Should Remco Evenepoel be a One-Day or Stage Racing Specialist?
 

Remco is young. He still has a lot to learn and growing to do as a bike racer. He is in a program that can teach him a lot with a DS who values him. I"m not going to worry about his future direction now, I think he should absorb all he can at Q-S. If he grows to be a 3-week contender, other teams will see it and make him offers, probably big ones that Lefevre will be unwilling to match as he'd rather spend his dough on riders with group finishing power. I'm going to sit back, watch him race and grow and see where it goes from there. Till then I think he is in a very good place.

remco (as the protected rider at this point in his career) seems better suited for one-days or shorter, one week (or less) tours. grand tours
tend to have way too many ways to lose time/importance. not putting it past him to become one of those dozen or so current riders than can realistically
compete for a gt podium spot but not seeing it. winning weeklong tours doesn't really seem to move the needle in the cycling world. i've said before that certain riders
(miguel lopez, tejay, ritchie, dani martinez, etc.) seem better suited for weeklong tours vs 3 week tours. ain't gonna happen but remco would be a helluva
super-domestique. better than seppuku. better than tgh. better than sivakov. better than brandon. better than Jonas (this last one aged well...)

Seems Remco had a lot of weight put on his shoulders, then that horror crash. Would like to see him participate in a GT with the same focus as MvdP had -- have some fun, try for some stages. Try to get the leaders jersey on the first stage if it suits him -- with a prologue or TT -- maybe just go all in classics style.

There's such a continuum through the Ardennes type classics into the short stage races that this is a false choice. So he hasn't finished a Grand Tour or won a cobbled monument yet. He's 22. Wait and see.

I see no reason why Remco can't be a great 3-week stage racer. He's 22 and has tried 1 IIRC, where he was still recovering from a severe injury. People are ruling him out based on an awfully small sample size.

So far, he seems to have issues staying in touch on the long climbs. If this remains the case, he really can’t be a GT contender. Maybe he can get better on these climbs, but, climbing seems to be something you have, or you don’t. Like MVDP, amazing rider, but not a GT guy based on climbing ability.

Just a short decade or two ago, not long after Remco was born, the conventional wisdom was that GC riders didn't reach their peak until mid/late 20s. It takes them a while to season, harden, and get cagey to manage and endure a grand tour.

A few wunderkinds have rocked that apple cart of late but there's still a lot of truth to it.

wow...helluva performance by remco in the klasikoa today. hopefully, we'll see him in la vuelta.

would be great if we didn;t get even a hint of SPOILER in this forum....

yeah...heaven forbid anyone should reffy race results and the logical following discussions at any point in the professional cycling forum. what's your particular cut-off? one day? three days? a week? a year?

news flash...the titanic just sank.

Wait to the next day or start your post with "Spoiler" so those who work can go online and not have their view of the race spoiled. Is that too much to ask?

pulled an existing thread that hadn't been posted to in a few months and didn't even relate an actual result. so people(s) clicked on existing thread when it had been highlighted in "new posts" or
circuitously navigated to sed thread and are miffy? y'all clicked on the existing thread. if you're so disturbed, stay away from professional cycling forum threads until you've caught up with your 3-4 day
or whatever backlog of races. like throwing out "spoiler spoiler spoiler spoiler spoiler" at the beginning of a post in an existing thread is going to placate y'all. really?! it's professional cycling. there are results multiple
times weekly. didn't even post specifics. it would have been different had i posted a new thread regarding the winner of whatever race but that is clearly not the case.

Remco vs Roglic will be a great fight at the Vuelta! I may even pop over the border and watch it live.


https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...e15c1aab6f.png

Scott, I so agree. What an entitled society of people we have these days... If someone is so damn worried about the possibility of seeing a result of a race, stay away from one of the most logical places possible you could be informed. Don't want to get burned? Stay the hell away from the fire!

This. If you click on thread in a forum specifically intended to discuss professional cycling, don't be upset when it discusses what happens in professional cycling.

Yes. It is too much to ask.

As is, apparently, a courtesy snowflake alert when folks are whining about there being information online. I feel triggered.

