The UCI agreed to the demand of race organisers. About time given there’s less then 40 days until the Giro where Q36.5, Tudor, VF-Bardiani-Faizanè and Polti-Malta will start. Some teams were assuming the news but were still unsure until yesterday lunchtime.
It feels a bit like Tudor have been sponsoring the Giro – see the roadside hoardings, the official timer branding – and ended up with the wildcard when they really want to go to the Tour. But that’s done too as they’ll start the Tour alongside Uno-X and Total Energies. For the Tour organisers the dilemma is solved, although the idea Total might not survive exclusion is one thing but if the sponsor switches its funding to to Ineos then the French squad may not be back in 2026 anyway.
You can ask what the point of relegation is if teams get bailed out with an extra wildcard. It’s a valid point but it’s as we’ve seen with this route it leaves teams having to wait until the end of March to see if they get any good news, plus only one team gets saved. Any team with an alternative, like scoring points, is best served by this route.
Team sizes were reduced for 2017 and there was talk of safety as the press release from 2016 above suggests… but that was probably cover and it was mainly an idea to stop the big teams dominating the races, think Sky, Astana and Tinkoff. Big teams still dominate and the safety element is probably marginal, a peloton of 176 versus 183. The one thing that is still needed is “animation”, that on a day when nobody wants to attack at least someone from Total or Polti will draw the short straw and go up the road, if only to give TV producers two scenes to alternate between before the inevitable sprint finish.
Revised rules and derogations aside, onto the promotion and relegation battle and it’s an important week as Cofidis overtakes Picnic-PostNL. The Dutch team is now the first at risk from relegation, sitting in 18th place, above the red line in the chart above. But it’s all very close.
Look at the chart above and you can see the progression this season and Uno-X are on the up too. If they could continue this momentum then they could be promotion candidates. This could create a double battle with them and XDS-Astana wanting into the World Tour; therefore two teams face relegation. So any satisfaction chez Cofidis in overtaking Picnic could be shortlived. Lots of ifs here but you can see this how this would take shape.
For Arkéa-B&B Hotels relegation now looks like good news as to be relegated in 2026 would mean they still exist, there should be news on the team’s future in the coming weeks.
Jakobsen out
One piece of the puzzle for PicNic-PostNL’s woes is that Fabio Jakobsen has “flow limitation in the iliac artery in both of his legs” and is heading for surgery. This might explain some of the issues he’s had this year but the team said he’d put in lots of work over the winter and it was only recently that the diagnosis came about, so it not explain his lack of results last year.
Some riders recover fully from this surgery, others less so. While this can be discovered after feelings on the bike of a lack of power, it can also be diagnosed in part by measuring blood pressure at the ankles and wrists and lower readings for the ankles gives a clue to reduced flow in the legs; several teams check for this.
Off the track
The UCI and Warner Brothers have pulled the plug on the “Champions League” track format. This blog doesn’t cover track cycling much but one observation here is that track has long been boosted by big names from the road, the crowds have come to see those made famous in the Tour de France rather than the indoor specialists. The UCI’s format was light on the champions known to the public and more reserved for Olympians. There’s the Catch-22 scenario where track riders struggle to get noticed outside of the Olympics of course and will do so even more now, but audiences might have been bigger if the likes of Jonathan Milan, Jasper Philipsen, Tom Pidcock or other names were involved. Alas.
Quintana medic verdict
The verdict for Doctor Fredy Gonzales is due tomorrow in France. He’s the medic hired by Nairo Quintana for the 2020 Tour de France where the team was raided by the police and various items were found, including needles, pouches of saline and more, last year’s blog post Gonzalez Goes To Trial, Questions For Quintana set out more details. The trial concluded last month, the judge will announce their deliberations tomorrow. Regardless of the criminal outcome, it also presented the potential anti-doping aspect as regardless of the verdict, some of the details suggest the possibility of an anti-doping case, whether a breach of the UCI’s “no needles” policy, or infusing more than just 100ml of saline can be a breach of the WADA Code (banned method M2.2).
Wout van Aert got pummelled in the Flemish media last weekend. The cartoon above by Marec in Nieuwsblad from the weekend the clocks went forward in Europe reads “one hour less of lying awake” says plenty. Van Aert he only flew back from altitude two days before the GP E3 and there’s always an adjust period on return so even if his time in Tenerife went perfectly we were not going to see the best of him, we’ll see more in tomorrow’s Dwars Door Vlaanderen. This doesn’t make things any easier for Van Aert though who has given himself just two Sundays to shine, one of which is notorious for mishaps. All while his team are looking weaker and this has been a theme in the classics so far: no team is kicking sand in the face of rivals, instead results have been defined by strongmen.
