The Eurosport Breakaway team have given their verdict on the team dynamic of men’s cycling after Visma-Lease a Bike’s Jan Tratnik won Omloop Het Nieuwsblad. The team discussed the dominance shown by Visma in previous weeks, the “frightening” strength in depth within their ranks, as well as the disappointing drop-off of Ineos Grenadiers, with Tom Pidcock finishing eighth.
The Eurosport Breakaway team have given their thoughts on the team dynamic of men’s cycling after Visma-Lease a Bike’s Jan Tratnik won Omloop Het Nieuwsblad.
The Slovenian won his maiden Classic in Belgium as a breakaway group of six – including three Visma riders – sped towards the finish line, with Wout van Aert the clear favourite to cross first, but instead it was the unlikely Tratnik, van Aert’s team-mate, who took it.
Speaking afterwards, the Breakaway team – comprising Dani Rowe, Adam Blythe, and Dan Lloyd – highlighted the dominance that Visma are having on men’s cycling.
“The strength of that team is frightening,” Blythe said. “It’s rare after a Classic that you get six guys altogether in that first group across the finish line. Normally, you’re waiting for 10 minutes.”
Rowe, an Olympic gold medallist, agreed, believing that a spell of dominance for a certain team is exciting for the sport.
“Cycling is such a team sport and outsiders coming into the sport as a fan really understand how much of a team dynamic it is,” she explained.
“Yes, only one rider gets to stand on the podium at the end of a race, but it’s down to a whole team to get them there. With that dominance, it’s great for the sport, we need these superstars, these teams. We get it across other sports.
“These aspirational individuals for young kids to look up to as role models. Kids don’t look at average athletes and aspire to be them. We need these superstars.”
The superstars that the Dutch team boast include Van Aert and Tratnik, and Frenchman Christophe Laporte completed the Dutch team’s top 10 trio at Omloop.
“Luckily, we’ve got [Mathieu] van der Poel (Alpecin–Deceuninck) to come and play,” Blythe said.
“The dominance of that [Visma] team – it’s not just Wout van Aert – there’s not just one rider at Visma – they’re all capable of winning it in such different ways, and that’s what makes them almost impossible to beat. I’d be really interested to see what it was like if Van der Poel was in that situation.”
Dan Lloyd, winner of the Vuelta a Extremadura in 2008, was more reserved with his thoughts on Visma.
“We have to remind ourselves that they didn’t win either of the cobbled monuments,” he said. “They didn’t win a single monument last year. We thought they were going to, because they’d won every single one-day race on the cobbles before the bigger ones, but they didn’t quite perform on the day.
“I wonder whether they’re coming in not as hot as they did last year, because Van Aert didn’t look at the top of his game. But that’s not a worry. The bigger races are six weeks away.”
However, Omloop was a poorer showing for Ineos Grenadiers and Tom Pidcock, with the British rider finishing eighth – the only Ineos rider in the top 10.
“Ineos Grenadiers [did] really well to get four riders into that split that came earlier than anyone would have predicted, but the worry for them is that when the first attack came from Visma-Lease, they went from having four in the front group to having just Tom Pidcock on his own,” Lloyd explained.
“If he’s not at the very top of his game, then you start to think how on earth are they going to get any kind of results? That would be more of a worry for me particularly because Pidcock is focusing on other things this year. He’s not doing the Tour of Flanders or Paris-Roubaix. He’s focusing on Amstel through to Liege, so they won’t have him. They’ve got a lot of work to do.”
Rowe believed that it was a case of other teams closing the gap on Ineos, who have seen wholesale changes amidst their ranks.
“Teams have just caught up with them,” Rowe said. “They’ve been the team with the biggest budget for a number of years, and there’s been a big changeover in staff. It’s good for the sport; it was stale when they were winning all of the Grand Tours every single year. But the Classics is something they’ve just never got right.”
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