I'll be on vacation another few days then want to catch up on the Tour de Femmes avec Zwift. Should I expect everyone to embargo van Vleuten stories until it suits me?

I understand why people want this, but I'm not sure how we can come to an agreement here about what constitutes a spoiler. Also, I think that if there are specific races that people *know* have happened and they haven't yet watched, then their own common sense should keep them from opening threads that pretty clearly are likely to include discussion of results.

Not having spoilers in the thread titles is clearly a good rule. But inside threads, it's different.

I guess it's possible that cyclezen was planning on watching the Classico San Sebastian, and didn't know that Evenepoel was going to be there and was one of the favorites, but if he did know, he might have expected that an old thread about Evenepoel, revived just after that race, was going to be about the results of that race.

More to 79pmooney 's point, waiting a day makes more sense in some situations than others. During a grand tour, when there are results piling up each day, waiting a day seems pretty onerous. By the time a day has passed, the events of the next stage may overshadow the previous stage.

On the other hand, writing "Spoiler" in front of a post that has recent results isn't so hard - it seems like a reasonable request. Still, I think if there's a race that has happened already and one is planning to watch it, self-policing what threads one opens is pretty much the best defense against having one's experience spoiled.

the entire professional cycling forum is always a spoiler for someone at some point. always has been, always will be.
pretty sure there is a wwii holdout on a pacific island somewhere that will raise an objection about the tdf's since 1943
at some point (new bf member obvs).
welcome to the 21st century. apply the preparation h cream accordingly and think about staying outta the professional cycling forum.
concerned about (semi-)results/inferences being revealed before you've had your cycling tea and crumpets
in proper accordance with your life priorities? tuck your children into bed late. live a little. the participants here in this forum have done an excellent job at not
posting results or the like in new post titles. one-day races are discussed as are daily stages in stage races. shocker! it's the professional cycling forum.

Its been like this for years and it’s not just cycling

F1, MOTOGP, Indy cars, MX Cycle racing ….

Stay off the threads until I’m up to date.

There aren’t spoilers in the thread titles.

I learned to,stay off of news and sports broadcasts when the local channel in DC spoiled the 1980 Olympics US vs Soviets.

I time shift just about everything

.

quick-step really hasn't embraced the long view...ie...the gc race vs the daily results. good ole patty seems to prefer the daily results in hand
instead of the pipe dream at the end of three weeks. with both remco and alaphilippe doing la vuelta, expecting them to strike out for stage wins vs playing the gc game.
masnada just seems to luck into/back into top ten gc finishes with consistency and others throwing a rod in the last week. sure, remco (or alaphilippe or cavagna) could end up wearing red early on.
how long will the team want to defend it vs just doing their thing after a disappointing tour?

methinx remco could do whatever he wanted but on the team he's currently on...serious gc contender is probably out as a pre-grand tour goal.

Yes.

Is anyone evolving their thought on this topic?

not really. remco has always looked capable of doing anything he wanted-just like wout (mvdp maybe down the road). as much as these guys seem
to do whatever the team says/wants/needs, they clearly have the talent to shine in different disciplines, situations, terrains, et al. depending on the day
or race, they seem to have a little more "flexibility."

if remco wins the vuelta, do i see him focusing mainly on gt's and stage races? no. the young punks (i'll throw pidcock in there as well) seem to prize
being able to do whatever they want-and usually winning or close to it-versus being pigeonholed into just classics/one-days or only road vs mtb/cyclocross.
quick-step w/patty l seemed to be the last of the holdouts but it's evident if he wants to attract/retain these exciting young punks, he's gotta be more open than
his usual my way or the highway methods.

Yes, those young whippersnappers have spearheaded a sea change back to the Merckxian / cannibalistic win-everything era, tearing up the script that ran for a few decades through various incarnations of blue, dark blue, and almost yellow trains.

I see a bit of a shift between posts 24 and 21, but that's more about LeFevre than Evenepoel. Still a few stages for post 3, et al, risks to materialize. And many years ahead for him to do whatever he does.

I wonder if Eddie Eddy (dutifully corrected; shame) will throw him a bone after the wire brushing he's given him in the press a few times over the past year.