Colnago Calls Out Tom Boonen For Calling Out Colnago
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After getting called out publicly by Tom Boonen, legendary Italian bike maker Colnago did a bit of calling out of their own.
Last week, appearing as a guest on the Wielerclub Wattage podcast, Boonen said that Slovenian superstar Tadej Pogačar was at a disadvantage when compared to some of his rivals.
The cause of Pogačar’s flaw is not his team or his motor. Rather, according to Boonen, it’s inferior equipment; specifically, UAE Team Emirates’ Colnago V4Rs race bikes.
Boonen went on to say that Pogačar would be even faster if he were riding the same material as teams like Ineos Grenadiers, who ride Pinarellos, and Jumbo-Visma, who are on Cervelos. Boonen, who recently had a bronze sculpture made of his legs, is one of Belgian cycling’s legendary figures and still a vocal voice in the sport, so the off-the-cuff comments were picked up by the Belgian media and turned into headlines.
Colango responded publicly and in a statement to Bicycling, challenging the former World Champion and four-time Paris-Roubaix winner, along with his podcast colleagues, to come and try for themselves a V4Rs before sitting down for a conversation about “podcast’s data that allowed them to identify the 2km/h difference in performances with other brands as reported by the podcast, in comparison with the data provided by Colnago on the bike’s white paper, available since its launch on the Colnago website’s homepage.”
Should Boonen—who has yet to respond—accept the offer, the ride and public conversation will happen in the days before Milan-San Remo on March 18.
A few hours after Colnago posted their tweet, Pogačar won Stage 4 of Paris-Nice on his V4Rs, attacking with 2.3km to go in a group that included Jonas Vingegaard on a Cervelo and David Gaudu on a Lapierre. It’s Pogačar’s sixth win of the 2023 season and one that puts him in the leader’s jersey for Paris-Nice with four stages remaining. He holds a ten-second lead over Gaudu and a forty-four-second lead over Vingegaard.
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