Teams & Riders Tadej Pogačar discussion thread

[CyclistAbi]

Pogi doesn't play mind games.

 

[kn0s]

But bottom line, if we go with the sentiment of the fans most vocal in such pre season discussion, then Jonas will surely win the Tour, Rogla and Pogi will try to prevent that and Remco will dedicate his 2024 season, to beat Rogla in a stage race.

Fans most vocal...... Yeah sure.

 

[scribers]

Pogi doesn't play mind games.

He says he doesn't eat people too

 

[Extinction]

Hinault famously sat on Lemond's wheel and was gifted the Alpe d' Huez victory by his teammate. This after creating a rift within the team and attacking the GC leader, Mr. Greg L. The appearances were of happy teammates collaborating in a Hollywood victory. Every Hero has sat on a wheel until the towing rider became annoyed and changed tactics. That is Every Rider. You don't get a thank you for being stupid enough to tow another to a victory unless it's a paid teammate. Thank God for great riders but every one of them know how to sit a wheel. You just don't know how to quit feeding the trolls. Get it....they're trolling.

In reality, Hinault would have won that Tour if he would have raced to conserve a 5 min lead, but opted to attack again. Now we can criticize the stupidity, but not the audacity. Greg was trepidatious, but had the mental gile and strength to see things through, yet Hinault made the race what it was. A titanic battle.

 

[Extinction]

I seriously doubt the sport has radically changed for worse. Or for better.

How can you even have an account for that?

What we know is that Hinault raced in the last days of an era that was shifting into more scientific and capital intensive approaches. Television, sponsors, radios, nutrition have all domesticated the random factors where past attack strategies thrived. Of course cycling is less "free" now but that was the price of spreading it to wider audiences and securing sponsors investments in tangible results. But that tendency is here to stay. Soon we will have live glucose monitors or instant power meters.

All in all, I refuse to equate wheelsucking with negative racing. It might be boring to watch but it just means the levels are higher for everyone.

De gustibus non disputandem est. So, we can't argue over matters of taste. Having said that, the more science prevails, the less the human aspect counts. And back then the drama of frontal confrontation was, I don't say more natural, but spontaneous yes. It was mano a mano from the front of the race, not mega- budget teams dictating outcomes. It's evolution, but greater entertainment no.

 

[scribers]

Cycling up until the 80’s was one of the few sports that the most talented athletes weren’t smoking cigarettes and drinking etc. and that’s probably not even universal for cycling

 

[Oldermanish]

In reality, Hinault would have won that Tour if he would have raced to conserve a 5 min lead, but opted to attack again. Now we can criticize the stupidity, but not the audacity. Greg was trepidatious, but had the mental gile and strength to see things through, yet Hinault made the race what it was. A titanic battle.

Except it wasn't supposed to be a "battle" as Lemond was the designated protected leader. The 5 minute lead the Badger secured was based on a somewhat secret arrangement with team members to isolate Lemond for Hinault's benefit. It became obvious and, on the day after when Hinault escaped and gained some 3 more minutes; Lemond was p*ssed off and unleashed from any protection obligations. Lemond and a few sympathetic riders brought Hinault back and left Bernard. I believe it was the next day Hinault attempted it again, was caught and agreed to ride with Lemond rather than get dropped; something absolutely no one believes Bernard would have offered up if the roles were reversed. He got the gift of a stage win and then offered up the feeble and arrogant suggestion that he was simply assisting Lemond "earn" his win at the Tour.
This after the prior year Lemond was ordered to ride neutrally or in support of Hinault's final TdF win in exchange for full team support the following Tour. Lemond could have easily taken that Tour from Hinault as well by all credible accounts.
Hinault proved that he would do what he wanted and create a narrative of greatness afterward. Nothing more heroic or titanic than that and this is coming from le Blaireau fan.

