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

[Riek s]

Well that was a bit disappointing... although somewhat expected for today. Was really hoping to much from him after his injury. Guess his bike handling skills didn't really improve when he was off the bike .


I agree with the others that he seemed to have been dropped because of his fear/incompetence in the downhill leading to a lot of small efforts that cooked him. Also found him extremely uncomfortable on the gravel on the straight sections as well. Think we now know where he needs to put his focus to... maybe he should do some winter cross training next year.

Hopefully he can get his head up again and see where he can end up in the Giro without completely blowing himself. Maybe he should focus on riding out the Giro for experience and road skills/comfort and less for classement.

 

[kingjr]

No, before the final climb the gap was almost 1m40.

After the last gravel section it was 1m09

 

[Volderke]

He descended like an amateur. I even wondered if he had the wrong tires because it seems he had zero confidence in going around a corner without braking superhard. I cannot understand the way he took some curves, and how afraid he was following wheels: if you lack the technical skills, at least try to follow the line of the rider in front of you.

He lost contact on a (not even fast) descent. I cannot understand that a guy like Almeida wasn't just around him when he was losing contact with the group.
He looked spent just because he had to close all his self-made gaps, and for a moment I thought he would loose closer to 3-4 minutes than the 2 minutes it was in the end.

 

[spalco]

He lost about 55 seconds. Could've been worse the way he looked.

Much worse, yes. At times he looked like he was completely shot.

Still, not sure what to think now about his prospects in this race. Tomorrow will be interesting again. If someone wants to mix things up it could be another hard day.

edit: and I'm not sure we should put a lot of weight into Giro GPS.

 

[kingjr]

He descended like an amateur. I even wondered if he had the wrong tires because it seems he had zero confidence in going around a corner without braking superhard. I cannot understand the way he took some curves, and how afraid he was following wheels

His crash may be a factor there.

Much worse, yes. At times he looked like he was completely shot.

Still, not sure what to think now about his prospects in this race.

Think nothing, and let the race surprise you

 

[LesDiablesRouges]

The issue is that this is the Giro d'Italia, not Baliose Belgium tour or Vuelta Burgos, its not nice February Beach race like Algarve. You need to be able to steer your bike, to fight for position, to ride gravel and hard climbs on repetitive days, to have a team that puts you in the best position at all times, to descend well etc. Not just attack the nice smooth easy belgian roads while the others warm up for bigger objectives.

Belgian roads are far from smooth or easy

 

[Publiuszam]

Anyways Crows are safe to eat
So, serving it up could actually be good for the health

One moment, please...

readylifestyle.com

Can You Eat Crow? (Is It Safe, Is It Legal, and How To Prepare It)

 

[HelloDolly]

Panda Claws

You were the one who said to anyone who tried to bring any realistic view of Evenepoels chances in his first GT should eat crow

you decided about the whole crow eating rubbish

no one else

 

[Logic-is-your-friend]

After the last gravel section it was 1m09

It was indeed less than i remembered. It was 1m15 when Evenepoel/Almeida left the last gravel section, according to the GPS.
A minute after Buchmann attacked, GPS said 1m40s. The moment Soler got dropped.

 

[Panda Claws]

Anyways Crows are safe to eat
So, serving it up could actually be good for the health

One moment, please...

readylifestyle.com

Can You Eat Crow? (Is It Safe, Is It Legal, and How To Prepare It)

Crows are smart, beautiful and friendly. How dare you.

 

[spalco]

He lost contact on a (not even fast) descent. I cannot understand that a guy like Almeida wasn't just around him when he was losing contact with the group.
He looked spent just because he had to close all his self-made gaps, and for a moment I thought he would loose closer to 3-4 minutes than the 2 minutes it was in the end.

Descending on loose ground can be scary. But it's definitely something that can be learned to an extent imo. I wonder if he did his recon at speed or more casual.

 

[Red Rick]

One last thing. It doesn't matter he got dropped today, Ramco is a great nickname and it's our duty to make it stick.

 

[spalco]

Panda Claws

You were the one who said to anyone who tried to bring any realistic view of Evenepoels chances in his first GT should eat crow

you decided about the whole crow eating rubbish

no one else

I'll admit I got caught up in the hype a bit maybe, although I was more realistic before the race, and always sceptical of choosing the Giro as his return race.

Looking at it sober though - IF he can stay in the contender group tomorrow, prove recovery and stay reasonably in range of Bernal on saturday, he's still doing ok. If he blows up again, then I'll be worried.

 

[LesDiablesRouges]

Much worse, yes. At times he looked like he was completely shot.

Still, not sure what to think now about his prospects in this race. Tomorrow will be interesting again. If someone wants to mix things up it could be another hard day.

edit: and I'm not sure we should put a lot of weight into Giro GPS.

Couple of things.

This was his first race after a rest day as well the first time being so deep in a race.

Sometimes riders can struggle with a rest day.

He was miserable at stage one at the Adriatica Ionica on the same type of roads and lost big time as well. He also bonked on the climbing stage. Then the next day he blew up the field and dropped Masanda for a 2+ minute stage win.

