Should be an interesting clash with Tobias Johanneson the current winner of L’Avenir in the latters home race
Johanneson is actually older than Evenepoel, Skjelmose, Van Wilder, Arensman... He pretty much followed the example of his countryman Foss: take the big U23 win in your final year against b-tier opposition and guys 3 years younger than you, because all the others have already turned pro by then. I'd wait a bit before expecting a clash.
Fantastic and deserved win for Remco, which by now has as many Monument wins as his colleagues JA and WvA. It was possibly gifted in some ways, but that should not take away any merit from it. He attacked when it best suited him, and he fought it all the way to the finish line in impressive form. We can all wonder what would have happened if WvA hadn't had Covid, if Poga was there if the big crash hadn't happened, but hats off to the young Belgian.
Also, we've discussed his race schedule, training and weight ad eternum, but his good results in Itzulia and now the win in LBL vindicates his and QS's decisions. He also showed that he can time his performances, as I don't think that his quiet LFW was accidental, but rather a lay low performance in order to guarantee the best legs possible for the bigger race.
For ToN and TdS I hope that he approaches them in a conservative manner, before the summer and Vuelta - if he wants to go for GC he needs to look at the next races only as a build up to it.
Gifted in some ways? Ok, i'll play. Last year's winner of San Sebastian was in his wheel. Now, i won't argue that Powless is of the caliber of Pogacar or Van der Poel, but he wasn't even able to stay in his wheel for 20 seconds. As you can see on the footage, immediately after the attack, the group responded. Sure, there was a 15 meter gap, but as soon as they saw he had attacked, they went all out. Fuglsang knows Evenepoel from Poland 2020 and went all out trying to bridge. He got to Powless' wheel, but by that time Evenepoel had gone. Right behind Fuglsang the Bahrain train had already formed and they were racing. Van Aert in a post-race interview said the pace was relentless. Now it turns out it was the fastest edition in a long time while the final had been raced into a headwind. By the time they reached Roche aux Faucons, one of the pre-race favorites, Mohoric, a patented hilly expert and rouleur (and according to some, a better version of Evenepoel), was out for the count. The other favorites in the meanwhile were saving their energy since they were riding 20km into a headwind. Nobody wanted to go earlier because they couldn't. Nobody bridged to Evenepoel because they couldn't. On Roche aux Faucons we had all out efforts by Vlasov, Teuns and someone else, i forget who. They did this on the 2nd part of the climb because they knew they would not be able to sustain that effort all the way up. Van Aert, Fuglsang, Powless, Mas (i think it was)... all got dropped, which goes to show the other guys weren't messing around. They reduced the gap to around 23s (the GPS was always 5s down on real time), a group of 3 riders had formed so they had all the incentive in the world to keep riding. Then the others managed to get back and the chase stalled as soon as even Van Aert got back. By that time Vlasov had attacked and he didn't get an inch closer, in fact as soon as he attacked he kept losing time to Evenepoel.
So apart from 2 short instances where the chase stalled briefly, which is nothing but normal race dynamics, i find it hard to see how this was gifted. The guy attacked into a headwind with 30k to go, solo. The other rivals waited as long as they could saving energy by having teammates do the job for them. As soon as they did put their cards on the table, they managed to take 16s out of his 39s lead (handclocked at the bridge before Roche aux Faucons), and one of the pre-race favorites had by that time gone overboard due to having done much of the work in the chase. Another pre-race favorite right after RaF attacked and did nothing but lose time.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram