{"id":235288,"date":"2025-10-31T04:48:17","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T04:48:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/235288\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T04:48:17","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T04:48:17","slug":"all-the-juniors-i-speak-to-have-a-manager-vismas-head-of-performance-calls-cyclings-youth-talent-race-not-always-healthy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/235288\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cAll the juniors I speak to have a manager\u201d \u2013 Visma\u2019s Head of Performance calls cycling\u2019s youth talent race \u201cnot always healthy\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>That shift, he argues, brings weighty expectations far earlier than before. \u201cSomeone gets the label of talent quickly and something is expected of you. That automatically creates pressure. The environment expects things too. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s always healthy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Fierce competition and Dutch prospects slipping away<\/p>\n<p>The demand for prodigies has dramatically reshaped the development market. De Groot made clear the battle now stretches far beyond national borders and traditional talent hubs. \u201cRed Bull, Trek, us, Decathlon\u2026 those are big rivals for each other and the battle is intense.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That intensity has seen Visma miss out on home-grown names. Two highly rated Dutch juniors \u2014 Michiel Mouris and Gijs Schoonvelde \u2014 opted to sign with Red Bull &#8211; BORA &#8211; hansgrohe\u2019s pathway instead. \u201cWe\u2019d certainly have liked to have one of them,\u201d De Groot admitted. \u201cEveryone makes their own choices, but we\u2019re very keen to bring through Dutch riders.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMan is not a machine\u201d: senior pros feel the shift tooThe consequences of cycling\u2019s youth obsession are already felt beyond academies. Veteran Belgian <a href=\"https:\/\/cyclinguptodate.com\/julien-vermote\" title=\"Julien Vermote\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Julien Vermote<\/a>, speaking to Het Nieuwsblad, warned that the drive to find \u201cthe new Pogacar or Remco\u201d risks sidelining experience and burning out youngsters. \u201cThey all think they&#8217;ll miss the new Pogacar or Remco otherwise. But there aren&#8217;t fifty of them walking around like that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He also highlighted the growing reliance on numbers over intuition: \u201cEverything is measured in watts and heart rate zones. While you still win races with brains and gut feeling\u2026 Man is not a machine, and people seem to forget that. The race isn&#8217;t a laboratory. You win with heart, not with an algorithm.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>His message dovetails with De Groot\u2019s warning: the system is becoming more intense, not necessarily more humane.<\/p>\n<p>A talent arms race \u2014 but at what cost?<\/p>\n<p>The top teams are investing earlier, scouting deeper, and recruiting younger. Development squads are becoming junior teams; junior teams increasingly resemble pro systems. The upside is clear: pathways are sharper and support is stronger. But the fallout \u2014 from mental strain on teenagers to fewer opportunities for seasoned professionals \u2014 is now centre stage in the sport\u2019s debate.<\/p>\n<p>For Visma\u2019s performance chief, protecting riders through this new reality will be as important as finding them.<\/p>\n<p>How teams handle that balance could shape the next era of the peloton.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#13; That shift, he argues, brings weighty expectations far earlier than before. \u201cSomeone gets the label of talent&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":235289,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-235288","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}