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

[Big Doopie]

And what exactly did he accomplish? Won San Sebastian and Tour of Poland, is that it?! Is that the feat that no one did in the whole history of cycling?
He's 21 now, in his age Coppi won a freaking Giro, Merckx won Milan-San Remo and finished on the podium at Lombardia, Van Steenbergen won Ronde Van Vlaanderen, Jempy Monsere won Lombardia, Freddy Maertens finished 2nd in both Ronde and the Worlds, Pogacar finished on the podium of La Vuelta, and Sagan won that same Tour of Poland.
So no, he did not accomplished what no one did.

lol.

so he was supposed to build his palmares while recovering from a fractured pelvis?

Some here want to argue what they want to argue without listening to any of the nuance.

again absolutely none of the riders you mention had achieved what Remco had done by age 20 1/2. None. That is a simple fact you cannot get around. So that speaks to his potential. To keep moving the time to incorporate the close on a year that he has been recovering and unable to build upon his other successes is simply stupid and in bad faith. No one is arguing that now at 21 others palmares may have been better. No one is arguing that. No one. So what exactly is your point?

 

[Big Doopie]

nope, i didnt misinterpret anything, I said that Pogacar has achived more than remco till the age of 21, heck we could debate even if Pogacar third place in vuelta is worth more than Remco has ever done.
You dont see the problem here, one guy a clear phenom won TDF at 21 has 56 pages, Remco a work in progress that at his best if everything works out could become another Pogacar has 227

again you are simply arguing with a point I never made. You are moving the boundaries. Not talking about success by age 20 1/2. NO ONE AND I MEAN NO ONE is arguing that Pog NOW has the better palmares. You are arguing that because Remco did not win anything while recovering from a pelvis fracture for near on a year, he hasn’t won anything. Well, no sh!t Sherlock. So yes you continue to misrepresent my argument simply because it does not fit your agenda.

 

[Big Doopie]

What gets lost in all the commotion about the San Sebastian win is that Evenepoel lost contact with the main group on the descent of the penultimate climb. So issues were obviously there before the big crash.

I read that he had a mechanical. Could be wrong.

I don’t believe he lost any time on the last descent into San Sebastián. May have even gained. Not saying he was a great descender before the crash. Just not as bad as he clearly is now.

 

[perico]

roglic bought first bike at 21, does that make him more exciting.
We all know what this is about, like you said its nationality based, so its quite understandable that a lot of non belgians wont like the hype

Hell Roglic was a ski jumper and didn’t pick up a bike until he was like in his 20s and turned into a natural. How exciting. Most winners win from the start in some fashion.

 

[perico]

Yes he did. He is without a doubt the best junior ever and he may be the most dominant pro at the age of 20 if you look at the winning %. Study his pages at procyclingstats. The kid started winning the very first races he entered in late 2017. His 2018 stats are just incredible. How he did it was also impressive (just watch his junior WC title as an example). When joining the pro's immediately after, it took him just 5 months to get up to speed and win his first stage race followed by a semi classic, TT and silver at the TT WC. In his second year as a pro he won all 4 stage races he entered, winning at least one stage as well. He would have won Il Lombardia without that crash and I am sure he was in a good spot to battle for the giro podium and stages as well. All of this before turning 21.

Jesus winning the Tour of Poland and Burgos is great, but does not make him the next Bernard Hinault before he’s finished a GT.

He “would have won” is arrogant. He was chasing Nibali on a descent. That’s like... part of the race you need to master if you are going to win

 

[Blanco]

lol.

so he was supposed to build his palmares while recovering from a fractured pelvis?

Some here want to argue what they want to argue without listening to any of the nuance.

again absolutely none of the riders you mention had achieved what Remco had done by age 20 1/2. None. That is a simple fact you cannot get around. So that speaks to his potential. To keep moving the time to incorporate the close on a year that he has been recovering and unable to build upon his other successes is simply stupid and in bad faith. No one is arguing that now at 21 others palmares may have been better. No one is arguing that. No one. So what exactly is your point?

My point is that you and couple of others around here are overhyping this kid massively.
He indeed might become greatest rider of his generation, he has a great potential, but he also showed couple of flaws which could affect his development heavily, like not having a sprint, not being explosive, and being a bad descender. He needs to work on this hard, cause if he doesn't correct this things significantly, he's not going to be the one you around here are expecting to be.

