Teams & Riders The Remco Evenepoel is the next Eddy Merckx thread

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18-Valve. (pithy)

May 4, 2011
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Right, but Bjerg is still quite young and he already smashed the U23 ITT field last year in his first ever U23 WC.

Evenepoel and him are less than 15 months apart.

Yeah, the gearing. Not sure if that amounts to > 1 sec/km, though. Can't say his time was out of this world compared to the u23 men, and the women. Extraordinary for his age, certainly, but we knew that already.

Yeah, next year will be interesting. (The Bjerg - McNulty ITT comparison is also an interesting one. Mcnulty seems to be going backwards, relatively speaking. Just talking TTing, obviously. McNulty beat Bjerg handily in the (flat) junior Doha ITT two years back.





Logic-is-your-friend said:
18-Valve. (pithy) said:
Same time as the U23 4th place Edoardo Affini. 44 seconds slower than Bjerg, according to Procyclingstats.com.
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There were a lot of sections where having a bigger gear would gain him a lot of time. In the flat sections and especially downhill, you could see he wanted to keep pushing, but the gear was just too small. I don't think he would have been too far off Bjergs time. But I guess we'll know next year perhaps.

PS: Evenepoel: "I didn't go full gas the first 10k, but i heard i had already had the best time with 20 or 30 seconds"
Click to expand...

I saw the interview and although my Dutch isn't that great, I think I got the gist of it. Not going full gas at first makes perfect sense ... I'm guessing most of the competition had the same strategy. Obviously he went for the best possible time, as that's the only fun he'll have with zero competition. He pretty much said that he only raced against himself.

I don't expect too much from Vacek in the road race, either (Clinic issues excepted). IIRC it's a longer course than what they're used to, which should suit Evenepoel better, I think.
 
DNP-Old

DNP-Old

Aug 6, 2014
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Re:

18-Valve. (pithy) said:
I don't expect too much from Vacek in the road race, either (Clinic issues excepted). IIRC it's a longer course than what they're used to, which should suit Evenepoel better, I think.
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The race is 126k, which is nothing outrageous. The juniors have done longer races and Vacek has won some of those.

That said, if Remco has a good day and gets the slightest of gaps, the race is over before it's even started. Might sound arrogant or obnoxious, but that's how the story has been the entire season. However, if he isn't able to get said gap or drop some of rivals and we're going into the last climb of Igls with a group, then Vacek is going to be a problem. He has shown that he can out-climb Remco. The gaps were never big, but a gaps a gap.

Of course, then Vacek would still have to finish it off in the descent and a bit on the flat, which should be in Remco's favour. However, earlier in the season Vacek won a race in Loano with a similar finale and he pretty much destroyed the peloton, which included most of the Italians who are going to be here, and that team is stacked.
 
Logic-is-your-friend

Logic-is-your-friend

Jun 7, 2011
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Re: Re:

DNP-Old said:
file.php
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Who's the strapping young man next to Remco?
 
May0maniac

May0maniac

Jun 30, 2014
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I guess there's only one question when it comes to the RR: will he attack on the first or only on the 2nd climb of the day?
The smart thing is probably to create a small group on the climb and attack on the descent or the flat sections between the climbs, Vacek is a pure climber, not the greatest descender and not the strongest rouleur and with Remco's engine it will be really hard to catch him once he gets a gap.
 
Flamin

Flamin

Jan 4, 2011
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Obviously the road race will be the biggest challenge in Evenepoel's career. All eyes are on him more than ever, the pressure to top off an exceptional season is inevitable. So far he looks perfectly fine with handling the spotlights, so I think this won't hamper him, but still, winning when you are the overwhelming favourite is the hardest thing in cycling (among other sports).
 
Lexman

Lexman

Jul 2, 2011
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interview with him and Patrick Lefevere in todays de Standaard, the most important items :
- he still doesn't live 100% for cycling still eats what he wants like french fries, chocolate etc;
- he'll start with a smaller inner ring thursday to do the first climb on souplesse
- he kicks on ITT, he prefers the ITT to the road race and will continue to work on ITT
- next year not much racing no PR, no Tirreno, much training on altitude and some smaller races like Argentina, Colombia, Algarve, Mallorca, perhaps Romandië
 
Lexman

Lexman

Jul 2, 2011
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interview with the CEO of the youth of Anderlecht where he played football before his switch
https://sporza.be/nl/2018/09/26/kindermans-over-evenepoel/

he always had an enormous drive, a very very good endurance and physical condition, he ended in a semi marathon ahead of his adult coach

he coud have become a good triatlethe if his swimming was good but no one knows

he would have never made it in the first team of Anderlecht, as a football player he lacked something nevertheless, he couldn't provide something which his team atttended for a player of his age so he left...

he describes him as a gentle boy always worried about his teammates and always there to drive the team

he has an enormous drive to go on and forward and to push himself ahead
 
Logic-is-your-friend

Logic-is-your-friend

Jun 7, 2011
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Re:

Lexman said:
interview with him and Patrick Lefevere in todays de Standaard, the most important items :
- he still doesn't live 100% for cycling still eats what he wants like french fries, chocolate etc;
- he'll start with a smaller inner ring thursday to do the first climb on souplesse
- he kicks on ITT, he prefers the ITT to the road race and will continue to work on ITT
- next year not much racing no PR, no Tirreno, much training on altitude and some smaller races like Argentina, Colombia, Algarve, Mallorca, perhaps Romandië
Click to expand...
During the Sporza broadcast of the world championship ITT, they said he would be racing far away from Belgium and Europe next year. Basically, what he would have been doing for Axeon, or at least that's what i understood from what they said. I think that's the smart move. Let him ride some races the Belgian press hardly knows about, keep him out of the spotlights. We'll just have to rely on DNP-Old to figure out what he's doing :lol:
 
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del1962

Oct 16, 2012
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Evenepoel has certain advantages that I don't think other juniors have

His birth date puts him in the subset of the oldest junior and his background at a pro football club gives him years of endurance training that other juniors don't have.

Some people just physically develop much earlier than their piers, he may never win a World Tour race or even a pro race, time will tell
 
Logic-is-your-friend

Logic-is-your-friend

Jun 7, 2011
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Re:

del1962 said:
Evenepoel has certain advantages that I don't think other juniors have

His birth date puts him in the subset of the oldest junior and his background at a pro football club gives him years of endurance training that other juniors don't have.

Some people just physically develop much earlier than their piers, he may never win a World Tour race or even a pro race, time will tell
Click to expand...
Anything is possible but the fact that he has shown consistently, that he would be one of a select group of contenders among the U23 regarding ITT, i think it's safe to say that it's not just a matter of "he's from januari". At the Belgian nationals, he was faster than the fastest U23. At the Euros he would have taken silver, and at the worlds, he would just miss out on the podium among the U23. All while not being able to compete on unrestricted gears.

Sure, as a footballer he's had endurance training, but i can tell you the average condition of the average pro footballer is laughable compared to a pro cyclist. These guys run on average 11km during 90 minutes, of which only few hundreds of meters of sprinting. As it turns out though, Evenepoel also was far above average in that regard compared to his teammates. So, it's also not just about "he was in good shape from his football days". Also, it's true some develop earlier than others, but again, i doubt he would be ahead of U23 guys who are up to 5 years older if it came down to his physique, his age or his football background. So, any way you slice it, it's just not that easy to peg down.

Also, coming from football may have some advantages, but these guys use completely different sets of muscles and are usually not at all as skinny as cyclist. They have to have a bit of "body" to engage in physical duels. So you need to take that into account as well. He still has to lose muscles that he will not use as a cyclist (and muscle is heavier than fat), all his upper body muscles can be trimmed as you can see that he is a lot bulkier and top-heavy compared to other cyclists his age. These muscles are useless to him now and he can make progression in that regard (weight from both fat and muscles) still.
 
H

hayneplane

Sep 4, 2017
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Interesting that the intention is to mostly give him a race program that he could have ridden in a pro-conti team anyway but likely without the pressure of any leadership duties or many races that are televised in Europe in a bid to put a handbrake on the hype.

Effectively year one is being treated as an apprenticeship year of learning how to train and live like a professional and to ride in a peloton plus altitude training to test his potential away from the glare of publicity.

What I found most amazing about the time trial performance was that he looked incredibly fresh afterwards as if all he had done was ride half a mile to the local shop and back.
 
Logic-is-your-friend

Logic-is-your-friend

Jun 7, 2011
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Interesting article for those fluent in Google Translate (it's in Spanish, and the google translation is really difficult to read):
https://www.elconfidencial.com/deportes/ciclismo/2018-09-26/remco-evenepoel-ciclista-futbolista-belgica-quien-es_1621393/

I found the part about how his disappointment in footbal, might have a positive effect on him, that it will help him cope with setbacks better and keep his own expectations in check. At least that's what i understood from the botched translation.
 
Lexman

Lexman

Jul 2, 2011
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an interview with his father :
https://www.nieuwsblad.be/cnt/dmf20180927_03788427

His father says that when he was still palying footbaal he took his fathers bike on a saturday morning and when he got bike had had ridden 120 km with a medium speed of 34 km and that was the moment he said he wanted to start to race...

His father told him about hiw own career in which he refused to take doping.

Tells about a big crash of the bunch last year in Ster Zuid Limburg where was catapulted against the front of a house when they were riding 60km an hour, he was unconscous for a few minutes, woke up jumped on his bike and ended the stage, the next stage he won with 4 minutes in advance...

The most interesting thing his father says seems to be this : the junior world title is nice but nothing more, serves as a basis for later on but no guarantees. He and his wife (but not Remco) spoke with Patrick Lefevere three times just about how PL saw Remco's career, never about money....

As parents they will try to provide a stable basis for their son to develop not to get the "big head" already but they say he's very strong mentally....
 
lartiste

lartiste

Jul 29, 2016
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Remco at the moment down at the peloton, 19s behind Vacek and further 56 behind first two riders.
 
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