Terrell Clapton has reached gold in cobblestone hills 😀
Nice !
Clapton is the 4th young 23yo cobblehills specialist who enters the golden cobble ranking on nr 215.
Two other foreign 23yo's are very close by on nrs 208 and 197, only the best foreign 23yo has a little bit of a gap on nr 165.
In previous season I gave Clapton his NT debut, because back then he was the nr1 in the u23 DreamTeam.
And because he will be an
excellent cobblehills specialist ( if he trains very well this season, especially on his 2 lowest side skills ).
However, Clapton has fierce competition to get a NT selection in future races, because :
5. 
Vlaanderen FCHC^H 256 km
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Thé new speciality of Australia ( instead of TT ), because we have a bunch of young and amazing cobblehills specialists.
Unfortunately there are a few foreign rivals who are ( much ) better, and therefore no 5-stars-rating.
But right now it's difficult what to expect, because RVV has a different race GV as the standard cobblehills GV.
It is certainly possible that Australia will be the best scoring nation in future NT cobblehills races, but most likely not yet this season.
In the current golden cobble ranking there are 17 Australian cobblehills specialist ( incl. Clapton ).
Among them 5 high ranked Australians, and I'm in doubt if Clapton will be better than the nr 5.
If the current ( also excellent ) Australians were all the competition, then probably no problem that Clapton gets future NT selections.
But . . . . .
Australia has some younger cobblehills specialists with amazing potential.
Especially in the team of
Villavante ; 3x 21yo's,
incl.
supertoptalent Sifford who in my estimation will be better than the current top ranked Ronnald and Morse.
His two 21yo teammates have also great potential ; with perfect training they will be even much better as the excellent Clapton.
But perfect training might be an issue because Sifford decides the training schedule, so, both might become less good as I estimate.
Although, despite not perfect training, maybe one or both will still be more than excellent and also a very high top ranking.
Further more, but i.m.o. of less quality as the Villavante talents ;
I see two 22yo's with very good potential ( incl. the nr 8 u23 DT = nr 5 on cobblehills ),
if they train perfectly, most likely they will be a bit better as Clapton.
So, according to me, the Australian future competition in cobblehills will be extreme fierce !
And it will be not a guarantee to get a NT selection for some excellent Australian cobblehills specialists,
probably it will depend on the different kind of cobblehills races who will be the best top 9 GV ( or the best helpers ).
But that does change the fact that I like Clapton a lot, he can become excellent ( and with already gold now, in fact already excellent ).
If Clapton had another nationality, it would be obvious and self-evident that he gets NT selections in all types of cobblehills races.
I was not exaggerating in my statement ;
Thé new speciality of Australia ( instead of TT )
And in the TT-glory days of Australia, the Aus.NT managers had to dissapoint a lot of excellent high ranked TT specialists,
because we could select just 9. Perhaps this will be the future case now with cobblehills specialists.
Of course, there is always a possibility that my estimations of the young talents are not correct,
and maybe they will be less good as I expect. TR and how they train, are both of big influence, and ( in most cases ) unknown to me.
For sure also of influence is that I'm not an expert in estimating young talents, it is more on "Fox-gut-feeling", instead of calculations.
