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

[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.

 

[Red Rick]

Giro kinda limits what you can do in February to April tbh.

 

[Eddy Evenepoel]

Giro kinda limits what you can do in February to April tbh.

Which I think is good. Win Remco wants to be a GT rider he should spending the Winter and early season training in mountains (put him 4 weeks at Teide or something in january/february and race some stage races with some climbing in it (Pick freely from UAE, Tirreno, Catalonia, Tour of the Alps, Romandie) before the Giro.
If he gets “freedom in calendar” in the first half of the season I fear he will do some classics in Belgium and maybe even race the early season stage races like a classic rider and not like a real GT contender (this is vague, I don’t really know how to describe what it thinking about). We know he can dominate smaller classics and stage races without the big climbs, it’s not what I want him to focus on if he and the team is serious about making him into a GT-rider.

 

[memyselfandI]

Well from physical point of view he is a proper climber: lightweight time trialist is very good starting point. But there is lots of skill things in climbing too. Almeida knows them better, maybe he learned as a junior something else than Evenepoel, maybe they didn't tell all to Remco in Anderlecht.

And climbing is more than 10 minutes. And GT climbing is different thing than week long or one day. And recovery is everything at GT. And DQS has not been and is not looking to be a proper GT gc racing team, Alaphilippe staying yellow or Almeida at pink were more of them being already skilled cats than team decided beforehand to go and take it home.

Evenepoel one day performance is way above Almeida or Pogacar when they all were 17-18. He is still young and can look 1-2 years one day races and stage races and decide what suits him best. There's plenty of work to do though. Best would be get someone to buy him out from DQS after few yrs.

 

[Logic-is-your-friend]

He should ride the GT he feels most comfortable with, where he can plan most other races he wants to ride around and/or where the route matches his strengths best. Last year i was advocating not to go to the Tour, because of the added media pressure (like we saw in the Giro, it would have been even worse at the Tour), but at this moment i think not even the craziest of mainstream media, would paint him as a favorite to win the TDF. Not after a set of disappointing performances at main events (Giro, Olympics, Lombardia). Especially international media should leave him pretty much alone should he go to the Tour. The Slovenians and Ineos should take the pressure away from Evenepoel, so who knows, given the circumstances he might get some more space and less media attention, as opposed to when he goes to the Giro with no other big names on the startlist.

 

[Red Rick]

Which I think is good. Win Remco wants to be a GT rider he should spending the Winter and early season training in mountains (put him 4 weeks at Teide or something in january/february and race some stage races with some climbing in it (Pick freely from UAE, Tirreno, Catalonia, Tour of the Alps, Romandie) before the Giro.
If he gets “freedom in calendar” in the first half of the season I fear he will do some classics in Belgium and maybe even race the early season stage races like a classic rider and not like a real GT contender (this is vague, I don’t really know how to describe what it thinking about). We know he can dominate smaller classics and stage races without the big climbs, it’s not what I want him to focus on if he and the team is serious about making him into a GT-rider.

Which GT to aim for really depends on what his goal is with riding that GT.

 

[Netserk]

I think the only case for the Giro is if he thinks he can win it.

 

[Oldermanish]

I think the only case for the Giro is if he thinks he can win it.

It's the toughest and generally requires some luck as well. Finishing a competitive GT should be a goal at his age. Not everyone drops in like Pogacar in this era.

 

[Nirvana]

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.

It's not only this fall, since he turned pro he did well on climbing stages only in Burgos at the first race after the longest break ever seen since WWII. You can take out the shipwreaking of the Giro but also here i doubt he was so bad considering that after 10 days he was already doing his trick on flemish hills at the Tour of Belgium despite having crashed out of the Giro.

Maybe from next year he'll suddenly turn into the new Pantani but at the moment there is a clear pattern in his performances with little hills being his playground, if i have to think about what big races he could dominate if ridden tomorrow i think about Ronde or Amstel not a Tour de Suisse, a Dauphine or a GT.

 

[18-Valve. (pithy)]

I think the only case for the Giro is if he thinks he can win it.

Ala and Evenepoel barely race together, even though they get on great.

Could be another reason to have him race the Giro (I don't think he'll want to wait until the Vuelta)

To avoid a clash of egos.

 

[houtdffan]

Have him do Contador's early season. Do Paris Nice, where there are a lot of medium mountain stages and than Basque country. If he wins one of the two, then CONSIDER sending him to the tour, or have him do Romandie then the Giro

 

[Logic-is-your-friend]

It's not only this fall, since he turned pro he did well on climbing stages only in Burgos at the first race after the longest break ever seen since WWII. You can take out the shipwreaking of the Giro but also here i doubt he was so bad considering that after 10 days he was already doing his trick on flemish hills at the Tour of Belgium despite having crashed out of the Giro.

Maybe from next year he'll suddenly turn into the new Pantani but at the moment there is a clear pattern in his performances with little hills being his playground, if i have to think about what big races he could dominate if ridden tomorrow i think about Ronde or Amstel not a Tour de Suisse, a Dauphine or a GT.