 

[Extinction]

Except it wasn't supposed to be a "battle" as Lemond was the designated protected leader. The 5 minute lead the Badger secured was based on a somewhat secret arrangement with team members to isolate Lemond for Hinault's benefit. It became obvious and, on the day after when Hinault escaped and gained some 3 more minutes; Lemond was p*ssed off and unleashed from any protection obligations. Lemond and a few sympathetic riders brought Hinault back and left Bernard. I believe it was the next day Hinault attempted it again, was caught and agreed to ride with Lemond rather than get dropped; something absolutely no one believes Bernard would have offered up if the roles were reversed. He got the gift of a stage win and then offered up the feeble and arrogant suggestion that he was simply assisting Lemond "earn" his win at the Tour.
This after the prior year Lemond was ordered to ride neutrally or in support of Hinault's final TdF win in exchange for full team support the following Tour. Lemond could have easily taken that Tour from Hinault as well by all credible accounts.
Hinault proved that he would do what he wanted and create a narrative of greatness afterward. Nothing more heroic or titanic than that and this is coming from le Blaireau fan.

I'm aware of all that. I did not mean to say Hinault was an honorable chap. His ego knew no bounds. However, that still doesn't negate the fact that had he ridden to conserve his five minute lead, rather than go on cavalier attacks against all prudence, he likely would have won that Tour. Yet without Hinault's audacity that Tour would not have gone down as the epic battle for which it has been remembered, much to the benefit of Greg's legacy. Greg himself said he never saw Hinault stronger than in that Tour. So, even if Lemond was better, I don't think he could have taken back the five minute deficit had Hinault ridden on Lemond's wheel (wheelsucking). But le Blaireau just didn't know what the word wheelsucker meant evidently.

It also took Lemond's naivity to allow Hinault to attack with Delgado and ride into the yellow jersey, a gullableness which again manifested itself when the American chose not to drop Bernard on Alpe d'Huez, effectively keeping the Frenchman in the race going into the final TT. The extremities of temperment combined with a real zeal for romantic adventure, is what separated cycling back then from today's sport. And that's never coming back, although it was enthralling. Alas, now it's all hugs, smiles and fistshakes as they get on their stationary bikes for those silly warm-downs.

Moreover, when you think about what Hinault said of the whole affair, that he wanted Lemond to demonstrate his worthyness by repeatedly attacking him, when he certainly should have opted on a defensive strategy; herein lies the difference between today's cycling and that of the charismatic 80s. Never could a rider today be a Hinault against a Lemond. It's unimaginable. Everything is too controlled, too managed, too dialed into predetermined plans. There is no margin for chaos in today's sport. Look at what happened in the Vuelta last year. At the moment of any real drama, any tension in a script that was unwittingly shred to pieces, because Kuss was not supposed to have gotten a free ride into a serious bid to win the whole race; what does Jumbo do the moment of greatest intrigue and chaos? Shut the race down and fall back upon formulaic outcomes. Instead, it would have been much more entertaining to watch Vingegaard and Roglic attack in an "all bets are off" scenario and may the best man win. But today's cycling is far too conservative for that and lacks the renegade, buccaneer spirit of a more innocent, pure and less controlled agonistic environment of the 80s.

Yet this has been the rusult of over-sized budgets combined with a preponderance of performance science. It's made the racing faster, but more predictable, near perfect in controlling outcomes, but far less entertaining. Think about what would have happened had Delgado, something unimaginable today, not shown up late for the prologue, or if Lemond had a Jumbo to control the race and deliver him to the top of the climbs, or Fignon looked after better to prevent a saddle sore? We'd have been deprived of a clash of the titans, is what. For that matter, what would have happened if Fignon had put on an aero-helmet and mounted those friggin tri-bars? Instead we got a real tragedy and the pathos of witnessing a golden ponytailed and bespeckled gladiator dying in the arena before a stunned and incredulous crowd. By contrast, today we have the flip side of that absurdity, in an unending quest for marginal gains in what has become an arms race of tech advancements. All this adds up to more "perfection", but less entertainment value, because the racing is so controlled by power meters, race radios, risk management and all the rest that individual creativity and drama have been largely snuffed out. Yet the latest generation of young talents like Pogacar (remembering this is his thread), have proved to be a much welcomed "blast from the past".

