• The Cycling News forum is looking to add some volunteer moderators with Red Rick's recent retirement. If you're interested in helping keep our discussions on track, send a direct message to @SHaines here on the forum, or use the Contact Us form to message the Community Team.

    In the meanwhile, please use the Report option if you see a post that doesn't fit within the forum rules.

    Thanks!

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

Page 369 - Get up to date with the latest news, scores & standings from the Cycling News Community.

Should we change the thread title?


  • Total voters
    111
Somewhat similar weight as Porte and Leipheimer (EDIT: and Evans too). Just because he is short doesn't mean that his ideal weight is lower, he is not built like Purito and Rujano. When fully trimmed and in great form, losing an additional kg means less power.

For the first (second, but first optimal) try for GT GC, I think it makes sense for his development to lean a bit in the heavy direction. Rather 63 kg than 62 kg, even if it won't make much of a difference. If anything, I think Pogi shows that power matters far more than being trimmed as much as possible.
 
Last edited:
I think the first two weeks in the Giro went very well, and i personally doubt him ''blowing up'' after 15 days had much to do with lack of power or being too skinny, considering what had happened before (crash, recovery, relapse...). But while it could be better for him to be a bit heavier i'm simply left wondering why or how they came up with that, while the plan was to have his weight be around 60kg, twice. That's not a minor difference. So they didn't know what they were doing in 2020/2021, or they still don't know what they'r doing and are simply trying to see what sticks?
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Tonton
Somewhat similar weight as Porte and Leipheimer (EDIT: and Evans too). Just because he is short doesn't mean that his ideal weight is lower, he is not built like Purito and Rujano. When fully trimmed and in great form, losing an additional kg means less power.

For the first (second, but first optimal) try for GT GC, I think it makes sense for his development to lean a bit in the heavy direction. Rather 63 kg than 62 kg, even if it won't make much of a difference. If anything, I think Pogi shows that power matters far more than being trimmed as much as possible.
You do need to be as trimmed as possible, it's just that low bodyfat% will be higher for Evenepoel. I think Roglic is a good example too. He looks bigger than most pure climbers but he's skinny af.

Pogacar seems to have a naturally higher BMI than most traditional GC riders too, but if you look at him the weight distribution is like a skinny climber with bigger legs.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Sandisfan
It
It's not that important, unless we are talking about outstanding climbing ability of a cyclist. In that case weight has a huge impact. Half of the posts here are about his climbing capabilities so ...
It’s also because most all of us like to speculate about potential and future capabilities—but most of us don’t have access to his training numbers, we don’t really know what he thinking or feeling, we don’t know whether prior injuries are still effecting him or not, so that leaves us to conjecture about past performances and . . . His physical appearance. They are the two things we can see with our own eyes. And yeah, these days we get some power numbers and Strava results.

Of course, with the example of Contador, there were some folks noticing his looks for other reasons ;)
 
If by possible you mean that which improves performance the most, sure, but then it's a trivial statement. I'm sure all riders could starve themself and lose more fat than what they race with.

Arguably most riders would be faster up the mountain if they did that.

It's probably a trivial statement, but it's true nonetheless. You can't be a fat cyclist any more than you can be a fat ballerina.
 
Okay, thats a bit extreme, isnt it?
Yes, that was the point. The extreme is possible, but not desirable. Riders can almost always be more trimmed, but at a cost that will eventually not be worth paying. The sweet-spot depends on many factors and is dynamic, as in it has changed over the years. Quite notably over the past 30 years. I have the impression that riders were generally a bit thinner a few years ago than they are now.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ExperienPT
Time bonuses won't help if he loses 5 minutes on the MTFs alone.

lol. The hate is strong in this one.

that’s like half a dozen posts in just 48 hours trolling for reactions. And this from a “moderator”. Haha.

and even re-using the old hater’s trope of no one else is in top shape when Remco wins, but he of course is (Burgos).

laughable.
 
I
According to Pelgrim he gained more "functional muscle mass", probably by becoming more mature. Apparantly, this makes him more explosive without impacting his watt/kg. We will see ...
I think that for an honest response to explanation the discussion would need to move into clinic territory, because the description fits exactly with what some of newer PEDs purportedly provide.
 
  • Haha
Reactions: Big Doopie
I

I think that for an honest response to explanation the discussion would need to move into clinic territory, because the description fits exactly with what some of newer PEDs purportedly provide.

haters out in force now.

a guy who wins the euro juniors by an unheard of 10 minutes after a 100 km solo, must be doping now that he wins a race as a pro.

but no matter, the guy doing most of the banning is a full fledged hater himself so…

what a joke the people who “run” this forum are.
 
I’m not hating anyone; seriously I was thrilled with Remco’s performance on Sunday, I really enjoyed watching him. . I just think hearing a statement as Pelegrím made (and maybe he spoke poorly or it was written down or recorded incorrectly), if you’ve been following what’s happening in the peloton the past ten years it’s a real eye-roller to take that at face value. It ‘s like a flaming-red flag for someone to use that phrasing to describe weight loss without power loss.
 
