The Pessimism and Occasional Optimism of Juvenile Adulthood

Simon Yates' victory in La Vuelta is a brilliant achievement and rightly deserved after falling so agonisingly short at the Giro in May.  However, I feel greater attention should be payed to someone else who stood on the podium in Madrid. A rider who has been around longer than the Yates brothers and a rider whose effort in recent years has been largely unnoticed by the wider world in recent years.  Thomas De Gendt's career could've gone in many different directions. In 2012, the 25 year old Belgian had kept himself in contention in the Giro d'Italia, only his second ever Grand Tour. De Gendt later attributed this to being incredibly light at the time, weighing nearly 60kg by the time the race reached Milan. And secondly, due to an incredible breakaway victory on stage 20 followed by a strong time trial the following day. Until that point, De Gendt had only appeared in the top 10 on 2 stages and was over 5 minutes behind the GC contenders. As such, the B