More Ineos headaches
To strongmen of a different kind and President Trump’s promised but still unspecified auto import tariffs in the US has a cycling connection as the Ineos Grenadier model has sold about 20,000 units worldwide, of which a third have been in the US according to the Financial Times. This makes the US Ineos’s biggest market by far. So a significant tax in the largest market is likely to dent the sales of Ineos’s automotive division. But remember the cycling team is a hobby project for James Ratcliffe and doesn’t have to meet financial or marketing criteria so if car sales crater the team can ride on if this is what Ratcliffe wants. Besides the team actually uses Mercedes vehicles.
Cheapo energy bars
From billionaires to cheapo money-saving tips now and if you’re looking at the price of energy gels and bars these days then try mixing some milled oats (60%), pitted dates (30%) and peanut butter (5-10%) in a food processor until it forms a paste and you can add salt, bicarb, any extras like bananas. Then put it onto a tray and spread to form a large block and leave it in the fridge overnight. Cut up into bar-shaped sizes to use and store the surplus in the freezer.
Finally no April Fools gag here today, see last year’s “Tour of Flanders Acquired by Saudi Investors” piece if you want one as it’s still relevant with the One Cycling project. The UCI is saying if it happens it has to happen under UCI rules and be subject to input from the UCI and others, conditions which all make it harder to happen… and that’s no joke.
Pitted dates and peanut butter I´m familiar with (and need not go further than the neighbourhood store to find them), but what are milled oats?
And why can´t I used rolled oats – the kind you can cook porridge in 2 minutes with – instead?
The very same thing, the flakes.
They are rolled by milling?
Ineos has more to worry about than slow selling cars. Breaking the sponsorship deal with the All Blacks was the perfect indication of just how vulnerable the entire edifice is right now. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/feb/15/chemicals-cars-man-utd-jim-ratcliffe-ineos
That’s been covered here before, in fact the last “Tuesday Shorts” post along with more like F1, soccer etc. Today’s news is more to show the specific Grenadier angle involved here. Ratcliffe is already facing rising energy and interest rates, now another headwind… but remains prodigiously wealthy.
Mads Pedersen played it out perfectly à la MvdP, but his team was extremely solid behind and had a role in making it pretty much tactically impossible to organise a decent chase, which might have worked better with a smaller, stronger, cooperative group.
Lidl looks like they might also be able to step up into the “superteam”category, as RBH, although neither appear as shocking as UAE and Jumbo did in previous seasons.
It still looked a lot like the Mads Pedersen show, although supported by his team and Milan did make the podium too. I thought the team was really instrumental in his win last year with Milan on the attack on the “plugstreets”.
Just when you thought it was safe to watch a bike race… Pedersen has to go and join in the long range attack club. Where has this come from?! Why is every major bike race an individual exhibition these days? Have the basic rules of physics changed? Is slipstreaming no longer possible?! Or are big name riders just more ballsy now? Like, could Cancellara have done this but just chose not to? Were riders in the past too self conscious of blatantly doping, or too afraid of being accused of it?!
+1
I am also tired of long range solo attacks. It’s like chasers are giving up instantly and decide to settle for battling for second place.
I think Cancellera did do it? A least a few times? But I take the point.
I like the long range solo attacks, though it’s even better when two or three get away. I think it injects a bit of romanticism into the race – the lone protagonist battling the themselves, the road, and the chasing pack. Ok, so in typical cases involving Pog, Remco et al, the pack can be a too far back to be considered chasers. But not always, and the vs. themselves and road element still stands.
And could be that this was always possible. Its emperor’s new clothes – the strongest rider is strongest 50k out or 3k out, so why not ride? It just needed to be pointed out by a few key results from riders bold enough to try?
One other final theory. Tactics change over time, adapting to defeat current orthodoxies. Sprint and mountain trains, with their set roles, are defeated by daring riders who break the rules and confound those who thought they were unbreakable. In time the pendulum will swing back, the might of team destroying the free will of our individualist heroes.
It’s undeniable though, that if the chasers organise themselves into a disciplined TTT mode, in most cases they would catch even Remco or Pogačar.
And we all know the difficulties of doing that, mind games and not wanting to sacrifice your strength, not taking a proper pull, etc.
