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

[Red Rick]

Was he not in trouble already 1-2 times before he got dropped?

Any news about his programme for next year? Would be interesting to see now what he can do in Paris-Nice, Catalunya or Romandie.

Not really in trouble but also never at the front of the race.

DQS will have to figure out why he couldn't roll with first group here. I'm not sure I'd buy he has endurance issues, so I find it likelier he's just tired after being in good form for a month or two now or that the climbing was too much for Evenepoel in his current state.

The weird part would be to see how much better Evenepoel seems to do at repeated 5 minute climbing efforts than repeated 20 minute climbing efforts.

But he's far from the only one to disappoint yesterday.

 

[18-Valve. (pithy)]

He has to be on a great day to climb well. I guess like Vingegaard, who only nearly managed to hold on the front group and finished 50s ahead of him. Or Vlasov who finished minutes down. Or Simon Yates. Or Champoussin, Almeida, Mollema, Pozzovivo... I think it's a bit strange to come to such conclusions at the end of the season with a bumpy start to say the least, while he's been back to form since Danmark Rundt, now two months ago. I wouldn't jump to conclusions. The entire season wasn't what he will have hoped, that's for sure, but it's not like he was able to ride it with an ideal preperation and base.

My point was that his legs couldn't have been that bad. He would have finished a lot further down otherwise. But instead finished strongly or very strongly after the last major climb. (I can't imagine he made up much time on the descent(s) ...

I don't buy the hunger knock excuse. I don't think you recover from that in " five minutes".

Of course, Remco's schedule was a major issue. Mostly flat or flattish races post Giro

He just seems to be unable to go with a sudden upping of the pace. Give him time, he comes back. But he just seems to often lose the wheel when they suddenly go a lot faster. While he's able to push quite suddenly on the flat, not sprint, but make a kind of sudden strong affort, but maybe it's because his aeroness helps him more then than when he's on a steep climbing?

Yep, same as in Emilia. I thought Lombardy would suit him better, but I probably underrated the new course.

 

[Netserk]

I too would favour an explanation of (local) seasonal fatigue and lack of base. Though lack of climbing specific training may factor in too. I don't buy that he lacks the ability to put the power down on climbs like yesterday (in the future).

Going forward, the main take away from this year is confirmation about his main strengths (hills and rolling terrain, ITT) and that he has put his crash behind him. Next year we will see just how well his power translates to proper mountains. I don't think he should do the Giro nor the Tour. Paris-Nice, Catalunya, the Ardennes and Romandie (optional), and then preparing for the Vuelta.

 

[Red Rick]

I too would favour an explanation of (local) seasonal fatigue and lack of base. Though lack of climbing specific training may factor in too. I don't buy that he lacks the ability to put the power down on climbs like yesterday (in the future).

Going forward, the main take away from this year is confirmation about his main strengths (hills and rolling terrain, ITT) and that he has put his crash behind him. Next year we will see just how well his power translates to proper mountains. I don't think he should do the Giro nor the Tour. Paris-Nice, Catalunya, the Ardennes and Romandie (optional), and then preparing for the Vuelta.

There's also a lot of extrapolating flat power numbers going on without knowing his exact weight.

 

[18-Valve. (pithy)]

Shame we have to wait this long to see him in a stage race with actual climbs again.

Do you think they'll have him race Tirreno-Adriatico? Giro looks like a given.

Bernal and Caruso raced UAE Tour + T-A

Simon Yates T-A, Catalunya, Tour of the Alps (pretty heavy schedule, IMO)

 

[Netserk]

Shame we have to wait this long to see him in a stage race with actual climbs again.

Do you think they'll have him race Tirreno-Adriatico? Giro looks like a given.

Bernal and Caruso raced UAE Tour + T-A

Simon Yates T-A, Catalunya, Tour of the Alps (pretty heavy schedule, IMO)

Seems likely, but it'd be a great waste if he didn't ride the Ardennes in his first four professional seasons.

 

[Carrick-On-Seine]

Seriously, the next Merckx has arrived and delivered. It ain't Remco.

I wish we could change the title of this thread. It was written when he was just a junior smashing every race he entered.
The title is a big reason why the thread is so busy as people just come into poke fun and then other people defend him.

 

[18-Valve. (pithy)]

Seems likely, but it'd be a great waste if he didn't ride the Ardennes in his first four professional seasons.

Liege should suit him really well, but looks like it's all for Alaphilippe in that race. Ala already lost one to a teammate and wants it badly IMO. Although his chances have dropped with the new course.

But yes, it shouldn't be an issue to add that race (and FW) to Evenepoel's schedule.

