The Curious Case of Jonas van Genechten

In three PDC drafts this year, Jonas van Genechten was either the highest or second highest 2018 point-scorer left on the board. Nobody took him. This in and of itself does not seem that unusual, until I tell you that the same thing happened in the 2018 draft and the 2017 draft. In fact, he was drafted only once among multiple drafts in all those years, insomuch that the running gag became how we tell his poor mother that nobody likes him.

This curiosity persists in VDS as well. Since his rookie season in 2011 through 2018, he has been selected to a mere 33 teams. Again, in and of itself, the prospects of any given perennial 1-or-2-pointer being selected to teams is quite slim. But since 2014, Jonas van Genechten gets fairly reliable results:

Excepting 2017 (the year that incidentally saw his greatest popularity), JVG has met and surpassed the fabled 100:1 point ratio with significant room to spare. This is surprising regularity. So what gives? Why do we every year have to draw straws to decide who has to call Mrs. Van Genechten and tell her that nobody, just nobody likes her poor son? After a little digging, I’ve come up with one possibility that may give us some insight into who we like and how we pick our teams.

Since 2014, with two exceptions (only a 10th place in the 2017 Schelderprijs and 9th in the 2016 Kuurne- Brussels - Kuurne) all of his points have come after June. This means that he simply does not fit the stereotype very well. If you’re going to be a big Belgian, you’d be better do well at big Belgian races, which means racing and winning in the spring. When putting together a team, if I have a need for a 1-or-2 point Belgian, I am going to overlook those that don’t score very many points in the spring. I’ll go to Procyclingstats, scroll to the bottom of his results last year and see that he was a non-entity in the spring (ignoring or maybe even chuckling at his summer and autumn results). I could take that same one point and spend it on Dimitri Claeys or Amaury Capiot, who occasionally score (or at least show) in the spring and fit the stereotype.

Furthermore, the lack of spring scoring make his results seem fleeting and flukey (even though they seem to be fairly consistent), similar maybe to a Climbian who only scores at E3. What’s especially unsettling is that his spring results are actually the flukey ones: a 9th and 10th in two spring races with a history of having some strange bedfellows in the lower top 10. His summer and autumn results are actually fairly reliable and include victories (2018 Omloop van het Houtland, a 2017 Vuelta stage, a couple of mid-level stage wins in 2016 and, worth mentioning, a 3rd place in the 2016 Paris-Tours, where he beat the likes of Matteo Trentin, Bryan Coquard in an on year, Mark Cavendish and Nacer Bouhanni). His points include wins and not random ones at that.

So then the real question: who are we to judge? If this is really why we are ignoring JVG, how did he get sucked into the mold? And why can’t he break out of it and get some VDS love? Part of it may be that he is simply a Big Belgian who spent a fair share of his early years with red Lotto. This is a typical trajectory for a spring specialist. A similar stereotyping may have happened to Darwin Atapuma (who has experienced a not insignificant drop-off in VDS selection [though that may be price-related]) and Jarlinson Pantano: a couple of obvious Climbian types that have been shoe-horned into being GC threats leading to disappointment when they are actually really just opportunistic and really great domestiques.

Perhaps within the realm of VDS, we are guilty of a millenia-old human vice. Perhaps, as with humanity, we might benefit by taking a deeper look at the rider instead. Here’s to poor old Jonas and the hopes that he finds himself on a few more teams this season.