 

[pelotonIQ]

I wish Remco the best but I saw a video yesterday of him struggling in the Angliru and that doesn't seem like a GT rider to me.

View: https://youtu.be/ZlQ1xzYFLfM?si=qZ96DHzbigL_T1eZ

Context.

Although steep climbs don't suit him, he was in the break on the Angliru stage and was already out of GC contention since stage 14 where he shifted focus to win the mountain jersey.

 

[Rob5091]

Mind games, joke or serious, you decide!
https://cyclinguptodate.com/cycling...r-tour-de-france-are-his-top-priority-in-2024
Q: What is your main goal for 2024: Giro or Tour?

Pogačar: World Championships.

 

[pelotonIQ]

Mind games, joke or serious, you decide!
https://cyclinguptodate.com/cycling...r-tour-de-france-are-his-top-priority-in-2024
Q: What is your main goal for 2024: Giro or Tour?

Pogačar: World Championships.

Classic maneuver to shift the topic away from the grand tours and to avoid follow up questions.

My take on Pogacars Giro-Tour double is that UAE are not confident in Poga winning TdF so they're hedging with the Giro.

 

[Extinction]

Classic maneuver to shift the topic away from the grand tours and to avoid follow up questions.

My take on Pogacars Giro-Tour double is that UAE are not confident in Poga winning TdF so they're hedging with the Giro.

It's what I already expressed somewhere here, so I can't but agree with you.

 

[Elos Anjos]

Classic maneuver to shift the topic away from the grand tours and to avoid follow up questions.

My take on Pogacars Giro-Tour double is that UAE are not confident in Poga winning TdF so they're hedging with the Giro.

It's the most obvious approach not to go out GT empty handed this season, but the fact it reaches for results doesn't take away the pattern that Pogacar never had a focus solely on the Tour and that his palmares reflects that.

Different races account for different preparations and there's a chance that for Pogi a good approach for the Tour without a loaded Spring can be a mild Giro in the legs. Even the Jumbo sport scientists, praised for their outstanding record could now only accidentaly fathom that Kuss needs two GT in his legs to be ultra competitive.

'We Found the Method for Him to Perform at the Biggest Moments': New Ambition, Same Structure for Sepp Kuss in 2024

Sepp Kuss carries winning training framework into boosted role with the Visma-Lease A Bike WorldTour bulldozer in 2024.

velo.outsideonline.com

 

[EllaChimp]

Goodness, the obsession with the Tour de France some people have on here is quite baffling. You'd think no other race exists or matters, lol. Just pointing out that neither the Tour nor the Giro are Pogi's main concerns this year. He's made it very clear that the World's are his main focus this year. He really wants that rainbow jersey and I hope he gets it!

 

[Extinction]

Goodness, the obsession with the Tour de France some people have on here is quite baffling. You'd think no other race exists or matters, lol. Just pointing out that neither the Tour nor the Giro are Pogi's main concerns this year. He's made it very clear that the World's are his main focus this year. He really wants that rainbow jersey and I hope he gets it!

By default?

 

[AmRacer]

Goodness, the obsession with the Tour de France some people have on here is quite baffling. You'd think no other race exists or matters, lol. Just pointing out that neither the Tour nor the Giro are Pogi's main concerns this year. He's made it very clear that the World's are his main focus this year. He really wants that rainbow jersey and I hope he gets it!

Poggi wants everything he hasn't won, yet.

 

[Oldermanish]

Yet this has been the rusult of over-sized budgets combined with a preponderance of performance science. It's made the racing faster, but more predictable, near perfect in controlling outcomes, but far less entertaining. Think about what would have happened had Delgado, something unimaginable today, not shown up late for the prologue, or if Lemond had a Jumbo to control the race and deliver him to the top of the climbs, or Fignon looked after better to prevent a saddle sore? We'd have been deprived of a clash of the titans, is what. For that matter, what would have happened if Fignon had put on an aero-helmet and mounted those friggin tri-bars? Instead we got a real tragedy and the pathos of witnessing a golden ponytailed and bespeckled gladiator dying in the arena before a stunned and incredulous crowd. By contrast, today we have the flip side of that absurdity, in an unending quest for marginal gains in what has become an arms race of tech advancements. All this adds up to more "perfection", but less entertainment value, because the racing is so controlled by power meters, race radios, risk management and all the rest that individual creativity and drama have been largely snuffed out. Yet the latest generation of young talents like Pogacar (remembering this is his thread), have proved to be a much welcomed "blast from the past".

