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

[Red Rick]

Which would explain why he went so hard and emptied himself with still two laps to go: to prove a point.

Quite poor managing from the Belgian team car.

Seems like it to me.

Should just have an offiicial national inquiry into the disaster that was this WCRR tbh.

I don't blame Evenepoel for not rejecting selection, but given the unclear instructions I don't think he did nearly the best he could do to maximize Belgiums chances.

 

[Rackham]

The most striking thing for me is that national coach Vanthourenhout liked the tweet from Hans Vandeweghe (saying that Merckx was right all along) as well. I think that's highly unprofessional and inappropriate.

It gets even better, i.e. the man Wout van Aert himself also liked that Tweet about Merckx being "right".

Social media was a mistake.

 

[BlueRoads]

First of all the most striking thing for me is that in Belgium there are talkshows where the cycling national team's tactics get discussed.
Second - the tactics weren't great, but in the end when Bardet would probably have been the better option compared to Alaphilippe I didn't hear him or his team complaining afterwards? I mean, in the end, these things happen. All in all the Belgian coach doesn't seem to be the best, it feels like they kind of messed up several times now. So if you want to learn something from it maybe you should think about a new coach.

 

[Red Rick]

First of all the most striking thing for me is that in Belgium there are talkshows where the cycling national team's tactics get discussed.
Second - the tactics weren't great, but in the end when Bardet would probably have been the better option compared to Alaphilippe I didn't hear him or his team complaining afterwards? I mean, in the end, these things happen. All in all the Belgian coach doesn't seem to be the best, it feels like they kind of messed up several times now. So if you want to learn something from it maybe you should think about a new coach.

Bardet wasn't the victim of 2018 France tactics, Pinot was.

Anyway, the little social media passive aggressive war is pathetic. Honestly Vantourenhout shoudl get fired for this.

 

[Blanco]

So I guess we won't hear nice words and praise between Wout and Remco anytime soon..

 

[johnymax]

Forget about the WCRR, who cares about likes on twitter. You can't change what's been done. Remco has to look ahead now towards Emilia and Lombardia. Like Roglič always says, the beauty of road cycling is that even if you miss your goal, luckily there are new challenges to keep you busy right around the corner. Onto the next races...

 

[Rackham]

Bardet wasn't the victim of 2018 France tactics, Pinot was.

Anyway, the little social media passive aggressive war is pathetic. Honestly Vantourenhout shoudl get fired for this.

At this rate of degeneration into a "war of words & likes", it'll become untenable to have both Remco Evenepoel & WvA in the same team. And that right there would be a massive own goal. If Eddie Merckx for example wanted to really help, he should come out & say "yada yada yada, Remco Evenpoel & WvA are two outstanding Belgian talents & we're lucky to have them, either one would make a great world champion".

But honestly there's another layer of "aggro" hidden beneath which can affect the Evenepoel/WvA dynamic, i.e. there was already a skirmish a while back between Evenepoel & Richard Plugge (Jumbo team manager) over Groenewegen (I think Evenepoel said something about how Groenewegen should be banned for life).

Clearly people talk behind the scenes & factions/loyalties exist which can "complicate" the national team situation.

 

[Rackham]

Forget about the WCRR, who cares about likes on twitter. You can't change what's been done. Remco has to look ahead now towards Emilia and Lombardia. Like Roglič always says, the beauty of road cycling is that even if you miss your goal, luckily there are new challenges to keep you busy right around the corner. Onto the next races...

Roglic is the Dalai Lama of professional road cycling, i.e. he's a zen master who reigns supreme over the angriest riders in the peloton.

 

[Ripper]

Has Vantourenhout ever showed himself to be a brilliant road racing strategist/coach? I believe the answer to that is a resounding no. I think after a pretty shyte home performance, Vantourenhout needs to stick to cross.

 

[Red Rick]

Has Vantourenhout ever showed himself to be a brilliant road racing strategist/coach? I believe the answer to that is a resounding no. I think after a pretty shyte home performance, Vantourenhout needs to stick to cross.

It's insane he got the job in the first place.

 

[Jagartrott]

Second - the tactics weren't great, but in the end when Bardet would probably have been the better option compared to Alaphilippe I didn't hear him or his team complaining afterwards? I mean, in the end, these things happen. All in all the Belgian coach doesn't seem to be the best, it feels like they kind of messed up several times now. So if you want to learn something from it maybe you should think about a new coach.

Coach has proven he isn't the best tactically, but he also is a relative "nobody" in cycling (B-category cross rider). Difficult to have authority over world-class talents then.

 

[Berflamand]

Comments by WvA regarding Evenepoel's statements:

"It disturbed me yes. It was oil on the fire. He said more in Extra Time Koers than in the team meeting."

