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

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It is very difficult to "objectively" compare the individual rider’s performances of Vingegaard’s tour win and Remco’s Vuelta win.
The boundary conditions are totally different:
-The level in the tour de France is much higher than that of the Vuelta.
-Jumbo GT team is of a much higher level than Quickstep’s GT team:
On the one hand, while defending the red jersey, Remco was isolated in more than a handful of demanding finals (=physically and mentally draining).
On the other hand Vingegaard could chill out in Van Aert’s back pocket for a big part of the stages and in other stages he was e.g. catapulted towards the top of the Granon by a Roglic, Van Aert two stage missile (epic Team Jumbo performance).

The best I can come up with to objectify this, is with the following thought experiment.
Rewind the Vuelta until the start of the “Elche - Alicante time trial” and, in the Quick-step team, replace Remco with Vingegaard…
Press play and see who will win this Vuelta.

I’m not sure I would rate Vingegaard’s chances to win this Vuelta as high as Remco’s.
All of this just to make a completely subjective assessment without any evidence? I’ll go too: I think Vingegaard from the Tour would have destroyed this Vuelta if swapped in for Remco.
 
All of this just to make a completely subjective assessment without any evidence? I’ll go too: I think Vingegaard from the Tour would have destroyed this Vuelta if swapped in for Remco.
But you have to consider the slot, team strength etc. You discount the fact that at the Tour everything is at its highest. No way we see the same Vingegaard at the Tour at the Vuelta, with the same team, in the same condition. Not happening and I'll venture to say won't happen again either.
 
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A two weeks break after la Vuelta and Remco would have won that ITT by some margin
Can't win this TT by a huge margin cornering like Evenepoel did.

And a 2nd week just may make form taper off even more.

In the Olympics, the ITT is after the road race, and at the Olympics, the Tour de France riders all sucked at the ITT while doing well while dominating the road race.

In top form he does win this, but then this is without Van Aert, and Ganna throwing a big stinker.
 
Can't win this TT by a huge margin cornering like Evenepoel did.

And a 2nd week just may make form taper off even more.

In the Olympics, the ITT is after the road race, and at the Olympics, the Tour de France riders all sucked at the ITT while doing well while dominating the road race.

In top form he does win this, but then this is without Van Aert, and Ganna throwing a big stinker.



Guess preparation would and could have been a lot better in that case though. Foss is pretty much the perfect example
 
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and then to cap off the first half of the Vuelta he crushed all GC opposition in a short ITT by larger amounts than anyone really expected.

It's this kind of post that makes the thread so hilarious. The constant rewriting of history. He pretty much won the Vuelta - ITT with the expected results. Some did better than expected, Lopez, some worse, Ayuso, Almeida, Arensman. But vs Mas was pretty much the expected result, if anything very very slightly less (looked like much less for a while, then Mas ran out of energy). Roglic 30"-1' could be expected, closer to 30", was closer to 1', so there he won slightly more than could be expected but certainly nothing sensational considering Roglic's way to the Vuelta at least.
 
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His worst TT result of the year.
He did look disappointed on the podium. At any rate, if cornering was an issue, with all those that were on the course, it may well have cost him 6, 7, 8 secs and who knows, perhaps more, Whereas Kung was impecable through the corners and so was Foss evidently, although there wasn't much coverage of him to see.
 
It's this kind of post that makes the thread so hilarious. The constant rewriting of history. He pretty much won the Vuelta - ITT with the expected results. Some did better than expected, Lopez, some worse, Ayuso, Almeida, Arensman. But vs Mas was pretty much the expected result, if anything very very slightly less (looked like much less for a while, then Mas ran out of energy). Roglic 30"-1' could be expected, closer to 30", was closer to 1', so there he won slightly more than could be expected but certainly nothing sensational considering Roglic's way to the Vuelta at least.
That's a fair assessment, although Roglic's perfomance on stage 4 suggested he was in top shape, even if he was slightly off on the first mountain stages.
 
He did look disappointed on the podium. At any rate, if cornering was an issue, with all those that were on the course, it may well have cost him 6, 7, 8 secs and who knows, perhaps more, Whereas Kung was impecable through the corners and so was Foss evidently, although there wasn't much coverage of him to see.
He looked disappointed after the finish when he heard who won and by what margin. He did his best power output ever, but there were so many corners so he was fresher on the straights, which is normal. With fewer corners he could be closer or won, he said afterwards. But no excuses with Vuelta or so. The wind was a lot more in the 2nd lap.
 
That's a fair assessment, although Roglic's perfomance on stage 4 suggested he was in top shape, even if he was slightly off on the first mountain stages.
Stage 4 is Roglič's favourite terrain and if he didn't win there that would mean he's in terrible shape. I think many stages in this Vuelta suggest that Roglič was not in top shape that we were used to in the last couple of years, at least not in the first part of the Vuelta. If nothing else, getting dropped by Mas on more than one occasion is quite an indication. Not to say that Roglič in top shape would beat Remco in TT - but he would be closer that he was IMO.
 
H will have indeed been pissed. if his power output was that high, which means if he cornered poorly he has every reason to be frustrated with himself. Although its better to finish third than crash out going for the win.

He also didn't overtake a rider, unlike Küng and Foss.

It wouldn't have given him 10 seconds, but between that and the cornering, there probably are 10 seconds to find.
 
It was an ITT where technical details such as cornering speed mattered a lot. I had the impression that Remco took more margin than Kung and Foss. There was little opportunity to play the aero game. What I don't understand is WVA's absence? This could have been his title.

Overall I conclude that it is again a great performance of Remco. His consistency in getting time trials podiums is really remarkeable.
 
It was an ITT where technical details such as cornering speed mattered a lot. I had the impression that Remco took more margin than Kung and Foss. There was little opportunity to play the aero game. What I don't understand is WVA's absence? This could have been his title.

Overall I conclude that it is again a great performance of Remco. His consistency in getting time trials podiums is really remarkeable.
With these corners even Mathieu could do well here, if prepared.
 
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He also didn't overtake a rider, unlike Küng and Foss.

It wouldn't have given him 10 seconds, but between that and the cornering, there probably are 10 seconds to find.
In case the cornering was indeed a problem, then you could well lose more than 10 seconds over the course of the TT. Taking a high speed corner too wide, or slow down too much, going into the corner at less than optimal speed and having to make up for that coming out of the corner, will cost you 10 meters or more. You start losing distance by braking too soon/hard, you lose distance by a less than ideal trajectory, and you lose distance coming out of the corner too slow and it will take longer to get back to top speed.

Though we did see Evenepoel take some corners less than great, i don't think we got to follow him closely enough to be able to determine whether this was an issue throughout the race. But if it was, then he could certainly have lost the race there.

EDIT: If you look at this strava Segment, you can see he loses a full 2 seconds in just the last corner to Bissegger, who takes the actual corner almost 10kmh faster. So it does look like he did indeed lose this in the technical sections of the course.
 
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Based on his performance today in the ITT, I expect a lot of him on Sunday. I don't see them being able to drop him, but also not sure he's able to drop others, and he won't win the sprint.

Belgium has to decide if they want to make it really difficult with high pace all day, which is bad for Wout, but better for Remco.
 

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