But it’s happening so often nowadays that you’d hope for some new thinking about these defensive tactics.
After all, it’s your only chance of winning the race in a situation like that.
If it was still the 1940s, and we were just reading about it then maybe I’d take your point. But we have to watch it.
I think part of the problem, certainly in flatter races like G-W is sprint trains. The teams are so focused on them, and presumably the sprinters so reliant on them (at least mentally), that their tactics focus on preserving them as long as possible, at the expense of actually chasing. In G-W for far too long Quick Step had I think Lampaert chasing on his own, while 3 team mates sat and watched. They won the sprint, but it was worth nothing.
We can be reasonably sure Pogacar and MvdP will produce a race on Sunday, but god help us if either of them can’t start for some reason.
@Richard S – It seems like you answered your own question. These super long-range attacks have failed the vast majority of the time, certainly in the recent history that I’ve been following pro cycling. Teams that are reliant on sprint trains know they need to keep their powder dry, and even teams who don’t need a sprint train know that chasing quixotic, long solo attacks is usually unnecessary. It’s something of a ‘prisoner’s dilemma’ problem.
I think this tactic only works for a very few riders, and only when it’s unexpected. So before you despair, let’s see if it continues.
Improvements in nutrition makes it less likely that the solo rider will bonk. This was a serious problem in the past; I can remember Cancellara bonking in Flanders after breaking away from the peloton early.
Yes, quality but also quantity, in terms of energy drinks, gels and bars. It’s one factor why racing is more intense, everyone has more energy at the end of a race.
It was only a decade ago that the likes of Adam Hansen were making a thing out of trying not to eat much during a ride and trying to train the body to metabolise fat better. Unthinkable now.
A pro out training almost looks like they are going bikepacking with a bar bag and increasingly a frame or top tube bag as well to carry the supplies for a ride.
I’m pretty sure Sagan outsprinted Dililer the year he won Roubaix, Flanders was his big solo ride. Maybe modern riders use Sagans track record at Milan Sanremo as evidence as why not to leave it to a sprint. Van Aert cramping up and losing a race he had no way of losing might convince him too!
All excellent points above by JV, Björn and you. Cancellara went very long (well over 30 kms) for a couple of his victories, but I think that anyway a good share of his triumphs in one-day races came from 15-20 kms solo attacks, especially before the last part of his career, after 2013, when he trained his sprint and relied more on it. Bettini also used to attack from the distance, although of course most of the times he didn’t go alone, somebody else got on his wheel, then he could win the sprint. We all remember how Gilbert finally brought home his cobbled Monuments. Even Boonen, who didn’t need it, enjoyed some long range solo raid. Same for Terpstra, who really needed it, instead.
So, it’s a lot of what you say above, plus the general perception effect (both among spectators and in the peloton, making it a self-fulfilljng prophecy) being magnified by the mere presence of Pogi’s and MvdP’s wins. Take ’em away and the rest fit in a more normal frequency pattern. But those two riders are clearly, ahem, not normal. MvdP might be in the Boonen/Cancellara category, but Pogi is even above.
Think women cycling just a few seasons back. In the case of women, we had sort of a reversed process, hence you can’t say that what we see happening depends on “tech”, be it bikes, food, pharma or whatever, or the same would apply among women. Better said, those factors are at work, no doubt, but the main one is probably *the peloton’s behaviour* meant as a complex stratification of capabilities, attitudes, expectations etc.
And it’s not the same in each and every race, either. I checked some power files from Sanremo separated by 10 years and you notice how the race is now ridden more slowly in the first third and much faster in the last one. OTOH, many cobbled Classics are now raced at full speed from scratch for 60 to 90 minutes at least, or even with no manifest drop in intensity, but then the average goes down when compared to the past in the last hour or so – obviously, as in the (not distant) past the race was kept sleeping often until 50 kms to go. Which meant that escaping with nobody on your wheel was a far harder feat. Just check how many athletes are still in the main “peloton” at 60 to go… nowadays a stron selection has already happened, not as much, say, 15 years ago.
Finally, I have a conjecture, much unproven, about the current tactical-strategical skills of both most riders and DSs not being precisely the best ever. Not only in the single race, but also in the management of a whole campaign.
