The Mou is the One and Only Phropet Thread

[Zoetemelk-fan]

We used to have an actual insider, the father of Tarling, who was bullied away. But now we praise an actual bully

Must say I'm way behind here, at most chuckling about recent months comments about 'mou' only having read a couple of posts from the concerned user myself going into this year.
However I read alot of posts from 'Inerrng' (or how it was typed) by the time - is inrng Tarling's dad really??

 

[Barkintheeye]

Funny thing is, while he had a very small group of people actually believing him in the start, the rest was basically mocking him Then Strade Bianche happened, and a few more people started to believe and less people mocked him after we were told hed ride in rings around the competition. Then MSR where he was extremely critical of the team and the ONE race he didn't expect him to blow everyone out of the water, and thats exactly what happened. Then all the juicy insights about team dynamics, Matxin, Sola, and the bald fraud San Millán. Then Catalunya with the improved climbing performance and people actually started to believe this guy was onto something. Then he got banned, but some of us still remember what was said about the the Giro which didn't disappoint, and now the climax after Beille

It was a ride, and its kinda cool honestly to have followed this 'live' while it became such a huge story just a couple of months later.

That plus the fact that he was dropping certain numbers that sounded hilarious yet plausible and grounded in some close proximity to Pogacar. I never knew @mou as a bully and my issue with his posts were the lack of coherence and incomplete sentences 😵‍💫

 

[Eddy Evenepoel]

However I read alot of posts from 'Inerrng' (or how it was typed) by the time - is inrng Tarling's dad really??

Tarlings dad was MichaelTarling:

@MichaelTarling

His posts and account have been removed but there is still a quote in the Joshua Tarling topic, the post itself has been removed

 

[Devil's Elbow]

I don't think I'll ever be able to wrap my head around the fact that posts made on here have developed into one of the main stories of this Tour to the point that they've put Pogacar on the back foot. It's the kind of thing that you would sooner expect to happen if you had a dream related to the forum for whatever reason.

 

[Barnacle Bill]

I remember reading his posts at the time, pretty entertaining in terms of 'details' even if the idea that Pog would be better this year wasn't exactly prediction of the century. But then out of the blue he would suddenly post something way over the line, so clearly breaking the rules that it was almost as if he wanted to get banned and go out in a blaze of glory. Of course the posts would be removed, on occasions he was banned, but those who had missed the offending posts would wonder why their hero had been banned, and if it was just for revealing his juicy 'information'.

He certainly knew how to make an impact but the fact that Pogi is now being asked about him is crazy, haha.

 

[gunara]

I never knew @mou as a bully and my issue with his posts were the lack of coherence and incomplete sentences 😵‍💫

Same. I was only back to frequent the forum near the end of Mou's era though, so maybe I missed the nastiness, but I could see the messy writing style.

 

[Taxus4a]

I quite surprised than even Pogacar himselft was asked of Mou and he was heard about him and what he said.

I think the same than Poggi. He can be right is some aspect, but not totally.

 

[Salvarani]

I quite surprised than even Pogacar himselft was asked of Mou and he was heard about him and what he said.

I think the same than Poggi. He can be right is some aspect, but not totally.

If I remember correctly. Mou said he was exaggerating and sprinkling in some stuff that was false to cast doubt... while also giving great insight and details to a lot of things.

Pog even admitted some things was correct and some things was not, which checks out with the above.

In hindsight, of course he got frustrated being called a liar and other stuff. Especially frustrating for him, when he was telling the truth and still getting provoked/ridiculed by some posters. He got the last laugh though and the naysayers are in disarray.

 

[pastronef]

This is probably the biggest news story to ever come out of this forum, bigger than that time when The Clinic got some juicy doping talk from Vaughters and CN kinda stole our work and turned it into a meh piece

but Mou will never crash the forum's servers like the Dawg did (was it after La Pierre St Martin or Ventoux? I don't remember)

 

[Taxus4a]

Sorry for my bad english and my ignorance, But what means exactly when you say GOAT?

 

[pastronef]

Sorry for my bad english and my ignorance, But what means exactly when you say GOAT?

G-reatest
O-f
A-ll
T-imes

 

[Alien Performance]

Funny thing is, while he had a very small group of people actually believing him in the start, the rest was basically mocking him Then Strade Bianche happened, and a few more people started to believe and less people mocked him after we were told hed ride in rings around the competition. Then MSR where he was extremely critical of the team and the ONE race he didn't expect him to blow everyone out of the water, and thats exactly what happened. Then all the juicy insights about team dynamics, Matxin, Sola, and the bald fraud San Millán. Then Catalunya with the improved climbing performance and people actually started to believe this guy was onto something. Then he got banned, but some of us still remember what was said about the the Giro which didn't disappoint, and now the climax after Beille

It was a ride, and its kinda cool honestly to have followed this 'live' while it became such a huge story just a couple of months later.

