Quote:
Originally Posted by reuben
It's awesome to watch either of them, and an almost guilty pleasure to watch them compete against each other in a race to which they're both suited and on form.
This.
|
My wife and I started watching Euro CX about five years ago and developed our relative crushes on these two based on that. Seeing Wout start on the road and do so well in Strade (2018?) after cramping on the final climb was amazing and then VDP also burst on to the road scene. Wout absolutely dominated CX this season really until the World Championship race. The women are usually more fun to watch and more competitive since it's not just the Wout/VDP show.
If we take away the Australia stuff (in my opinion the parents, kids and VDP all made big mistakes) and just look at the riding I'd say my biggest complaint against VDP is that he has shown a tendency to give up if things aren't going his way and/or he's not feeling great. This goes back to his Junior days. He wears his emotions on his sleeve much more so than Wout - I tease my wife that he's a Dutch Latino (she's Latina) due to all the histrionics after wins. But he's stupendous and just a blast to watch when he's on. As someone else said, when he's 100% he's tough to beat.
As far as Wout I don't see anything that can be criticized other than some questionable tactics - maybe that's due to how strong he is and not having to learn that skill. VDP has gotten much better tactically the last 12-18 months and will continue to beat Wout on certain parcours even if they are on equal form due to that. If you put a guy like Trentin's tactical nous into Wout's brain then he'd be superman. But his ability to win field sprints, rolling Classics, compete at LBL, time trial, win on a mountaintop (Ventoux) and to be a great teammate/domestique is unrivalled. He might not win like Pog (the new Cannibal) but there's also no one like him.