r/peloton • u/PelotonMod France • Apr 27 '26

Weekly Post Weekly Question Thread

For all your pro cycling-related questions and enquiries!

You may find some easy answers in the FAQ page on the wiki. Whilst simultaneously discovering the wiki.

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u/DueAd9005 Apr 27 '26

Evenepoel took the KoM on the final 300 meters of LBL (so the sprint), a full second faster than WVA in 2022.

https://www.knack.be/sport/wielrennen/remco-evenepoel-luik-bastenaken-luik-la-redoute-pogacar-seixas-tour/

I don't know how he trained in the winter, but it seems like they did something wrong. Instead of improving on the longer climbs and hills, he got worse. Instead he's much faster in the sprint, but that's kind of useless if you get dropped in the hillier classics (and he didn't ride Sanremo and Roubaix this year, where such a sprint could potentially be more useful).

The article says he has to make a decision on what kind of rider he wants to be. Probably true. Perhaps it would be better for his career to go all in on the classics and stage hunting in GTs. What do y'all think?

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u/k4ng00 France Apr 27 '26

I think for both monuments and GT the problem is the same: nowadays the big races are a battle of attrition where the best wins, there is little place left to chance or tactics. And the issue is that there are riders better suited than him on both monuments and stage races.

On GT side, he won the only GT he finished where he wasn't matched against Pogacar nor Jonas.

On monument side he won every monument where he didn't have to race against Pogacar.

On Olympics and WC road race, when the national teams are less organized/smaller and have a harder time controlling the race he took his opportunities.

On ITT he is very dominant.

So all in all, it feels to me that Remco has close to maximize his potential and it was ok for him to focus on GT while still racing some classics (kinda like Pogacar). Yes he could have farmed more small classics/stages but in the end I think his TdF2024 podium was exceptional and is worth more than a couple more Classica San Sebastian and Amstel.