 

[laarsland]

The disputes and continuous back-and-forth he’d been involved in last few months takes it’a toll and that shows in a monument. He’d up his chance if he matured a bit and kept his head down, but Pat L is the wrong mentor for that.

 

[Mayomaniac]

Seems likely, but it'd be a great waste if he didn't ride the Ardennes in his first four professional seasons.

Yeah, they should finally send him to the Ardennes classics, having another card to play would be better for the team.

 

[Logic-is-your-friend]

I can only hope people, and mainly the press lose interest due to the big results not coming, so that next year he isn't automatically seen as a favorite in every race, and gets some more space and rest.

I also think we might be underestimating not only the impact of his lack of base training, but also the effort of the recovery itself. I'm not sure his body ever got any actual rest since january 2020.

Seriously, the next Merckx has arrived and delivered. It ain't Remco.

Is it Masnada?

 

[KZD]

Was he not in trouble already 1-2 times before he got dropped?

Any news about his programme for next year? Would be interesting to see now what he can do in Paris-Nice, Catalunya or Romandie.

None that I have heard off but something like Algarve, Tirreno, Basque Country and Ardennes classics should be a good schedule before the Giro.

 

[Logic-is-your-friend]

Was he not in trouble already 1-2 times before he got dropped?

From what Lefevere said in the press, it was the idea to have him act like he was struggling a bit at the back, because everybody was expecting an attack from him. Then, after Ganda on the flat, he was supposed to attack and have Almeida and Alaphilippe in the wheels of whomever would chase him. But the plan didn't work because both Evenepoel and Almeida were bad, and it was Pogacar who attacked on the climb.

So him "struggling at the back" was supposedly "acting". Considering how strong he finished the race though, i'm inclined to believe it, and i'm also inclined to believe the distance isn't going to be a problem. At the WCC he also did more work than some other teams combined and he dropped off after over 240k iirc. I don't think he's the rider who will struggle at races longer than 200km.

 

[Big Doopie]

From what Lefevere said in the press, it was the idea to have him act like he was struggling a bit at the back, because everybody was expecting an attack from him. Then, after Ganda on the flat, he was supposed to attack and have Almeida and Alaphilippe in the wheels of whomever would chase him.

Actually, a surprisingly good plan.

Before he was dropped, I actually wondered if DQS plan was to get as close to the finish with numbers as that would be the only way to beat Rog (and Pog) who have better sprints. They needed to make it so that Rog could not cover every DQS attack.

Best laid plans…

 

[Nirvana]

IMHO we had another proof that he isn't a climber, at least at the moment, for the future only god knows since nowadays everyone can suddenly become a climber, even if that's not his team field.

For sure he can almost drop riders off his wheel and hang on against a full peloton on the flat, the moment he finds a slight false flat he could just ride away, on flemish hills and similar little climbs he's just unplayable but already when there are 3 kms long climbs like in Emilia he can't ride away and on longer climbs a lot of riders can drop him.

 

[noob]

According to the DS Evenepoel had a bit of a hunger knock in that final climb. Which could explain why he seemed to have recovered later on.

From what Lefevere said in the press, it was the idea to have him act like he was struggling a bit at the back, because everybody was expecting an attack from him. Then, after Ganda on the flat, he was supposed to attack and have Almeida and Alaphilippe in the wheels of whomever would chase him. But the plan didn't work because both Evenepoel and Almeida were bad, and it was Pogacar who attacked on the climb.

So him "struggling at the back" was supposedly "acting". Considering how strong he finished the race though, i'm inclined to believe it, and i'm also inclined to believe the distance isn't going to be a problem. At the WCC he also did more work than some other teams combined and he dropped off after over 240k iirc. I don't think he's the rider who will struggle at races longer than 200km.

Wow! Thank you for explaining that! So that's why Almeida kept pulling when Remco was dropped. It looked absolutely crazy to my eyes. Almeida pulling looked crazy as well. Maybe it was because he actually felt it was the only thing he could even do in that race as he was too cooked.

 

[18-Valve. (pithy)]

PCS has Remco on the startlist of Chrono des Nations. Ganna, too.

Startlist for Chrono des Nations 2021

Competing teams and riders for Chrono des Nations 2021. Top competitors are Remco Evenepoel, Stefan Küng and Remco Evenepoel.

www.procyclingstats.com

Can anyone confirm?

 

[Logic-is-your-friend]

IMHO we had another proof that he isn't a climber, at least at the moment, for the future only god knows since nowadays everyone can suddenly become a climber, even if that's not his team field.

