How This Professional Gravel Cyclist is Paving The Way For Future Generations - Alexey Vermeulen
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 ก.ย. 2024
- Alexey Vermeulen is a current professional gravel bike racer. He was previously riding on the World Tour Stage for BMC Devo and later what has now become Jumbo Visma/Visma Lease A Bike. Alexey left the World Tour and began pursuing a career in gravel cycling as it was growing in popularity across the United States and the world.
Alexey has many successful results to date including national championships and major gravel event wins, but of course, we didn't want to talk about all of that.
In this episode we go into how Alexey is partnering with major brands to sponsor and support up and coming athletes and to ensure that the sport of gravel cycling continues long after he's retired. We dive deep into the idea of marketing yourself as an athlete and what it means to be a "professional" in a sport.
We really did have such an amazing conversation with Alexey and we hope that you enjoy his perspective as much as we did.
Follow along on his and Avery's adventures on TH-cam and Instagram:
/ @alexeyandavery
@alexeyvermeulen
Don't forget to check out the podcast over on Instagram or Tik Tok:
@sitting.in.podcast
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One of my favorite rides to exist! Great to see him on a podcast!🤟🏼
Honestly such a pleasure to chat with and such a down to earth dude. Good choice in riders to support 🤘🏼
To his point about not having the same excitement about watching unbound, I think if the coverage was end to end, I'd have loved to watch the last 50km of unbound. There are a whole bunch of moves that happened in the race that didn't get captured in any of the recaps I've seen other than from the riders themselves.
And I think there is room for new races to become as iconic as road classics (and I say this as a road fan first and foremost). For example, Strada Bianchi started in 2007, and there are already discussions about whether it should be considered a monument, because it's already become iconic due to the setting, the quality of the racing that has happened on that course, and that the last 5 people to win it are Pog (x2), Pidcock, Van der Poel, Van Aert, and Alaphilippe.
The higher caliber the racing becomes (like this years Unbound) and the more that the sharp end of the race plays out in exciting ways, the more likely that Unbound, IF it could be broadcast at the same level as top road races, could become just as iconic as Strada. After all. It's really only a decade behind.
The more that world tour guys come over to try it and don't win (or don't win every time), the more that makes it a big deal, too. OR if top WT cobble/cross guys decide later in their road careers that Unbound is a big enough deal that it'd be a special feather in their cap. Particularly since they couldn't win it without going full gravel style with the right bike, hydration packs, etc. Imagine Wout showing up with Lachlan's setup, MTB tire(s), bladder in the skin suit, etc. If/when that kind of thing happens, that too will make it a bigger deal.
I know it's rare, but I enjoy both MTB and gravel. They both offer different challenges that are great for cross-training. The endurce you build up in gravel helps with MTB and the climbing in MTB helps with gravel.
Great perspective on it. We agree there’s more overlap than people give credit
The shirts are on point in this ep.
It still blows we away just how huge an influence corps have in terms of revenue for this sport. It makes sense but it also is tough to see too bright a future. That is if a lot of this stuff relies so heavily on a certain kind of economy. I suspect many of a certain age don't know what it would look like if the ad and sponsorship money dried up. That's kind of scary to me. It's also the nature of the beast to have some companies like, Enve, as one example, with their MBA's and private investment firms bloating the brand from within by overreaching with too many ideas and not enough real demand etc. I suspect many will disagree but if gravel really does have this grassroots vibe still then it will need community resilience supported inside it because at some point the brand money will dry up or at the very least the economic incentives will change. It's just how this crazy large bike company thing works. On the other hand, independents are probably not going anywhere soon and despite not having the money to support all this stuff there is still that core ethos that is really important for the riders in general.
Great episode!! 🤘🏼
Thank you! One of our favorite conversations.
Great conversation! Alexey is a well spoken dude with some great perspective 🍻
We totally agree. Very sharp, highly intelligent individual with a lot of really good things to say about the sport and life.
dude did zero research on Alexey.... lost me after that embarrassing intro
Hey! We appreciate your feedback. We're new to the podcasting side of things and of course working out kinks. Trying to decide just how much we want to research someone is actually a really important part of the experience we're trying to offer you folks. We do feel that too much research takes away the organic and drives a more scripted conversation but do agree that we need to know some bit of information on someone's background to at least know what might come up, or tackle some key points. Did you make it to the part where we joked about the Wikipedia Page blowing it?
It sort of stinks that you didn't give it more than maybe 30 seconds, this was a fantastic conversation overall and the conversation with Alexey went pretty deep into the state of gravel cycling and cycling in the United States in general, and touched on some really interesting topics like marketing yourself as an athlete and more. That's okay, though. We realize our podcast may not be for everyone.
We sincerely hope you find your favorites out there. There's plenty of content out in the universe these days.
All the best!
Great to see Alexy sit down on a new podcast that while may be working out the kinks did a good job. Keep it up.
Thanks a ton! Glad you enjoyed it 😊
Almost all the college kids I know are only into downhill. What would get them interested in endurance suffer-fest riding?
This guy gets it!
NICA isn't particularly interested in being a pipeline. I've talked to them directly during a leader summit about my high-level kids who are motivated to represent the US in some respect, and they made it clear that is not their focus.
That’s very unfortunate. We definitely need more development opportunities for these kids. Happy to hear about the things Alexey is working on and hopefully more follow.