My name is Elin - A pro cycling lover's reflections

Is Fuglsang too fat to win the Giro d'Italia?

Category: Cycling

Sport can be fascinating in many ways, but sometimes it's sick. When I was in Copenhagen, Denmark to check out the women's road race during the world championships, I realized how incredibly skinny the athletes really are. In normal circumstances, I am normal weight, almost underweight, but around these girls I looked obese. It was crazy.
Jakob Fuglsang
Jakob Fuglsang is one of the favorites to win the Giro d'Italia next year, but his RadioShack-Nissan-Trek sport director Kim Andersen says the Danish rider is overweight, and if he doesn't lose weight, he won't win the Giro d'Italia next year.

"He must lose two per cent of body fat. Otherwise he can not make it all the way up the steep mountains," Andersen told sporten.tv2.dk.

According to his current team Leopard-Trek's website, Fuglsang weight 69 kg, with a height of 182 cm. A healthy weight, for sure, but he is a cyclist and weight can matter in all kind of ways.

"If he loses the weight he can compete. If he loses the weight and is in good form, then he can be right up there."

Fuglsang will be the team's captain for the Giro and will then, probably, have a helper role at the Tour de France, where the team wants to bring Andy and Fränk Schleck on to the podium again.

But first, he must make the Tour de France team.

"It will be in an auxiliary role. I think we can count on that. But it is not certain that it will be so,” Andersen noted. “It is impossible to say, for it may well be that he is completely finished after Giro.”

But I still have a bad taste in the mouth of cycling's low fat frenzy. It doesn't make much good for anyone. Obviously, we have no idea what Andersen has told Fuglsang, but I do hope that Andersen knows what he's doing, that is, given Fuglsang some tips on how he can lose two percent body fat without hurting himself. Too many athletes have tried to lose weight by starving or start following some crazy diet, like only eating jelly beans or only eating plain pasta forever and forever and forever. You may believe than only kids are trying these kind of methods, but sorry, maybe your favorite athlete is trying them today.
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