fans of Van Aert - who missed it:


Yikes. Van Aert has apparently been dropping George Bennett on big climbs during JV's training camp in Tignes. Kruijswijck could. not. drop. him, either. Petit St. Bernard is one thing, but Iseran (assuming they climbed both sides and why the **** wouldn't they) is another.

Could Wout "jack of none" Van Aert be Belgium's next GC rider?

It's not so far fetched, in that Thomas went from a classics specialist to a GT winner. But I'm not sure we've seen a guy with WVA's kick transform into a GT rider unless you count Alaphilippe from last year.
 
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As you may have read I really like van Aert and also I got him in my cq-team, but if he can climb better than Bennett and Kruijswijk and sprint better than Alaphilippe within months, we should just move this to the clinic. So I hope it's something about form and circumstances and that we won't see him pulling Roglic up the high mountains at the Dauphiné or the Tour.
 
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As you may have read I really like van Aert and also I got him in my cq-team, but if he can climb better than Bennett and Kruijswijk and sprint better than Alaphilippe within months, we should just move this to the clinic. So I hope it's something about form and circumstances and that we won't see him pulling Roglic up the high mountains at the Dauphiné or the Tour.
This is a pretty shortsighted remark. Van Aert has always shown great climbing ability for a guy of his size, even in CX it was clear he was the better climber on the longer harder climbs. We've known for years that he outputs insane watts. He beat Tony Martin in an ITT when he was 21, in the same year Martin became world champ (so before he was over the hill). Big powerful riders who are great ITT'ers and big watt-monsters, who lose weight and train in the mountains, tend to do a lot better. Dumoulin, Thomas, Wiggins, even van Baarle has been winning mountain stages. It's possible Ineos want to prep Ganna as well.

With his skillset, it makes sense that he does well after losing weight, and that people start thinking about GC. I'm not sure he himself would consider it, become a GC rider, but other than Ganna, there isn't guy in the peloton more suited for a transformation, imho. Is it needed? Would it be fun? That's a different matter. Also, it's not because he had one very good day, that he could do it 3 weeks in a row or on regular basis. But clinic talk is just stupid. Also, what do you mean by "within months"? He's been winning sprints his entire life. He was already bridging gaps uphill last year in the TDF when Kruijswijk was dropped in a second peloton.
 
Maybe the correc take is as follows.

Kruijswijk couldn't drop van Aert. Bennett was getting dropped. Evidently they needed that training camp
Basically, what I'm reading is that the team and Van Aert's teammates were in awe.

Wuyts on Van Aert: "But what strikes me most is that he achieves values close to 6 when we look at the ratio of wattage per kilo of body weight. That is fantastic for a 77 kilogram rider"

link:

 
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This is a pretty shortsighted remark. Van Aert has always shown great climbing ability for a guy of his size, even in CX it was clear he was the better climber on the longer harder climbs. We've known for years that he outputs insane watts. He beat Tony Martin in an ITT when he was 21, in the same year Martin became world champ (so before he was over the hill). Big powerful riders who are great ITT'ers and big watt-monsters, who lose weight and train in the mountains, tend to do a lot better. Dumoulin, Thomas, Wiggins, even van Baarle has been winning mountain stages. It's possible Ineos want to prep Ganna as well.

With his skillset, it makes sense that he does well after losing weight, and that people start thinking about GC. I'm not sure he himself would consider it, become a GC rider, but other than Ganna, there isn't guy in the peloton more suited for a transformation, imho. Is it needed? Would it be fun? That's a different matter. Also, it's not because he had one very good day, that he could do it 3 weeks in a row or on regular basis. But clinic talk is just stupid. Also, what do you mean by "within months"? He's been winning sprints his entire life. He was already bridging gaps uphill last year in the TDF when Kruijswijk was dropped in a second peloton.

Yeah, the clinic remark was sloppy and I should have kept from it. It would be very much okay for me if he became a GC rider in the future, maybe even next year. And beating Bennett and Kruijswijk on certain climbs under certain circumstances is one thing, extremely strong, but in a way that I can understand. Being generally better at climbing than them, this year, a few weeks after he has shown how strong his sprint still is, would be... well, too much for me. In that case they should send him as a coleader to the tour with Roglic. But I don't think it's like that.
 

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