 

[Big Doopie]

My point is that you and couple of others around here are overhyping this kid massively.
He indeed might become greatest rider of his generation, he has a great potential, but he also showed couple of flaws which could affect his development heavily, like not having a sprint, not being explosive, and being a bad descender. He needs to work on this hard, cause if he doesn't correct this things significantly, he's not going to be the one you around here are expecting to be.

It would help greatly if people differentiated between those who hype with no nuance and those who simply state facts but also admit to grey areas and unknowns.

1. fact: remco by age 20 showed as much potential as any rider in the history of cycling (let’s all also be sure to understand what “potential” actually means. It does NOT mean that it WILL happen)

2. fact: Pog has a much better palmares by age 22 than remco will ever have now at that same age. He is also my pick to win a 2nd Tdf this summer. So the gap is likely to grow between them before remco actually closes it (if he ever does)

3. fact: remco has been out and recovering from a very serious injury for 9-10 months. Unless someone tells me differently, he was therefore unable to add to his 2020 successes

4. fact: I thought it was a really stupid idea to line him up for the giro and believe it smacked of arrogance on the part of all involved

5. fact: remco can climb

6. fact: whether he can climb successive mountains or days is absolutely still in question

7: fact: we still have no evidence that he can recover over three weeks. However to judge him on THIS giro is absolutely ludicrous considering his prep

8. fact: he needs to work on his bike handling skills and his descending (perhaps never exactly a strength) is now horrendous due likely to fear from his terrible crash

opinion:

they/he should never have rushed back. Why not Ruta del sol then 9 days at dauphine with TT and successive high mountains?

(and those who are quoting eddy merckx need to be aware that he is notoriously the absolute worst prognosticator in cycling. And that is actually documented)

 

[topt]

again you are simply arguing with a point I never made. You are moving the boundaries. Not talking about success by age 20 1/2. NO ONE AND I MEAN NO ONE is arguing that Pog NOW has the better palmares. You are arguing that because Remco did not win anything while recovering from a pelvis fracture for near on a year, he hasn’t won anything. Well, no sh!t Sherlock. So yes you continue to misrepresent my argument simply because it does not fit your agenda.

you think wonderboy without the crash would win TDF at 21 ?

 

[Blanco]

He “would have won” is arrogant. He was chasing Nibali on a descent. That’s like... part of the race you need to master if you are going to win

It's not arrogant, it's immature, stupid and wrong.

 

[Riek s]

you think wonderboy without the crash would win TDF at 21 ?

Who knows, maybe he wouldn't even ridden the tour when he was 21, not sure if a GT is only the measurestick though.
But does that matter? he might have won other classics/smaller tours/WC TT/.. What if he won every one week stage race he entered during his 20/21 year of age? (lets say the ones he won now a second time resulting in 10 wins in 1 week stage races. (on 10 he entered) What about 2 additional classics in the same period). and that is for 2 times half a seaon. So lets assume with some progression he has some other stage races like PN/tour de swisse. Maybe another podium in WC TT (or win). These are things we know he could do. Would that be worth less?

 

[topt]

Who knows, maybe he wouldn't even ridden the tour when he was 21, not sure if a GT is only the measurestick though.
But does that matter? he might have won other classics/smaller tours/WC TT/.. What if he won every one week stage race he entered during his 20/21 year of age? (lets say the ones he won now a second time resulting in 10 wins in 1 week stage races. (on 10 he entered) What about 2 additional classics in the same period). and that is for 2 times half a seaon. So lets assume with some progression he has some other stage races like PN/tour de swisse. Maybe another podium in WC TT (or win). These are things we know he could do. Would that be worth less?

yes and he would never win every week stage; I dont know what Belgian media has done to you guys but you are really going overboard

 

[Big Doopie]

you think wonderboy without the crash would win TDF at 21 ?

do you actually understand what the word “potential” means?

 

[Riek s]

yes and he would never win every week stage; I dont know what Belgian media has done to you guys but you are really going overboard

why? you are bringing hypotheticals into place. You are the one who neglects his accomplishments when he was 19/20. And when i double what he did in the next year (when he was out), i'm going overboard? So what he did was not impressive, but if he did it again it would be overboard...

Overboard would be assuming he'd win a GT. but the things he won is perfectly in line to win tour de swisse or PN. Him winning other classics is also not far fetched. he won one and was one of the strongest in another one. He also had a podium on WC TT, so him repeating that is also not far fetched.

 

[topt]

do you actually understand what the word “potential” means?