Just have a look at QS. They will probably need cooperation to bring it down to a sprint for Merlier, or Magnier in the future. Not a great option, but it’s what they put on the ground. Is anyone going to help after Gand? For a mere 2nd place?! Defending they were “happy”? It’s so bad that even if you have a man in the break and he doesn’t pull “cause we got Merlier back”, the rest might not accept it, as QS aren’t working back there, either. Just a basic “case study” but it happens all the time. Intelligent TV let you see that, as it happened on Montjüic for Rogla’s victory. Commenters were watching and sort of rolling their eyes as they immediately said (live) that, riding that way in the chase, nobody was catching him, despite being only some 20 secs for 20 kms.
Hadn’t read John’s, whom I agree with, not that I had left that out from the list on purpose. May I add, following up on the notes below, that, in fact, just a few years ago riders still ate real food in the first part of a race, which implied a wholly different racing style. It was a serious bottleneck, even riders with a natural gift for long raids faced serious issues, say Pantani when he went on a lot of gels to keep high intensity from the beginning and for long in his last ever TDF stage. What Inrng observes re: Hansen was also true for Nibali who had a natural propension for that. He’d barely fit in today’s cycling. OTOH, voices in the air whisper that the likes of Dumoulin and Aru saw their careers shortened by the first oh-not-so-very-effective experiments of the “new wave”.
Sagan’s Paris-Roubaix win was also with a monster long-range solo attack. He caught another pair of riders, and one stuck with him for a while, but then he was solo again to the end (if my often faulty memory is not failing me again). And that wasn’t the only solo attack Sagan has had I think.
Lizie Armistead’s / Deignan’s Paris-Roubaix win also was a very long range solo – 80km, FWIW.
I enjoyed Roglic’s romp as chasers would claw back 10 seconds or so on the climb but then loose time on the way down. Most of his 20 second advantage came from the descent as well … even if it wasn’t downhill all the way.
You can buy large bags of maltodextrin and fructose powder fairly cheaply from a number of sources. There are various opinions on the optimal ratio to mix them up in – some well-known gel makers use 2:1. If you add about the same, or a little bit more, volume of water as the power mix, you’ll get a gel. Alternatively, add 30 to 60g to a bottle of water, depending on how many bottles you take per hour.
You also want electrolytes. Just salt and sodium bicarb only provides sodium. Buy some “Reduced Sodium” or “LoSalt” salt from your supermarket – salt where 40% to 60% of the sodium chloride has been replaced with potassium chloride, thus providing both Na and K. Bear in mind that you are getting Na from *both* the sodium bicarbonate and the salt! Perhaps a small pinch of salt per hour probably – depends on how much you sweat, and your blood pressure. The bicarbonate you need to experiment with (bearing in mind it’s a source of sodium, in addition to the bicarbonate anion). Maybe 1/2 to 1 tsp per hour?
You can also buy citric acid powder (or “monohydrate citric acid”) from supermarkets and food stores. If you mix this in a 1.2g of citric acid to 1g of sodium bicarbonate ratio (or 1.6 : 1 tsps by volume), you will get CO2, sodium and citrate. Citrate being part of the Krebs cycle that produces ATP to power your cells. You probably want some bicarbonate unreacted though, so go for maybe half or less of the citric acid – it has a strong taste too obviously!
You can make your own energy drink/gel powder for a fraction of the price of the branded stuff. It’s all commodity ingredients available at many nutrition shops (maltodextrin and fructose in bulk), supermarkets and food stores!
All useful suggestions. Tried for one paragraph above to keep it as simple as possible but people can go in different directions, and no baking required so it’s even cheaper.
If the paste is too dry and thick to spread you can add more peanut butter, or water, syrup or honey. Experiment and it seems to work.
I loved the spirit of the suggestions, both the “make it yourself not buy” aspect and sticking to essential basic ingredients, but, as a curiosity, why not simply real food, like, banane & panini? Very long raids, I guess, or the occasional performance-oriented ride? Plus, the decline of rural areas where you can’t anymore just stop and buy something decent, I have to assume, as several references on that have been appearing on this blog and commentaries. Luckily enough, in most rural areas where I ride you still have great options, but I suppose that’s not the general situation.
For an amateur rider, I agree it makes sense to eat real food. A banana, some panini, and even a cake and some sweets. Anything that provides some calories and is easy to digest. Most people won’t be expending enough energy to need much more. Also you will need some salts and water. And there is nothing wrong with stopping somewhere for a few moments to eat your food, or making a cafe stop.
The professionals can’t stop during a race, and they will be burning huge amounts of energy since they ride much faster. They need lots of calories without much fibre. Hence for them, energy bars are the way to go.
Yeah, definitely use real food too. Especially for long rides.