They are not mutually exclusive. Him excelling on a repetition of 500-3.500m climbs, where he might actually be the best in the world already, doesn't mean he couldn't be great at longer climbs as well. He doesn't have to be the best at everything in order to become a major GT contender. Again, he finished 90 seconds from Bernal on the Zoncolan, even if you ignore the circumstances, that's still an immense achievement for a 21 year old. But it's Evenepoel we're talking about so for some reason that doesn't count. Him doing his trick at BBT... actually, that's it, he wasn't able to do his trick there, he couldn't even drop two guys who were already in the break the entire day. It actually proves he was not fully recovered, and i think it's still a difference to ride BBT against small fry opposition, compared to Zoncolan vs Bernal, Carthy etc.

Nobody is saying he'll turn into the next Pantani, but i think he's already shown plenty to suggest that climbing in itself will not be a problem. Maybe a whole week of hard mountain stages with multiple HC climbs per day in the third week of a GT could be a problem, sure. But we won't know until he rides one. Nevertheless, Kuss and Sosa aren't able to consistently ride HC climbs in the 3rd week of a GT either, and yet nobody is saying they aren't climbers.

As for which races he could dominate if ridden tomorrow? I think it would depend on the opposition. I don't think he would dominate Ronde or Amstel against on form Van Aert, Van der Poel, Pidcock or Alaphilippe any more than he would dominate Tour de Suisse against Roglic or Pogacar. But if that Tour de Suisse has no Slovenian in it, i would rather put my money on that than i would on Ronde Van Vlaanderen.

 

[noob]

Remember giro 2022 has no Pog, Rog or Bernal. They're preparing/saving themselves for TdF.

So that's where I expect the most action next year since everyone knows it's now or never.

 

[memyselfandI]

Ala and Evenepoel barely race together, even though they get on great.

Could be another reason to have him race the Giro (I don't think he'll want to wait until the Vuelta)

To avoid a clash of egos.

Egos? Remco is magnitudes behind JA in result stats, it's empty illusion to create any ego problem between them. Alaphilippe btw did his first GT in 24yrs of age am I right? Like Alaphilippe he could easily skip gt's year or two and do like cumulative loads of smaller stage races and everything to bild a cannon. But busy and hype and so on..

 

[Breh]

And Alaphilippe doesn't have a huge ego afaik.

 

[Blanco]

And Alaphilippe doesn't have a huge ego afaik.

Oh yes he has.., but not quite like Remco though.

 

[memyselfandI]

Big ego is tolerable if you can deliver, and Alaphilippe certainly can.

 

[Red Rick]

Alaphilippe is a total team player in the Tour. He just needs to be able to go into his break aways and do his random yolo *** when he wants to.

 

[BlueRoads]

If Alaphilippe and Cavendish for green work in the same Tour, there should not be a problem with Evenepoel and Alaphilippe in the Tour - unless Evenepoel plans to contend the same stages as a stage hunter.
Actually I would love to see Alaphilippe do the Vuelta... but I guess that doesn't happen unless something goes wrong in the earlier season.
Personally I think Evenepoel should do somethink like: UAE, Paris-Nice, Catalunya, Giro, races where he can go head to head with really good stage racers and which aren't too punchy, then a pause and see how much he still has in the tank for the rest of the season.

 

[memyselfandI]

"First we ride, then we talk" (unknown)

 

[SHAD0W93]

If Alaphilippe and Cavendish for green work in the same Tour, there should not be a problem with Evenepoel and Alaphilippe in the Tour - unless Evenepoel plans to contend the same stages as a stage hunter.
Actually I would love to see Alaphilippe do the Vuelta... but I guess that doesn't happen unless something goes wrong in the earlier season.
Personally I think Evenepoel should do somethink like: UAE, Paris-Nice, Catalunya, Giro, races where he can go head to head with really good stage racers and which aren't too punchy, then a pause and see how much he still has in the tank for the rest of the season.

It would even help them both as Evenepoel can attack and Ala just has to sit on and respond.

 

[tobydawq]

Alaphilippe is a total team player in the Tour. He just needs to be able to go into his break aways and do his random yolo *** when he wants to.

What else should he have done in his Tour participations?

 

[Red Rick]

What else should he have done in his Tour participations?

I wasn't sarcastic. He got along with Cav and doing leadouts famously. He just needs to be able to go into breakaways and get the occasional stage to yolo.

If Evenepoel goes to the Tour for a GC, it's not like DQS have to carry the race most likely. Evenepoel mostly needs to hang on and DQS should want to create chaos in echelons and that sort of stuff much rather than control mountain stages anyway.

 

[tobydawq]

I wasn't sarcastic. He got along with Cav and doing leadouts famously. He just needs to be able to go into breakaways and get the occasional stage to yolo.

If Evenepoel goes to the Tour for a GC, it's not like DQS have to carry the race most likely. Evenepoel mostly needs to hang on and DQS should want to create chaos in echelons and that sort of stuff much rather than control mountain stages anyway.

Okay. Yolo *** certainly sounds completely appraising.

 

[memyselfandI]

I mean people talk this kid here who has not even finished gran tour nevermind doing anything gc wise? Like Wiggo leading out Cav in Champs last day people think..maybe bit early.

It's true, going to be long off season.