newManUK wrote:
Let me try to answer this in a none confrontation manner
1) Firstly you said that finishing top 6 at SB or MSR was better than winning a Belgium Classic?
Personally I class Flanders/P-R (ok I know it's in France) as the Belgium/classics. Winning one of those puts you up with the cycling gods and can set your entire career so I completely disagree.
2) Now you seem to be making the point that you can't extrapolate a 1 hour ride to a 4-6 classic. Which many would agree with! However, you did this without the knowing that MVP has already proven himself a few times over the longer distances. Like coming 2rd in the European RR Champs in Glasgow. Which was a long, cold, hard race where many of the big boys dropped out.
You might be interested to read what the Roger has to say about them
""If you have big class, then you can do everything. From the moment Van der Poel and Van Aert became professional cyclists, I knew that they would be two very good road racers. The best in Belgium and Holland. I said that," said De Vlaeminck, who dismissed comparisons with Sven Nys. "A good cyclist, Nys, but he didn't have big class. He was lucky that he didn't have to race against 'Van Aertje' and Van der Poel.""
http://www.cyclingnews.com/...flanders-approaches/ Roger De Vlaeminck (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_De_Vlaeminck)
1) Uh yes? not sure how else to justify that one, and it was a 3rd and 6th place finish, and now a 2nd place finish in world tour events that get UCI points, WVA is leading in UCI points of MVP although its close which is why its exciting to see where they finish in flanders/PR.
2) Since this is ST I assume we both understand how periodization, specificity, and peaking work within a training plan and schedule right? Assuming both WVA and MVP trained to peak for cyclocross worlds its likely they are now coming down from that peak in specific fitness as they transition to road whereas many of the other road riders are increasing their CTL in a base/build phase to peak later in the season. Obviously world class rider's troughs in their training are going to be higher than peaks for lower riders everyone knows that. Both riders have a lot of potential to make a transition to road successfully and I expect them to only get better once they stop prioritizing the cyclocross season.