Hard to say how he'll recover but it's possible albeit extremely unlikely that he bounces back in the race.

Bernal hasn't shown weakness and he's got the strongest team by a long shot even without Sivakov.

It's difficult to think he could in his current form overcome Bernal's protection along with catching Bernal in a vulnerable position.

The only way to do it is to launch a long distance breakaway of 40-50km versus a small peloton. (10-15 riders) . However he may not be capable of that currently, and there may not be such an opportunity available.

 

[HelloDolly]

I think Remco can win a GT ...maybe even 5 but it is unrealistic and possibly damaging to put too much pressure on him at this age and returning from a long lay off

let the kid just be for a year or 2 and then he can come out and win all that his talent allows

 

[Logic-is-your-friend]

Couple of things.

This was his first race after a rest day as well the first time being so deep in a race.

Sometimes riders can struggle with a rest day.

He was miserable at stage one at the Adriatica Ionica on the same type of roads and lost big time as well. He also bonked on the climbing stage. Then the next day he blew up the field and dropped Masanda for a 2+ minute stage win.

Hard to say how he'll recover but it's possible albeit extremely unlikely that he bounces back in the race.

Bernal hasn't shown weakness and he's got the strongest team by a long shot even without Sivakov.

It's difficult to think he could in his current form overcome Bernal's protection along with catching Bernal in a vulnerable position.

The only way to do it is to launch a long distance breakaway of 40-50km versus a small peloton. (10-15 riders) . However he may not be capable of that currently, and there may not be such an opportunity available.

If it's true what Rick said, that he was pushing bigger numbers than Bernal, than the problem wasn't that he's done. Just that today he lacked the skills and wasted energy.

 

[groogster]

Very strange how he was having problems at those sterrato sections, especially on descents... the energy spent trying to close the gaps made him crash in the last section... But after all losing only 2 minutes to Bernal was almost a miracle, at one point i thought that we would lose 4 or 5 minutes...

 

[Froome]

I think Remco can win a GT ...maybe even 5 but it is unrealistic and possibly damaging to put too much pressure on him at this age and returning from a long lay off

let the kid just be for a year or 2 and then he can come out and win all that his talent allows

If now he is ramco and not remco, he could win 20 gts in the future.

 

[LesDiablesRouges]

If it's true what Rick said, that he was pushing bigger numbers than Bernal, than the problem wasn't that he's done. Just that today he lacked the skills and wasted energy.

I think he's the only one capable of still beating Bernal in the Giro albeit an extremely long shot assuming that Bernal's back doesn't blow up. (This is still going to be an issue for Bernal long term as back injuries never really go away for too long).

 

[Zoef-Lightning]

A bit loose with the term 'dropped', right?

Which I feared. A combination of great fear downhill, on the dirt. And bad legs (after the rest day). I think that his team has
take him out of the race if he still has a bad day. For his own good.

 

[Zoef-Lightning]

What do you mean? He barely lost time on the last climb.

He lost (a lot of) time on every climb. But did well on the flat sections.

 

[Axel Hangleck]

I did wonder how today would go for him; he's a late comer to the sport, so hasn't grown up racing & learning technical skills - which are just as important as his engine. I think it's a combination of his crash on the descent in Il Lombardia - and not being comfortable riding loose surfaces, with the bike moving around beneath him.

If I were his boss, I'd be thinking about maybe doing some CX training/racing in the winter, just to get comfortable with a bike sliding around.

He's 21, first race for 9 months - he'll win GTs....just give him time to develop.

 

[limak_]

If it's true what Rick said, that he was pushing bigger numbers than Bernal, than the problem wasn't that he's done. Just that today he lacked the skills and wasted energy.

It's definitely true he had to push bigger watts than Bernal as whenever you saw him on the sterrato he was riding like 3 meters behind the wheel of the rider in front of him. While Bernal being constatly glued to his teammate's' wheel all the time.

 

[The fridge in the blue trees]

There simply weren't enough false flat sections, pretty obvious.

But he held on well after being dropped. Lost 55" in the last mountain? Look at how much others lost to Bernal there, Ciccone, Soler. But also the rest lost 20-30" seconds to Bernal, so losing 25" to Carthy in the end means he did well there, considering that he had been dropped for quite a while there.

 

[peterfin]

It's hard to tell what actually went wrong. Was it really his bike handling skills or did he fear falling during those downhills sections? Many times when they zoomed in on him there was a gap of 5-10m with the cyclist in front of him so he must have spent a lot of energy. But was this sufficient to have that collapse at the end? Maybe he also experienced a dip at the same time? It was his first rest day ever so he doesn't know how his body react to this, certainly not after such a long absence from pro cycling. Also, that frustration didn't help him either although you could see why he was angry. Almeida was not helping him when he dropped and he lost him a second time as well. Apart from those 2 dips, he did put up a good fight. During the last 5km he basically kept the same pace as Bernal and Buchmann while the others lost 30 seconds.