I guess it means 229 pages on forum, 4 times more than guys that acctually REACHED potential

 

[Andre]

What gets lost in all the commotion about the San Sebastian win is that Evenepoel lost contact with the main group on the descent of the penultimate climb. So issues were obviously there before the big crash.

...which makes his San Sebastian victory even more amazing...

 

[Bonimenier]

I guess it means 229 pages on forum, 4 times more than guys that acctually REACHED potential

These 229 pages are a combination of Remco lightning it up as junior when he got a ton of reaction already, Remco coming from Belgium, Remco being a more polarising figure than some other riders which causes ridiculous reaction from both pro and contra Remco users, and ironically people like yourself complaining about it constantly.

 

[peterfin]

It's not arrogant, it's immature, stupid and wrong.

Lets just say that he had a very big chance to win that race and everyone who followed him that year probably agrees.

What he did during the Lombardi race was not the point of my message and insulting me doesn't make your point either. The fact is that, based on the numbers, he is the most dominant junior ever and after just a few months as a pro he started displaying that dominance on the pro stage as well up to his crash.

This why the hype about Remco exists, obviously mainly in Belgium, and while its over the top at times it is totally justified.

 

[happytramp]

I dont know what Belgian media has done to you guys but you are really going overboard

Yeah, thanks Belgium. You've gone and ruined Remco for the rest of us.

 

[Panda Claws]

So fun that we kind of establish that part of the reason why this thread has so many posts are people who are irrationally angry and jealous about the hype Evenepoel gets and yet those people continue to complain about it, making the thread even bigger.

Just like those news articles on Facebook where you'll see tons of comments saying things like "This isn't news!" or a satirical "Well I just bought a nice ham in the supermarket." or "They didn't make an article about me breaking my leg!" or even "What about x? Why are you not writing about x you lousy newspaper? "

Hint: The newspaper did talk about x. Just in a different article.

It's absolutely ridiculous that this is even an issue. If you wanted Pogacar to get more attention then you should start interesting discussions in that thread. Since that doesn't happen it looks more likely that you just want Evenepoel to get less attention in this thread lol.

Almeida's thread is also rapidly closing on in Pogacar perhaps you might want to take the crusade there too.

 

[Hugo Koblet]

Great post with some very good points.

Looking back it seems so strange that they decided to throw him into the Giro in such a moment. That Lombardia crash looks more and more like a huge point in Evenepoel's career that should have been a reminder on taking things slowly. Instead he starts training too early, all in all misses about half a season of racing and then gets thrown into a gt without any preparation races despite that gt not suiting him (lack of TT's) and some stages in that race being significantly tougher than anything he has ever ridden. When they should have taken it slowly they decided to do the opposite.

In retrospect TdS, maybe some small stage race during the Tour followed by the Olympics and finally the Vuelta seems so so much more sensible. Let's just hope they learn from their mistakes and take it easy from now on. I mean his season has only started. If he wins gold in Tokyo and some races in fall his perception will have swung back in no time whatsoever.


This I disagree with. People can say whatever they want but nobody can change that Evenepoel's career start up to his crash is completely unrivaled by anything anyone has ever done in modern cycling. Nobody even comes close. The guy rode guys off his wheel without accelerating in the junior categories, came to the pros and just kept doing it. That is still completely insane to me.

Was the hype overblown? Perhaps, but he did deserve to be more hyped than any youngster I can remember. Seriously, if you compare what Evenepoel did to what Bernal did at his age the hype that seems unreasonable in comparison is Bernal's.

This is not the bursting of a bubble, this is the point where his career hits a crossroad. The question isn't if he was even that good. We saw he was last year already. The question is whether he will be able to keep it together or if he will crack under the pressure now that things have gone so wrong for almost a year.

Good post. Though I gotta say that it actually makes me sad to see stuff written about Evenepoel in past tense.

 

[happytramp]

So fun that we kind of establish that part of the reason why this thread has so many posts are people who are irrationally angry and jealous about the hype Evenepoel gets and yet those people continue to complain about it, making the thread even bigger.

Just like those news articles on Facebook where you'll see tons of comments saying things like "This isn't news!" or a satirical "Well I just bought a nice ham in the supermarket." or "They didn't make an article about me breaking my leg!" or even "What about x? Why are you not writing about x you lousy newspaper? "

Hint: The newspaper did talk about x. Just in a different article.

It's absolutely ridiculous that this is even an issue. If you wanted Pogacar to get more attention then you should start interesting discussions in that thread. Since that doesn't happen it looks more likely that you just want Evenepoel to get less attention in this thread lol.