For more intense rides – e.g. up to 4 hour races – and for the later stages of long races, you will need gels and sugary liquids though (if you want to avoid large performance drops). The exact balance of complex food to gels/sugary drinks for different kinds of rides, and how to fuel is a complex topic, and not addressed here. 😉 You need to research that for yourself.
Yeah, personally I’m still in that new part of my life – now not so new, but ain’t end too soon, I suspect – when the occasional “long ride” (inverted commas sorely needed) is a total 2-3 hrs and the typical “training week” (ditto) is 2x 1-hr rides. In fact, I’m adamhansening (who’d say that…), i.e., as I typically don’t take any food or water, of course, then I tend to avoid in “longer” rides, also. I was wondering out of curiosity. But never forget that a “panino al salame” is very good for nitrites and nitrates, too, or at least that’s what good ol’ Ferrari defended 😛
Bananas are nice but a lot of space in a pocket for not so much energy.
You can buy little bottles of concentrated flavourings at baking stores / online. The kind of thing where a _tiny_ drop can flavour almost a whole bottle of liquid. Blueberry, vanilla, raspberry, etc. So you can make a whole bunch of different flavour gels. 😉
There are now little re-useable squeezee packs available for putting your gels in. Probably a lot better for the environment (especially if you make your own gel, and aren’t transferring from small retail gel packs), and easier to use on the bike – grab, suck, put back in pocket.
I’ve been using little squeezee condiment bottles, meant for ketchup/whatever on the dinner table – bought them before the sports specific, re-useable gel squeeze bags were a thing.
Last week, I saw a Grenadier on the road here in the US and had a little chuckle. Ten years after first hearing the name — and there it was. I don’t want to offend anyone here in this community, but I found it underwhelming.
It’s a specialist car, for enthusiasts looking for something without wanting a Toyota Landcruiser or a Range Rover / Land Rover… not the usual demographic to reach in pro cycling.
Ineos Grenadiers (the cycling team) had an Ineos Grenadier (car) for team support duties at the Tour Down Under this year, and I got to have a good look between laps when I was on a traffic marshal point in the feed zone.
I really can’t work out what it’s for. The bottom half looks reasonably good for off-road work, but the body is oddly narrow and the interior very cramped for a large 4×4, and it’s not well equipped for taking stuff that you would want to take on an off-road camping trip.
It would have been dragged over to Adelaide from somewhere no closer than Melbourne (I bet it was not the most enjoyable drive on the highway) as the car dealership group who had the Adelaide Ineos dealership had returned their licence to Ineos Automotive in the middle of 2024.
So far as that week’s duties of shuttling between feed zones went (no racks on top for bikes for that one) the Hyundai fleet supplied by the race organisation and the sleek Peugeot used by Groupama-FDJ looked to be far better choices – including for potential shortcuts on gravel roads.
I find it underwhelming, too, even if I only saw photos… but, hey, just check the one above: it fits abundantly within the parking lines, that’s not a good starting point for a true man’s big car. Yeah, I guess that being Germany they took into account X7 and GLS when drawing the parking lot, but, heck, in this time and age you need to show the world your need for lebensraum, be it in Greenland or Taiwan.
I’ve been out in one, and I thought it was awesome, if niche. The Defender has been tarted-up to become the wealthy school run car du jour, so it’s nice to see the Grenadier pick up the batton for a rugged and abusable truck.
Did the doors stayed closed?
I am forever a Van Aert fanboy. And I will die on the hill of “Without that puncture in Paris-Roubaix 2023 he would have won” and many similar cases of bad luck, like last year’s crash.
For this year I understand that he is peaking later, and I really want to believe that all is just planned really well – BUT. BUT. I have never seen Van Aert so poorly positioned before the critical points before. I see MVDP and Pedersen in the top5 onto the hellingen, but it’s like Van Aert is just 10-15 places off every time. One thing is form ON the hellingen, another thing is getting to them first.
Good point, I had noticed the same. But the run in towards the walls also requires legs, plus you need attitude and some risk taking. More and more of the latter when the former are lacking a bit. Perhaps Wout didn’t want a repeat of last year. If it’s a deliberate decision, fine, if it’s psychological it might be an issue at Ronde, too, less so at Roubaix. However, some undercover riding, not boasting form, can also be tactically useful. Not that anyone will ever underestimate him, but it can add shades to the mind games.
