Are Race Tactics Becoming Outdated? Should M-SR Be Shortened? Grumpy Old Man Pays Price; Bike Industry's Continuing Woes; Saudi Investment Interest ... in Other Sports; Peter Sagan
Key Takeaways:
● Cycling’s Grumpy Old Man Pays the Price
● Are Race Tactics Becoming Passé?
● Is M-SR Too Long?
● Wielerflits: Bike Industry Continues to Stagnate
● Saudi Investment Interest Continues … in Other Sports
● Peter Sagan’s Engine Needs Another Tune-up
Team Soudal Quick-Step boss Patrick Lefevere has long relished the role of pro cycling’s grumpy old man, but he finally paid the price this past week for disparaging comments he made about the team’s star rider Julian Alaphilippe, and his partner Marion Rousse (previous racer, now director of the Tour de France Femmes). There is hardly room here to recount all the offensive and boorish outbursts Lefevere has produced over the past few years – often geared at women or riders on his own team, though he somehow scraped the bottom of a barrel to combine both in this instance. However, the UCI finally had enough, determined that Lefevere’s comments were in breach of its Code of Ethics, and said the he must publicly apologize for the Alaphilippe comments as well as one other unspecified incident, and remain on better behavior in the future – or pay a fine of 20,000 Swiss francs. Although it’s not unheard of for coaches in other sports to take to the public media to castigate their own players, Lefevere often seems to cut himself off at the feet by making the attacks personal, rather than criticisms to spur professional motivation. Unsurprisingly, speculation has started about whether Alaphilippe will return to the team next year after his current contract runs out.
After each monument in 2023, and particularly after Strade Bianche a couple weeks ago – where some of the sport’s biggest stars (Remco Evenepoel, Tadej Pogačar, and Mathieu van der Poel) swept to victory with essentially unstoppable solo attacks – there have been creeping suggestions that perhaps in-race tactics were going extinct. If the best riders can simply have their teams make the race as hard as possible before riding clear of the bunch with a significant portion of the race remaining, even the best-laid tactical plans will have almost no effect. If riders like Pogačar, Evenepoel, or Van Aert attack 50 or even 90 kilometers from the finish line, there just isn’t any way for lesser riders to get ahead of the race or parry the attacks.
However, the last week has clearly demonstrated that we are not quite yet in a “post-tactical” world dominated by a handful of superstars. First, Remco Evenepoel was defeated by Matteo Jorgenson at Paris-Nice due to superior tactical racing by the young American, And second, this past weekend’s Milano-Sanremo saw underdog Jasper Philipsen defeat heavy pre-race favorite Tadej Pogačar, who was visibly the strongest rider in the race. Alpecin-Deceuninck executed a perfectly coordinated plan, with Philipsen led in by his superstar teammate Mathieu van der Poel (who himself has been criticized as one of the main culprits of tactics-free racing) while Pogačar’s UAE squad made tactical errors in the final kilometers.
Meanwhile, Elisa Balsamo’s (Trek-Lidl) won a powerful sprint win over Lotte Kopecky (SD Works-Protime) and Puck Pieterse (Fenix-Deceuninck) in the Trofeo Alfredo Binda, serving up another example that while Kopecky’s SD Worx might be the strongest team on paper, overall strength between the top WWT squads is beginning to even up. Calculated breakaways, strong attacks and chase-backs among the favorites over the final two circuit laps led to a reduced bunch sprint in which Balsamo had the strongest legs. The well-balanced top ten (nearly every one of the top teams were represented) indicates that the WWT spring Classics might provide the sport’s best racing of the year.
The fact that M-SR was the first monument in two full years to serve up a winner that wasn’t either Van der Poel, Pogačar, or Evenepoel, is ironic – since the nearly 300-kilometer course lacks significant geographic challenges, is often considered an archaic, outdated relic, and has faced recent calls to change the course by adding more difficult climbs. But, as racing speeds have increased (this edition was the fastest of all time), the perceived excessive length of the course has just barely kept the race over six hours – the vague but invisible line where the sport’s fittest and most talented riders seem to begin to crack. This somewhat tediously easy course seems to have kept ultra-strong riders from simply riding clear, while the extreme length adds just enough fatigue to the peloton in the finale to stave off routine bunch sprints. As a result, the number of contenders, while still highly elite, is larger than any other monument, and the sport's top riders have been forced to lean on more tactical racing in order to win. In essence, one could argue that M-SR is turning into the perfect modern race – due to its balance between being too easy and hard. In contrast, as the Tour of Flanders has made the finale of its course more difficult in recent years, the potential pool of winners has become smaller and smaller, and racing slightly less tactical, as the strongest riders know they can simply launch a knock-out blow over the two brutal final climbs.
The flourish of excitement and victory of an outsider at the end of six hours of racing over the weekend also brings up the much-debated point about the purpose of Milano-Sanremo’s long 300-kilometer course (which was technically reduced to 288 kilometers for 2024). As sports like baseball have emphasized a faster pace to reduce the time of games and capitalize on perceived shortening attention spans, cycling’s biggest events can routinely last five or six hours. Many pundits and fans have routinely called for shorter races, in an attempt to create more exciting and explosive races. While shorter events can produce exciting line-to-line racing (like the 110-kilometer Stage 19 of the 2011 Tour de France) or increase the number of potential contenders (like the now-defunct shorter version of the Strade Bianche course) it may also result in anti-climactic racing. If the level of fitness is extremely high among the top riders, a relatively flat or short course often results in a massive bunch sprint on a flat course, or tightly-clustered uphill stalemate at the top of a mountain (see Stage 13 of the 2023 Giro d’Italia). In short, the extremely high and uniform fitness level of top riders means that you can't simply shorten a race and expect it to generate more exciting racing.
