I already knew from your blog that you were not a vingegaard fan. Can I ask why? Like any particular reason, or is it more you dislike visma and thus jonas by association?
Same for pogacar, though I myself am on the fence about him. Obviously his talent is incredible imo but yea he is big enough/ famous/wealthy/successful enough atp that I don't think he can turn a blind eye to who pays his salary anymore.
oh boy so i've been asked about the vingegaard thing a while ago and i've been sitting on a half written rant. i'm gonna do it properly this time.
so uh. i don't like him as a rider, he has nothing as a person, and the consequences of him being a thermonuclear cockroach during the tours he won are gonna make me stop watching this sport eventually? last point is a joint slay with pogacar, but hey.
first. while i don't usually abide by the theories of "ohhhh a rider is boring he's a wheelsucker he never attacks blah blah blah" and i honestly thought those were overblown for vingegaard. but god he's still so fucking boring. in so many ways.
first is the races he goes to and how he performs there. yeah yeah he doesn't do classics everyone should do what they want it's not a problem. WELL IT'S A PROBLEM FOR ME. i mentioned before my fave riders from the last era were Nibali and Pinot who were part of those rare guys that had a great balance between stage racing and classics racing and it's no coincidence. i just like guys like this. and when he finally makes a show of going it's so fucking pathetic, like what he did at euros25? honestly insulting, took a spot in the team to do fuck all and NOT EVEN ACT AS A TEAMMATE (more of that later).
and then there's what we'll call "racecraft". this guy has absolutely zero ability to make racing decisions that arent "urrrrr im the strongest i go" or plans laid out carefully by his ds with all his teammates working for him. like you can say what you want his reaction during the tdf24 gravel stage sums him up as a rider. not his terrain not his responsibilty so he's just gonna do nothing. no soul, doesn't spark joy, there's nothing here. and you could argue that it was the proper strategical decision etc. I. DO. NOT. CARE. i do not watch this sport to see robots who don't have any skill outside of a high watt output. i need some love here, some fun, i want to witness unexpected things, and he has never given me that on his own.
and it sucks, because clearly his team is (was?) able to lay out proper, ambitious plans. his two tours were won on the back of his team (esp. a certain guy but i cannot mention his name too much seeing what other topics i'm gonna get to soon ^_^) pulling all-ins and it seems like he didn't take anything away from it. imo you really see what a rider is made of when he's not the strongest, and what i've seen is that he's made of soggy wet cardboard. the way his team was obviously setting up a big offensive in whatever that one tdf25 stage was where jorgenson was always in front in the wrong places and he didnt even try to follow through... man. there's just such a lack of character and race smarts here. not to mention how disrespectful it was to his teammates.
also on the racing. i am sorry but it is an unforgivable sin to look so ugly on the bike when you're a pocket climber. he looks like froome's slenderman ass when at least this mf had the excuse of being relatively tall. also it's so obvious he's a terrible terrible bike handler and it's not funny and quirky it's just cringe. it's giving lab rat put on a bike.
then. let's talk about vingegaard as a teammate and not as a leader. well it's gonna be quick because from 2022 onwards he never helps anyone ever while his wins were achieved solely because of his team hashtag samenwinnen. its not even that he's a bad teammate he's an inexistant one. by the way i'm still mad about fucking trine yapping to the media about how jonas' teammates should be 100% devoted to him and not have their own ambitions, which caused a lot of media drama, for jonas to not even TRY to defend his teammates just in the slightest and just throwing them to the wolves. even funnier that his teammate that got the worst of it is the one guy that has been absolutely instrumental to his tour wins but god forbid we give even a little back apparently. actually i'm still SEETHING about that, real character defining moment for me.
but it doesn't matter bc as nobody is immune to propaganda, people out here are gonna look as visma's carefully crafted PR #samenwinnen #bestiesdevotedtotheroach and tell you they all love each other and they're the bestest friends in the world yayyyyyy
ok done with the racing part. now the doping part.
not even gonna go in depth into the "he was racing when he was a kid and he had to stop to work at the fish factory" story that has somehow being recrafted into some great heroic tale and not something. well incredibly fishy. because what the hell lol if you're that guillible i don't know what to say.
now. this is where i have to mention pogacar because both of them have contributed hand in hand to the current enshittification of this sport ❤️ there's a game of escalation played them between them and their teams that has brought us to where we are standing. pre-covid things were already starting to look a bit dubious to say the least (pogi vuelta 19 really was the star of this), then you get an out-of-this-world MTT performance at the tdf20, followed by complete domination in the tdf21 with jumbo getting that scrawny looking guy out of nowhere. and improved team performances. to the absolute stupidity that was tdf22 on a team level and the actual atomic bomb that was tdf23 in terms of jonas' own performances. not naming names for the team bc i have someone to protect ^_^ look the other way ^_^ but tdf23 was such an INSANE outlier and the reaction it got back then was deserved. that Combloux ITT is still statistically the most deranged performance we have seen in this sport in terms of actual gap between 1st and 3rd place and it deserved all the scrutiny it got. but the whole tour23 was kind of a mass hallucination event because how was this guy absolutely shitting on pogi who was already making a mockery of everyone else the rest of the year (RVV23)??? tdf23 then caused uae and pogi going absolutely thermonuclear from 2024 onwards. congrats you ruined the fun for everyone.
and im assuming i'm getting read by people with half a brain here but obviously "material" and "training techniques" and "carboloading" and "z2 training" obviously don't result in such MASSIVE improvements in such a short period of time (FOUR YEARS!!!) where it's somehow the two biggest teams and their leader constantly one upping each other's physical performances. they're just pushing the limits of medically assisted racing further and further. so yeah i resent jonas/jumbo heavily for that ❤️ not to mention the comment he made regarding his daughter and doping was really crass. because he is doping. anyways.
last thing to mention is his personality i guess? which is just boring pr shit and being a family man and sometimes having one single funny one liner about hating sprint stages. so outside of the racing there's nothing to like he's just a guy. which good for him i guess but this is not how you redeem him for me.
ok more or less done with vingegaard. forgot a lot of things im sure.
now with pogi it's gonna be quick because i mentioned it several times. overall i think he's a fucking shitty human being and while i liked him in the past because i often enjoyed the way he raced. it's gone and i dont even like the way he's racing anymore.
mentioned the doping part. x100 for him because he's just allowed to do whatever he wants atp and nobody cares. lol.
i heard enough about him being "friends with the uae prince" and "feeling like part of the family" and him chanting UAE! UAE! UAE! with kids. he's the poster boy for a genocidal petrolstate and if i had any say in the matter the regime would fall and he would be taken to court as a criminal. ❤️
also heard enough stories of him and his mean girl clique during races. stupid piece of shit. hope mou is right and his gf breaks up with him and leaves him miserable yayyyyyyyyy may he disappear forever ❤️