I've made a fair bit of money this year thanks to Mou

 

[Alien Performance]

WTH is a phropet?

A prophet to someone who should go to bed rather than start new threads at at midnight

 

[Gigs_98]

I think there are two sides to this story. As I've written in the Pogacar thread already, I think this is all extremely funny and hearing well known cycling journalists as well as Pogacar himself talking about him is very entertaining.

But the other side to this, the side that I don't understand at all, is why on earth people are making such a fuss about him. I already didn't understand what some people saw in him this spring, but it's almost unbelievable people find his posts months later and think they've found the messiah. Mou didn't make any revelations that were remotely shocking. All he did all season was picking the outstanding favorite in every race Pogacar entered, which just happened to be Pogacar every time. Everyone expected Pogacar to dominate SB, everyone expected Pogacar to dominate LBL, everyone expected Pogacar to dominate Catalunya and everyone expected Pogacar to dominate the Giro. The Tour could have become the point to validate or debunk some of his claims, but after Vingegaard crashed in Pais Vasco everyone expected Pogacar to dominate there as well. I'm definitely among the people who were more sceptical about how the Giro might affect Pogacars Tour shape and even I'm on record writing that he's clearly the favorite to win.

"Oh, but Mou correctly predicted that MSR would be the only race where his dominance would not be as severe."

Yeah no sh*t, the least mountainous race is where the best climber can make the smallest difference. I can't believe anyone would take this as wisdom. It's a take so cold I'd be genuinely shocked if a single regular poster on this forum would not have made it. I don't know too much about the numbers he wrote about but to my knowledge most of it was training numbers (which we can't varify) and his predictions for races have usually been reasonably correct, but once again the most basic prediction for how Pogacar would perform have been correct every single time this year. I guess he wrote stuff like "you've never seen anything like what he'll do this July" but the watts have increased drastically throughout the peloton over the last few years, so the best climbers breaking climbing records was another super easy prediction any exuberant Pogacar fan would make.

So really the only interesting thing Mou wrote about was the insider knowledge from within the team. Now there has been some discussion about whether he has insider knowledge at all. This is currently the top post on r/peloton:

https://www.reddit.com/r/peloton/comments/1e5ncb9/debunking_mou

View: https://www.reddit.com/r/peloton/comments/1e5ncb9/debunking_mou/
.
I'll say though, I don't think the guy is debunking anything other than explaining that in theory there are other ways to obtain Mou's knowledge than being an insider, while being an insider is still by far the easiest way to do so. Whether he does actually know someone close to Pogacar, I have no idea and I'm honestly not particularly interested.

What I can say is that his insight has at times been quite interesting. I think the stuff he wrote about Pogacar's relationship to Ayuso and Matxin seems very plausible and is partly validated by what we are seeing during the races. Similarly the stuff he wrote about his coaches, falling outs and changed training regime is kinda interesting. What you'll note though is that none of this actually interesting stuff contains any predictions about this season. I guess Mou writes that going from San Milan to Sola is an upgrade leading to more success but it's not like Pogacar did anything this year that seems impossible under his previous training regime. He has only really improved at the Tour and there are a bunch of reasons for that, which are completely unrelated to his coaching. The fact that Pogacars inner circle thinks the coaching is an improvement is also a complete none-story because obviously he does. If he didn't he wouldn't have changed coach in the first place.

So to sum it all up, what on earth is all this fuss about? Yes, Mou has made some interesting comments in which he either shared insider knowledge or made pretty good analysis of various sources. But those are not the posts anyone is talking about. Instead everyone talks about him as some kind of mystical cycling prophet because he made some completely obvious predictions. Add to that, that even without knowing the apparently very offensive things he wrote to get banned, it's obvious Mou was an absolute ***, and I'm genuinely shocked there are that many people paying that much attention. But I guess that brings me back to the first side of this story. It's all very, very funny.

 

[topcat]

Pogacar responds to UAE mole "mou": He gets some things right | Cycling Today

Tadej Pogacar once again was in control of his rivals in stage 17 of the Tour de France, but one of the subjects that drew a lot of attention on social media in the past days was the alleged UAE team mole called "mou".

cycling.today

Pog debunks mou. Probably the only time Pog was asked the difficult questions.