Of course, good performances raise morale… and the other way around. Maybe E3 was really too soon after the Teide: I’d have gone with Gand, I guess. But, again, maybe their idea was pure training, not even thinking about winning, which would necessarily bring you closer to some red zone of effort and/or risk. We’ll know more later today: there should be less pressure and he might test his improvements without such a heated competition as we’ve been saying more and more at E3, a race which progressively changed a lot in the last couple of decades.
The general sensation, from last Autumn, too, and the CX season, is that of course he can be there, well above the rest of mortals, but with a looming question mark about the very very peaks he had been hitting in previous seasons.
I don’t like him skipping Classics, but I like the idea that the team respects more his aspirations (if it’s really like that).
Someone tell Visma April Fools is over.
That one will last until April 1st 2026. At least.
Visma did a fantastic job, great lead out for Powless.
Somewhere Ian Stannard is just a little bit miffed.
I never thought I’d see a repeat of the Stannard vs Quickstep show! Although I think Stannard’s win was the more impressive, given that the Quickstep trio repeatedly attacked him (unlike VLAB’s efforts today). Still, both finales will live long in cycling folklore
Winning a la Stannard.
Agreed. As we all know, Stannard’s heroics against QS resulted in the greatest win in the history of all cycling, maybe all sport. But I loved this nearly as much.
What made yesterday so peculiar and altogether less spectacular albeit more funny is that while Stannard had superior legs and was athletically well above his rivals that day (which doesn’t justify losing a 3 to 1 as it doesn’t take anything away from Ian’s memorable feat), well, OTOH yesterday Powless had great legs but not to the point you’d deem him superior to the Visma.
Save for the sprint, my favourite moment was when Benoot took advantage of Neilson eating to let a gap open, but the EF rider didn’t panick, he finished off his bar or whatever, then he went, only to give a bit of a scolding to Jorgenson thereafter.
It was a similar situation but different. Quick Step in 2015 were split, chasing each other down at times which helped Stannard and then he started prising them apart.
Visma by contrast didn’t move once, they took Powless to the line assuming Van Aert would finish the job and wanting to gift the win to him after his crash here a year ago. Van Aert cramped in the sprint which is probably a concern for Sunday which will be longer.
Blog post of the Stannard win in case anyone is wondering what this is all about:
https://inrng.com/2015/03/the-moment-the-race-was-won-omloop-het-nieuwsblad-2015/
I agree it was similar but different. In those days, the ‘wolfpack’ QS strategy allowed relatively less hierarchy, with whomever was strong that day taking their chances. It’s not necessarily the greatest mentality in a 3-on-1 situation against a strong rider, when a little coordination and strategy should yield the win.
In contrast, Visma was coordinated, in terms of all being on the same page, but with terrible strategy. WvA’s post-race emotional devastation reminded me why most successful elite athletes are so bloodless. Being arrogant and aloof to criticism, while unseemly, is an asset in competition. WvA has let the Belgian fans and press get into his head, and his team tried to gift him a win for emotional support, with disastrous results. I’ve rarely seen such a human response to a loss by an top-level athlete.
And none of this is to take away from Powless’s epic win, which had me jumping up and down and cheering. The way he pulled his share of turns, like he was a dedicated part of the Visma TTT, was impressive. He said he knew if he really tried to shirk that it would’ve triggered attacks but, even with that concern, it really appeared that he was doing a lot more than he needed to (which was noted also by the commentators at least once).
Better than watching someone solo for the last 80km. The VLAB screw up made it a much better watch.
Brilliant stuff – much better and more entertaining than the horrors of Strade and E3.
I got to give Powless credit was it not Visma who did not renew his contract a few years ago?
He was the only one who could follow the Visma threesome after he had been in the break.
Then dust WVA “revenge best served cold”
Unless the story presented here https://velo.outsideonline.com/news/inside-neilson-powlesss-move-from-jumbo-visma-to-ef-education-first/ is pure PR hogwash, it was Powless himself who chose to leave Jumbo-Visma.
Yes, it seems Powless had a very different response to being at Jumbo-Visma than fellow American Jorgenson did (though Jorgenson was coming from Movistar, and came to the team-in-yellow four years later). I can imagine that if Powless had stayed he’d have a career something like Benoot – a strong support rider for superstars, a guy with impressive finishes, but virtually never being the featured rider.
Good point Kevin, Sepp as I recall went to Visma the same time as Powless. Sepp is a super domestique at his finest no more not a leader. Perhaps Matteo has broken that mold of non-native European leaders for Vima?