https://hansvdw1.wordpress.com/2018/09/ ... -sep-2018/
Traduction (merci à LIYF de CN)
Remco's margin for progression
Nobody wants to be called the Cannibal of Schepdaal. Or the Hungry one from Tongeren or the Piston of Virton. Can the same be said about our brand new world champion time trial at the juniors, and if everything goes according to plan, on the road as well, that is not so certain. Remco Evenepoel (18) and entourage do little to keep a low profile. Why would they, if the closest attacker ends a minute and a half? A bit of euphoria is legitimate.
Remco Evenepoel is the third Cannibal in the rich history of Belgian cycling. Sven Nys, who never got further than the cyclocross and a ninth place at the Olympic Games on the mountain bike, once had the dubious honor to wear the same epithet as the GOAT (greatest of all time), but nobody who dared to call Nys the new Eddy Merckx.
We've seen enough so called new Merckxes in those forty years since Eddy stopped, but none that was called both the new Merckx and the Cannibal. Evenepoel is both and what follows, is an attempt to contextualize it all. Especially to warn the very poor Belgian cycling community, which has been begging for decades for such a super talent that does not end up in the gutter prematurely, to keep its feet on the ground.
Starting with Remco Evenepoel himself. It is incomprehensible that both the union and his upcoming team QuickStep did not first send that boy on a course (mediatraining is implied). A masterclass 'what do you think, but do not say,' came in handy. For example, you do not say: "I'm climbing 5 km per hour faster than the rest." If everyone rides 15 per hour, 5 per hour is a third faster. That seems slightly exaggerated and even if it is the truth, then you do not say that. There is a rule: what Eddy never said about himself (but Frans Verbeeck did say about Merckx), Remco from Schepdaal should not say either.
That people eat it up is understandable. And if he says so, it may also be written down as well. Very different story, of course, if the young man says verifiable things that are demonstrably wrong. For example, that Chris Froome and Tom Boonen would have the same maximum oxygen intake, 82 in particular. The last known data from Froome (tested in 2015 in the GlaxoSmithKline Human Performance Lab) gives 84.6. Boonen was in the neighborhood of the 80.
The watts per kilogram of body weight of the climbing Evenepoel were also in the newspaper. Evenepoel declares he can push 7 watts per kilo and there was then explained that the better Tour climbers push more than 7. There were once two who came out over seven: Marco Pantani and Lance Armstrong on l'Alpe d'Huez, when they were full of EPO. This year, Tom Dumoulin never ran above 5.7 watts and 6.3 is about the physiologically acceptable limit for climbs that last longer than 20 minutes.
Maybe this is where things don't add up and did he push 7 watts/kg for 2 minutes the Berendries. In that case he has a problem, because the shorter the climb, the higher the power. Forget that 7 watt, buy that boy a new power meter please. and send him on course (mediatraining). Make sure he keeps his mouth shut about it.
The fact that Evenepoel is the greatest talent in years that it has produced cycling, is clear and the special / frustrating / fun part is that cycling has not produced that talent at all. Once they have a super talent at the cycling federation, then, like the spearhead of the pros, Greg Van Avermaet, he comes out of football. That story is known: Evenepoel played with Anderlecht, PSV and also KV Mechelen, lost his place for a while and then went to race.
He has been doing that for a year and a half now and he wins everything. A great talent, yes. An exceptionally great talent, yes. A talent that has never been seen? That remains to be seen. Results achieved in the past are a boost, but no guarantee for the future. Evenepoel will become a professional at QuickStep next year and that is the worst thing that could happen to him. Not because of QuickStep, but because he'll turn pro at age eighteen, without having raced one race with the U23, he'll immediately get to ride with the big boys.
The plan was to first let him grow at Axel Merckx for a year and then transfer him, but Team Sky immediately wanted to give it a chance and under pressure from all the offers that came his way, Patrick Lefevere immediately gave him a contract.
His trainer has been Fred Vandervennet for years, a marathon runner who once trained his father and who also guided Remco Evenepoel in his conditional work as a footballer. Vandervennet was already known as a traininganimal as a runner and later developed as a trainer. As far as that aspect is concerned, they have it in order at the Evenepoels.
So the question is not whether he is well supervised and whether he is a talent, but how much progression margin he still has. In other words: how much longer before Remco Evenepoel reaches his ceiling?
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