I'm a grumpy non-fan of the excess tech that has neutered aggressiveness in the sport. Race radios and instant strategy adjustments from the DS caravan have seen to that and it's an easy fix if it were important. The blather about on the road safety is an easy fix as well. Allow riders to have a general alert from the officials with input from the team caravans and maybe a designated rider per team. Take the in depth data off the bikes and leave them with speed, distance, pulse rate and altitude to guide their efforts. That should encourage aggression with the absence of an alarm system when you're 2 watts over your "pedal anger" prescription.

But wrapping up in-team subterfuge with some sort of heroic and noble outcome is something I'd expect of Hinault's biographic ghost writer. It didn't pass as credible to me on any level.

Even comparing the Visma debacle is irrelevant. They neglected to support the supposed leader, Roglic and then tried to weasel out of it by protecting a deserving team member. It would have been a disaster for that team to let it go on, too. Sorry we didn't enjoy the denouement that would have satisfied the unwashed masses.

As for Pogacar; he seems to enjoy racing impulsively to a greater point and has been successful. I'm afraid now he deals with the reality of being the most feared rider and gets very few opportunities to surprise anyone which tends to play into the hands of the most stacked team. Hopefully this year it's different and we'll get the honest drama we'd all enjoy. It may be an outlier that provides the catalyst and it'd be really sweet.

 

[Oldermanish]

By default?

No one wins the Worlds by default. It's too much of a lotto for that. MvP's win was so much more impressive than most I can recall. Lemond's win, coming back from the dead or some of Sagan's had good drama, too. Remco's was well -earned but seemed off a bit for pack response. He would have won anyway.

 

[AmRacer]

Remco's was well -earned but seemed off a bit for pack response. He would have won anyw

MvdP would've won.

 

[Extinction]

I'm a grumpy non-fan of the excess tech that has neutered aggressiveness in the sport. Race radios and instant strategy adjustments from the DS caravan have seen to that and it's an easy fix if it were important. The blather about on the road safety is an easy fix as well. Allow riders to have a general alert from the officials with input from the team caravans and maybe a designated rider per team. Take the in depth data off the bikes and leave them with speed, distance, pulse rate and altitude to guide their efforts. That should encourage aggression with the absence of an alarm system when you're 2 watts over your "pedal anger" prescription.

But wrapping up in-team subterfuge with some sort of heroic and noble outcome is something I'd expect of Hinault's biographic ghost writer. It didn't pass as credible to me on any level.

Even comparing the Visma debacle is irrelevant. They neglected to support the supposed leader, Roglic and then tried to weasel out of it by protecting a deserving team member. It would have been a disaster for that team to let it go on, too. Sorry we didn't enjoy the denouement that would have satisfied the unwashed masses.

As for Pogacar; he seems to enjoy racing impulsively to a greater point and has been successful. I'm afraid now he deals with the reality of being the most feared rider and gets very few opportunities to surprise anyone which tends to play into the hands of the most stacked team. Hopefully this year it's different and we'll get the honest drama we'd all enjoy. It may be an outlier that provides the catalyst and it'd be really sweet.

I completely agree with your first paragraph, so there's nothing to beg to differ about there.