There are reports emerging that the omnipresent Saudi investment fund PIF has offered $2 billion to help merge the men’s (ATP) and women’s (WTA) professional tennis tours. According to the Huddle Up newsletter, the deal makes good sense for PIF – due to the similarities of the basic economic model between golf and tennis. Basically, any players outside the top 150 struggle to stay afloat financially, and “an increase in prize money (or guaranteed salaries) would go a long way” towards stabilizing the sport. The newsletter also reports that the two primary governing bodies of tennis have flown to Saudi Arabia in recent weeks to close a $100 million sponsorship deal.
Meanwhile, potential Saudi interest in investing in the sport of pro cycling – if it was ever really there at all – seems to be rapidly fading. It’s been about five months since there was an outburst of stories claiming that pro cycling was on the verge of being taken over by the Saudis, and just six weeks since Reuters reported that the deal was imminent. In retrospect, earlier hysteria around the project now seems wildly overdone, but it is still too early to do a post-mortem analysis of the entire One Cycling project as there remains the possibility that at least some of the project’s initiatives could yet be undertaken. But at the appropriate time in the future, it will be interesting to dig into more detail about what actually happened with the proposed details and timeline of the project. That post-mortem should objectively examine how the sport should encourage and embrace change in the future, and – from a media perspective – reflect on how to cover major but often unsubstantiated developments in the sport in the future.
Recent news of brand “right-sizing” from Trek – one of the industry’s biggest bicycle and accessory multi-line product companies – confirmed that the bike market faces more upheaval before it can truly rebound from its inventory glut woes. Our friends at Wielerflits provided a broader global perspective on this crisis last week as part of its Taipei Cycle Show business news analysis and wrap up. In assessing the situation, they cited how historically poor industry-wide forecasting techniques created a perfect storm coming out of the COVID 19 pandemic. “A gigantic deficit has led to a gigantic surplus. Production (capacity) has increased, but demand has decreased,” and as a result, Wielerflits discovered that several of the most important brands have millions of mid-to-high-end frames “gathering dust” with no buyers lined up, potentially suppressing several billion dollars of sales worldwide. And the situation unfortunately might not resolve this year or in 2025, as export figures from the Taiwan Bicycle Association and the Bureau of Foreign Trade indicated that Taiwan's bicycle industry fell by as much as 21.29% from January to August in the last year alone. For the full story and insights into how the big brands might adjust to this new consumer-reality, read the full article here (Google’s Translate or similar web-based translation recommended).
Peter Sagan’s campaign for glory this summer at the Paris Olympics has been temporarily side-tracked due to a relapse of his heart rhythm issues. “While I was training on the rocky trails in Marseille, my heart hit a few bumps. Nothing to worry about, you could say that my heart needs a pit stop. I will undergo surgery next week … I am sure I will be back in the saddle very soon.” Although Sagan didn’t provide much detail, according to our colleague Dr. Bill Apollo, a Pennsylvania cardiologist, Sagan most likely has PSVT (paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia). The problem results from a “short circuit” which is able to conduct electrical impulses in the heart abnormally and at a high rate which causes the heart to race, or tachycardia. The ablation procedure which Sagan is likely to undergo locates the abnormal fibers which are then destroyed – or ablated – by a catheter placed within the heart, typically using high-frequency radio energy. Patients can expect an almost 97% chance of cure with an ablation procedure. However, as many as 3-7 % of patients may have a recurrence after a presumably “successful” procedure, even in the best hands. We wish Sagan a successful follow-up procedure so that he can resume his quest for Olympic gold.
In a fast-developing situation regarding the validity of “amateurism” in sport, the Dartmouth men’s basketball team recently voted to unionize and begin negotiations with its university administration for pay and benefits as recognized employees. The calculated steps taken by the Dartmouth team members – first, winning their Federal labor relations case, and using the precedent to unionize – follows an established path through which organized workers exercise their rights and collectively bargain with employers and industries for fair pay and treatment. Given the enormous sums of money being earned on the backs of the athletes, it should come as no surprise that the NCAA is trying an alternate path to enshrine its control over the collegiate sports economy via legislation. Its board is lobbying Congress for an antitrust exemption similar to that of other pro team sports leagues and the IOC’s UN charter. With the exception of a few elected officials, some of whom were once coaches in NCAA team sports, there isn’t enough bi-partisan support so far for such a drastic move in a major U.S. election year and even a Congressional roundtable meeting on the matter last week, in which NCAA and collegiate administrators were hoping for a “Hail Mary'' solution – fell flat. With the NCAA’s hold on collegiate sports’ amateurism model in jeopardy, reality may be catching up to Olympic-style sporting amateurism, too. In a broad sense, sports like pro cycling and international athletics could have new legal grounds to challenge marketing and revenue restrictions set by the IOC in the very near future.