This is armchair quarterbacking and not meant to hate on Remco, it’s more admiration for MVDP…..
Not exactly a hot take. I think Remco is clearly a massive talent but in my opinion his mental game is weak. A number of years ago Cycling Tips had an article telling everyone to keep an eye on MVDP because he was likely to be amazing. It was all about how he was killing it in cyclocross along with Wout Van Aert and how if one didn’t win a race it was the other. The thing that stuck out to me at the time was how when Wout didn’t win he came second, if something went bad for Mathieu he fell back though the field and DNFd. He went from that to the guy who doesn’t give up and wins Amstel in the most insane way. The guy who gets dropped in MSR but still fights for a top 10.
Maybe he just grew up but it really feels like his mentality changed. Remco needs some of that. He could really add a lot to races if he wasn’t so fragile.
I think Remco would be much happier as a stage hunter than as a GC contender. It’d let him play to his strengths instead of trying to compensate for his weaknesses. It’d also make races much more entertaining if he was free to follow his instincts instead of a team strategy.
I’m not sure it was always MVDP giving up. It has seemed to me that he has the ability to completely empty himself, even deeper than most pro athletes, but when he does, he explodes and is gone. Thinking, for example, of the 2019 Worlds, and the Flanders sprint he lost to Asgreen. But he does seem to have learned to manage this as it doesn’t seem to happen as much any more.
Remco should have been on a different team all along. I thought if you swapped him 5 years ago onto Jumbo and put Wout in Quickstep, both would have better careers, though the emergence of Jonas would have complicated that equation.
I would love to see what a beefed-up Remco would do in a spring classic’s campaign.
I don’t know if chasing GC in a 3 week tour is where he’s going to find happinness and fulfillment.
I had the same thought abour Bardet the other day. My favorite Bardet era was when he stopped focusing on the Tour, gained a few kg and started to try some classics or chasing stages.
I would hate a talent like Remco’s being wasted on chasing the TDF like so many other riders before him. He has qualities that Viggo and Pog don’t have, and I’m not convinced a grand tour is where those qualities can shine at their brightest.
I doubt it was giving up all the time but the result way back then very often seemed predictable. MVDP takes the early lead and never gives it up while Wout goes after him until the end OR things don’t go his way and it all falls apart. I’ve never followed cyclocross closely so that was just my general impression.
I agree that Remco would probably have been better off on another team from the start but I’m not sure there was ever a possibility of him not being pushed to grand tours.
Wout is a whole other topic. I’d love more for him but what he’s done is still amazing. An incredible teammate with giant wins of his own
Yeah 100% on Wout. It won’t be obvious when you just read his palmares but his his 2022 TdF was one of the most insane performances I’ve ever seen from a cyclist. If he never wins another race he’ll still be a legend to me.
I just don’t have the same regard for Pog, MvDP, etc. and I think it’s down to how hard Wout works when he’s on domestique duty.
The guy wins almost every TT he enters. The only reason why he doesn’t appear to be as “competitive” is because race organizers are building parcours that suit a drama that cycling fans love to see but imho becoming too stale; races that are directly built for Tadej or Jonas.
Give Remco some more time to develop and others to burnout. If you start to see stage races that are flatter and have longer TT’s, the field strength will flatten substantially at the top end. But rn the fans want to see Tadej / Jonas smash on everyone else, so Remco looks “fragile”.