 

[Salvarani]

It is one thing to predict dominance of the races he would enter... but he also provided numbers from tests, locations and whatnot. Things that have checked out. Not just "obvious predictions". He wasnt just saying stuff out of the blue and he motivated why some thing may have been false. It is by design if anything, like he also said. Everything being 100% would mean trouble. That some people still dont believe it for many reasons and trying to poke holes... it is to his advantage if you havent realized.

Selectively forgetting that and just saying "he just said he switched coaches, how he would improve, gossip from the team" is a pretty lazy thing to say.

 

[topcat]

I think there are two sides to this story. As I've written in the Pogacar thread already, I think this is all extremely funny and hearing well known cycling journalists as well as Pogacar himself talking about him is very entertaining.

But the other side to this, the side that I don't understand at all, is why on earth people are making such a fuss about him. I already didn't understand what some people saw in him this spring, but it's almost unbelievable people find his posts months later and think they've found the messiah. Mou didn't make any revelations that were remotely shocking. All he did all season was picking the outstanding favorite in every race Pogacar entered, which just happened to be Pogacar every time. Everyone expected Pogacar to dominate SB, everyone expected Pogacar to dominate LBL, everyone expected Pogacar to dominate Catalunya and everyone expected Pogacar to dominate the Giro. The Tour could have become the point to validate or debunk some of his claims, but after Vingegaard crashed in Pais Vasco everyone expected Pogacar to dominate there as well. I'm definitely among the people who were more sceptical about how the Giro might affect Pogacars Tour shape and even I'm on record writing that he's clearly the favorite to win.

"Oh, but Mou correctly predicted that MSR would be the only race where his dominance would not be as severe."

Yeah no sh*t, the least mountainous race is where the best climber can make the smallest difference. I can't believe anyone would take this as wisdom. It's a take so cold I'd be genuinely shocked if a single regular poster on this forum would not have made it. I don't know too much about the numbers he wrote about but to my knowledge most of it was training numbers (which we can't varify) and his predictions for races have usually been reasonably correct, but once again the most basic prediction for how Pogacar would perform have been correct every single time this year. I guess he wrote stuff like "you've never seen anything like what he'll do this July" but the watts have increased drastically throughout the peloton over the last few years, so the best climbers breaking climbing records was another super easy prediction any exuberant Pogacar fan would make.

So really the only interesting thing Mou wrote about was the insider knowledge from within the team. Now there has been some discussion about whether he has insider knowledge at all. This is currently the top post on r/peloton:

https://www.reddit.com/r/peloton/comments/1e5ncb9/debunking_mou

View: https://www.reddit.com/r/peloton/comments/1e5ncb9/debunking_mou/
.
I'll say though, I don't think the guy is debunking anything other than explaining that in theory there are other ways to obtain Mou's knowledge than being an insider, while being an insider is still by far the easiest way to do so. Whether he does actually know someone close to Pogacar, I have no idea and I'm honestly not particularly interested.

What I can say is that his insight has at times been quite interesting. I think the stuff he wrote about Pogacar's relationship to Ayuso and Matxin seems very plausible is partly validated by what we are seeing during the races. Similarly the stuff he wrote about his coaches, falling outs and changed training regime is kinda interesting. What you'll note though is that none of this actually interesting stuff contains any predictions about this season. I guess Mou writes that going from San Milan to Sola is an upgrade leading to more success but it's not like Pogacar did anything this year that seems impossible under his previous training regime. He has only really improved at the Tour and there are a bunch of reasons for that, which are completely unrelated to his coaching. The fact that Pogacars inner cycle thinks the coaching is an improvement is also a complete none-story because obviously he does. If he didn't he wouldn't have changed coach in the first place.

So to sum it all up, what on earth is all this fuss about? Yes, Mou has made some interesting comments in which he either shared insider knowledge or made pretty good analysis of various sources. But those are not the posts anyone is talking about. Instead everyone talks about him as some kind of mystical cycling prophet because he made some completely obvious predictions. Add to that, that even without knowing the apparently very offensive things he wrote to get banned, it's obvious Mou was an absolute ***, and I'm genuinely shocked there are that many people paying that much attention. But I guess that brings me back to the first side of this story. It's all very, very funny. this for

Agreed. This forum is the only social media platform that I frequent. I thought that, apart from a couple of head bangers, most people praising mou were joking. It now appears it was and is worse than I thought.
While he was here, mou was most obsessive user.
It's hilarious that mou made the news and pog was asked about him.