According to Pelgrim he gained more "functional muscle mass", probably by becoming more mature. Apparantly, this makes him more explosive without impacting his watt/kg. We will see ...
Unfortunately i'm not an expert, but i feel this statement might prove the exact opposite of what it is supposed to prove. More functional muscle mass, to me that sounds like his muscles being more efficient than before. If they are indeed more efficient now... wouldn't you need less muscle mass in order to achieve the same, instead of more? If the theory is that his muscles are now even stronger in relation to how much they weigh, that it has become beneficial to have more, even uphill, then why stop at 63kg? We saw what happened in Valencia, so clearly it isn't as straight forward as that.

If someone with some authority on the subject could shine a light, it'd be appreciated.

I’m not hating anyone; seriously I was thrilled with Remco’s performance on Sunday, I really enjoyed watching him. . I just think hearing a statement as Pelegrím made (and maybe he spoke poorly or it was written down or recorded incorrectly), if you’ve been following what’s happening in the peloton the past ten years it’s a real eye-roller to take that at face value. It ‘s like a flaming-red flag for someone to use that phrasing to describe weight loss without power loss.
He's not describing weight loss without power loss. He's trying to explain why Evenepoel now needs to be 3kg more heavy than the years before.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Sciatic
Unfortunately i'm not an expert, but i feel this statement might prove the exact opposite of what it is supposed to prove. More functional muscle mass, to me that sounds like his muscles being more efficient than before. If they are indeed more efficient now... wouldn't you need less muscle mass in order to achieve the same, instead of more? If the theory is that his muscles are now even stronger in relation to how much they weigh, that it has become beneficial to have more, even uphill, then why stop at 63kg? We saw what happened in Valencia, so clearly it isn't as straight forward as that.

If someone with some authority on the subject could shine a light, it'd be appreciated.


He's not describing weight loss without power loss. He's trying to explain why Evenepoel now needs to be 3kg more heavy than the years before.
Thanks, the drift of the discussion on the page was weight loss so I thought that what the quote referred to.
 
Unfortunately i'm not an expert, but i feel this statement might prove the exact opposite of what it is supposed to prove. More functional muscle mass, to me that sounds like his muscles being more efficient than before. If they are indeed more efficient now... wouldn't you need less muscle mass in order to achieve the same, instead of more? If the theory is that his muscles are now even stronger in relation to how much they weigh, that it has become beneficial to have more, even uphill, then why stop at 63kg? We saw what happened in Valencia, so clearly it isn't as straight forward as that.

If someone with some authority on the subject could shine a light, it'd be appreciated.


He's not describing weight loss without power loss. He's trying to explain why Evenepoel now needs to be 3kg more heavy than the years before.

There's an optimal development curve that's based on his physiology, goals, that assesses how he can get the most out of his natural abilities and where he has the most room for improvement in terms of his physiological development.

To get to 60kg it would take a few years (2-3+) and the problem is that we get past 18 humans have a hard time staying the same size. Remco would lose too much power at 60kg and he'sd be much more prone to illness, injury, the elements then at 63kg.

Yes, he cannot get too big otherwise he's on a suboptimal physiological development curve for climbing.

His optimal weight might be 61.5/62kg but he gets stronger and older it becomes much more difficult to reach that weight and it takes more time to do it in a healthy way.

The implication is that while 60kg makes it much easier to climb his body cannot feasibly work optimally at that weight at his age.

This was a constant concern when I coached wrestling. The power to weight aspect was critical. I had a kid cut weight to the 50kg weight class from his normal walking around weight of 60kg. He had a big advantage at 50kg he was not in the most efficient power to weight zone. He ended up performing the best at 54 kilos because he was in his peak efficiency zone where the power to weight ratio was maximized.

Had the same thing happen with a kid who was about 82 kilos at the beginning of the year and we wanted him to wrestle at 77.5 kilos and he wanted to go up to 86 kilos. He struggled initially at 86 kilos but once he got acclimated there was no way he could stay at 77.5 kilos because we was 1.96 meters tall and the drop would take him far out of the optimal power to weight ratio.

Any cut below 63 needs to be done as a long term cut and that's only if Remco remains in his sweet spot while making that cut. He'll near the end of his maturing phase and then they'll be able to plot what weight he should be at and how to get there with the maximum amount of power, acceleration, etc.
 
To get to 60kg it would take a few years (2-3+) and the problem is that we get past 18 humans have a hard time staying the same size. Remco would lose too much power at 60kg and he'sd be much more prone to illness, injury, the elements then at 63kg.
Yet I was flamed for noting that amidst all the illness in the peloton, Evenepoel has been healthy throughout the spring, and maybe that was (partly) because of his weight.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ExperienPT
You were insinuating he only won because others had been sick and he had not. Don't act like you're the poor victim now.
For sure, if he had been sick on the day, I don't think he would have won. Is that controversial?

What you choose to read into my post that wasn't there by my hand is your responsibility. The context that I mentioned is that we had discussed his weight in this thread before the race, so I wondered if his health had benefited from it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Sandisfan
i personally doubt him ''blowing up'' after 15 days had much to do with lack of power or being too skinny…

i actually think the drop off could be attributed to no winter base, and yes, being too light.

the question is whether he can climb the big cols consistently well at 63kg.

side note: I believe he would have absolutely crushed an ITT like at Romandie today. Like Hinault at Avoriaz in 1979.
 
Last edited:

TRENDING THREADS