About the remark that he said before the race that he had faith in Remco:

"I couldn't really say anything else. I had no choice but to say that" (translation of: Ik kon moeilijk anders)

 

[Poursuivant]

Apparently WVA said his favourite film is Forrest Gump and Remco just liked a tweet which described Forrest Gump as “overrated.” This is getting really, really messy, what next, insulting each other’s cutlery? Where will this end? Won’t somebody think of the children? Hopefully the sport can come through this, but Festina ‘98 did not have anything of this magnitude. #prayforcycling

 

[Ripper]

It's insane he got the job in the first place.

It is honestly shocking to me that a cycling powerhouse nation like Belgium has this level of incompetent dweeb calling the shots for the road racing selection and tactics at the world championships that happen to be in their home country!

 

[Ripper]

Coach has proven he isn't the best tactically, but he also is a relative "nobody" in cycling (B-category cross rider). Difficult to have authority over world-class talents then.

It is interesting. You don't have to be a good racer yourself to be an excellent tactician and strategist. However, Vantourenhout has not demonstrated even mediocre skills in this regard.

As for the wambulance event occurring between Wout and Remco, if they have advisors, said advisors need to slap them both silly.

 

[Wvv]

About the remark that he said before the race that he had faith in Remco:

"I couldn't really say anything else. I had no choice but to say that" (translation of: Ik kon moeilijk anders)

This disturbs me more than anything Remco said, in all honesty.

 

[18-Valve. (pithy)]

Google translated

Van Aert: "Remco agreed with the tactic, weird to turn 180 degrees now"

A day after Remco Evenepoel's criticism of national coach Sven Vanthourenhout in Extra Time Koers, World Cup leader Wout van Aert also responded. While exploring the cobblestones in Roubaix, he gave his reading of the facts.

Van Aert had already liked a few tweets this morning and does not hold back in front of the camera. "Remco's explanation disturbed me," he said. "We went to the World Cup as a team. I would like to congratulate the national coach for how he has done that." "I think he has been very clear to everyone from the start. I expected that there would be criticism because we did not win. Only then would everything have been perfect and otherwise there would always be criticism.

I think it's not wise to add fuel to the fire from someone within the team." "I think Remco told a lot more in Extra Time race than he said in the team meeting." Will Van Aert bounce the ball back? "I don't think there were any problems and it's very easy to talk like that afterwards. I think he was the one who agreed with the tactics, who agreed with the selection.

He has been preaching for weeks on end how he was looking forward to it so I think it's really weird to turn 180 degrees now." Had Van Aert already felt something because of Evenepoel in the run-up to the World Cup? Couldn't he say that to the press? "Yes, I could hardly do otherwise," he said meaningfully.


via Sporza.be

 

[Sciatic]

First of all the most striking thing for me is that in Belgium there are talkshows where the cycling national team's tactics get discussed.
Second - the tactics weren't great, but in the end when Bardet would probably have been the better option compared to Alaphilippe I didn't hear him or his team complaining afterwards? I mean, in the end, these things happen. All in all the Belgian coach doesn't seem to be the best, it feels like they kind of messed up several times now. So if you want to learn something from it maybe you should think about a new coach.

Ha, I love your first point—that seems so surreal (from the U.S. perspective) that cycling strategy debates would be on talk shows!

 

[Samamba]

This disturbs me more than anything Remco said, in all honesty.

Why?

Remco said the same thing over and over again before Worlds, being that he was 100% committed to helping Van Aert become the new World Champion, that he was their to be a dom and not a leader, and so on. Even in the teammeeting he doesn't say anything.

Then out of the blue he asks the Belgian DS if he can get his own chance just before the race starts? And then a few days later he starts criticizing his teams tactics?

I would be annoyed too if I was Van Aert. It's just incredibly fake from Remco, he said those things before Worlds because he knew he would get shitted on by the press and Belgian fans otherwise and now that he sees the Belgian press in its hypocritical nature (everyone and their mother was fine with Van Aert being the sole leader before the race), he saw his chance to hop on that train.

Look, I don't like Vanthourenhout, it's *** stupid that he got the job in the first place, literally had no experience with road cycling, and I do think afterwards that the teams tactics were pretty dumb overall, but it's bloody time another rider like Van Aert says what he thinks about the kid.

Also let's stop acting like completely emptying himself was because he got the orders to do so. Vanthourenhout already said immediately after the race that he did that on his own (probably to prove a point) and that there was no way of communicating to him on time to stop doing it.

 

[Mayomaniac]

I don't agree with Belgium's tactics, mainly chasing down Remco was a mistake. Let him pull in the front group and work with the others. If he can't drop them on the final circuit he should stop working and try to attack them.

Remco is also kinda wrong (if he actually said those things), by now he should know that he couldn't win a sprint against even Pozzovivo, so he has to understand why having him as the main option/as the co-leader with the same rank as Wout is not gonna be an easy choice for a team coach. I also don't know if I'd put my money on him dropping everyone and winning the whole thing, he could have gotten a medal. Still, his team chasing behind and him not getting permission to attack when his group with many big nations had +50sec on the main bunch towards the end of the final lap of the Flandrian circuit was stupid, I can understand why he's not super happy about that one. I also get the feeling that he's surrounded by yes men who blow smoke up his arse.

Wout also kinda comes off pretty bad when he talks about wanting to go for stages and the green jersey at the Tour while trying to win the whole thing with Roglic, it sounds really selfish.

Overall going on a talk show and discussing the team tactics after

 

[Jagartrott]

Remco is also kinda wrong (if he actually said those things), by now he should know that he couldn't win a sprint against even Pozzovivo, so he has to understand why having him as the main option/as the co-leader with the same rank as Wout is not gonna be an easy choice for a team coach. I also don't know if I'd put my money on him dropping everyone and winning the whole thing, he could have gotten a medal. Still, his team chasing behind and him not getting permission to attack when his group with many big nations had +50sec on the main bunch towards the end of the final lap of the Flandrian circuit was stupid, I can understand why he's not super happy about that one. I also get the feeling that he's surrounded by yes men who blow smoke up his arse.

He didn't ask to be co-leader, he asked if he could get a free-er role, that, if there would be a situation where he was ahead with a small group, he could attack from that. But apparently, all he was allowed to do was follow and pull, and not attack himself. That's seriously weak from the coach, tactically. A team is much more dangerous if there are many riders that could win - as DQS demonstrates so often.

In the talk show, the other three (Dirk De Wolf, Adrie Van der Poel and Iljo Keisse) all agreed that Evenepoel was not used optimally.

 

[Berflamand]

Why?

Remco said the same thing over and over again before Worlds, being that he was 100% committed to helping Van Aert become the new World Champion, that he was their to be a dom and not a leader, and so on. Even in the teammeeting he doesn't say anything.

Then out of the blue he asks the Belgian DS if he can get his own chance just before the race starts? And then a few days later he starts criticizing his teams tactics?

I would be annoyed too if I was Van Aert. It's just incredibly fake from Remco, he said those things before Worlds because he knew he would get shitted on by the press and Belgian fans otherwise and now that he sees the Belgian press in its hypocritical nature (everyone and their mother was fine with Van Aert being the sole leader before the race), he saw his chance to hop on that train.

Look, I don't like Vanthourenhout, it's *** stupid that he got the job in the first place, literally had no experience with road cycling, and I do think afterwards that the teams tactics were pretty dumb overall, but it's bloody time another rider like Van Aert says what he thinks about the kid.

Also let's stop acting like completely emptying himself was because he got the orders to do so. Vanthourenhout already said immediately after the race that he did that on his own (probably to prove a point) and that there was no way of communicating to him on time to stop doing it.

Did you watch Extra Time Koers? I did not watch the whole talk show but in the fragment I've seen it was De Wolf and Van der Poel who were criticizing the team tactics, not Remco. He just gave some honest answers to the questions they asked him.

Can you blame him when he feels that after the recon there are chances for him on this parcours, that he then asks the national coach if there is a scenario in which he would get a chance? When he was told no he accepted the strategy and rode as instructed. I don't see where he did wrong.

Him completely emptying himself after WvA and the rest of the favorites catched him was under instruction from WvA himself (at least I haven't seen WvA denying this).

 

[Red Rick]

Did you watch Extra Time Koers? I did not watch the whole talk show but in the fragment I've seen it was De Wolf and Van der Poel who were criticizing the team tactics, not Remco. He just gave some honest answers to the questions they asked him.

Can you blame him when he feels that after the recon there are chances for him on this parcours, that he then asks the national coach if there is a scenario in which he would get a chance? When he was told no he accepted the strategy and rode as instructed. I don't see where he did wrong.

Him completely emptying himself after WvA and the rest of the favorites catched him was under instruction from WvA himself (at least I haven't seen WvA denying this).

He accepted the strategy then they didn't win and now he's whining.

 

[Berflamand]

He accepted the strategy then they didn't win and now he's whining.

Except he didn't whine. He listened to the others (mainly De Wolf and Van der Poel) whining.

Granted he also didn't defend the strategy but the others (who should be 30 years older and wiser) were quite adamant.

 

[topcat]

I'm usually not a fan of whining. But Remco is right to moan his ass off. The coach should be sacked. Remco could have got a medal. Wout couldn't. The end.