However, I think you've misunderstood what I was trying to express regarding the 86 Tour, if my words were read carefully. I basically stated that Hinault was a back-stabbing egomaniac, even if not quite so bluntly. Hence, how in what I wrote can such "team subterfuge", as you so well put it, be construed as sychophantic flattery to a supposed "heroic and nobel outcome"? No, what I meant was that such douchebaggery on Hinault's part, like it or not, made the duel with Greg enthralling, as all the pundits at the time unanimously said. The only hero was Lemond, Hinault the anti-hero. Every hero needs an anti-hero to make up the epic. Moreover, I clearly stated that Hinault raced rather stupidity and there is nothing to recommend in that. Although doing so afforded much to the entertainment value of that year's race. It was pure gold, that, and I for one would not have had him race any other way from this point of view. Let us not take things too seriously.

More than comparing with the Vismo debacle, I was contrasting the two outcomes' polar opposite team management applied mental habits. On the one hand, you had a rather devious Paul Köchli mischieviously encouraging discord, while sowing the seeds of intercene war (at one point the insouciant DS even encouraged a stupified Hampsten to play his own cards to win the race), while on the other, a lilly-livered Zeeman unable to handle the backlash from social media over "how dare Roglic and Vingegaard ride as team leaders", to then cave into an all too predictable politically correct outcome. Such denouement can only have satisfied shareholders terrified of the team being black labled and those with weak stomachs for any type of controversy (or simply a certain fandom insistant upon preconceived notions of etiquite and fair play).

As for Pogacar, he has already been the most feared rider in the peloton for quite some time, but this doesn't seem to have prevented him from striking hard and winning big.

 

[Extinction]

No one wins the Worlds by default. It's too much of a lotto for that. MvP's win was so much more impressive than most I can recall. Lemond's win, coming back from the dead or some of Sagan's had good drama, too. Remco's was well -earned but seemed off a bit for pack response. He would have won anyway.

Sure but I meant by default in terms of "not" winning the Tour again.

 

[Krzysztof_O]

Sure but I meant by default in terms of "not" winning the Tour again.

Tour is a glorified exho. Giro is for real men and I glad that Teddy finally becomes one.

 

[Elos Anjos]

I'm a grumpy non-fan of the excess tech that has neutered aggressiveness in the sport. Race radios and instant strategy adjustments from the DS caravan have seen to that and it's an easy fix if it were important. The blather about on the road safety is an easy fix as well. Allow riders to have a general alert from the officials with input from the team caravans and maybe a designated rider per team. Take the in depth data off the bikes and leave them with speed, distance, pulse rate and altitude to guide their efforts. That should encourage aggression with the absence of an alarm system when you're 2 watts over your "pedal anger" prescription.

This cannot be overstated. The impact of technology in the sport is unsurmountable and as recent developments recede to our awareness background, we tend to overlook it and assume they have always been there. And I'm not even talking about bike technology, nutrition or training methods.

The radio or the powermeter shift race dynamics a lot. I recall Contador's takes for banning them in the times of Sky train in order to allow a bit more random factors to come in.

That's why having a discussion about "wheelsucking", "agressiveness" or "the good old days" assuming that the contexts - from nowadays and in the past - are the same is mostly a pointless, mute discussion.

 

[Extinction]

This cannot be overstated. The impact of technology in the sport is unsurmountable and as recent developments recede to our awareness background, we tend to overlook it and assume they have always been there. And I'm not even talking about bike technology, nutrition or training methods.

The radio or the powermeter shift race dynamics a lot. I recall Contador's takes for banning them in the times of Sky train in order to allow a bit more random factors to come in.

That's why having a discussion about "wheelsucking", "agressiveness" or "the good old days" assuming that the contexts - from nowadays and in the past - are the same is mostly a pointless, mute discussion.

Pointless, however, only insofar as what you outlined nullifies all the rest. But it's that rest which is missing.

 

[Elos Anjos]

Pointless, however, only insofar as what you outlined nullifies all the rest. But it's that rest which is missing.

Simply put, attacking rates in races hinge on several factors:

1) human (natural talent, psychological drive to excel),
2) route design
3) weather factors
4) technology.

Technology is dependent on the capital intensive input that drive sponsors to expect a return for their investment. It means also that all things being equal in the peloton, i.e., if all teams have access to the same technologies, technology will have a tight grip on race dynamics.

The previous discussion just focused on the 1) factor.