Almeida's thread is also rapidly closing on in Pogacar perhaps you might want to take the crusade there too.

So wait, now the thread has gone from Hype... To people giving out about the hype... And now people giving out about people giving about the hype?

It's gone to the next level.

 

[Blanco]

Lets just say that he had a very big chance to win that race and everyone who followed him that year probably agrees.

What he did during the Lombardi race was not the point of my message and insulting me doesn't make your point either. The fact is that, based on the numbers, he is the most dominant junior ever and after just a few months as a pro he started displaying that dominance on the pro stage as well up to his crash.

This why the hype about Remco exists, obviously mainly in Belgium, and while its over the top at times it is totally justified.

I'm not saying this trying to insult anybody, and that wasn't my intention by any means, but for me saying that a rider would win a certain race while he crashed 30-40 km from the finish, while not being in significant lead over others, is totally wrong.
Again, my intention was not to insult you, if I did that then I'm sorry, but that's just my opinion on this kind of comments. You're not the first who does this, it happens all the time, and usually the posters are hard core fan boys of the rider in question, and in my opinion they don't look at it objectively.

 

[LesDiablesRouges]

I'm not saying this trying to insult anybody, and that wasn't my intention by any means, but for me saying that a rider would win a certain race while he crashed 30-40 km from the finish, while not being in significant lead over others, is totally wrong.
Again, my intention was not to insult you, if I did that then I'm sorry, but that's just my opinion on this kind of comments. You're not the first who does this, it happens all the time, and usually the posters are hard core fan boys of the rider in question, and in my opinion they don't look at it objectively.

Remco in 2020 pre-crash was on a completely different level. If you are arguing otherwise then you really don’t know what you are talking about.

The only person that could have contested was Fuglsang the eventual winner and Remco had just ridden away from Fuglsang the prior week with 51km solo breakaway.

That’s why people made the deduction that Remco would have been with a strong shout to win Il Lombardia had he had not fallen.

This is the same type of deductive reasoning used to assess the favorites for spring classics or any race for that matter.

How do you think people make killings at the track. They are able to make enhanced predictions using pattern analysis and are able to extract the likely results based on patterns.

 

[Riek s]

I'm not saying this trying to insult anybody, and that wasn't my intention by any means, but for me saying that a rider would win a certain race while he crashed 30-40 km from the finish, while not being in significant lead over others, is totally wrong.
Again, my intention was not to insult you, if I did that then I'm sorry, but that's just my opinion on this kind of comments. You're not the first who does this, it happens all the time, and usually the posters are hard core fan boys of the rider in question, and in my opinion they don't look at it objectively.

I agree you can't say he would have won for sure. There are to many things that can happen in such a race, (like a fall) and tactics is typically one of them. It is not always to strongest that wins, sometimes the winner is the one who escapes at the right time.

But we can agree he would have been a very hot favorite for the win and podium.

 

[Panda Claws]

I agree you can't say he would have won for sure. There are to many things that can happen in such a race, (like a fall) and tactics is typically one of them. It is not always to strongest that wins, sometimes the winner is the one who escapes at the right time.

But we can agree he would have been a very hot favorite for the win and podium.

Actually while many people thought Evenepoel would win Blanco was kind of a prophet. Edit: Sorry for giving everyone a notification about getting quoted lol didn't think about that.

Why did Unibet just gift me a lot of money by having Evenepoel at odds 3?

Most likely scenario for me is some really good climbers kick clear on the Muro Di Sormano and leaving Nibali and Evenepoel to tempo up and limit the gap that Nibali closes with a typical daredevil descent and Remco closes on the early part of the valley road then goes straight to the front and slowly strangles what is left of the lead bunch before leaving them gasping for air 5 kms from the foot of Civiglo signing off on a 25km solo to glory.

I don't think anyone will be able to follow REMCO™ on the Sormano. Winning margin will be less than 2 minutes though since the chasing group will have a couple of demestiques left to keep it below 30 s before Civiglio. But since Remco doesn't slow down it won't matter.

Hoping for a good fight for second.

Here it is

I may sound strange, especially after Burgos and Poland, but I don't think Remco will win...

But I am mostly joking here. I also think that Evenepoel was mostly considered a favorite there. You can say it was a missed opporunity for sure but the race was not at a point where we can say anything like 'Evenepoel would have won'. If only because there was a very very real chance that people would stay glued to his wheel and outsprint him at the end.