 

[Rechtschreibfehler]

I disagree with the renaming of the thread, a Phropet could have been the forums own thing.

 

[Tim Cahill]

Agreed. This forum is the only social media platform that I frequent. I thought that, apart from a couple of head bangers, most people praising mou were joking. It now appears it was and is worse than I thought.
While he was here, mou was most obsessive user.
It's hilarious that mou made the news and pog was asked about him.

The whole manner of engagement, just the way of speaking around for some reason really reminds me of the Gamestop affair, and the various cryptocurrency rugpulls that followed. It's always funny for a little bit, many are just playing along for a laugh, but you realise some have actually bought into the grift, mostly [[content deleted]] found a sense of commonality to rally around. It tanks, the actual sharks make off with the loot and many are left holding the bag, but people still keep the faith.

I'd say Kingjr's post is probably somewhere close to accurate;

It's quite comical, really. If I had to speculate, I'd say he is a hardcore fan with a personality disorder, who is also a friend of a friend of someone close to or inside the team, and with that information went on his own little crusade to change the narrative about Pogacar being inferior to Vingegaard in Grand Tours. Which, as it turns out, was justified, sort of, though I still want to see what Vingegaard can do in the Tour 2025 without a severe injury disrupting his prep.

 

[Cassirer]

While I share @Gigs_98 bafflement, didn't mou emphasize pog was heavily training behind a scooter? Given what we are learning about carbon monoxide...
(which I believe is gray scale and not yet deep clinic - if so, sorry)

 

[RedheadDane]

While I share @Gigs_98 bafflement, didn't mou emphasize pog was heavily training behind a scooter? Given what we are learning about carbon monoxide...
(which I believe is gray scale and not yet deep clinic - if so, sorry)

He - Pogachar, now mou... - already explained what the whole "breathing carbon monoxide" thing is really about.

 

[Unterlenkerfahrend]

It is one thing to predict dominance of the races he would enter... but he also provided numbers from tests, locations and whatnot. Things that have checked out. Not just "obvious predictions". He wasnt just saying stuff out of the blue and he motivated why some thing may have been false. It is by design if anything, like he also said. Everything being 100% would mean trouble. That some people still dont believe it for many reasons and trying to poke holes... it is to his advantage if you havent realized.

Selectively forgetting that and just saying "he just said he switched coaches, how he would improve, gossip from the team" is a pretty lazy thing to say.

There's also things that haven't checked out, like the reddit thread above just pointed out.
I thought his overall claims (change in training, Millan being a fraud, a few (not all) numbers) were fine and I had no issues with him posting these. Problem were poster like yourself who were hyping up this obvious grifter that the attention got to his head and he was just waffling all sort of stuff. And flooding the race threads with "look at me, I was so right" posts when Pogacar simply performed as expected in the likes of Catalunya was simply a cult that most rightfully didn't get behind, hence the backlash.

All good and fun at the beginning but it very quickly felt like a forced performance.

 

[Dekker_Tifosi]

Mou is the first shitposter on cyclingnews forum to actually get this much press attention. It's hilarious

Imagine if the shitposters of old here got much attention. Remember Ryo Hazuki and the colombian propaganda. Man would that make for a few nice clickbaity articles.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

There's also things that haven't checked out, like the reddit thread above just pointed out.
I thought his overall claims (change in training, Millan being a fraud, a few (not all) numbers) were fine and I had no issues with him posting these. Problem were poster like yourself who were hyping up this obvious grifter that the attention got to his head and he was just waffling all sort of stuff. And flooding the race threads with "look at me, I was so right" posts when Pogacar simply performed as expected in the likes of Catalunya was simply a cult that most rightfully didn't get behind, hence the backlash.

All good and fun at the beginning but it very quickly felt like a forced performance.

Hey, Benji made a career out of being a worthless grifter who offered zero insight and just surfed waves of popular opinion about big name riders and persuading people on social media that he was some kind of prophet, why can't Mou do the same, after all while the extent of their insight may have been questioned, any insight at all is more than Benji had access to at first and he found his way in, right?

A lot of these kinds of stories is about the old inner sanctum of the media club and co. losing their minds over the chance there's part of the narrative they can't control and falling over themselves to get to it.

 

[gunara]

Mou is the first shitposter on cyclingnews forum to actually get this much press attention. It's hilarious

Imagine if the shitposters of old here got much attention. Remember Ryo Hazuki and the colombian propaganda. Man would that make for a few nice clickbaity articles.

Mou's rude remarks are love poems compared to Ryo's