Akuryo said:
Zinoviev Letter said:
GuyIncognito said:
jaylew said:
It's going to be fun watching Gaviria v Ewan for the next decade.
Ewan said last week he knows he'll never beat everyone in a flat sprint, he doesn't have the top speed for that. Says that even sprinting flat out in the slipstream of someone like Greipel or Kittel he still loses ground, so forget about ever coming around them.
He explained he'll try to do the same as Matthews, focus on classics and sprints that are slightly uphill or at the end of selective stages. He was better than Matthews at that as a youth and also reasonable in the time trial.
Ewan is 21. Nobody has any idea of what the upper limits of his potential are in flat sprints. Including him. He is completely right to note that the top three are simply faster than him at the moment. But he is faster than any of them were at 21.
Well, the same things where said about Sagan, too. And now people have to realize that he will never beat the likes of Kittel, Cav or Greipel in a flat finish. He'll always get second because of smart following. There's no shame in that, cause he can do a lot of other things. Same goes for Ewan. And I think it is good that he knows that already so he can focus on the things where he really excells at.
Exactly that was said about Sagan because exactly that was true of Sagan. You can't tell how much a "child" super talent will improve in a particular specialty when they are still a very young kid. They might be very early developers who aren't going to get much better, or they could be a dominant champion in waiting. We can't know from the outside and, crucially, they can't know either.
Ewan doesn't "know already" what the upper limit of his development as a field sprinter is. He has assumptions already, based on his experience as a child prodigy, which may or may not turn out to be justified. The same was true of Sagan. Now that Sagan is a bit older, where he fits in as a sprinter has been clarified by experience and physical development and it turns out he isn't the next Cavendish or Kittel. But that was not clear when he was a kid, and those who guessed "right" were guessing just as much as those who guessed "wrong".
If you really could tell how talented kids will develop as adults, the sport would be a lot more predictable.
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