For sure he can almost drop riders off his wheel and hang on against a full peloton on the flat, the moment he finds a slight false flat he could just ride away, on flemish hills and similar little climbs he's just unplayable but already when there are 3 kms long climbs like in Emilia he can't ride away and on longer climbs a lot of riders can drop him.

By this definition, Bardet, Sosa, Kuss, Simon Yates, Vingegaard, Vlasov... aren't climbers. A lot of riders can drop them on longer climbs.
During the Euros, he dropped every climber in the race (Almeida, Bardet, Pogacar, Sivakov, Mollema...) on a 3.5km climb. The only rider he couldn't drop was a "sprinter".

A recurring theme, he needs to prove again and again what he can do in order to be sure, and the first moment he falters, it's proof he can't do it. He drops everybody in Burgos and Algarve, but that doesn't prove anything. He's "only 5th" in Emilia (ahead of Vingegaard, Kruijswijk, Martin, Mollema, Quintana, Pozzovivo...) after leading out his teammate in the final and finishes poorly in the last race of the season (yet ahead of known climbers) and he gets demoted to being in trouble on anything longer than 3k climbs. Imagine going into the Pogacar thread and question his climbing ability based on his Euro and Emilia performances.

It's all very tiresome really. If anything, what he did in the Giro, knowing he was on a downward trajectory of form, was reassuring imho. He was still in the top 10 after 14 stages and even finished the Zoncolan stage "only" 1m30s from Bernal. Even if you want to ignore the circumstances regarding his injury, it being his first race in 9 months and his lack of base form, a rider his age that finishes so close on such a stage would be seen as a future climbing force to be reckoned with. But in Evenepoel's case, let's use it as proof he's not a climber.

He may not be a pure climber, how we imagine a Contador or Quintana. But i think you'll have a hard time finding 10 riders with better climbing performances than him at that age in the past decade.

 

[Netserk]

Between the ECRR and until Lombardia, Evenepoel had clearly proved that he was in great shape. And in the same period he did better on more rolling terrain than on the hardest climbs.

I don't think you can say the same about the riders you mentioned.

 

[Logic-is-your-friend]

Between the ECRR and until Lombardia, Evenepoel had clearly proved that he was in great shape. And in the same period he did better on more rolling terrain than on the hardest climbs.

I don't think you can say the same about the riders you mentioned.

That's hardly the point. The point is that his performances in Emilia (5th) and Lombardia (19th, less than a minute from Nibali, Vingegaard etc) are being used as examples to fuel a narrative that doesn't align with performances he already showed in the past. Almeida was 2nd in Emilia, he was even worse in Lombardia than Evenepoel. Almeida can't climb confirmed,

When you use the same argument against any other rider, you notice how ridiculous it sounds. But somehow, this type of argumentation has been fueling this topic for the past 2 years.

 

[Red Rick]

This is gonna be a long off season

 

[Volderke]

PCS has Remco on the startlist of Chrono des Nations. Ganna, too.

Startlist for Chrono des Nations 2021

Competing teams and riders for Chrono des Nations 2021. Top competitors are Remco Evenepoel, Stefan Küng and Remco Evenepoel.

www.procyclingstats.com

Can anyone confirm?

Confirmed.

 

[yaco]

I would like Remco to focus on Classics and one week stage races in the first half of the season - Then he can have a crack at the Vuelta.

 

[Rackham]

I would like Remco to focus on Classics and one week stage races in the first half of the season - Then he can have a crack at the Vuelta.

I'd give Evenepoel the same advice Primoz Roglic recently gave Wout van Aert regarding the GT most suited to his characteristics: go to the Tour de France.

The Vuelta has the steepest gradients on the punchiest climbs made for mountain sprinters (like Roglic, Valverde etc.) & pure climbers, whereas the Tour has longer, lower gradient cols where power can really do the talking. In most years it also has more TT as well.

I know it's the biggest race of all the GT's, but ironically looking at Evenepoel's characteristics as a rider it might be the one which suits him best. Whether that's next year, the year after or even 5 years from now.

 

[BlueRoads]

I'd give Evenepoel the same advice Primoz Roglic recently gave Wout van Aert regarding the GT most suited to his characteristics: go to the Tour de France.

The Vuelta has the steepest gradients on the punchiest climbs made for mountain sprinters (like Roglic, Valverde etc.) & pure climbers, whereas the Tour has longer, lower gradient cols where power can really do the talking. In most years it also has more TT as well.

I know it's the biggest race of all the GT's, but ironically looking at Evenepoel's characteristics as a rider it might be the one which suits him best. Whether that's next year, the year after or even 5 years from now.

I also think at least the Vuelta should really be the least suited to him. Depending on the route the Giro could fit him as well as the Tour, though.