Is he really as good as he seems or are his performances ‘dodgy’?

(I also realise its sad state of affairs where my first reaction is to question someone’s performance rather than thinking “Wow!”)

On a positive note I really enjoyed Nys bossing it around Gaverre this weekend – thanks Cyclocossable for footage!

I couldn’t speculate on whether he is clean or not but he certainly isn’t invincible, Pauwels just rode away from him twice last week. It’s a shame that Mathieu VdP is broken as I’m sure he would have been taking some of Wout’s wins.

Nah, he’s legit.

Seems to be on a roll ATM, bit like Nys was a few years ago. You find this in Cross if you follow it.

Cheers for the replies. Not an expert,but enjoy watching the races.

VdH always seems to nearly there, but not quite.

Been good to see Sweeck (sp?) having a go at the start too, but fading- seems young yet

why on earth would you question this?

He is the fastest guy out there (just) currently but Kevin Pauwels & Lars van der Haar are both getting wins also. I don’t think Wout gave the EU Champ to Lars based on his post-race reaction 😉

Indeed it will be great to see Van der Poel back to form shortly. I imagine the 2nd half of the season he will be thrashing all-comers due to the fresher legs having missed the season until now.

I’m still rooting for the old man Nys to win something. I had the feeling the Gavere looked promising for a while 🙁
It’s far too dry over here in Belgium currently, so I’m hoping for some real mud soon for Nys to use his technical skills.

I watched that valkenberg race (few wks ago) yesterday on tv – some dutch geezer pretty much bossed it all. So much faster then the rest down one descent that he could’ve nearly freewheeled the rest of the course

some dutch geezer

That’s little Lars 😉
his thighs are as wide as they are long 🙂

Cos it looks like a new rider, bursting on the scene and winning everything.

In reality he’s been moving steadily up the ranks (and winning everything on the way).

He is a machine when he gets going. It’s amazing to see Nys right up there with the ‘van the **** up’ lads.

I do have a soft spot for Kevin Pauwels ( I teach young people with Autism) as he manages a pretty stressful career amazingly well. I got a real insight to how he does it when I was invited to spend the morning with him, his manager and his mum before the MK round last year.

Funny that when Sven has been on a roll, I like it when others beat him. Now I really want him to win a race!

It will be interesting to see what Lars Boom and Zdenek Stybar can do.

@Tang: Jealous! I think Kevin is great

He’s the best at the minute but lars has the edge on him on courses that suit him. Remember the world champ is out at the minute and I still think there’s a big neils Albert shaped hole in the results.

The test for Van Aert is riding a full season in the Elites. He’s still only young and doesn’t have the massive race volume in his legs that Nys, Pauwels etc. have – he’s an U23 really and was able to cherry-pick his races up until this season, miss the odd one or two to stay fresh and dive in and out as required.
40+ races per season may start to tell, especially if VdP, Boom and Stybar all come in firing on all cylinders.

I’d heard rumours about boom but I didn’t think stybar would be back this winter?

Boom has said he’ll be back racing. Not so certain on Stybar.

Stybar has said he will if the contracts are right.

Bit of an article here:

http://www.sport.be/cycling/nl/nieuws/article.html?Article_ID=746347

oh, interesting.

Given the number of times he’s landed on his head in the last few years i thought levefre had banned him from cross

As above, I think he’s just hit a good vein of form – hopefully Van der Poel will be back soon.

Hopefully Stybar will be back after Xmas too (fingers crossed). Its also a shame Niels Albert had to retire. He was one of my favourite riders of the last few years.

A World Champs showdown between Stybar, Boom, VdP, Van Aert, Pauwels, VdH and the sadly departing Nys would certainly make the drive to Zolder worthwhile 😀

Looks like he’s going to be pretty handy on the road too…

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/van-aert-stuns-in-tour-of-belgium-opener-news-shorts/